Archives for October 2017

Blunt Force Trauma

"Because of the particularities of German culture, according to Adorno, National Socialism could pose as a substitute for the sense of belonging lost through the capitalism driven rationalization of society. But it is a freakish social world. The coldness is not overcome, and togetherness is achieved through exclusionary myths. If we take the broadly Aristotelian picture as some kind of baseline, the life that Adorno describes is about as damaged as life can be." Brian O'Connor "Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments, and impossible tasks." Freud "...the utopians realized that profit was becoming the driving force of history in the … [Read more...]

The Forest is a Devil

"What poet will give us the metaphors of this new language?" Gaston Bachelard "And what next? Armaments piling up like an accumulating catastrophe, mass neurosis, nations like mad dogs. All this seems gratuitous, horrible, cosmic to such people, unaware of the causes. How can the bourgeois still pretend to be free, to find salvation individually? Only by sinking himself in still cruder illusions, by denying art, science, emotion, even ultimately life itself. Humanism, the creation of bourgeois culture, finally separates from it. Against the sky stands Capitalism without a rag to cover it, naked in its terror." Christopher Caudwell "My paintings are, in fact, a confrontation with … [Read more...]