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Pill Pod 158 - Walter Benjamin On the Philosophy of History (Exclusive)
🕑 Added 2024-02-25 01:25:48 +0000 UTCIn closing up our end of history series, we are back making our bed where it is buttered with some OG critical theory. We read Walter Benjamin's prevenient opposition to the end of history. It is a highly recommended read, and short, so see the attachment or find the weblink here.
Comments
Jonny Blade
I’m guessing Victor is not on the side of paying college athletes. Love of the game, love of the game. What are y’all complaining about?
Plastic Pills
Whatever this is articulating, it's weirdly comforting
Khemith
Those moments of stillness. When ideas are obliterated is just as important as being Messianic. Writing it down. Even remembering it is really just conformity too. The difference it imparts. The disruption of systems. The blank space is it's image. It's not a secret. But feels like a secret of secrets. Where the point is on the surface but must be seen from the depths
Isaac Suárez
This may be the gap between the US and Canada speaking, but I think the “life and death” stakes of grad school workers are very real. Most folks can’t find work with humanities or social science MAs- the pay and remuneration make a big difference because it’s the only way folks can make a living outside of the lowest sectors of the service or white collar sector. Loving your work is secondary, in my view, when it comes down to bringing home a decent paycheck. The love or passion aspect of work is often used as an excuse to not pay people- so I find the “argument from love for work” to be deeply suspect (this is also coming from a public sector mental health/addiction worker in the US- nonprofits and “helping profession” employers love to use this line to make jobs as low paid and shitty as they can.)
Zachary Manenti
I listened to it 4 times, and now i have to say u guys really did an amazing job and opened up the text I was always drawn to but mystified by. I didn’t realize at first what a great podcast this one was. Now, surprisingly, on re-reading the Benjamin text, it almost seems straight forward, though in form in 20 ‘fragments’ ( or dialectical images) on purpose to take on historical materialism’s task of dissociating itself as far as possible from historicism and historical progress: to brush against the grain. Now I can point you to the Baudelaire poem ‘A Une passante.” Benjamin wrote on Baudelaire and mentions this poem in that context. I think he’s even referencing this poem in fragment #v (5). But in any case, I see in the poem an example of an historical dialectical image, a ‘constellation’ —-exactly what he’s talking about. Even down to the ‘flash’ ‘eclair’. Poem as an historiography, it constellates Baudelaire ‘s own historical disappearance as the last lyrical poet at the threshold of the modern, arrested in the flash of poetic ‘ love at last sight.’ …. thank you! (Now on to Kabbalalistic temporality. )
Keanu Clark
I've looked into some of the Benjamin Mysticism stuff with Gershom Scholem and Merkava. There are Eastern Orthodox Theologians who work with Continental Theory like Alexander Gotlizin and stress that they're looking at things through that kind of Scholem spin
Timothy Reedy
Would be interesting to hear a critical theorist podcaster’s take on Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Alex B
Seems like an appeal to create a kind of negative entropy
haw
please do more on benjamin !
Lee Nelson
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/do-what-you-love-work-myth-culture/399599/
DilloBear
Are y'all going to do Benjamin's piece on violence? Would love to hear y'all dig into "divine violence." Also, Catherine Malabou's new book on anarchism would be a fun little episode or series (each chapter engages with a philosopher(s) and anarchism: Aristotle, Schürmann, Levinas, Derrida, Foucault, Rancière, Agamben, etc.) An episode on each chapter Would be fun because I imagine y'all would have a lot to say. And she might be down to do an interview after? 🤷♀️🤷♂️
Yingfire
Interesting to hear that one of you is at the same university I am doing my PhD at. However, I'm more dim on the bargaining team. They are part of a big, bureaucratic beast, and are surely more comfortable with the status quo than not.
Laurence Grant
Have you got a link to the photo of Walter Benjamin w/ the machine gun?
Dony Top5
Not having a working knowledge of Walter Benjamin. Does anyone know if the two episodes of "Philosophize This" are a good place to start?
morricane
a) Back then? You still have to write a Habilitation after your Dissertation to become a full professor in Germany. b) The chess "machine" turk was an actual thing back in the day, so I guess that's why it has to be a turk. c) Pills got the pronunciation of "Benjamin" right.
