I completely agree with Steven Shaviro and the Reading Experience to”only write about books [and films etc…] I like, letting the ones I don’t be passed over in silence.”
One of the earliest people to defend this was André Bazin:
André Bazin is known as a proponent of appreciative criticism, wherein only critics who like a film can write a review of it, thus encouraging constructive criticism.
Below are answers to the question: why I read the blogs I read:
That’s all. Thank you.
Prompted by this post by The Reading Experience blog on John Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934) I started thinking about the concept of mediazation, a word to which one only finds 344 references on the web. A much more common word that denotes the same quality is mediated, of which there are 77 references on Jahsonic alone, most prominent of which are the references to mediated sex and mediated violence. Mediatedness and mediazation are key concepts in modernism and postmodernism. One might even argue that if modernity started after the Middle Ages and the arrival of print culture for the happy few, postmodernity started with the advent of the mediazation of mass society, with the replacement of aura and direct experience by the media (which coincides with the arrival of print culture for the masses). If one follows this through it would appear that the shift from modernity to postmodernity is only one of degree.
From the web:
For Shaviro, Cronenberg is not simply an illustration of postmodern media theory. Rather, “the brutally hilarious strategy of Videodrome is to take media theorists such as Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard completely at their word, to overliteralize their claims for the ubiquitous mediazation of the world.” Footnote But the difference between Cronenberg and (for example) Baudrillard is Cronenberg’s insistence on the palpability of mediated experience: –William Beard via http://iceberg.arts.ualberta.ca/filmstudies/Videodrome.htm [Nov 2006]
Experience, quipped Oscar Wilde, is the name one gives to one’s mistakes. Does aesthetic experience then name the central blunder of modern aesthetics? Though long considered the most essential of aesthetic concepts, as including but also surpassing the realm of art, aesthetic experience has in the last half-century come under increasing critique. Not only its value but its very existence has been questioned. How has this once vital concept lost its appeal? Does it still offer anything of value? The ambiguous title, “the end of aesthetic experience,” suggests my two goals: a reasoned account of its demise, and an argument for reconceiving and thus redeeming its purpose.
[…] Modernization and technology, Benjamin likewise argued, have eroded aesthetic experience’s identification with the distinctive, transcendent autonomy of art. Such experience once had what Benjamin called aura, a cultic quality resulting from the artwork’s uniqueness and distance from the ordinary world. But with the advent of mechanical modes of reproduction like photography, art’s distinctive aura has been lost, and aesthetic experience comes to pervade the everyday world of popular culture and even politics. Aesthetic experience can no longer be used to define and delimit the realm of high art. Unlike Adorno, Benjamin saw this loss of aura and differentiation as potentially emancipatory (although he condemned its deadly results in the aesthetics of fascist politics). In any case, Benjamin’s critique does not deny the continuing importance of aesthetic experience, only its romantic conceptualization as pure immediacy of meaning and isolation from the rest of life. –Richard Shusterman via http://www.artsandletters.fau.edu/humanitieschair/end-aesth-exp.html [Nov 2006]
See also: aura – live and mediated popular culture – experience
Stephen Mitchelmore in an new post at This Space (who I’ve mentioned before here) writes about the distinction between genre fiction and literary fiction.
If there’s one reason why this blog exists, it is to challenge the assumptions of British culture about what it means for work to be ‘literary’. Over two years and longer, I’ve posted blogs defining literary fiction, and observed that it tends to be only genre writers and their fans who are perplexed about their exclusion from the literary prizes (which, I must say, aren’t terribly literary anyway). I’ve even asked an apparently taboo question: why aren’t literary writers given genre awards? But it seems I’m having no impact and the dummies are winning the day. At least in that respect I’m following in the finest literary tradition.
Although he says that he’s defined literary fiction here, he starts his definition by saying that he’s only offering another evasion but then goes on to say that:
I seek an engagement at the deepest level. It’s not always the most comfortable of experiences, and if I had any intelligence maybe I’d avoid it by getting lost in some genre fiction.
In this analysis two words stand out: engagement and intelligence. Engagement points to seriousness (which we need from time to time, but not always); the way Stephen uses the term intelligence indicates that somehow genre fiction is stupid. A pity.
Let me round up this quote (introduction mine) by a certain George Walden who represents my view on this matter best:
The perceived contradiction between high and low culture is a recurring theme on Jahsonic.com. I believe that both high culture and low culture are minority tastes and as such can be described as subcultures, both influencing mainstream culture. I also believe that both high and low culture have produced masterpieces and works of mediocrity. As George Walden puts it:
Three points appear self-evident.
- First, there is no conflict whatever between popular and more demanding culture, and no need to choose.
- Second, that the majority of popular culture is commercially produced ephemera of mostly lamentable quality which needs absolutely no help or encouragement from government, still less nauseous ingratiation.
- Third, that there is such a thing as high art, and that some things will always remain for the privileged few – privileged not in the tired old class-conscious meaning of the word, but in the sense that by hard work and/or natural ability they are able to appreciate, eg highly refined musical forms or classical literature that it is not given to everyone to understand, even if we are given every opportunity to do so.
— George Walden, source unidentified (website offline)
The Impressionist and patron of other artists Gustave Caillebotte (1848 – 1894) painted the Boulevard Haussmann under many aspects of seasonal and daily change.
Gustave Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist (1995) – Anne Distel
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Book Description
Caillebotte’s vivid representations of Parisian life bridged the gap between Realism and Impressionism during the 1870s and early 1880s. His Paris Street: Rainy Day and Floorscrapers–each the subject of a fascinating, extensively illustrated analysis in this book–have become icons of the Impressionists’ devotion to scenes of modern urban life.
Prepared by an international team of scholars to accompany the major 1994-95 retrospective organized by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and The Art Institute of Chicago, Gustave Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist reproduces 89 of his paintings and 28 of his drawings and studies, many of them from little-known private collections. Thoughtful essays examine both his work and his crucial role as an early patron and promoter of Impressionism. A chronology, list of exhibitions, and selected bibliography provide additional invaluable information.
See also: French art – realism – impressionism – Arcades Project
Related: road – car – Baron Haussmann – Paris
Works with boulevard in title: Hollywood Boulevard (1976)
Avenue de la Grande Armée, one of Haussmann’s twelve grand avenues radiating from the Arc de Triomphe. La Défense and the Grande Arche (the hollow white cube) can be seen on the horizon. [Oct 2006]
Image sourced here.
Picture of Boulevard Haussmann during the Paris flood of 1910, photo by Pierre Petit (1832-1909)
Image sourced here.
1800s photograph of Printemps (meaning “spring” in French), a French department store (or a grand magasin, literally “big store”). I grandi magazzini Printemps in una foto d’epoca
Image sourced here.
Boulevard (French, from Dutch Bolwerk – bolwark, meaning bastion) has several generally accepted meanings. It was first introduced in the French language in 1435 as boloard and has since been altered into boulevard.
In this case, as a type of road, a boulevard is usually a wide, multi-lane arterial divided thoroughfare, often with an above-average quality of landscaping and scenery.
Baron Haussmann made such roads well-known in his re-shaping of Second Empire Paris between 1853 and 1870. The French word boulevard originally referred to the flat summit of a rampart (the etymology of the word distantly parallels that of bulwark). Several Parisian boulevards replaced old city walls; more generally, boulevards encircle a city center, in contrast to avenues that radiate from the center.
Boulevard is sometimes used to describe an elegantly wide road, such as those in Paris, approaching the Champs-Élysées. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard [Oct 2006]
Boulevard Haussmann running from Paris VIIIe to Paris IXe arrondissement, 2.53 km long, is one of the wide tree-lined boulevards driven through Paris during the Second French Empire by Baron Haussmann, who retained the complete confidence of Napoleon III.
The department stores (“grands magasins”) Galeries Lafayette and Le Printemps are sited on the Boulevard Haussmann, which is mostly lined with apartment blocks, whose regulated cornice height gives a sense of regularity to the Boulevard.
At No. 102 lived the great French novelist Marcel Proust (1871 –1922) a martyr to asthma spent much of his life writing through the night hours in the famous cork-lined bedroom of his ornate townhouse. Alan Bates starred in 102 Boulevard Haussmann a 1991 made-for-television docudrama written by Alan Bennett [1].
At 158 and 158 bis the Musée Jacquemart-André presents a private collection of French furnishings.
The Impressionist and patron of other artists Gustave Caillebotte (1848 – 1894) painted the Boulevard under many aspects of seasonal and daily change. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard_Haussmann [Oct 2006]
The Complete Richard Allen, Vol. 1 (1992) – Richard Allen
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James Moffat, who wrote under the pen name Richard Allen, produced several pulp novels for the UK publishing house New English Library during the 1970s.
Many of his stories featured the often violent and sensationalist exploits of a fictional skinhead character, Joe Hawkins. Allen’s skinhead-related works include: Skinhead, Skinhead Escapes, Trouble for skinhead, Skinhead Farewell and Dragon Skins (about Kung Fu-fighting skinheads). He also wrote a number of other titles aimed at exploiting various youth subcultures, including Punk Rock, Teeny Bop Idol, Suedehead (a longer-haired offshoot of skinheads) , Smoothies (an even longer-haired offshoot of skinheads), Sorts (female versions of Smoothies), and Glam. The collected works of Richard Allen have been reissued in a six volume set by ST Publishing.
A BBC TV documentary about his life, “Skinhead Farewell”, aired in 1996. Allen’s formulaic and sensationalist writing style has been frequently mimicked by Neoist writer Stewart Home. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Moffat [Oct 2006]
See also: British literature
The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War (1988) – Stewart Home
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Stewart Home (born 1962) is a British fiction writer, subcultural pamphleteer, underground art historian, and activist. His mother, Julia Callan-Thompson, was a model and hostess who was associated with the radical arts scene in Notting Hill Gate. She knew such people as the writer and situationist Alexander Trocchi. Stewart was put up for adoption soon after his birth.
The Assault on Culture, originally written but rejected as a B.A. thesis, is an underground art history sketching Stewart Home’s ultimately personal history of ideas and influences in post-World War II fringe radical art and political currents, and including – for the first time in a book – a tactically manipulated history of Neoism (including character assassinations of individual Neoist) that was continued in the later book Neoism, Plagiarism and Praxis. Despite its highly personal perspective and agenda, The Assault on Culture: Utopian currents from Lettrisme to Class War (Aporia Press and Unpopular Books, London, 1988) is considered a useful art-history work, providing an introduction to a range of cultural currents which had, at that time at least, been under-documented. Like Home’s other publications of that time, it played an influential part in renewing interest in the Situationist International. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Home
See also: Lettrism – Situationism – assault – culture – 1988
Peter Sloterdijk’s texts read as a thriller, his philosophy has the potency of sending shivers down your spine, much like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Deleuze before him.
The rationale for this post is Sloterdijk’s audacity of his 1999 declaration that critical theory is dead.
Rules For the Human Zoo is a speech delivered by Peter Sloterdijk on July 20 1999 on the occasion of a symposium dedicated to the philosophy of Heidegger. He had held that same speech two years before but nobody had taken offense. The speech is on biogenetics and its implications (think Gattaca).
I lent the Rules article today at my local library in a Dutch version called Regels voor het Mensenpark, Kroniek van een Debat. The subtitle translates as history of a debate. The debate is between Peter Sloterdijk and Jürgen Habermas. Sloterdijk accuses Habermas of intentionally misreading him and calling upon Assheuer as a proxy to attack Sloterdijk. The attacks basically called Sloterdijk a fascist:
In the eyes of Professor Habermas, a left-wing philosopher, this secret agenda makes his fellow academic a “fascist.” Professor Sloterdijk, also a left-wing philosopher who once travelled to Poona to seek enlightenment from the Bhagwan, thinks his critic is resorting to “fascist” tactics to discredit him. —http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2000/2000-March/005176.html [Oct 2006]
In the 37th issue of 9 Sept 1999 of Die Zeit, Sloterdijk replied to his adversaries Habermas and Assheuer with Die Kritische Theorie ist tot (EN: Critical Theory is Dead).
From the web:
According to a recent article in The Observer (10 October 1999) the fashionable dinner tables of German society are buzzing with controversy over `the death of critical theory and the future of metaphysics’. The article refers to a debate provoked by a conference address given at Elmau in Bavaria last July by Peter Sloterdijk. His paper, `Regeln fur den Menschenpark : Ein Antwortschreiben zum Brief ber den Humanismus’ (Rules for the Human Theme-Park: A Reply to the Letter on Humanism), was addressed to an international conference on `Philosophy after Heidegger’. Copies of the address began circulating among academics shortly after the conference. Subsequently, two heavily critical articles were published in the national press. Sloterdijk’s bad-tempered response to these articles (Die Zeit, 9 September 1999) has generated an animated quarrel, whose participants have included Manfred Frank, Ernst Tugendhat, Ronald Dworkin and Slavoj Zizek, among others. —http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/print.asp?editorial_id=10101 [Oct 2006]
In [the open letter], Sloterdijk wonders if Assheuer has the same text as he does at all, since they read it so differently – Assheuer thinks he’s a Nietzschean, where he explicitly said that Nietzsche’s concept of the overman can have no meaning for us any more. The press is once again alarming people for alarming’s sake. The second part of his letter is addressed to Habermas, because Sloterdijk has heard that Habermas has spoken about him to many people (!) but not spoken with him. He claims that Habermas has mobilized an international attack against him, making photocopies of his lecture and sending them everywhere. Sloterdijk goes on at length how Habermas has thus reified him – it’s a hilarious read. With Habermas, critical theory has become a sinister Jacobinism that liquidates its opponents through mass media. Its claims are based on the “forceless force of the quicker denunciation (and worse reading)” instead of what Habermas calls the “forceless force of the better argument”. Critical theory was the answer for the children of the Nazi era. With this debate it has shown itself to be unsuitable for our needs: critical theory is dead. —http://mail.architexturez.net/+/Heidegger-L/archive/msg22054.shtml
Heidegger’s Letter on Humanism (1947)
The Letter on Humanism, written in 1947 in response to questions circulating about the relationship of Heidegger’s philosophy of Being to humanism, Christianity, Marxism, and the new “philosophy of existence” expounded by Sartre, Jaspers, and others, has been called Heidegger’s “greatest effort.” It was written at a time of great personal struggle for Heidegger: he had just been indefinitely banned from teaching following the Nazi war-crimes hearings, and he had undergone a kind of emotional breakdown as a result. Nevertheless, the Letter on Humanism virtually catalogues the most important strands of Heidegger’s entire later philosophy – the meaning of the history of Being, the way Heidegger sees to the re-awakening of that history, its relation to the philosophical tradition, the meaning of action, the role of technology, art, and language in the historical destiny of Being, and above all the need of a new thinking to prepare that destiny. The essay contains some of Heidegger’s most memorable language. In it, we can see especially clearly the role of reflection about language in preparing a new consideration of Being that will make the leap outside the tradition of metaphysics, which has hitherto determined all of our language. The quest for a new language will be so important to Heidegger that he will even spell important words, like Being, in antiquated and strange ways, to show that he uses them outside the closure of metaphysics. —http://www07.homepage.villanova.edu/paul.livingston/martin_heidegger%20-%20letter%20on%20humanism.htm [Oct 2006]
See also: 1999 – German philosophy – Peter Sloterdijk – Critical Theory
New Science: Principles of the New Science Concerning the Common Nature of Nations (1725) – Giambattista Vico [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
James Joyce was influenced by Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), an Italian philosopher who proposed a theory of cyclical history in his major work, New Science. Joyce puns on his name many times in Finnegans Wake, including the “first” sentence: “by a commodius vicus of recirculation”. Vico’s theory involves the recurrence of three stages of history: the age of gods, the age of heroes, and the age of humans—after which the cycle repeats itself. Finnegans Wake begins in mid-sentence, with the continuation of the book’s unfinished final sentence, creating a circle whereby the novel has no true beginning or end. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return [Oct 2006]
See also Giambattista Vico