The Leeds Arcades Project

Arcades project

2011-12-06T06:46:00.002Z

An interesting article by Esther Leslie

The Arcades Project was an encyclopaedic project on which Walter Benjamin worked for thirteen years from 1927 until his death in 1940. The Arcades Project takes its name from a nineteenth century architectural form. It also borrows its structure from that same architectural form. Arcades were passages through blocks of buildings, lined with shops and other businesses. Montaged iron and glass constructions housed chaotic juxtapositions of shop-signs, window displays of commodities, mannequins and illuminations. As the nineteenth century gives way to the twentieth century, montage moves from being a prescript of construction in technology to art and literature: from the Eiffel Tower to Dada and surrealism to the city novels of Alfred Döblin, John Dos Passos, James Joyce and others. Montage construction treats its material elements as contrasting segments that must be bolted together for maximum impact. In architecture this might lead to a dramatic exoskeleton, a whole building built up from small parts whose connectedness is on display. In textual form this means fragments, apercus, swift shifts of thought, the establishment of relationship between disparate objects, across a whole environment. For the Arcades Project Walter Benjamin organised the thousands of index cards on which he transcribed quotations and notations into files, called Konvolute. He developed a system of cross-referencing. The files comprised a vast array of interlinked scraps. When Benjamin fled Paris he gave over his collected notes of the Arcades Project to Georges Bataille, librarian at the National Library in Paris. He hid them well. He might have hoped to return one day to complete his researches. But completion was itself an issue. Gretel Adorno once joked that Benjamin inhabited the ‘cavelike depths’ of the Arcades Project and did not want to complete it ‘because you feared having to leave what you built’. Indeed the endeavour remained uncompleted, interrupted by Benjamin’s death, and so his map of the nineteenth century was only partially drafted. And so the definite significance of each passage is impossible to guess. The only certain point is that the elements were selected from the books and archives of the Bibliotheque Nationale, but in final form they would have been organised in a way that remains only inferable. Perhaps they might always have remained as a montage of found materials interspersed with occasional comment. Benjamin states in his file on methodology:

Method of this project: literary montage. I needn’t say anything. Merely show. I shall purloin no valuables, appropriate no ingenious formulations. But the rags, the refuse - these I will not inventory but allow, in the only way possible, to come into their own: by making use of them.

Such a method appears analogous to dream interpretation. What does the dream offer but images, vivid, fragmentary, intense but not understood, until later, until worked over, worked back into narrative and patterns of causation, then made useful. And Paris, home to the arcades, was an appropriate place, for it was a city most chiasmal, the capital of dreams and the dream of capital. Paris was the ‘most dreamed of’ object of the surrealists’. It was a locus where capital did its work most intensely, in comparison to which later the ‘American dream’ of wonder and abundance would seem a mere shadow. The arcades house the dreams of the nineteenth century masses and their masters The arcade houses a collective body, who wears it like an exoskeleton:

The dreaming collective sinks down in its inner life into the arcades, just as the sleeper receives messages from his inner bodily processes, noises, blood pressure etc translated and elucidated in dream pictures.

The arcades, Benjamin tells us, are fluid places, and there things strike us ‘like realities in a dream’, always in flux, always remoulded in meaning, montage-like, by what comes after, always delaying their full meaning. A dream logic then is the best we might expect from such a bundle of notes and fragments and images. This is appropriate enough, for the dream features everywhere in the project, as in Benjamin’s work as a whole. The dream, for Benjamin, is an index of freedom - our social dreams indicate our social utopias. Children’s whole existence is seen to be dreamlike, and so utopian. And yet, again, it is only in their interpretation that we can become conscious and fully understand them, and so, it is only upon awakening, shedding the dream’s grasp in favour of knowledge, drawn from the dream that freedom can be restored. Benjamin writes in his 1935 Exposé of the Arcades Project:

The arcades and interiors are residues of a dream world. The utilization of dream elements in waking is a textbook example of dialectical thought. Hence dialectical thought is the organ of historical awakening.

Historical awakening is an aim of the project as a whole. Benjamin writes: ‘The new, dialectical method of doing history teaches us to pass in spirit--with the rapidity and intensity of dreams--through what has been, in order to experience the present as a waking world, a world to which every dream at last refers.’ And then, elsewhere, ‘It is at this moment that the historian takes up ... the task of dream interpretation.’ The study of the nineteenth century would bring the historian and the reader to the threshold of the present, to the point of waking. Benjamin would be the wide-awake, and wide-eyed dream interpreter of history.

The nineteenth century is, as the Surrealists say, the noises which intervene in our dreams and which we interpret when awake.

But what of the book that has now come to be in the absence of the project having been able to fulfill its aim. There are few signposts in its arcades of quotations. And yet, in fragment form or otherwise, Benjamin’s project hoped comprehensively to chart the arcades and the world in which they existed – a full history, and of course, as he noted in ‘Traumkitsch’, in 1925, ‘dreaming has a share in history’. The panoramic purview came about by collecting statements, analyses and responses from many perspectives. The various exposés and plans for the project perhaps provide a sort of guide for the purposes of orientation in the Arcades Project. The 1935 Exposé emphasises the architectural interest of the project. Its sections are named after a charged nineteenth century space and a figure who is closely associated with that space: Fourier or the Arcades; Daguerre or the Panoramas; Grandville or the World Exhibitions; Louis-Philippe or the Interieur; Baudelaire or the Streets of Paris; Haussmann or the Barricades. These section headings are like pharoses on a city plan, and they help to give shape to the city, the epoch and the project itself. So too do the chunks of commentary, of which the majority appear in the later stages of the Baudelaire file and the file N on the theory of progress and methodology. These are at least pointers through the aggregate of material. Just as the map of the past remained fragmentary, so too that past itself and its features - not least the arcades - fell into ruin. The project, then, had to take up into itself the fact of ruination. It charts a ruined or half-built or half-collapsed arcade. Perhaps a ruin of a building is not so far away from a solid structure. After all, Benjamin writes that it is possible to discern more about a great building from its plans or ruins than from the completed construct itself. For Benjamin the value of the ruin was, in part, the fact that it had passed through a history. It had the marks of a process on it. The political value of that history - fact, dreams, all of it - lies in its reconstruction and interpretation, to remove thought from the realm of mythology, remaining sensitive to its relevance in the present.

First of all, from 1927, Benjamin collected quotations and made notes on streets, department stores, panoramas, world exhibitions, types of lighting, fashion, advertisements, prostitution, collectors, flaneurs, Baudelaire, gamblers, boredom. From 1934 he added another set of themes, some of which were more directly political or economic. He did not abandon the former themes, and continued to collect notes on them. The later themes included the boulevard-building ‘Haussmannization’ of Paris, barricade battles, railways, conspiracies, social movements, the stock exchange, economic history, caricaturist Daumier, the Paris Commune, anthropological materialism, sects-history, the école polytechnic, Marx, Fourier, Saint-Simon, idleness, the Seine and antique Paris, lithography and reproductive techniques. Dissent, alternative histories, ‘creative destruction’ and utopian forecasts are as much in evidence as details of technological construction in iron, glass and lighting design or the organisation of wage labour, prostitution and literary life. The theme of the arcades had been there from the beginning. In 1927 Benjamin had planned to write a newspaper article on the arcades together with his flaneuring journalist friend Franz Hessel. This developed into another essay ‘Pariser Passagen’ in 1929. And out of that sprung the project, whose first file of quotations is ‘Arcades, Magasins de Nouveautés, Sales Clerks’. The arcade was the Ur-form, the originary form, of modernity, for it incubated modes of behaviour – distraction, seduction by the commodity spectacle, shopping as leisure activity, self-display - that would come to figure more prominently as the century passed into the next. The Paris arcades sheltered the first modern consumerism. These covered walkways with glass roofs had evolved out of the Galeries of the Palais Royal. With their jumble of diverse commodities from across the Empire, they turned shopping into an aesthetic event. They were perfect sites in which to linger and to learn how to window-shop and how to desire fantastic commodities. They were built, for the most part, in the decade and a half after 1822. A guide from 1852 describes each glass-roofed and marble-lined passageway as ‘a city, a world in miniature’. Such description attracted Benjamin, who had long harboured a fascination for the small, for worlds in miniature as in snow shakers or on stamps, or miniaturised bits of this world in the toys that he collected. And children interested him too, for they produce their own small world of things within the greater one. Parisian arcades are a miniature dramatization, importantly of the wider world, that is to say of the antinomies of capitalism.

Benjamin’s study of the arcades investigates the composition of an epoch; the age of Industrial Capitalism, as seen and theorized by producers and consumers, politicians and intellectuals, the socially powerful, the disenfranchised and the social resisters. As such it is a panoramic examination. For Benjamin, the arcades launch an exemplary environment in which the tenets of a modern perception and experience are elaborated: a mode of perceiving and a quality of experience that is both forged by and appropriate to the modern age. It is disorienting, dreamy, chock-a-block with stimuli. His Arcades Project records facets of a commodity society with its continual flow of goods, impressions, forms. Modern experience, he characterizes through his swift shifts of focus, as a string of Momentaufnahmen – records of the moment, snapshots. And what is snapped, snapped up, snapped onto, is product, commodities. These commodities are short-lived; their life spans reveal the tempo of capitalism. Their existences are correlated to fashion’s caprices. Benjamin reviews the facets of the commodity on display, where it becomes a dream-infested body of meaning. Everything desirable can be a commodity, a public display of fetishism. In the process of commodification, wish-images, the fragments of utopian potential, promised in the first flirtatious kisses of modern industrialism, congeal into fetish. Newness becomes a fetish. Transitoriness must ever outbid itself, in order to maximize profit. This means according to Benjamin’s schema of the dynamic of the modern, the novel rapidly becomes outmoded, it quickly becomes out-of-date fashion. Remaindering is the other side of this – history as bargain bin. And in this permanent move to built-in obsolescence, the commodities of the modern disclose secret connections to the mythological, that which is ancient and out of reach. This is the dialectic established at the core of the modern. It is a relay between the newest and the oldest. The novel is rapidly outmoded and always then, importantly for Benjamin, on the brink of becoming antiquated. That is to say, the new must contain itself antithesis – as possibility – dialectically inside itself. Any map of the modern, such as is the Arcades Project, whose object – the arcades, department stores, social movements against capitalism, world exhibitions and so on, all already aged by the 1920s – could at best trace the broken contours of now decrepit labyrinths. And so, a disrupted sense of time is conveyed in the fragments of the Arcades Project. Each moment, each short quote or comment appears only to disappear again back into the rubble of an unfinished book, an incomplete thought, an uncompleted, interrupted action. But this time of delay, of afterwards, an indication again of the method of interpretation – where meaning might come of the fragments of a dream, related upon awakening, in all its intensity.

The first arcades were built in Paris for Napoleon’s return from the Egyptian campaign. War is often, for Benjamin, the other face of industrial expansion. The dialectic assets itself, here in the couplet production/destruction. One of the ideas Benjamin pulls out from the archives of the Bibliotheque Nationale points to the fluidity of connections between the later palaces of industrial innovation and display and the ordering and drilling of the battleground. And the arcades were swallowed up in the Haussmannization of Paris, when broad boulevards were cut through in a militarization of city space designed to deter barricade-building and to enable the swift passage of state vehicles. As Benjamin writes, arcing between past and present: ‘Haussmann’s work is accomplished today, as the Spanish war makes clear by quite other means’. Haussmann was appointed by Louis Napoléon as the prefect of the Seine between 1853 and the Emperor’s fall in 1870. His replanning moved the working classes and the poor out of the city centre to the East and remodelled the West for the bourgeoisie. The arcades, places of chance encounter, niches and unpredictability, fell victim to this city tidy-up, described by Marx, in The Civil War in France, as ‘razing historic Paris to make place for the Paris of the sightseer!’. Paris turned into a place of touristic contemplation, away from the action of class struggle. By the time of writing, Benjamin’s object of study has already become unfashionable, or at least under threat, which makes his project a piece of history writing in the sense which he loves best: writing an obituary to the recent past, which, echoing still in dimming childhood memories, is his pre-history, an understanding of which casts direct light upon the now.

These arcades were products of the first international style of architecture. They were trademarks of the modern metropolis, its wealth (only for some) and its imperial domination. They were crammed with colonial plunder. The empire had provided the impulse for an expansion in commodity production, in terms of new sources of raw materials, which could be worked over and sold off in the newly established markets and zones of influence. But the effects of Empire also reflect back on the Imperialist nations, not least by providing the raw materials of a burgeoning commodity market. Imperialism grasped the world as totality, a total market and exploitable productive source. Imperialism had begun the process of unifying the world – in trade. It completed the reversal of the task in human terms: more divisions, more competition, more nationalistic hatreds. Boundaries dissolve, in a way, in trade: but only for the traders. In describing how Victor Hugo publishes a manifesto to all the people of Europe to mark the world exhibition of 1867, Benjamin notes how the motives displayed spin off into a fantasy of actual unification of peoples, attributing a common language and will. For the international workers’ associations, internationalism remains a dream, from which the First World War rudely disturbs them. Equality proves to be a chimera. The world exhibitions had shown that too, anyway, along the dividing lines of class and nation. They promised to be places where everyone could rub shoulders democratically and where status was relocated in objects themselves and not persons. Benjamin quotes Rjazanov to point out how isolated from actuality this fantasy was:

In 1855 the second world exhibition took place, this time in Paris. Workers’ delegations from the capital as well as from the provinces were now totally barred. It was feared that they gave workers an opportunity for organizing.

The new modes of consumerism were to colonialise consciousness. The fact of consumerism, of the priority of the commodity, dominated any relation to the world, even the unconscious world. For Benjamin this was a consciousness invaded by the petrifying and fantastic workings of commodity fetishism and reification. The arcades are stocked high with the cultural by-products, specious clusters of projected fantasies and congealed monuments to the days of their production and all that has recently been ‘forgotten’ called the Moderne, modernity. They collaborate briefly with fashion – die Mode, the modish. But Benjamin is ever-keen to stress the dialectical switch involved. At the same time as consciousness is colonised by the commodity, consciousness responds to the utopian side of commodity production, holding open a space for genuine response to the presentations of commodified desires. The impulse for accepting the commodity is the actual wish to see dreams fulfilled. The arcade substitutes, in Benjamin’s analysis, for the world or the dream of the world. Marx’s work hoped, from the outset, to ‘reform consciousness’ as he wrote to Alfred Ruge in 1843, and such reformation ‘consists entirely in making the world aware of its own consciousness, in arousing it from its dream of itself, in explaining its own actions to it’. Arcades are a form of consciousness, and simply an architecture. They are house rows or corridors that have no exterior, no external existence. This Benjamin aligns with the structure of the dream: ‘Arcades are houses or passages having no outside – like the dream’. They share the characteristic of self-containment with the optical amusements - panoramas, myrioramas - that they house.

The innermost glowing cells of the city of light, the old dioramas, nested in the arcades, one of which today still bears the name Passage des Panoramas. It was, in the first moment, as though you had entered an aquarium. Along the wall of the great darkened hall, broken at intervals by narrow joints, it stretched like a ribbon of illuminated water behind glass. The play of colors among deep-sea fauna cannot be more fiery.

The arcades and the panoramas are like monadic, perfect worlds in miniature, glass bauble snow- shakers. This self-containment is their ‘truth’.

The true has no windows. Nowhere does the true look out to the universe. And the interest of the panorama is in seeing the true city - ‘The city in the bottle’, - the city indoors. What is found within the windowless house is the true. One such windowless house is the theater; hence the eternal pleasure it affords. Hence also the pleasure taken in those windowless rotundas, the panoramas. … Those passing through arcades are, in a certain sense, inhabitants of a panorama. The arcade is a windowless house as well. The windows of this house open out on them. They can be seen out these windows but cannot themselves look in

Phantasmagoria and panoramas and the arcades that nestled there represented, in Benjamin’s schema, a certain way of seeing, a universalism. Living in a panorama, that is how total the event in consumer-based society has become. Mass consumers are on display. Capitalism is a drama in which they participate. Consumers occupy the space of the display itself, and thus become an integral part of it. The significance of windowlessness goes further than this. As windowless truth the arcades and the panoramas adopt the form of the monad, a figure that recurs in Benjamin’s writing s and is adapted from the philosopher Leibniz. A monad is an object blasted free of time for the purposes of analysis – it is concentrated time, pre-history, the present, and post-history are crushed together there. It is a good site for investigation into modernity. It is an important moment of the past that can explain the present and the possibilities of the future. An image of a greater totality - the experience of an historical era - can be found there. It is a threshold. The arcades give way to another form, the department store. It is here than a modern mass is forged, and this is a mass that will eventually enter the stage of history not as a revolutionary subject, but as the mass of mass politics, the politics of totalitarianism. .

For the first time in history, with the establishment of department stores, consumers begin to consider themselves a mass. (Earlier it was only scarcity that taught them that) Hence, the circus-like and theatrical element of commerce is quite extraordinarily heightened.

Consumers emerge blinking from the arcades and enter a new buying zone – the department store, where the rules are different, where the victory of scale is obvious. The mass of mass society, identified as the swelling ranks of customers, audience, producers, visible from the late nineteenth century, is the potential site, argues Benjamin, for politicization, because the idea of the mass and consumerism necessarily plays with the supplying of collective demands and the promise of fulfillment of utopias. Benjamin locates this mass in the department store, at the sites of consumption. It gains a certain self-consciousness, as a mass an sich, a mass of consumers, made equal [to each other, to the commodity] in the fact of exchange.

Specifics of the department store: the customers perceive themselves as a mass; they are confronted with an assortment of commodities; they take in all the floors at a glance; they pay fixed prices; they can make exchanges.

It is an ambiguous consciousness that Benjamin is eager to map out in the Arcades Project, in order to establish the political actuality and potential of this mass. Consciousness might turn out to be catastrophic. Or it might become a consciousness of the catastrophe, combined with the will to interrupt the endless flow of the novel as the ever-same. This is the dialectic that grounds modernity, a myth of progress unmasked as the eternal return of the ever-same. It has its banal commodity face.

Dialectic of commodity production: the novelty of the product attains (as a stimulation to demand) a hitherto unknown significance; the ever-again the same appears for the first time manifestly in mass production.

It has its philosophic spin-off. One file of the Arcades Project is called ‘Boredom and Eternal Return’. The old is inherent in the new, it is a return. This represents the Janus face of progress, pulling in two directions at once. It is a dialectic of progress, whose actual stakes are social regress, under the aegis of a certain technological progress, as opposed to human progress. Progress, in Benjamin’s view of modernity, connects to the catastrophe. Hell has already happened. Precisely this capitalist technological idea of progress ushers in catastrophe. The vision of eternal return and catastrophe was practiced in the panoramas, given its big debut in First World War, which then becomes a simple dress rehearsal compared to what we have come to know as the holocaustic calamity of World War Two. The repetition compulsion is set in motion by the structures of commodity production, the eternal return of the ever-same. This is catastrophic experience. War has started, for it never really finishes. The ruins are blasting into focus. The nineteenth century is falling down. Its ruins were already contained in its plans. In his 1935 Exposé Benjamin writes that it was Balzac who first spoke of the ruins of the bourgeoisie, but it was Surrealism that first allowed its gaze to wander uninhibitedly across the field of rubble that the capitalist development of the productive forces had left in its wake. Balzac could see the ruination contained in that order - immanent to it - but it takes time and a liberated consciousness (or rather the fall into unconsciousness and then awakening) to cash this out fully. Now, in Benjamin’s moment of writing, 1930s, there was no doubt. The ruins of past promises were visible, and behind - or in front of - the broken promises lay even more devastation. Ruin and devastation recur, as motif, as also historical fact. Ruin is a natural phenomenon and a social one. The Arcades Project moves fluidly between two types of ruin. One of the striking aspects of nineteenth-century capitalism, as represented in Benjamin’s harvest of quotations, is its simultaneous naturalisation and mythologisation of social and historical forces. This took on various forms: Grandville’s lithographs of over-lively commodities; the fetishistic language of stocks and shares and misconceptions of the value-form; the re-iterated ideological succumbing to fate; the countless images of Paris poised on the eve of destruction. References to Pompei’s volcano are several in the Arcades Project, and in a children’s radio lecture on the demise of Herculanum and Pompei, Benjamin speaks of the ashes which ‘nested in the creases of garments’, the curves of ears, between fingers, shafts of hair and lips’, and these ‘solidified before the bodies decomposed, so that we possess today a series of faithful imprints of individuals’. The volcano is a particular mode of destruction. It petrifies. It acts like a snapshot of an otherwise ungraspable history. Volcanic ruin models memory become history for Benjamin. In the autobiographical snapshots of ‘A Berlin Chronicle’, which Adorno identified as the subjective counterpart of the Arcades Project, Benjamin finds in his memory of school

… rigidly fixed words, expressions, verses that., like a malleable mass that has cooled and hardened preserve in me the imprint of the collision between a larger collective and myself. Just as a certain kind of significant dream survives awakening in the form of words when all the rest of the dream content has vanished, here isolated words have remained in place as marks of catastrophic encounters.

Into this petrified landscape, the proletariat, in conjunction with technologies, should have erupted a second time, in an already volcanic landscape, to cash in the promises of their masters. But they failed to become the final agents of destruction. The naturalising, mythical effects of capitalism won out, even when the proletariat’s own representatives enthusiastically embraced the natural and automatic role that it and the productive forces should play in the script of emancipation.

Haussmann had obliterated history when he cut the boulevards through old Paris. Into the evacuated space of historical consciousness descended the mists of fetishism and phantasmagoria. Or the phantom solidified like lava, as Benjamin indicates when he writes: ‘With the Haussmannization of Paris, the phantasmagoria was rendered in stone’. Fetishism and the phantasmagoria were cultivated in the world exhibitions, out of which crawled the modern entertainment industry and the consumer’s dreamy disposition with its attitude of ‘pure reaction’. If Benjamin’s synopses allow some coherent ordering of the material, then it seems that the fragments direct Benjamin to unearth things, impulses, objects, matter that has decayed. First, in the earliest attempt, in 1927, to present his interest, Benjamin follows the Surrealist procedure to the letter.

In the crowded arcades of the boulevards, as in the semi-deserted arcades of the Rue Saint-Denis, umbrellas and canes are displayed in serried ranks: a phalanx of colorful crooks. Many are the institutes of hygiene, where gladiators are wearing orthopedic belts and bandages wind round the white bellies of mannequins. In the windows of the hairdressers, one sees the last women with long hair; they sport richly undulating masses, petrified coiffures. How brittle appears the stonework of the walls beside them and above: crumbling papiermache ‘souvenirs’ and bibelots take on a hideous aspect; the odalisque lies in wait next to the inkwell; priestesses in knitted jackets raise aloft ashtrays like vessels of holy water.... Over stamps and letterboxes roll balls of string and of silk. Naked puppet bodies with bald heads wait for hairpieces and attire. Combs swim about, frog-green and coral-red, as in an aquarium; trumpets turn to conches, ocarinas to umbrella handles; and lying in the fixative pans from a photographer's darkroom is birdseed.

This is the same uncanny jumble of outmodedness that attracted the Surrealists. But Benjamin develops a more critical aspect. Untimeliness is a political-economic category. Capitalism itself becomes outmoded, yet still present in the nineteenth century. This is evidenced in the setbacks and repeated uptakes of revolutionary struggle. Paris is the capital of the nineteenth century because the echoes of the French Revolution – a revolution on behalf of the universe – reverberate through it in revolutionary wave after wave. Paris in the nineteenth century was an Ur-place, a site to mine in order to find out about the mechanisms of bourgeois rule and the renewed attempts to oppose it. It is there that the contradictions of bourgeois class rule are most spectacular, as class alliances are formed and broken. Consolidated is the rule of capital alone. Benjamin’s 1935 and 1939 synopses of the project ascend to the revolutionary climax of class struggle. The Communards burn down the Paris that the ‘artist-demolitionist’ Baron Haussmann had built in his ‘financial’ and ‘military’ re-planning of the city. But this negation of his negation is not sustained, and the class fighters allowed themselves to be, once again, misled by the bourgeoisie.

The Arcades Project repeats these attempted historic gestures too, in recovering them, and also in its imagination that there re-presentation might, in itself, elicit historical activity:

We can speak of two directions in this work: one which goes from the past into the present and shows the arcades, and all the rest, as precursors, and one which goes from the present into the past so as to have the revolutionary potential of these ‘precursors’ explode in the present. And this direction comprehends as well the spellbound elegiac consideration of the recent past, in the form of its revolutionary explosion.

But the dream of nineteenth century abundance and/or revolutionary transformation has shifted to anticipation of the catastrophe. The optical bedazzlements of the nineteenth century - new gas lighting, new colour dyes, new modes of harnessing energy - turn into the colourful infernos of the First World War and then intensify in the holocaustic fire terror of the Second World War. I.G. Farben was there all the way. The ruins of the twentieth century were the part- ruins of the nineteenth century, exploded yet again by a Technik gone wild. Technological advance is not progress but a continuous strip without beginning and end, whose fateful destructive/productive dynamic can ultimately only be ripped apart by the simultaneously sober and intoxicated proletariat, but it is in ruins too, now.

The Arcades Project was originally to be called a ‘dialektische Feen’, a dialectical fairy scene. Benjamin’s first conception was the telling of a politicized version of the Sleeping Beauty story as a fairy- tale of awakening (from this myth of permanent progress and human submission to destiny). In Pariser Passagen<1>, an early collection of notes for the Arcades Project, he refers to youth as fulfilling that role of the sleeping princess, possessing an experience akin to the experience of dreaming. The twentieth century would need to awaken from the objects of the nineteenth, from the promises of abundance, from the seductive objects in the park of attractions. The dream takes place in the new architectural sites of modernity.

Dream houses of the collective: arcades, winter gardens, panoramas, factories, wax museums, casinos, railroad stations.

The Arcades Project was to be some sort of Marxian retelling of a fairy-tale, in which the Sleeping Beauty is awoken from the nightmare-dream sleep of capitalism’s commodity phantasmagoria. Walter Benjamin wrote to Adorno in June 1935 to ask if he knew of any psychoanalytic study of awakening. Adorno, for his part, thought that Benjamin’s project did not get to the point of awakening and in fact was continuous with bourgeois psychology, whereby bourgeois society privileges dream and the subjective interior as prime mediator of social reality. To maintain such a historically specific model of self is to fall under the ‘spell of bourgeois psychology’.

For Benjamin, though, the spell can be broken through a ‘Technik des Erwachens’, ‘technique of awakening’. For Benjamin. biographically, the first stage of awakening had been historically specific. It had been the First World War blasting his consciousness into a sort of shell-shock. It is this experience which he reworks as a social experience in the 1920s and 1930s, aided by an approach that is historical-materialist (of sorts). Benjamin analyses a social shell shock. The critic turns therapist. There is a play-off then in Benjamin’s work between the representation of the dream, given in fragments and quotes, speaking for itself with all its confusion, and the tentatively begun labour of analysis – social-psychoanalysis. Benjamin wished to portray the Paris of the Second Empire as a prototype, the origin of capitalist bourgeois civilization. The politically current relevance of his historiography is found in that civilization’s vanishing point in his here and now. Benjamin looks back at the dream of the past, engaging in a sort of mock-predictive historicizing. Historical materialism becomes a critical exercise in a time of crisis.

The materialist presentation of history leads the past to bring the present into a critical state.

The mixing of time points, of cause and effect, fused in a melange of multiple historical determinations, is a methodological feature of the Arcades Project. Historical progress is dispensed with, but, at the same time, all events are seen as interconnected, implicated in each other. Critical analysis will reveal the events’ permanently current germaneness, just as the unconscious knows no time, but time is needed to present a diagnosis. The work on the Arcades Project takes place through a period of political intensity – and only appears to be a backward looking archaeology. The ruins of history spike the present. Benjamin sees his work as a contribution to the crisis of new historical thinking in the intellectual civil-war of the 1920s. The Arcades Project participates in this same sense of a connection between social crisis and intellectual crisis, a sense of necessary social revolution and critical-intellectual revolution as concomitant. Benjamin’s point is the Marxist recognition of the necessity of historicizing that which appears natural. The central core of the project fragments expounds and details how modern reality, this only an appearance of modern reality, might be experienced, if it is not penetrated by analysis, as a dream world stoked by myth.

Capitalism was a natural phenomenon with which a new dream-filled sleep came over Europe, and, through it, a reactivation of mythic forces.

Just as the Surrealists argued, Benjamin stated that under conditions of capitalist productive expansion, industrialization had brought about a re-enchantment of the social world. A deep complexity of social arrangement was evolving. Modern experience took place in a mass society organized around great institutions of shopping, schooling, bureaucracy, welfare and total warfare. Yet underneath the surface appearance of accelerating rationalization of the system, there was the flip-side, a world of myth, a contradictory formation, modernity as mythology. These myths found form in entertainment, advertisements, commodity promises. Myth is wedded to consumerism and its self-publicity. In the modern metropolis, the ‘threatening and alluring face’ of myth gleamed. Characters from new capitalist myths beamed down from hoardings on street walls that advertised ‘toothpaste for giants’, as Benjamin noted in One Way Street. The advertisement is one method whereby the commodity infiltrates the dream-world of the consumer. It blurs over the commodity character of things. The Surrealists would envelop these dream signs from advertising and the appealing products of industrial fantasy into their poetry, in order to recreate a modern aesthetic of the new city. Benjamin feared that the Surrealists were too entranced by the mythology of the modern to ever break from it fully. They preferred to keep sleeping, for that is when their best ideas stole upon them. They were not unlike their ancestors of the previous century, the one that so ensnared them.

The nineteenth century; a spacetime ‘Zeitraum’ (a dreamtime ‘Zeit-traum’) in which the individual consciousness more and more secures itself in reflecting, while the collective consciousness sinks into ever deeper sleep. But just as the sleeper - in this respect like the madman - sets out on the macrocosmic journey through his own body, and the noises and feelings of his insides, such as blood pressure, intestinal churn, heartbeat, and muscle sensations (which for the waking and salubrious individual converge in a steady surge of health) generate, in the extravagantly heightened inner awareness of the sleeper, illusion or dream imagery which translates and accounts for them, so likewise for the dreaming collective, which, through the arcades, communes with its own insides. We must follow in its wake so as to expound the nineteenth century - in fashion and advertising, in buildings and politics - as the outcome of its dream visions.

In a dream-sleep the world and its business pass as in a phantasmagoria, a metaphor that Benjamin uses in order to instigate a series of cross-references between modern experience and contemporaneous optical devices, the gadgetry of entertainment and early film and photography. Examples abound of phantasmagoria fascination, such as this quoted by Humphrey Jennings in his 1938 quotation-patchwork study of the fantasies and fears of industrialisation, Pandaemonium.

A common form of vision is a phantasmagoria, or the appearance of a crowd of phantoms, sometimes hurrying past like men in a street. It is occasionally seen in broad daylight, much more often in the dark; it may be at the instant of putting out the candle, but it generally comes on when the person is in bed, preparing to sleep, but by no means yet asleep. I know no less than three men, eminent in the scientific world, who have seen these phantasmagoria in one form or another. It will seem curious, but it is a fact that I know of no less than five editors of very influential newspapers who experience these night visitations in a vivid form.,

The phantasmagoria, then, is the counterpart of awakening, it is the time of falling asleep, the images that flood the mind, as the rational self slips into dreaming. The phantasmagoria was a popular late nineteenth century theme – but Benjamin revamps - or overhauls - the technologies of the past century in order to approach that century, or rather mediate it. In Konvolut N, theoretical centre of the Arcades Project he borrows words from Rudolph Borchardt’s writings on Dante:

Pedagogic side of this undertaking: ‘To educate the image-making medium within us, raising it to a stereoscopic and dimensional seeing into the depths of historical shadows’

We make images, just as we make dreams, and just as Benjamin gathers up images and vivid moments of the 19th century. This is our condition, but we need to turn it to liberatory ends. We need to escape the phantasmatic presentations, a dim and befuddled consciousness of events, in favour of a dialectical seeing, that investigates, from an enlightened perspective, social relations. But that involves an education of that image-making technology within, teaching it how to read the ruins, the fragments, the traces and half-echoes. It needs to be sent into reverse, to become the tool of awakening, not a symptom of the fall into sleep.

The Arcades Project asks how a mythic dream consciousness, such as the longing for dream fulfillment in the commodity or the idea of love satisfied in prostitution or the desire for human union through imperialism, can be rattled, forced to wake up from the wishful thinking it indulges. Perhaps assertion simply of the actuality of commercial brutality would suffice. Perhaps boredom in the end would finally force a change, through being unsustainable. Marx had characterised Second Empire history in France, in Hegel’s terms, as ‘grey on grey’: history without events; development whose sole driving force seems to be the calendar. But boredom also induces sleep. The yawn is the gesture of both. Strangely, the dreaming collective is realised between 1917 and 1927 in the post- encephalitic wave of dream- sleeping sickness which swept Europe, sending its victims into Sleeping Beauty and Blue Beard comas.

From 1934, while Benjamin is making notes for the Arcades Project, his own dreams, he claims, become ever more politicized. Conceiving of history as a territory, a series of spaces and spatial relationships, he writes to Scholem that his dreams and the historical traces he perceives in them ‘represent an illustrated atlas of the secret history of National Socialism’. Echoing Joyce’s ‘history is a nightmare from which we are trying to awake’, Benjamin wants to wake up from his dreams turned historical nightmare. The imperialist mentality is turned in on itself, into the self. Space – the spacetime, the time of dreams - has become a map of Lebensraum, the living space that Hitler’s army set out to conquer in the East. While the Nazis pushed one way, Benjamin’s moved in the opposite direction. from country to country, stumbling finally to ground on stretch of no-mans-land between Spain and France. These are bad dreams. The collective has succumbed to the spectacle. The mass finds a home in the totalitarian states, where Gleichshaltung, conformity, co-ordination, is an effort to produce a stunningly homogenous social receptacle. Benjamin brings the phantasmagoric consciousness and its glossing over of the reality of class difference into connection with both commodity fetishism and totalitarianism, forming a span between his study of nineteenth century Paris and his meditations on nazi Germany.

The circumstance of the new is perhaps nowhere better illuminated than in the figure of the flaneur. His thirst for the new is quenched by the crowd, which appears self-impelled and endowed with a soul of its own. In fact, this collective is nothing but appearance. This ‘crowd,’ in which the flaneur takes delight, is just the empty mold with which, seventy years later, the Volksgemeinschaft ‘people’s community’ was cast. The flaneur who so prides himself on his alertness, on his nonconformity, was in this respect also ahead of his contemporaries: he was the first to fall victim to an ignis fatuus that since that time has blinded many millions..

Dreams might be able to be read, which is to say interpreted as wish-symbols which, made conscious, could then be striven after in reality. However, dreams can also be too seductive, countering activity. Doesn’t Freud say that the dream is a trick to keep us sleeping? And Benjamin knows their dangers:

Motif of dream time: atmosphere of aquariums. Water slackening resistance.

Walter and Linguistics

2011-11-06T10:00:00.002Z

Walter Benjamin & The Religion of Translation

by Sarah Dudek

In his essay “The Task of the Translator”, Walter Benjamin elevates translation to a level of the sublime that it has probably never since reached. This extraordinary piece, published as a preface to his own translations of Baudelaire’s “Tableaux Parisiens” in 1923, has highly influenced the theory of translation. Its enigmatic and mystical character launches a religion setting translation into a crucial position.

The topic of translation and the figure of the translator always struggle with the marginalization they are driven to within the literary scene. Translation is widely considered a secondary phenomenon, with the translator mostly hidden behind the predominant author. This might be an explanation for the fascination Benjamin’s uncommon and esoteric thoughts have.

For Benjamin translation is a means to aspire to “pure language”. He regards a process of supplement of languages as taking place through translation because of the difference between source and target language. This inadequacy is in itself the source of an enrichment of the target language: foreign, untranslatable concepts and structures are brought into a language and take part in the process of an ongoing complement of languages with its climax in “pure language”.

Benjamin’s thoughts cannot be understood without having a closer look at his concept of language—“pure language” seems a rather vague term. His whole project is so remarkable because it has an all-embracing notion of language as its basis: the world is made of language and the final aim is to understand this “textus” of the world, to achieve harmony between the inadequate human languages and the language of God. This thought is highly influenced by Jewish mysticism mainly bequeathed in the Cabbala and made more accessible to a broader public amongst others by Walter Benjamin’s close friend Gershom Scholem, a German Jew and later professor at the University of Jerusalem.

In order to reflect on the significance of translation it is a presupposition to ponder on the theory of language, which is necessary background for any concept of translation and translatability. Seven years before publishing his essay on translation, Benjamin had written the even more metaphysical “On Language as Such and the Language of Man”, in which he develops his idea of a distinction between the intellectual and the linguistic parts of the human being. Benjamin posited a universal sphere of concepts, which he called the “intellectual part”, totally self-sufficient and distinguished from the “linguistic part”. The two components of the human being are connected to some extent, but the linguistic part never covers the whole conceptual sphere. Thus it is not possible to articulate the totality of existing concepts: the various languages are inadequate, extending only over parts of the conceptual sphere, but varying in this extent and in the concepts of the intellectual sphere they cover—every particular language is able to articulate different intellectual content. The biblical idea of a once existing complete language in paradise disintegrated by God after the Tower of Babel grounds Benjamin’s theory of language. The particular languages are thus only incomplete pieces of the pure original. It is this idea which leads to the understanding of language as not only a communicative tool between humans, but moreover the realm of hidden divine truth, of something enigmatic which is totally free of meaning and resonating in the human languages. Benjamin builds his teleology on the basis of this mystical idea: the final aim is to approach divine language, in which all truth is hidden, but which is at the same time no longer communicative, but rather totally free of meaning. Translation is the decisive means to reach the final end: it completes languages, puts together the disintegrated “modes of intention”—as Benjamin calls the sphere in semiotics termed “signifier”—and works towards the perfection of the original, which can be considered incomplete, requiring translation: “Thus translation, ironically, transplants the original into a more definitive linguistic realm”, Benjamin states.

The right way of translating is important. Due to the characteristic of the final goal, the divine language—a language without any meaning—Benjamin focuses totally on the mode of expression, on language without content. According to him translations should not try to transfer meaning, but rather translate as close to the original as possible, by transferring its syntax and also its way of expressing concepts to the target language: “A real translation is transparent; it does not cover the original, does not block its light, but allows the pure language, as though reinforced by its own medium, to shine upon the original all the more fully.” Thus the extraordinary task the translator receives in Benjamin’s theory tends to reverse to an exceedingly binding restriction imposed on the translator lacking any granted creativity.

How can a theory that is so enigmatic, mystical and restrictive at the same time exert such an influence on the theory of translation? An impressive number of essays referring to Benjamin’s theory of translation have been written by renowned authors such as Peter Szondi, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, and many others. Among other things the space of interpretation Benjamin leaves open might attract, but moreover it is the strength translation gains through this process which proves fascinating and unique within the theory of translation.

It is remarkable and bound to the effect “The Task of the Translator” has had that Benjamin does not consider the reader. In the very beginning of the essay, one reads: “In the appreciation of a work of art or an art form, consideration of the receiver never proves fruitful. […] No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener. Is a translation meant for readers who do not understand the original? Yet any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information—hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.” The end of any consideration for the reader of a translation provides freedom to the translator. The transmission of content is superfluous: if there is not receiver there is no demand for information. It is possible to focus only on aesthetics—as incomprehensible as the result might prove to be. Such a stance on translation justifies the existence and esoteric character of the society of translators inquiring the works of each other as well as their isolation from the widely ignorant sphere of readers. If the world is understood as language then it follows that aesthetics is the only thing that makes sense. To go with the early Nietzsche one can state that the world is only justified if considered an aesthetic phenomenon.

It might be for the abstract character of these thoughts that Benjamin’s essay was widely considered a theory of untranslatablity. This view is often taken by referring to the ambiguity of the title: the German title “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers” could also be translated as “The Surrender of the Translator”. But this is not contradictory to Benjamin’s belief in translatability: the above-mentioned inadequacy of every translation is re-valued by Benjamin and positively predicated with reference to the transparency for pure language. In addition, the essay was written as an introduction to Benjamin’s own translations of pieces out of Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs du Mal”. Certainly there is some truth in Stefan Zweig’s review on Benjamin’s translations from 1924, when he states that it is an “icy, unsensual and dead German way” of translating Baudelaire, freezing the original and depriving it of all sensual melody. It is true that Benjamin’s translations do not work for somebody reading Baudelaire in translation for the first time. Very little of the magic and the content of the poems are conveyed, due to the abstractions Benjamin condenses out of Baudelaire’s more descriptive verses.

With reference to the above-mentioned rejection of consideration for the reader Benjamin’s way of translating might make sense. To ask for whom he translates becomes a profane question—it is not applicable as a critique regarding Benjamin’s system. A more appropriate critique is the following: if translation is taken as a means to the end of pure language, it has to face the danger of losing its aesthetics due to a lack of independence. Opposing the concept of “l’art pour l’art”, it has a function in a teleological and religious process. In Benjamin’s theory decisions concerning aesthetics of translation have to consider the exposing of pure language beside mere aesthetic judgments. A language can certainly be enriched by other languages, but a coherent melody can hardly be found if the loyalty of the translation goes as far as imitating even the syntax of the source language. In this context Benjamin quotes Rudolf Pannwitz, one of the disciples of Stefan George, himself a translator of Baudelaire, as well as a predominant cultural figure and poet: “Our translations, even the best ones, proceed from a wrong premise. They want to turn Hindi, Greek, English into German instead of turning German into Hindi, Greek, English. […] The basic error of the translator is that he preserves the state in which his own language happens to be instead of allowing his language to be powerfully affected by the foreign tongue.” Inspiration by a foreign language sounds like a reasonable enterprise, but giving up aesthetic feeling in order to translate as loyally as possible has an effect on translation which reverses the whole project of Benjamin to its opposite: it makes translation a mere means, a tool without any independence, whereas the original would still have more freedom and thus the poet more concessions of creativity.

The ambiguity of Benjamin’s view becomes obvious when the relation between original and translation becomes topical: an imitation of the original does not make any sense for him because of the inadequacy of source and target language, but his demand for loyalty is not to ignore. The independence of the original can also be cast into doubt by his remark that the original demands a translation, that translatability is something inherent to it, as well as—with regard to the “messianic end of history”—considering Benjamin’s underlying teleology.

It is remarkable that in the English translation of “The Task of the Translator” by Harry Zorn the religious connotation of Benjamin’s terms is sometimes less obvious than in the German original. It might be the alienation one has towards such a mystical way of thinking and towards the ambiguity of Benjamin’s style of writing. Nevertheless, Benjamin’s theory of translation can only be understood in religious terms. It is bound to the Cabbalistic tradition, which is in itself enigmatic and contradictory—and so is Benjamin’s essay. Its magic is evoked by its ambiguity and its holistic aesthetics. In it, translation can live in its extraordinariness. Although it is not a theory of untranslatability, it is hard to think of its practical influence on translators. As mentioned before: the presupposition of his theory of translation is his “messianic” theory of language. It is hard to think of seriously accompanying Benjamin in looking to language for such a messiah.

The Angel of History

2011-11-06T08:50:00.002Z

Beautiful Things

2011-11-06T08:46:00.002Z

What seems paradoxical about everything that is justly called beautiful is the fact that it appears.
Benjamin, Schriften I, 349 (via allenjunior)

Benjamin and Linguistics

2011-11-03T07:26:00.002Z

From Benjamin's 1916 essay “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man”:

What does language communicate? It communicates the spiritual essence corresponding to it. It is fundamental to recognize that this spiritual essence communicates itself in language and not through it. Hence, there is no speaker of languages, if that means someone who communicates through these languages. Spiritual being communicates itself in, not through, a language: this is to say, it is not outwardly identical with linguistic being. Spiritual being is identical with linguistic being only insofar as it is communicable. What is communicable in a spiritual entity is its linguistic being. Language, therefore, in each case communicates the linguistic being of things, but their spiritual being only insofar as this is directly included in their linguistic being, insofar as it is communicable.

Accumulating things

2011-08-21T19:25:00.002Z

In her 1978 essay “Under the Sign of Saturn”, the critic Susan Sontag, invoking the ur-flâneur Walter Benjamin, wrote: “If [the] melancholy temperament is faithless to people, it has good reason to be faithful to things. Fidelity lies in accumulating things – which appear, mostly, in the form of fragments and ruins.”

Culture Shock

2011-07-30T07:29:00.000Z

A Thai princess tries something new

Yes there is a first time for everything, but little did she know before she came to England that her journey here was the start of a first time for many things. Being German myself I had been through many of the experiences she was now facing therefore tried to support her in every way possible. Our first day at Uni was probably the most important. After a long stressful day of travelling to different classes around campus we were ready to relax and enjoy the evening. Although I felt very pleased that this day was coming to an end I could feel her hands trembling. She was so terrified, I could feel her pain! I reassured her it was not as painful as she may think but she did not believe a word I said. She had spent a life living like a princess in Thailand so any situation that seemed daunting, even in the smallest, was magnified to her. I explained to her how it would happen and that I would be experiencing it with her, she was not alone.
I squeezed her hand tighter, pulled her closer, and whispered in her ear that it would all be over within minutes. I realised how innocent she was, how oblivious she was to the reality she was surrounded by. I asked her if she was ready and she nodded her head with a look of horror in her eyes. I felt bad for her, I did not want to cause her pain but no matter how much I tried to reassure her it would be ok it made no difference. I gave her one last look and then finally took the step that may be a life changing experience for her. A minute later I felt her hand ease off mine, I looked at her and noticed the look of relief on her face. It was over. I was pleased to see her smile return knowing that I was the first person to help her experience that. Walking her across a busy Bradford road in the rush hour.

Culture Shock

2011-07-28T15:05:00.003Z

An international student talks about missing food from home:-

It happened in the first week I arrived in Bradford. I had only been in Bradford for a couple of days, still trying to get familiar with life and the shops. A rice cooker was one of the things that I hadn’t got around to sorting out yet. Anyway, I was really homesick and desperately needed to have some rice. That afternoon I went out shopping in the city centre with other new arrival students. We finished shopping in Morrisons and were wondering around the other shops nearby. So, I went into this shop, packed full of lots of food in tins and things in all sorts of packaging. I was just browsing and looking around, then I saw a small package labeled ‘Rice Pudding’. My eyes lit up with joy and excitement, and I thought I could finally have some rice.
As soon as I got back to my accommodation, I took out this rice pudding thing from my shopping bag. Without even unpacking my shopping bag, I got a spoon and had a really big mouthful……

I went pale immediately and spat it out; “Oh, it’s so disgusting! It’s not rice, it’s sweet and cold and yak, so disgusting…..”

What kind of a country is this?

Benches

2011-07-28T15:04:00.001Z

"You asked me once, what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world. ”
— O'Brien in George Orwell’s 1984

On the benches
Anyone who has spent any time in Room 101 will know that there are benches right outside its windows, so that when the windows are open we can all clearly hear the conversations of people sat on the benches. The people on the benches don’t realise that there is an open window right next to them so often have quite personal conversations without realising people are listening. Predictably, I’ve been writing these conversations down for years. I like to think they are little slices of Bradford life, so here goes with the first one. These are all 100% word for word true, no exaggeration, no lies:-

Today two young Bradford lads:

1: "Yeah, I fell really hard, I fell like this, right on a brick, it really hurt. X (name unclear) was laughing and you know sometimes when someone’s laughing, well, I just went into murder mode, you know when you go into murder mode, like a switch.......I recon he's took some beatings anyway."
2: "Yeah, he's took some beatings. "

Ambient noise drowns the voices...

2. "What you do when you work out? You do upper body work? I work on my legs but never do no upper body work. What you think.... it matter?"
1. Nah, I like to work on my upper body, but your legs are more important. If you got your legs nice that's more important. If you got good legs then whatever happens in a fight, you'll still be standing."
2: "Yeah"

On the benches
Anyone who has spent any time in Room 101 will know that there are benches right outside its windows, so that when the windows are open we can all clearly hear the conversations of people sat on the benches. The people on the benches don’t realise that there is an open window right next to them so often have quite personal conversations without realising people are listening:-

One boy and two girls talking:

Boy:- “Why’d you do that?”
Girl – “What”
B – “You know what you did”
G – “What?
B – “Well what did you do? It was a perfectly ordinary conversation and what did you go and do?
G – Nothing
B- In a totally normal conversation what did you have to go and do?
G – “I don’t know
B – “You do know, what did you do?
G – “I don’t know
B - “”What did you do?
long pause
G – “I did some dance moves”
All Laugh

Double-hip-poke

2011-07-16T13:30:00.001Z

The Fire Safety Officer has been telling me off for years about the numerous small infringements my library makes on the fire safety rules: I must not put posters on the walls, as someone could set them on fire with a lighter or a match; I must not prop doors open as fire can whoosh through them; storing shelves under the abandoned stairway is a fire hazard.
Today he came round and spotted the toaster in my back room which he informed me was a fire hazard.
“You can’t have that. You have to get rid of it.”
“OK, I will.”
And then he walks towards me (we are standing in my small back room; the one where I keep my toaster )and, taking his two index fingers, pokes me in the hips.
The Fire Safety Officer has double-hip-poked me!
I hardly know him.
A double-hip-poke is not even a commonplace poke.
I don’t know what it means.
I don’t know what to do.
I think I laughed and walked out of the room telling him not to worry about the toaster.

Porn in the Language Centre

2011-07-16T13:29:00.001Z

So, a gentleman came into the language centre and asked if he could use the scanner. The scanner is connected to my computer, behind my desk, so he came around and started his scanning. I went into the back room to make a cup of coffee and left him to it. Scanning complete, he put his memory stick into the computer to copy the files across. As I came back into the room I heard the loud unmistakable sounds of a porn actress having sex.
Everyone in the room looked up from their quiet working.
The scanning guy frantically clicked his mouse trying to close the offending Windows Media Player file.
I stood there, all eyes in the room on me, as if I was somehow responsible, “Er, Ah, I can explain folks. Er......”
The scanning guy clicked.
Everyone looked at me.
I reddened.
“Yes, I can explain everything. It’s that video I was watching earlier of a woman giving birth. I’m really interested in that.”
As one, everybody just went “Oh” and turned back to their work.
Wow, I got away with it.

The scanning guy hasn’t been back.

The task of the leftist thinker

2011-07-16T12:37:00.000Z

Benjamin said it is the task of the leftist thinker not to ride the train of history but to apply the brake.

Refurbishment

2011-07-16T06:31:00.002Z

Refurbishment
As part of the possible refurbishment of the resources area i make an appointment to visit Salford university's resources room which is "all singing, all dancing" (technical speak for modern). I take a day off work and agree to be there sometime in the afternoon before 4pm, which is when they close. Anyway i kind of goof around in the morning and finally set off at about 12.30 thinking i've got plenty of time. Halfway across the M62 a lorry gets blown over (it was the windiest day of the year) and is straddling all three lanes of the motorway so i'm pretty much stationary for the best part of two hours. I finally arrive in Salford at about 3.30. Now, maybe i should have just turned around and come back another day but i just kind of wanted to get it done. By the time i got to Salford i felt like i'd come so far that there was no way i was gonna give up now. Anyway after 10 minutes or so i found the university and i'd rung the lady i was supposed to meet and told her that i would be there for sure. So, the resources centre is on the 9th floor of a building called The Maxwell building. I park my car and ask the Car Park attendent where the Maxwell building is?
Attendant: "Are you here for your Graduation?"
Me: "Er, no, i'm just supposed to meet someone in the Maxwell building before four"
Attendant: (He looks at his watch) "well, you'll be lucky, the Maxwell building is that one over there" (and he points to a huge building far off in the distance)
So i'm already pretty stressed out because i'm so late and now it really looks like i'm not gonna make it, but, you know, by now i've got that determined thing going on so off i run across the campus like some crazed running suited man.
I get to the Maxwell building, sweaty and dishevelled, and its already 3.50. I seem to be at the rear of the building and cannot find a door. I run along one side of the building and amazingly there are no doors whatsoever. I'm frantic by this time, i cannot believe i've come so far; I'm actually outside the building, but i cannot get in.
I run along the other side of the building and about half way along finally find an entrance. It says on it 'Maxwell Building: Great Hall'. Now you must remember that all of this is happening very fast as i'm despirate to make that 4 oclock deadline. I think to myself "Maxwell Building Great Hall, well at least im in the maxwell building, all i've got to do now is look around for stairs". The door opens into a little hallway with a cupboard at one end and large double doors at the other. I open the double doors and step in.........
To find myself at the rear of the stage in the main hall in the middle of the graduation ceremony. The hall is packed full of Graduands all of whom are looking at the strange sweaty, flustered man who has appeared on the stage. I'm actually on the bloody stage in the middle of a graduation ceremony. Just infront of me is the chancellor or whoever, who is delivering a speech to the packed hall. To the left of me along the back of the stage are various bigwigs in their graduation finery. Everyone is looking at me in shock and amazement.
I stand there, for what could only really be seconds. Finally i exclaim "Whoaw" and run right back out through the doors i came in through. I hightail it right out of there as fast as i can.

At the University of Muri

2011-07-16T06:29:00.002Z

Walter Benjamin
One of Walter Benjamin’s most famous writings is ‘Unpacking my library’, a homage to book collecting. Benjamin was also a great user of Libraries, famous for spending most of his days in Paris in the Bibliotheca National. Indeed, the famous unfinished manuscript of the Arcades Project was entrusted to the Librarian there; the famous writer and pervert, George Bataille. What few people know is that years before Benjamin had been a librarian himself, in the University of Muri, back in Germany. He was 26 when he began work there.

Today we find him meeting his friend Professor Scholem in the University refectory. They are drinking tea and talking:-

Walter: “So you know how friendly I am, well, she was clearly lost and looked so alone and like she was having a hard time adjusting to being here...

Gershom: “Where was she from again?”

Walter: “Heilongjiang. It’s in the far north of China. She’s here on some kind of government exchange. Minder follows her everywhere. Anyway, so I was showing her around, and explaining things to her. Asking her how she likes Muri, and Germany. Well, you know how Chinese are, they play their cards close to their chests, and she clearly didn’t want to give too much away. ‘Who’s this strange man asking so many questions?’ So, she’s telling me about a problem with the hot water in her halls and I ask her which halls she’s in. I can tell she’s a little surprised that I asked her outright, and I feel I’ve sort of alarmed her; crossed a line, like she thinks I might stalk her or something; I wouldn’t of course, that stalkers club I used to belong to hasn’t met for months now. Anyway, she tells me which halls she lives in but you can tell she doesn’t want to. I change the conversation and we talk about other things but she’s a little on edge now. So, we talk for a while and she sits down and listens to the radio for a while. Eventually she gets up and is leaving. ‘See you later’ I say, and she shoots me back a look of shear horror. ‘I’m going to see him later? Why am I seeing him later? He knows where I live, is he going to come over? Have I somehow agreed to meet him, and not realised?’ She doesn’t reply, just hurries out the door, almost running.”

Gershom: “Ha, she feels sexually harassed by you.”

Walter: “Exactly, I’m really worried; I think she might make a complaint. Professor Schict will roast me. Imagine if I get accused of sexual harassment. I’ve got to walk past those halls every night too, on my way home. What If she happens to look out her window one night and sees me walking past, she’ll be terrified.

Gershom: “Ah, I wouldn’t worry too much about Schict, that guys got more sexual harassment accusations against him than anyone. 6 the last time I heard. 6 from university staff, it’s a good job he doesn’t go near the students too often, there’d be hell on. As well as the harassment charges I heard he’s also had flings with other married staff members, what’s her name? Err, xxxx.”

Walter: “Blimey, I didn’t know”

Gershom: Ah, senior management, they’re all at it, you wouldn’t believe the stuff that goes on. I heard this one story about XXX, well, you know that big lady in ops, and well I heard she moonlights as a SandM Madame. They all know about it. So, XXX arranged with her to have a meeting about some mundane work stuff, but he wanted, for the entire duration of the meeting, to have his cock out. I don’t think he particularly wanted to be touching it or anything, it was just hanging out as they talked about student admissions procedures or whatever.”

Walter: “Wow, and this really happened? My God.”

Gershom: “I heard they set it up, after that I don’t know what happened.”

Walter: “Wow, incredible. OK, well yes, I don’t feel half so worried now. Hell, maybe I’ll even try it on the next time she comes in. Why not eh?”

Benjamin Comics

2011-06-26T14:59:00.002Z

Benjamin Comics

2011-06-26T14:56:00.000Z

Benjamin Comics

2011-06-26T14:50:00.003Z

Walters walks in

2011-06-25T15:33:00.000Z

See, Walters just walked in. When Walters walks in you know its time to leave; guy exudes negativity like Clinton exudes charm. I seen him work a room before, destroy them one by one, going around the room shaking hands, sucking the life out of them, leaving them startled, listless, trying to shake him off, get their mojo's back on track.
OK love, i'll take over the script from here, yeah, had to be the saddest man in the world i bet, when you find out all the details and you realise what a fool you been made of, didnt you suspect a damn thing? Wasnt their a doubt in your mind?
'A' had been his first real encounter with real beauty. "So thats what beauty is." Like that childhood adolescent encounter with beauty and desire for the first time. Its not even real desire all that, its more metaphysical and etherial at that age and at that stage; otherworldly.

Cartoon Abstract of Gershom's memoir of Walter

2011-06-23T21:02:00.003Z

Interesting Film about Benjaminia

2011-06-14T16:57:00.000Z

http://www.vimeo.com/17166870

Ruinations - June

2011-06-12T18:28:00.000Z

5 i:-

1/ Every time the sickness comes I feel like a little bit of my brain dies. It’s around the time I go blind and lose proper awareness of my body.

2/ When I first graduated I worked looking after mentally handicapped until there was a scandal when one of the other workers got two of the clients to kiss each other. They filmed us all secretly and caught her at it, caused me to panic about just what I might have been up to.

3/ In Venice late one evening I wandered the Giardini weaving in and out of the various abandoned pavilions. There was no one else around, and I could pretty much let myself in at my leisure. These huge building, empty and decrepit were somehow terrifying.

4/ I had to find myself a blindwriter, not simply a translator, but an interpreter; an interpreter of meaning. Best place to hide one of these would be in a person you’ve never even noticed, so that’s where I needed to look.

5/ When I was younger I used to be able to make people I met feel special, you know, that whole Clinton thing: ‘made me feel like the most important person in the room’. Learnt it from CW I did. Recently I’ve noticed myself projecting differently; makin everyone I meet feel a little the worse, makin them aware of something about their situation which, well, is regrettable.

The Manchester Arcades Projects

2011-06-12T18:24:00.002Z

they do not sleep

2011-06-02T19:09:00.000Z

I read about those idiots in the city in the south, the ones that do not sleep. There is a breakdown of statistics about the city, such as 95% of them go to University, but the literacy rate is only 65%. Initially this seems incompatible to be. Many of them visit here, more all the time. In fact, its becoming an increasing problem. Today I visited the Memory Hall, normally a serene, thoughtful experience, but since tourism has increased it is now awash with them, shouting, pushing, recording every damn little thing.
Back in the dream I am ready to give up. I can feel my body giving up. No longer have the energy. Ive been trying so hard to get us through the process, and ive just reached the stage where I cant go on any more with them all sniping and jostling. I ask the lab guys to put me back in The Raft, I just need to rest now. I give up. I need to rest for a while.
They do, I get back into the container, where I haven’t been for about 15 years. Strange. It feels comfortable, and I really do relax.
We visit the city in the East, where their MRT is different from our own. Their announcement system keeps you constantly updated on which viruses have been detected in the air supply. Today, its not too bad, but there's still very few people using the trains. Of course, everyone is wearing their masks, and we are given standard ones as we board.

they do not sleep

2011-06-01T07:35:00.005Z

As we left for the East a number of storylines were coming to a head: The Addingham Arsonist struck again and there were rumors of a note suggesting that this wouldn’t be the last we were hearing from him; They were marching against the Mosque which was being built next to the Army base; Snipers from Minaret’s. And the trial of Colin Wang’s killers was taking place, with all the details finally coming to light. His sister, Sally had been stabbed and tied, whilst her brother lay nearby slowly dying of multiple stab wounds. As the night dragged on, the killers discussed how they’d come to this point and one bent down, kissed Sally on the lips and told her he loved her and not to worry. Then he smashed a vodka bottle over her head. In the East I manage to buy a newspaper from England, it is already yesterdays by the time I get it; New research shows that when David Cameron’s face is superimposed on a naked man’s body (they used the same body with many different faces) and shown to housewives for a sustained period, those housewives reported a 20% increase in sex with their husbands. Boy George had the second highest rating, with more likely candidates like Sean Bean and Daniel Craig coming substantially lower in the ratings.

The obsession with simulation here reaches new heights all the time. At a wedding there are 7 photographers on the stage with the priest and couple. They point their cameras in the faces of the groom, and trip over each other trying to capture the bride making some tiny move. Their attempts to coordinate and communicate mean that they are more distracting than anything the priest is doing.
The custom of building a model flat out of wood, by the side of the road, where an actual tower block will one day be. Prospective buyers can look round the wooden building to see how their tower block flat will one day be. Once the customer ‘buys’ the simulation, work on the original can start, and the wooden model be destroyed.

I had met Colin Wang’s parents when they first came for the opening of the investigation, and in the course of trying to befriend them asked them all about themselves. They were prison wardens in the high security prison on the island in Hong Kong bay; The Raft. For years the most dangerous prisoners in the East had been locked up there in what was a pretty grim and strict regime. They had become incredibly cautious about what they gave away about their own lives, and I think they thought Colin’s death was in some way connected to their work. I think I enquired too much about life on The Raft because I saw them less and less over time, till eventually I lost touch entirely. Of course, it turned out that what led two African immigrants living in Birmingham to be in that house that night was an even more unlikely turn of events.

writers

2011-05-17T20:39:00.000Z

writers are people who write books not out of poverty but out of dissatisfaction with the books they could afford but do not like.

The Chinese Person

2011-05-17T20:32:00.000Z

Walter in an essay on Franz describes the Chinese person thus:- In China the inner person is almost characterless. It is something quite other than character that distinguishes the Chinese individual; a wholly elemental purity of Feeling.

Walter and Prostitutes

2011-05-10T05:16:00.000Z

Walter loved to write about prostitutes. A vast proportion of The Arcades Project is Walter writing about prostitution in the arcades. In 'Picturing Proust' when trying to explain Proust's inventive and elaborate writing style and mirroring a story told by Proust about how to locate an address at night wherein Proust gives every detail but the address, Walter writes "try locating the address of a brothel in a foreign city, even if you have been given the most long winded instructions (excepting only the name of the street and the number of the house) and you will understand what is meant here." Yeah, I think we can guess how Walter spent his evenings when visiting all those foreign cities.

Taipei Simulacrum

2011-05-10T05:02:00.000Z

I have a horror of simulation. Taipei is awash with it. Simulation of its own past. Whilst what little remains of its real past languishes undisturbed and ignored in quiet corners. You could actually believe they would tear down the real past to build a lovely new recreation. And it would prove to be really popular. Take today, we wander around the Shihida area where we find loads of Japan era houses ignored and falling to pieces in back streets. Meanwhile people flock to the disneyfied recreations which litter the cities shopping areas.

The Kaohshiung Arcades Project

2011-05-02T16:13:00.000Z

Marrying Amy- Conclusion

2011-04-14T16:17:00.001Z

Marrying Amy – Conclusion
The comedic story of an English guy marrying a Taiwanese girl and the misunderstandings and cultural clashes which ensue.

Having travelled to Taiwan to get permission to marry Amy from her Father, enduring cat attacks, fundamentalist Christian singing, excessive sweating, cultural misunderstandings and having paid 3,000 for a few pre-wedding photos, I finally found myself back in Taipei, about to get married.

My Parents, Sister and a few other relatives came out to Taiwan for the big occasion. Now, my Parents are lovely, but I think it’s fair to say that my Dad isn’t the smartest dad in the ad bag. He had agreed to act as my Best Man for the day, and was very nervous. I was pretty nervous myself and not entirely sure I shouldn’t have gone with my Sister as Best Man, but, ah, it was too late to change now.

So, in a Taiwanese wedding there are one or two customs which are a little different to ours. One is their engagement parties, which normally take place a few weeks before the wedding, but in our case, because of people coming from abroad, took place the night before. The engagement is basically a big family meal, but a key cultural part of it is that the Grooms family have to leave quietly, without saying goodbye, before the fish dish is served. Basically sneak out. So, despite having been told a million times that it was vital that he didn’t say goodbye of course my Dad couldn’t help himself, just as he was about to exit the room he turned back and said goodnight to the packed room, informing them all “see you for the wedding”. The room full of Taiwanese people just started back, unable to believe it.

This had set things a little on edge with Amy’s family, but by the next morning everyone had almost forgotten about it and we were all excited about the big day. Another Taiwanese custom is that the Groom has to go round to the Bride’s house to pick her up and take her to the wedding. Before he is allowed in her house the Bride’s friends set him some tasks to do, which he has to perform correctly in order to gain admission to the house. The Best Man can come along with the Groom and can do half of the tasks with him. So, early in the morning, in sweltering Taiwanese June heat, my Dad and me were stood on the doorstep of Amy’s Parent’s house, being quizzed on what was Amy’s favorite meal, and other such questions, designed to test how well I know her. Following the questions, there are physical tests. Now, this is the part where the best man can really help out. So, when I was asked to do 50 press-ups, on the doorstep, in 35 degree heat, I really hoped my Dad could help me out. Now my Dad is a funny little fat man with a big ginger beard, kinda like a ginger Father Christmas, so I guess I shouldn’t have expected too much. What I didn’t expect however was for him to struggle to do one press-up, to fart loudly as he struggled to push himself up and for both of the buttons on his suit jacket to burst off as he strained. Great, everybody is laughing at us, and now I’m going to have to do all these bloody press-ups on my own.

So, with some slight bending of the rules, we managed to pick up Amy and finally got to the church for the wedding. Following the traditional format, the Groom and Best Man enter first, followed by the Bridesmaids who scatter flowers ahead of the bride, except that, as soon as Amy’s two young nieces, who were acting as Bridesmaids, saw my Dad ahead of them they both started crying and refused to scatter their flowers or go anywhere near the ‘foreigner’. So, with a minor restructuring of the Brides entourage we managed to get the Bride to the altar and get the two of us married.

On to the reception, which we had conceived as a merging of the two cultures, so we had a mini video story of how Amy and I met, which is a Taiwanese custom, and the Best Man’s speech, which is not a tradition in Taiwan. So, imagine, my Dad stands up in front of a room full of people who are not familiar with the tradition of the Best Man embarrassing the Groom on his most important day, and starts to tell them about the time his own son pissed himself in the local shop, and the time he shat himself in a school assembly, and the time he locked himself out of his chalet, stark naked in a holiday camp in North Wales. Well, all the Taiwanese people; my new family, sat there in horror as this list of atrocities was read out, unable to comprehend why my Father seemed to hate me so much that he would do this to me on my special day. Even with Amy interpreting, and trying to minimize the impact, there were still looks of horror from all around the room. And my poor Father, expecting everyone to be laughing along with him, was himself shocked to be delivering his speech in silence.

Oh dear, I thought to myself, maybe this merging of cultures wasn’t such a good idea.

Marrying Amy – Part 6

2011-03-27T21:09:00.000Z

The comedic story of an English guy marrying a Taiwanese girl and the misunderstandings and cultural clashes which ensue. Having travelled to Taiwan to get permission to marry Amy from her father, 3 months later I found myself on another plane to Taipei.

Having finally received permission to marry Amy, and as Amy’s parents began to make the arrangements for the wedding I was told by Amy that we would have to go to Taiwan to have our wedding photos taken, several months before the wedding.
‘Eh?
The wedding photos taken three months before the wedding?’
It turns out that it is a tradition in Taiwan (and in other parts of the Far East) that couples pay a photography studio to have a series of glamorous (or tacky, depending on your point of view) photos taken before the wedding. These photos are then displayed at the Wedding reception, and as little cards are given away to guests. The cost of the day’s photography (which includes dress hire on the photography day and on the wedding day) and set of nicely framed photos and cards is approximately £1,000.
Now. £1,000, plus £800 each for plane fares to go to Taiwan (well plus all the other money you spend when you do stuff abroad) just to have a few photos taken, means that these 10 photos are going to cost me about £3,000. Wow, that’s some pretty expensive photos.
Now, I am Yorkshire born and bred so the idea of spending £3,000 on a few photos is pretty much against my religion.
‘Can’t we just ignore this bit and not have the photos?’
‘Can’t we just have some taken here and email them to your mum to print out?’
‘Can’t we just say we cant get the time off work?’
‘Can’t we say we don’t do this in England and were going to follow English tradition for this bit?’
‘Can’t we just pretend to be sick or something?’
‘Can’t we get out of it somehow?’
When Amy (who was clearly dismayed by my trying to worm my way out of spending the money) tried my excuses out on her mum, the reaction was progressively more and more despairing. She wasn’t happy that her daughter was marring this older, non-Christian, foreigner. And now he was trying to ruin the plan to have a nice normal Taiwanese wedding by being tight.
Each excuse I offered was roundly dismissed until eventually I was informed that if I didn’t fork up the money and get us on a plane to Taiwan I would bring shame on myself, shame on Amy and shame on her whole family.
Hmmm... £3,000 of a Yorkshire man’s hard earned cash?
Or shame on an entire family?

What to do..........?

To be continued...

Marrying Amy. Part 5

2011-03-27T21:06:00.002Z

And so with just a few hours to go before we left Taipei, Amy's Parents drove us to the airport. On the way to the airport there is a country park with active geysers which Mum and Dad wanted us to see. We walked a long country path to reach the geysers and enjoyed chatting as a group. At one point we split into boys and girls, and once again, perhaps for the last time, i found myself in a perfect position to ask Amy’s Dad for her hand in marriage.
"Can i ask you a serious question?" He turned to me, almost as if he had been expecting some such question; "Yes."

Me: "I really love your daughter and would very much like to spend the rest of my life with her. I hope you know that i am a serious person and that i will always look after her. I would like to ask her to marry me sometime soon and, well, would just like to know that it is ok with you.....I would like your approval, basically."

Father: "Well, we like you very much, but i must ask my wife something like this. I must ask my wife."

Me: "Yes, of course"

Father: "My religion means very much to me. It is very important. I know my daughter is lazy and does not always go to the church, it is important to me, and to my wife, that she goes to the church, every week. We hope that you can make sure that she goes to the church. It is important to me. Do you understand?"

Me: "Yes, of course. I will do my best."

Father: "Our religion is very important to me and my wife."

Me: "OK"

Father: "My daughter is lazy sometimes. I hope you can help. I would like very much if she would go to church every week. It is important that she has a relationship with Jesus."

Me: "Yes, of course."

Father: “Religion is important to me."

Later as Amy and I sat in the airport she asked me what he had said? Had he given his permission?
"Well, I'm not sure. It was abit unclear. He said he'd have to ask your mum, which is fair enough, and then he sort of talked alot about how important his religion is to him."
"He does that alot"
Me: "Yes, he went on about it for quite a long time"
"Hmmm. But he didn't say "No""
Me: "Yes, exactly. I think its good news really. I sort of got the idea that he didn't object to the idea, even that they like me and are happy for us to get married. He didn't seem to object. Yes, i think its pretty much good news, virtually a "Yes".

And so we returned home and Amy had to write her Masters Dissertation and was under alot of stress and we all but forgot about all the fuss of asking for her hand in marriage, assuming that, in some way it had already been dealt with. We had done that part now, and could move on with lifes next challenge......
And then one day, several weeks later we got a phone call from Amy's mother......

Art and Isolation

2011-03-27T16:07:00.000Z

"The association of art and isolation is all the more dangerous because, as it flatters the self-esteem of the productive person, it effectively guards the interests of a social order that is hostile to him........
....The bourgeois have very good reasons for imputing supernatural creative power to labour." - Walter Benjamin

Benjamin's words of wisdom

2011-02-20T17:22:00.000Z

"Every rise of Fascism bears witness to a failed revolution" - Walter Benjamin

Benjamin's words of wisdom

2011-02-20T17:16:00.000Z

"Everything depends on how one believes in one's belief" - Walter Benjamin

Walter relaxes on holiday in Ibiza

2011-02-20T17:13:00.002Z

A little history of photography

2011-02-12T08:37:00.002Z

Little History of Photography (Kleine Geschichte der Photographie, Petite Histoire de la Photographie, Short History of Photography)

by Walter Benjamin

Benjamin states in the introduction that the first decade of photography was its best. In the decade that preceded the industrialization of photography, it enchanted. Later, photography liberated itself from a non-technological conception of art, and, in fact, enlarged greatly its domain of applicability.

The precision of portrait photography, Benjamin claims, magically passes on the individuality of the person photographed. We look for the coincidence, the visual subconscious laid bare by the photographic paper. Early portrait photography was mysterious, timid, detailed, vivid, impressive. The long exposure forced models to be at rest for a long time and impressed a sense of duration on the photography. Early photographs were meant to last.

Soon, photography replaced some landscape painting, and a lot of miniature portrait painting. Portrait photography rapidly became a business, accesorizing, adding unnecessary elements and 'retouches'. The aura of early portrait photography (- the young Kafka -) originated in the long posing, the often bad lighting, the obscure, and the obscurity of the model. These were soon replaced by the faithful mirror photography held up to the rising middle class.

Photography (- Atget -) replaced the aura of the early image by the emptiness of the city view. Man and the reproducible image became strangers. Sander no longer photographs individuals, but classes of people.

The mechanical reproducibility of art and photography has given rise to a different mode of perception, in which we have reduced objects and made them manipulable. Photography made objects beautiful, suited for creative sales, but fails to portray human relations. The photograph of a factory does not portray the human relations within. It is necessary to create something artificial to represent the real.

Not only do the viewers need to learn the visual language, photographers themselves need to learn how to read their proper images better. A visual legend needs to be constructed to elevate photography above the approximate.

Marrying Amy. Part 4

2011-02-02T06:41:00.000Z

Marrying Amy. Part 4

The story of an English guy trying to sort out marrying a Taiwanese girl. A true account of marriage and colliding cultures.

I had fallen in love with a Taiwanese girl (Amy Hsu) and we had decided to get married. Clearly, for her parents, this would be a big deal (they had been initially opposed to the idea of their daughter going out with an older, English, none-Christian). I decided that I should do things properly and ask her father for her hand in marriage. We went over to Taiwan for a few weeks, specifically so I could do this.

Having plucked up the courage to ask her father for her hand on several occasions, events conspired to foul up my plans, but I would persist…..

Part 4
Ever since I was a child, animals and children have always reacted really badly to me; babies and toddlers see me and cry, dogs bark at me, animals try to attack me. After seeing that movie The Omen, and adding a mix of self importance and imagination, my adolescent mind started to think that maybe I was evil, or even Satan.

So, the minute I walked into Amy's parents’ home for the first time, their sweet little kitten of a cat, Kiki, went mental and started trying to claw at me, actually running after me to try to scratch me.

As our visit to Taiwan progressed I learnt to stay away from the cat. I’m vegetarian out of a hatred of animals, so didn’t want to go near the thing anyway. Sure, Kiki managed to claw me a few times, but nothing serious. The parents, Amy, and me too, all just laughed about how much Kiki seemed to hate me.

And so it came to our last day in Taiwan, with only an afternoon to go before we left. We had been out for breakfast at a local street cafe and came home to pack. The girls were in Amy's room. I was in the living room with Amy’s Dad. It was another perfect opportunity to ask Dad for his daughter’s hand in marriage. I spoke, “Not long now. I’ve had a really lovely time, thanks to you and your wife........Err, I wanted to...”

At that moment Kiki jumped up on the Sofa next to me and clawed at my wrist, drawing blood.

Amy's Dad (in a deadly serious tone): “They can tell things that we can’t”
Me: “Yes”

Dad: “They are more sensitive to spirits and feelings than humans.”
Me: “Ha, Yeah”
Dad: “They can spot things we cannot.”

Ah, what could I do? I’m pretty sure he was only joking, but he seemed so serious, and the implication seemed to be that he now thought there was something not quite right about me, something spiritually wrong with me. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but the cat could sense it. How could I ask now? How could I believe that he would say 'yes' when he seemed to suspect that there was something just wrong about me? Did he too suspect that I might be evil? He's a Christian; he's not going to let his daughter marry someone he even vaguely suspects might be Satan.

And so I went back to my room and finished packing.

To be continued………

The sounds of Venice

2011-01-16T17:03:00.000Z

Today The Leeds Arcades Projects are hopelessly nostalgic for Venice and cannot stop thinking about the sounds of the city. What are the sounds of Venice? The sound of gently lapping water on stone and wood, and the sound of footsteps and voices echoing on brick and stone.

Venice: Pure City

Addingham

2011-01-16T16:59:00.000Z

Since I have moved to the countryside
where I encounter wood, stone and dead creatures
I feel
somehow better

Taiwan

2011-01-16T16:51:00.001Z

How to explain the feeling of arriving in Taiwan? How to explain the better me that emerges? How to explain the multitude of luxuries? The overstaffing of department stores, with young, uniformed men hired just to bow as you leave. The cleanliness, efficiency, gentleness, seamless technology, everywhere.
As I begin to bow and smile, as people bow and smile at me, I start to feel more tender, considerate, gentle, compassionate, refined. Better. A person more in tune with the world.

Lonely Planet Taiwan (Country Guide)http://9im6jjs425770o267f7u4gprd0l4tbn2-a-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/ifr?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwms.assoc-amazon.com%2FGoogleGadgets%2Famzn_monetize.xml&container=blogger&view=editor-sidebar&lang=en&country=GB&v=ac6ecfe2e768ddd3&libs=core%3Adynamic-height%3Agoogle.blog%3Agoogle.blog.editor%3Alocked-domain%3Arpc%3Asetprefs%3Asettitle%3Aviews&parent=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogger.com%2F&mid=1293552146295#

San Michele

2011-01-16T10:26:00.001Z

The sick or disadvantaged of Venice were marginalised by isolation on various surrounding islands; so, the leprous were kept on San Lazzaro dei Armani, lunatics sent to San Servolo, Jews isolated on the Giudecca and the dead on San Michele.

It is this last island which fascinates me most, the impenetrable walled cemetery, a fearsome fortress risen from the sea, all walls and cypresses.

There is something about San Michele which seems impregnable, indeed for a long time I thought it was impossible to visit unless you were dead or visiting the dead.

Returning from Murano by watertaxi we made to stop at San Michele, this was the first time I had realised that as a tourist the island could be visited. Amy and I resolved to get off, but it seems that something about the island remains impregnable to me, as the taxi was so crowded and the sea so choppy, that disembarking on the island was almost impossible. We tried to squeeze through but the fierce sea had made the crowded passengers fractious, and as more people squeezed onto the boat, we realized we wouldn't make it through. So our taxi rocked and struggled past the high walls and cypresses of the island of the dead, back to the mainland, with us a little afraid for our own lives, fearing we might be soon returning to San Michele as residents rather than visitors.

Venice Revealed

Venice

2011-01-16T10:05:00.000Z

The Leeds Arcades Project is clearly obsessed by Venice, but why? What is it about Venice that so captures the imagination? Everything slows down, the gaze becomes somehow sharper, feelings more refined. Walls and windows slip by, churches and well heads come into view, the light as you walk along the shore is somehow brighter than in the normal world.

Venice: Pure City

Evil Pub Quiz - Warning, quite rude

2011-01-11T17:54:00.003Z

In its spare time The Leeds Arcades Project writes horribly offensive pub quizes. Here's our latest (Beware, some of the language may cause offense):

Evil Quiz

1. What do 9 out of 10 people enjoy – Gang rape

2. Which of the following is not a real Sheila-Na-Gig – 3 pics from churches, 1 from porn

3. 4 Shits, what have we been eating – match the meal to the shit

4. Complete the following literary quote by Nabokov:
“Everytime I saw her face I thought I would….
A) Have a fucking wank
B) Die of tenderness
C) Pull out my cock and ask her what she thinks of that, eh?
D) Think, Damn, I’m old enough to be her grandfather

5. Real blogs dedicated to weird stuff

6. Dangerous chemicals

7. Not-the-Jerry-Springer-show round
a) I cut off my manhood – to deter an unwanted male admirer, “sick to God-darn death of being stalked” cut it off w shears and flushed it.
b) I married a horse – after a bad date shagged his horse “it was so good I almost passed out”. He kisses horse during the show.
c) I’m happy I cut off my legs – also a transexual
d) My brother lets me pimp his wife to pay the rent – lets him live in his trailer, brother even has to pay to have sex w own wife. “If he don’t let me im gonna kung-fu him – and I aint even paying for no doctor bill”

8. Which of the following is a real Elton John album?
a) Thanks wind, you totally raped my hair
b) The horrible, horrible asshole
c) Follow the yellow brick road
d) A load of fucking shit that foreigners seem to really like

9. Recent Anti-Japanese protests in China (Oct 2010).
“Take a Japanese Wife, then string her up and beat her everyday”

10. What percentage of Tea Party supporters believe that “if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites” – 3/4

11. Photo of human skin lampshade, What is this?

12. How many of the current “we’re all in it together” Cabinet are millionaires?
18 out of 23

13. Which of the following is not a real atrocity perpetrated by the Japanese on the Chinese during WW2?
Women naked and tied with legs apart and left by the side of the road for a quick rape
Beheading competitions between two sword wielding generals, with victims lined the length of an entire road
Etc

14. Is it true or false that Mr Davis can make women fall in love with him just by staring at them for 30 seconds.
Answer: Lets find out, Miss, could you come over here

16. Berlusconi has been in trouble for having bunga-bunga parties with 17 year olds, but what exactly is a bunga-bunga party?
a) Brutal an*l gang r*pe
b) An erotic game involving the simultaneous use of a banana and a baseball bat
c) A sexual role-play involving a ‘leader’ and several naked girls
d) A type of orgy invented by Colonel Gaddafi

17. We have conducted an exhaustive survey of porn on the internet to try to ascertain which category of porn is the most popular. Which is it?
a) An*l
b) G*ngbang
c) Mature
d) R*pe
e) Bunga-bunga

18. Prince Charles recently wrote a book of new age philosophy laying out his ideas for a more caring, progressive society, in tune with nature, but is it true or false that the f*cking toe-rag has someone who holds his c*ck for him when he pisses

19. What is the only known cure for hiccups?
a) Water, upside down, all that stuff
b) A finger up the bottom
c)

NCC - 101- 2

2011-01-11T07:39:00.001Z

So, I went up to the Command Pod to see the Captain for our big meeting. Sure enough, energy vampire that she is, she sucked the enthusiasm and motivation out of me instantly. She really did want to have it all out with me, so there we are in that cramped little pod from which she commands the ship, cramped together. For some reason she's sitting there with her legs spread really wide. Anyway, she's been told by the Cape that the crew are non-too-happy with the course she's plotted and she's really wanting to have it all out. I stall, saying I need to think about my response and change the subject to discuss a few technical problems I've noticed with the navigational software.
So anyway, in the course of our conversation she keeps trying to bring the conversation back round to my doubts about her leadership, informing me that she's been very upset about things. She starts to cry on a number of occasions and i have to comfort her.
Once again she criticises the way I run the bar, I think she's worried about the gang who hang out in there, little realising that a lot of the new staff who came on-board over the summer don't come into the bar because of her drunken behaviour over the summer.
Anyway, I manage to get out of there without too much stress, but feel completely drained and demotivated. How the hell does she do that? She literally sucks the joy out of you.

Marrying Amy. Pt.3

2011-01-10T14:50:00.002Z

Part 3 of the comedic story of an English guy trying to sort out marrying a Taiwanese girl. A true account of marriage and colliding cultures.

I had fallen in love with a Taiwanese girl (Amy Hsu) and we had decided to get married. Clearly, for her parents, this would be a big deal (they had been initially opposed to the idea of their daughter going out with an older, English, none-Christian). I decided that I should do things properly and ask her father for her hand in marriage. We went over to Taiwan for a few weeks, specifically for this reason.

Having plucked up the courage to ask her father for her hand on a couple of occasions, events had conspired to foul up my plans. And so with the end of the trip approaching I was starting to feel the pressure.

The night before we were to travel back home, Amy’s Dad wanted to take us out to a concert in the Sun Yat-Sen memorial hall. Brilliant, I thought, it’s a lovely building and it’ll be nice to see the concert hall. Hopefully, afterwards I'll get a chance to get Dad on his own and have a man-to-man chat.
The concert was by some American Born Chinese (ABC’s) Christians and was a concert of Christian songs (remember that Amy’s parents are strong Christians). I’m not Christian at all, but hey, I like Hymns and singing, so this is going to be fine. It was really crowded, Wow, I think, this should be good.
Within 2 minutes of it starting I realise I’m in an Evangelical Praise Concert; everyone stood up, with their hands in the air, shouting out Hallelujah, as the band whip the crowd up into a frenzy of Jesus praise.
Not really a joiner-inner, I found various ways of trying to trick myself into enjoying the concert:
I said to myself, “Ah, they all like it, just join in a bit, enjoy it, it doesn’t matter”;
I told myself, “you’re going to ask her father for her hand later, make him happy, look as if you are enjoying yourself”;
I used the obvious one and told myself “I’m a spy, I’m only here to observe. I’m getting the inside skinny on this movement. I’m only joining in so they don’t realise I’m spying on them”.
Anyway, I was getting through it and even making eye contact with Amy’s Dad from time to time as I clapped along to songs about how great a lamb Jesus was.
And then one of the ABC’s started to tell a story about how she had cured a disabled African guy. She told of how Jesus told her to go to Africa to cure the sick and how, whilst there, a man who had been born with a twisted, crippled arm, asked for her help. She laid her hands on him, and Jesus told her to pull. She pulled, but his arm only went half way. He looked at her, afraid and shocked; she looked back at him, also shocked. She said to God “Come on god, don’t joke around with me, if you are going to let me heal this man, let me heal him totally, not half heal him” and she laughed as she told this story,
And the ABCs laughed too,
and the audience laughed too,
and Amy's Mum laughed,
and Amy's Dad laughed.
I did not laugh.
Sure enough she pulled the African man’s arm again and he was fully cured. His arm, which had never worked, was now fully healed. “Africa is a land of Miracles” she told us.
Much as I had wanted to join in, wanted to go with the flow, this story was just too much for me, I didn’t join in anymore, I didn’t smile at Dad anymore, I didn’t clap along to anymore songs, and I didn’t ask for his daughters hand in marriage. I was a fool and let this story cloud my mind; I let my perfect opportunity slide past.
Ah, but the story does not end there, there were still a few hours the next day before we had to go……there was still time...…To be continued……

Marrying Amy. Part 2

2011-01-10T14:44:00.003Z

Part 2 of the comedic story of an English guy trying to sort out marrying a Taiwanese girl. A true account of marriage and colliding cultures.

I had fallen in love with a Taiwanese girl (Amy Hsu) and we had decided to get married. Clearly, for her parents, this would be a big deal (they had been initially opposed to the idea of their daughter going out with an older, English, none-Christian). I decided that I should do things properly and ask her father for her hand in marriage. We went over to Taiwan for a few weeks, specifically so I could ask for her hand in marriage.

Having plucked up the courage to ask her father for her hand yesterday, events conspired to foul up my plans, but the very next day I woke up with new found resolve.

After a busy day sightseeing we all had dinner together and the two girls went to another room to talk. Seeing my opportunity to get Dad alone and have a man to man chat with him, I went to the toilet for a quick wee (I didn't want to get into a big marriage conversation needing to urinate), and to psyche myself up a bit. I burst out of that toilet as ready to ask for a girls hand in marriage, as any man has ever been.
I marched back into the living room, (where Dad had been looking through his albums when I left), and sat myself down on the sofa. Just as I was about to speak, Amy's Dad, (having found the album he was looking for and put it onto the machine), spoke; "This is the music from my Mother-in- Law's funeral."
"Oh, really, that's nice. Er I want to..."
"She asked for three pieces to be played at her funeral and this one was her favourite."
"Right"
We sit in silence, listening to the music.
I think to myself, "There's no way I can ask for a girls hand whilst listening to her Grandma's funeral music, that's gotta be bad luck in Taiwanese culture, hell, that’s bad luck in Michael Allhouse culture.”
We sit for a little while longer, just listening to the music.
"Very beautiful" I say.
Tomorrow…….tomorrow…….. I'll do it tomorrow……........
To be continued

Marrying Amy. Part 1

2011-01-10T14:44:00.001Z

Marrying Amy
Episode 1: My first attempt to ask
her father for his daughter’s hand in
marriage...
I had fallen in love with a Taiwanese girl
(Amy Hsu) and we had decided to get
married. Clearly, for her parents, this
would be a big deal (they had been initially
opposed to the idea of their daughter
going out with an older, English, non-
Christian). I decided that I should do things
properly and ask her father for her hand
in marriage. We went over to Taiwan for
a few weeks, specifically so I could ask for
her hand in marriage.
Things all went very well, with me
managing to charm them/pull the wool
over their eyes, depending on your point
of view. Things had gone so well in fact that
they let it be known that they approved of
me as a boyfriend. By the second week I
resolved that as soon as I got Amy’s father
alone I would ask him for his daughters
hand in marriage.
Opportunities were not forthcoming and
with only 3 days of the holiday left I had
still not found the right occasion. And then
we all climbed a nearby mountain together.
The four of us got up early and went up the
mountain before the sun had a chance to
The comedic story of an English guy trying to sort out marrying a Taiwanese girl. A
true account of marriage and colliding cultures.
get too hot. Now, I sweat rather easily
and even though it was only 9am,
already the temperature was starting
to get quite high.
We got half-way up the mountain and
the girls wanted to turn back as we
were all starting to sweat profusely, but
I could see the top from where we were
and couldn’t resist but try to climb all
the way. Amy’s father agreed to go with
me (I think he was worried I’d get lost)
so us two boys set off together, in what
was becoming intense heat.
As we were climbing up, it occurred to
me that this was finally an opportunity
to get him on his own and have a proper
man-to-man chat. I thought, I’ll wait till
we get to the top, it’ll be great. It will
be a great view and a really significant
and romantic place to make such a big
gesture. As we climbed it was getting
really hot and we were both sweating
a lot.
Finally, we reached the top and wiped
the sweat from our brows. We both
took a moment to look around and
enjoy the remarkable view. I thought
to myself, this is it, this is the perfect
moment: “Mr Hsu, can I ask you
something?” he turned to look at me
and as he was looking at me, his eyes
moved down to my crotch area. I
also looked down to see what he was
looking at; I had sweated so much that
my beige shorts were drenched with
sweat in a big p**s stain pattern. I was
soaking wet between the legs and the
beige had changed to a dark brown
in what really looked like pant p**s.
Amy’s father looked up at my face and
said, “It is very hot I think”.
“Err, yeah”.
“You wanted to say something?”
I think to myself, can I ask him for his
daughters hand in marriage when I’m
standing here having virtually p****d
my pants?
“Err, nothing, I just wanted to say
thanks for bringing me here, the view
is amazing”.
Tomorrow, I think; I’ll do it
tomorrow…………to be continued

Benjamin Fashionwear

2011-01-09T17:32:00.000Z

Fabulous new Walter Benjamin fashionwear
The sweatshirt reads "Self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order" - Benjamin.

Walter Benjamin: An Introduction to His Work and Thought

Kierkegaard

2011-01-08T20:11:00.001Z

Kierkegaard, famous for philosophy
thought that to be truly free
one had to be consumed with worry.
I think I might agree.

NCC-101

2011-01-08T19:58:00.000Z

Today the Captain came down to see me after her shore leave. Jesus, I forgot what an energy vampire she is; 2 minutes in her company and you feel totally demoralised. She was trying to get me on my own again so she can have it all out with me. Since there's always so many customers in here she cant get started on me. So, first she tries to get me to come to the command pod straight away; I make up an excure, then its later this cycle; another excuse. Tomorrow? No, but she pins me down to next week.
I hear from Webb, who was called in today that there was shouting, anger, tears, the whole thing. Webb ran out of there. Campbell changed all the E5 developments Webb had been working on. Its difficult to know how much of it is vindictiveness and how much incompetance.
I decided to go over and see the Chief to express my fears; I even doubt whether this new course she plotted isnt heading for disaster. Anyway the Chief listens and promises to call up Canaveral; make sure they're aware of whats going on.
Sometimes I think Burt is right and there really is a secret mission we all know nothing about, it just seems to be a secret mission which is leading us all to our doom.

Crisis on Infinite Earths

2011-01-08T19:46:00.000Z

We are in the Dales on a coach trip. We pass many beautiful waterfalls, I am stunned.
One particular waterfall on a steep hill is awe inspiring. Our coach breaks down on this hill and we all have to get out. It is soon repaired and we leave two girls behind, who just didnt make it back to the coach in time.
Ah, we are in an Eastern European country, approaching the capital. The ancient gates to this city are stunning. They are huge and covered in gold and delicate carvings. The detail is incredible. Loads of leaves and tiny doorways. Beautiful.

More Stuff

2011-01-08T19:21:00.001Z

Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.-John Ruskin

The Complete Works Of John Ruskin - John Ruskin

Berlin Childhood

2011-01-02T21:44:00.000Z

“We can never entirely recover what has been forgotten. And this is perhaps a good thing. The shock of repossession would be so devastating that we would immediately cease to understand our longing. But we do understand it; and the more deeply what has been forgotten lies buried within us, the better we understand this longing. Just as the lost word that was on the tip of our tongue would have triggered flights of eloquence worthy of Demosthenes, so what is forgotten seems to us laden with all the lived life it promises us. It may be that what makes the forgotten so weighty and so pregnant is nothing but the trace of misplaced habits in which we could no longer find ourselves. Perhaps the mingling of the forgotten with the dust of our vanished dwellings is the secret of its survival.

“However that may be, everyone has encountered certain things which occasioned more lasting habits that other things. Through them, each person developed those capabilities which helped to determine the course of his life. And because- so far as my own life is concerned- it was reading and writing that were decisive, none of the things that surrounded me in my early years arouses greater longing than the reading box.

“It contained, on little tablets, the various letters of the alphabet inscribed in cursive, which made them seem younger and more virginal than they would have been in roman style. Those slender figures reposed on their slanting bed, each one perfect, and were unified in their succession through the rule of their order- the word- to which they were wedded like nuns. I marveled at the sight of so much modesty allied to so much splendor. It was a state of grace. Yet my right hand, which sought obediently to reproduce this word, could never find the way. It had to remain on the outside, like a gatekeeper whose job was to admit only the elect. Hence, its commerce with the letters was full of renunciation. The longing which the reading box arouses in me proves how thoroughly bound up it was with my childhood. Indeed, what I seek in it is just that: my entire childhood, as concentrated in the movement (Griff) by which my hand slid the letters into the groove, where they would be arranged to form words. My hand can still dream of this movement, but it can no longer awaken so as actually to perform it. By the same token, I can dream of the way I once learned to talk. But that doesn’t help. I now know how to walk; there is no more learning to walk.”

Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childhood around 1900.
Berlin Childhood around 1900 Berlin Childhood around 1900 Berlin Childhood around 1900

Kafka

2011-01-02T21:39:00.002Z

There is nothing more memorable than the fervor with which Kafka emphasized his failure
Walter Benjamin, “Some Reflections on Kafka” from Illuminations

From the Benjamin archive

2011-01-02T21:16:00.000Z

Article on Benjamin

2011-01-02T10:05:00.000Z

A very interesting article on Benjamin

Gathering Storm

Aberrant Marxist, heretical Jew, maverick social theorist—Walter Benjamin remains difficult to classify, but his mystique only continues to grow

By David Kaufmann

In the last five years, more than 300 books and articles on Walter Benjamin have appeared in English alone. Not bad for a man who was virtually forgotten when he committed suicide in 1941.

It’s always been hard to pin Benjamin down. Aberrant Marxist, heretical Jew, maverick social theorist, deconstructive spirit—he has been many things to many people. It is equally hard to describe what he did, in part because Americans don’t really make intellectuals like him. Benjamin, whose most important work was written in Berlin during the ’20s and then in Paris during the ’30s, wasn’t just a book reviewer, although he wanted to be the best one in Germany. He was hardly a journalist, but a good deal of his considerable production was written for newspapers. He was not a philosopher, but he is treated like one. To use a quaint expression, he was a man of letters. Even that does not do him justice.

Uwe Steiner’s new book on Benjamin—which attempts to put Benjamin in his historical place—doesn’t really do him justice either. Steiner traces Benjamin’s mature work to the thinker’s early days as a radical student before the First World War, when Nietzsche was all the rage. Fair enough. Steiner also has a larger goal: He wants us to stop trying to bend Benjamin to our intellectual will—be it Marxist, deconstructive, or religious. A laudable goal but also slightly perverse, because Benjamin had no trouble trying on others’ thoughts to see if they fit. Even worse, Steiner’s approach scants Benjamin’s intellectual and emotional allure.

Benjamin’s remarkable endurance derives as much from his style as from his ideas. Or rather, his brilliant, damnably esoteric critique of capitalist culture is one with the pathos and indirectness of his prose. His sentences suggest. They imply. At their best, they radiate. Hence the remarkable bursts of scholarship his work has seen over the last few decades. He reminds people of what they might think.

His most famous set piece comes from his last work, a series of aphorisms called “On the Concept of History.” Written in the short period before he killed himself while trying to flee from the Nazis, this paragraph gains some of its considerable melancholy from retrospect, from the fact that it has been taken as his last will and testament:

A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

A beautiful piece of writing that gets an extra kick from its pessimistic counter-intuitive punch line. Progress doesn’t progress in the slightest. It is a steady march through disaster. And there is nothing, it seems, we can do about it.

Bleak stuff. But Benjamin’s ability to arrest you with the solidity of an abstraction can tempt you away from the thin thread of his argument. On its own, this paragraph presents us with a picture of fallen and unredeemable history. In the context of the other paragraphs of the essay in which it appears, we can see that the Angel of History does not have the last word. History, Benjamin maintains, is permanently, if elusively, susceptible to revolutionary change.

Benjamin claimed that his work was saturated with theology, even—or rather especially—when it appears to be at its most secular. In the piece that contains the Angel, the revolution fulfills a theological mandate by making “whole what has been smashed.” Benjamin imagines that it will enact tikkun olam in a very literal sense. Benjamin’s colleague, the philosopher Max Horkheimer, once accused him of believing all too squarely in the Last Judgment. Though Benjamin tried to recast his thought into more acceptably materialist terms, Horkheimer had a point. Benjamin might have talked about redemption as the historical fulfillment of squandered hopes, but at heart he was always listening for the final trump. He was waiting for the glorious resurrection of the dead.

Benjamin’s thought was essentially religious. It clung to the twin promises of redemption and transcendence. The man worked from the clearly Jewish intuition that justice cannot be derived from the world as it is. Justice is precisely that small break from nature instituted by the Law. Our problem is not that nature is sinful. Our problem lies with the fact that on its own, nature just isn’t enough. It needs to be transcended, if only just a bit. As his friend T. W. Adorno was fond of reminding us, the Talmud says that the redeemed world will be like this one, but a little different. And that tiny shift means everything.

But what happens when we, as the children of modernity, have lost the Law? That is where Benjamin’s messianic politics slip in. Gershom Scholem, the magisterial historian of Kabbalah, always maintained that Benjamin was a Jewish thinker and not really a Marxist. For his part, Benjamin argued that he pursued a single goal—the radical transformation of the world, a utopian strike against suffering. His was not the tikkun olam of good deeds and incremental improvements, but of bold risks and decisive moves.

Sure, sure, there is a great deal of Romanticism in all this (as Steiner would be the first to point out) and a sentimentalizing anarchism that speaks of another era. Even so, Benjamin proposes a heresy we might want to consider: redemption without faith. He refuses to give up the rigors and promises of theology for a more amenable, even amiable ethical Judaism. He therefore cuts a different path for the post-religious. Just as Scholem, however unwittingly, presents us with a Kabbalah without halakhah, so Benjamin quite wittingly addresses a theology without God. An intractable contradiction? Perhaps. Nevertheless, it is a historical conundrum that we have yet to overcome.

Crisis on Infinite Earths

2011-01-02T10:00:00.000Z

I am on a Northern England beach, in a seaside town, Amy and a long-haired man I do not know appear before me. They want something from me which I know they will use to kill another, innocent man. They have the ability to teleport. I run but I cannot escape them.

Young kids, urban types are talking about sex. They are all saying that it doesn’t matter if you have a baby. It seems that they all have one. One girl admits that she has no children and everyone seems to be amazed. Everyone laughs at one guy who admits he still lives at home. I am the host.

In the ULC they are executing students who cannot answer three test questions correctly. They are only doing it as an example to encourage the others to try harder. I stand and watch the testing and the executions. I seem to be unmoved by it all. It is taking place in Room 101 and is being filmed. I think to myself “this is really not going to help Room 101’s usage figures”.

I am on the train to Skipton with Matthew and Siti; we are going to visit the castle. It is snowing heavily. There are announcements of delays and cancellations. We assume the snow is causing the problems but as people around us receive mobile phone calls it becomes apparent that this is something more. Crossed? Outbreak? Zombies?

In an altered Bradford the market is outdoors. I am buying pakora and discuss with the shop owner how we could take over the house next door to mine and open a curry house. The police arrive. I am parked illegally so have to run off to my car to move it.

It is the future and I am in a simusleep machine. I wake up from a lifetimes dream; this life, my normal life; it has all been a dream. The world I wake up in is similar to this world except the women are all dressed in sexy pvc-like futuristic clothes. I am sent on a mission by the authorities and given a female handler.

Amy and I are watching TV, flicking around the channels; we seem to have seen everything. We come across a film where a group of people are trapped in a ruined castle and are pursued by two killers. We start to watch it, and somehow get drawn into the movie so that we are the characters in the film. We run around the castle desperately trying to find our way out. We head to a corner, where a door should be, but yes, I have seen this film before, there is no door here, it’s a trap. I start to remember more about the plot of the film; some of are going to die before we get out of here.

I am a rugby player in the future. The game has changed and now you have to get the ball halfway across the city whilst the opposite team try to do the opposite. The man running with the ball is tackled and as he goes down, he passes the ball to me. You are allowed to use the crowd for cover and even hide if you want to but there is a time limit. I shake off my pursuers by ducking into a large crowd. I hide out in a tower block which can be sealed from the inside. I seal it and they begin to surround the building. Shit, they know I’m in here.

Some old document I own turns out to be something a number of criminal gangs want. I am to hand it over at a certain time in return for the release of a friend they are holding hostage. The meeting place is my home. The friend is in on it with the criminal gang, somehow I know this so I don’t turn up at the rendezvous, I just run and keep running until I have left my old life behind.

I am working in a hospital during the Christmas holidays. I am walking down a corridor with some colleagues when I run into Anne who asks me to card-swipe a door for me as she has lost her card (again). She asks in such an abrasive way that it seems like a command and all my colleagues seem alarmed, some even ask me if I am ok afterwards.

I am in some abandoned future city, on a high plateau, like somewhere the Incas would live. The buildings are huge and crystalline; made up of huge crystals joined together, except they are all smashed and fallen. I come across one which is unspoilt. The narrator informs us that this is where XX lives, who is the head of security. XX saw that the state was crumbling and realised that humans could not properly enforce the law so he replaced the police with robots. I think: “this is starting to sound a little familiar”. The robots enforced the law, XX’s law, and pretty soon most people were either dead or had fled to the woods nearby. We see some robot police patrol past where I lay (they look like robot stormtroopers from Star Wars).

I am on a barge with a load of posh people (am I in Downton Abbey?). They are all dressed in Edwardian clothing and are discussing a forthcoming marriage. The conversation turns to someone who is not with us and the scandal of their wedding. Suddenly someone points to the sky where we see a German bomber swooping down on us. It drops a bouncing bomb on us, which bounces just before us, and just after. As it flies over me it is so close I can see every mark on its metal casing. A powerful woman takes control of the situation, grabbing the barge controls and starting to steer us in the opposite direction. I ask her “will it be back?”. “Oh yes”, and she points to the sky where I see the plane turning round for another salvo.

In the woods near my parents’ house (between the tennis club and the park) there are wild people living. They are white haired and naked. They look quite terrifying, and I’m told are cannibals. I jog too near them one day and am grabbed and pulled into the woods. They are actually very friendly, and it’s all a big misunderstanding. I arrange for them to be interviewed on TV. They play the whole thing for laughs and become a new media sensation.

In zombie infected Venice I end up at a crossroads, with Zombies coming at me from all sides. I manage to climb up the side of a high building and climb inn through a window. Inside I find Martin, who offers me dinner. He takes me to his lair which seems to be underground. He has a very nice set up.

Antique shops

2011-01-02T00:14:00.000Z

Collectors are people with tactical instinct; their experience teaches them that when they capture a strange city, the smallest antique shop can be a fortress, the most remote stationery store a key position. How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of book!
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections
Walter Benjamin, “Unpacking My Library”

Ruskin sketches Venice

2010-12-29T19:59:00.000Z

The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3),

Some images of Venice by Ruskin

2010-12-29T19:53:00.001Z

The Stones Of Venice The Stones Of Venice

The Storyteller

2010-12-22T10:06:00.000Z

There is nothing that commends a story to memory more effectively than that chaste compactness which precludes psychological analysis. And the more natural the process by which the storyteller forgoes psychological shading, the greater becomes the story’s claim to a place in the memory of the listener, the more completely is it integrated into his own experience – the greater will be his inclination to repeat it to someone else someday, sooner or later. This process of assimilation, which takes place in depth, requires a state of relaxation which is becoming rarer and rarer. If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away. His nesting places—the activities that are intimately associated with boredom—are already extinct in the cities and are declining in the country as well. With this the gift for listening is lost and the community of listeners disappears. For storytelling is always the art of repeating stories, and this art is lost when the stories are no longer retained. It is lost because there is no more weaving and spinning to go on while they are being listened to. The more self-forgetful the listener is, the more deeply is what he listens to impressed upon his memory. When the rhythm of work has seized him, he listens to the tales in such a way that the gift of retelling them comes to him all by itself. This, then, is the nature of the web in which the gift of storytelling is cradled. This is how today it is becoming unraveled at all its ends after being woven thousands of years ago in the ambience of the oldest forms of craftsmanship.

Walter Benjamin: The Storyteller (excerpt), from Orient und Okzident, 1936, translated by Harry Zohn in Illuminations, 1968

The Leeds Arcades

2010-12-22T09:34:00.000Z

Walter Benjamin on Facebook

2010-12-22T09:13:00.001Z

There are over 20 people on Facebook claiming to be our Walter (apart from all the people who share his name).

Futurists

2010-12-22T09:00:00.001Z

Jesus, those Futurists:-

From Walters 'The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction':-

All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war. War and war only can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while respecting the traditional property system. This is the political formula for the situation. The technological formula may be stated as follows: Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today’s technical resources while maintaining the property system. It goes without saying that the Fascist apotheosis of war does not employ such arguments. Still, Marinetti says in his manifesto on the Ethiopian colonial war:

“For twenty-seven years we Futurists have rebelled against the branding of war as anti-aesthetic ... Accordingly we state:... War is beautiful because it establishes man’s dominion over the subjugated machinery by means of gas masks, terrifying megaphones, flame throwers, and small tanks. War is beautiful because it initiates the dreamt-of metalization of the human body. War is beautiful because it enriches a flowering meadow with the fiery orchids of machine guns. War is beautiful because it combines the gunfire, the cannonades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench of putrefaction into a symphony. War is beautiful because it creates new architecture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, the smoke spirals from burning villages, and many others ... Poets and artists of Futurism! ... remember these principles of an aesthetics of war so that your struggle for a new literature and a new graphic art ... may be illumined by them!”

This manifesto has the virtue of clarity. Its formulations deserve to be accepted by dialecticians. To the latter, the aesthetics of today’s war appears as follows: If the natural utilization of productive forces is impeded by the property system, the increase in technical devices, in speed, and in the sources of energy will press for an unnatural utilization, and this is found in war. The destructiveness of war furnishes proof that society has not been mature enough to incorporate technology as its organ, that technology has not been sufficiently developed to cope with the elemental forces of society. The horrible features of imperialistic warfare are attributable to the discrepancy between the tremendous means of production and their inadequate utilization in the process of production – in other words, to unemployment and the lack of markets. Imperialistic war is a rebellion of technology which collects, in the form of “human material,” the claims to which society has denied its natural materrial. Instead of draining rivers, society directs a human stream into a bed of trenches; instead of dropping seeds from airplanes, it drops incendiary bombs over cities; and through gas warfare the aura is abolished in a new way.

“Fiat ars – pereat mundus”, says Fascism, and, as Marinetti admits, expects war to supply the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been changed by technology. This is evidently the consummation of “l’art pour l’art.” Mankind, which in Homer’s time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.

Koestler - the man who borrowed some of Walter's suicide pills

2010-12-22T08:40:00.001Z

Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic
by Michael Scammell
Random House, 689 pp., $35.00

He began his education in the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, at an experimental kindergarten in Budapest. His mother was briefly a patient of Sigmund Freud’s. In interwar Vienna he wound up as the personal secretary of Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of the early leaders of the Zionist movement. Traveling in Soviet Turkmenistan as a young and ardent Communist sympathizer, he ran into Langston Hughes. Fighting in the Spanish civil war, he met W.H. Auden at a “crazy party” in Valencia, before winding up in one of Franco’s prisons. In Weimar Berlin he fell into the circle of the infamous Comintern agent Willi Münzenberg, through whom he met the leading German Communists of the era: Johannes Becher, Hanns Eisler, Bertolt Brecht. Afraid of being caught by the Gestapo while fleeing France, he borrowed suicide pills from Walter Benjamin. He took them several weeks later when it seemed he would be unable to get out of Lisbon, but didn’t die (though Benjamin, denied passage into Spain at the French border, took them and did).

Along the way he had lunch with Thomas Mann, got drunk with Dylan Thomas, made friends with George Orwell, flirted with Mary McCarthy, and lived in Cyril Connolly’s London flat. In 1940, Koestler was released from a French detention camp, partly thanks to the intervention of Harold Nicholson and Noël Coward. In the 1950s, he helped found the Congress for Cultural Freedom, together with Mel Lasky and Sidney Hook. In the 1960s, he took LSD with Timothy Leary. In the 1970s, he was still giving lectures that impressed, among others, the young Salman Rushdie.

It is difficult, in other words, to think of a single important twentieth-century intellectual who did not cross paths with Arthur Koestler, or a single important twentieth-century intellectual movement that Koestler did not either join or oppose. From progressive education and Freudian psychoanalysis through Zionism, communism, and existentialism to psychedelic drugs, parapsychology, and euthanasia, Koestler was fascinated by every philosophical fad, serious and unserious, political and apolitical, of his era.
CUNY Writers' Institute

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Nor were these shallow passions. His belief in communism led him to fight in Spain and travel in the USSR. His Zionism led him to a kibbutz near Haifa. At different times, he advocated the use of violence, whether to bring about a Communist utopia or to create the state of Israel. Even when he turned against his previous causes (and against his previous friends who still believed in them) he did so with real fervor. He is, after all, best known as an anti-Communist, not as a Communist, largely because of his best and most influential book, Darkness at Noon, a fictional account of the interrogation of a leading member of an unnamed Communist party. His involvement with Revisionist Zionism is also probably less well known than The Thirteenth Tribe, a book that argues that modern European Jews are descended from the Central Asian Khazars, and not from the Jews who lived in the Palestine of antiquity—a thesis which, whatever its merits, is hugely popular among the enemies of Zionism. Even so, when in the grip of one particular mania he was incapable of seeing the counterarguments: in the face of all rational argument, he even stuck to his late passion for telepathy and ESP—so much so that he left most of his estate to fund a professorial chair in parapsychology.

Koestler was equally likely to succumb to extreme passions in his personal life—notoriously so. He was variously in thrall to Jabotinsky, to his analyst, and to an extraordinary series of women. He was also consumed by violent hatreds—starting with his mother—and pursued many vendettas, against fellow writers (he was fiercely jealous of Hemingway, loathed Bertrand Russell) as well as romantic rivals (including Edmund Wilson) and ex-husbands. Eventually, he offended almost everyone he knew, but only after getting drunk with them first.

Even his entertainments often went to extremes, as this superb new biography well illustrates. Far and away my favorite Koestler moment—in a book full of amazing Koestler moments—is Michael Scammell’s description of an evening in 1946, during which Koestler and his then girlfriend (and later wife) Mamaine Paget went out drinking with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and Camus’s wife, Francine. The festivities began with dinner in an Algerian bistro, continued in a dance hall “lit with pink and blue neon lights,” and then, at Koestler’s insistence, progressed to Schéhérazade, a nightclub filled with “violinists wandering about playing soulful Russian music into the guests’ ears.” There were arguments about communism, and about friendship. “If only it were possible to tell the truth,” exclaimed Camus at one point.

At about 4 AM, Koestler was pried away from the nightclub, and the group “repaired to Chez Victor in Les Halles for onion soup, oysters, and white wine.” Roaring drunk, Koestler threw a crust of bread across the table and hit Mamaine in the eye; Sartre, equally drunk, poured salt and pepper into napkins that he put in his pocket and said he had to deliver a lecture at the Sorbonne in the morning on “The Responsibility of the Writer.” Camus said, “Well, you’ll have to speak without me” (“Alors, tu parleras sans moi “). Sartre said he wished he “could speak without me too” (“Je voudrais bien pouvoir parler sans moi “) and collapsed into giggles.

Scammell, whose fine-tuned sense of irony serves him well here, describes that evening’s conclusion:

They broke up at dawn. Alone with Sartre, Beauvoir sobbed “over the tragedy of the human condition,” then leaned on the parapet of a bridge over the Seine and said: “I don’t see why we don’t throw ourselves in the river.” “All right,” agreed Sartre, “let’s throw ourselves in,” and began to cry himself. In another part of the city, Koestler too burst into tears as he stared into the Seine. Then he disappeared into a pissoir and shouted to Mamaine, “Don’t leave me, I love you, I’ll always love you.” They got home at about eight o’clock and slept all day, except for Sartre, who stuffed himself with pep pills and dragged himself off to the Sorbonne to give his lecture. It wasn’t possible even for an existentialist to address the students “sans moi.”

Leaving aside its entertainment value, that particular passage raises some interesting questions. We are not so many years removed from 1946, in the grand scheme of things. Yet much has changed since then, starting with the rules of acceptable public behavior. It is simply not possible to imagine any three prominent contemporary American public intellectuals—say, Malcolm Gladwell, Niall Ferguson, and David Brooks—indulging in a night on the town such as that one, let alone weeping over the human condition and threatening to throw themselves into the Seine at the end of it. Hollywood starlets and pseudo-celebrities behave that way in our culture, not serious people.

More to the point, Koestler was, in our contemporary definition of these things, an alcoholic, as were many of the people around him. He was also, in our contemporary definition of these things, a sexual predator. He was blatantly unfaithful to all of his three wives, as well as to the other women he lived with. He flirted outrageously, and sometimes aggressively, with other men’s wives too. Just a few days before the evening at Schéhérazade and Chez Victor, Koestler actually went to bed with Simone de Beauvoir.

David Cesarani, a previous biographer of Koestler, has even described him as a “serial rapist.”1 Scammell disputes that accusation at some length. In the end, only one woman—Jill Craigie, the wife of the British Labour leader Michael Foot—ever actually accused him of rape, and there are some ambiguities about her story. She made the charge when she was in her eighties, and Koestler was dead. Others, including her husband, remembered the incident differently. Scammell notes these discrepancies, and convincingly dismisses some of Cesarani’s other accusations as unfounded. He also notes that the charge has nevertheless deeply tarnished Koestler’s posthumous reputation. This is not at all surprising. Even if “rape” is not the right word, some of the sexual behavior Scammell describes would, in the contemporary world, be considered absolutely beyond the pale—and probably illegal as well.

Nor are the rules of public behavior the only things that have changed. The professionalization of literary and intellectual life was underway even in Koestler’s lifetime, and he chafed against it. He disliked the lecture circuit and never had any real interest in teaching. He had very little time for universities in general. He also refused to be categorized as a simple “novelist” or “journalist,” and in the latter part of his career wrote books about science, philosophy, history, and psychology. He understood the term “intellectual” in a much broader sense than we do today, and felt comfortable ranging over a huge number of fields in which he had no professional expertise whatsoever. This approach to the life of the mind, perfectly acceptable in the Vienna of Koestler’s youth, simply looks amateurish from the perspective of the present. As a result, many of his later books have slipped off the radar and are long out of print. Others, notably The Thirteenth Tribe, are considered curiosities that appeal to conspiracy theorists, not scholars.

The most important change, however, is political. To put it bluntly, the deadly struggle between communism and anticommunism—the central moral issue of Koestler’s lifetime—not only no longer exists, it no longer evokes much interest. Thanks to the opening of archives, quite a few Western historians are, it is true, still investigating the history of the Soviet Union and of the international Communist movement. But outside of a few university comparative literature departments, Soviet-style Marxism itself is not a living political idea anywhere in the West. In the wake of the Lehman Brothers crash in the autumn of 2008, there were calls for a government bailout of the auto industry. No one—no major newspaper columnists, no leading politicians, no popular intellectual magazines—called upon the vanguard of the proletariat to rise up and overthrow the bourgeois capitalist exploiters. In the Europe of 1948, somebody would have done so.

What that means, though, is that the entire political context in which Koest- ler, Sartre, and Camus functioned—and in which Koestler’s most important works were written—is now gone. In the years following their debauched evening in Paris, Sartre and Koestler actually stopped speaking to each other. Partly this was personal: Sartre tried to seduce Mamaine, Koestler did seduce Beauvoir, and there were bad feelings all around. But the more important reason was political. After Darkness at Noon became a best seller in France, Sartre distanced himself from its author, on the grounds that Koestler, by publicizing the crimes of the repressive Soviet regime, was putting himself at the service of American imperialism and blocking the progress of the left. It was not that Sartre did not know about the horrors Koestler described—the prisons, the torture, and the labor camps of the Soviet Union—it was that he did not find them politically convenient. They gave too much encouragement to the bourgeoisie.

Portbou

2010-12-22T08:25:00.000Z

The quiet Catalan settlement of Portbou has traditionally been best known as the first stop on Spanish territory on the Mediterranean side after France. Its vast railway station, seemingly quite out of proportion to a population of 1500 souls, stands as testimony to Portbou's border status, rivalling its opposite number in the French village of Cerbère across the frontier. Today, crossing the Franco-Spanish border is no longer quite the experience of transition-in-action that it once was. In the wake of the Schengen agreement and the euro, border checks and currency exchange have been consigned to history, although, thanks to the persisting difference between Iberian and standard European gauges, those nostalgic for the past of closed nation-states can still enjoy the complex operation by which the wheels of express trains are changed between Cerbère and Portbou stations. The small Catalan municipality generously offers the visitor the freedom of its tree-lined avenues and the repose of its stunningly beautiful beach. Today's painless border crossing would, however, have seemed an impossible dream in 1940, in a Europe ravaged by war and fascism, a Spain only beginning to recover from its own civil war, and a captive Catalonia licking its wounds, its language and culture pulverised under the iron heel of Francoism. In that year, in a time marked by irreconcilable conflict between nations and ideologies, Portbou, quite unintendedly and paradoxically, received, for little more than twenty-four hours of his life, a passing visitor whose memory would, at the end of the twentieth century, in a strange twist of history, transform the town's identity and promote it to a permanent place on the cultural map of Europe.

On the afternoon of 25 September 1940, a group of three clandestine travellers arrived in Portbou, exhausted after a harrowing trek across the Pyrenees from Banyuls-sur-Mer in France (15 km distant as the crow flies). One of them was a stateless German Jew, who carried on his person a provisional American passport issued by the US Foreign Service in Marseille, stamped with a Spanish transit visa, also issued in Marseille and good for the land journey to Portugal. A fugitive from the Vichy regime, he now aimed to reach the safety of the US via Lisbon. He had once visited Ibiza, but spoke no Spanish, although he had an excellent command of French. The Spanish frontier guards accosted the group and demanded their documents. They told the bearer of the US passport that he could go no further: his presence on Spanish territory was illegal because he had no French exit visa. However, in view of the traveller's evident ill-health, the police agreed to postpone expelling him back to Pétain's France until the next day. Impelled, perhaps, by inexplicable generosity or covert republican sympathies, they allowed him to spend the night, not in a police cell but in the less undignified surroundings of a cheap room in the Hotel de Francia - at No 5 in Avenida del General Mola, a street in the town centre near the police station, recently renamed after a Francoist commander. At 10 p.m. the next day, in Room No 4 on the hotel's second floor, the traveller was found dead.

The stateless refugee whose life ended in Portbou on 26 September 1940 was Walter Benjamin, now recognised as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. He had lived in exile in France since 1933. He had been deprived of his German nationality in July 1939, and later that year had suffered the indignity of an internment camp. After the Nazi occupation of Paris and the creation of the Vichy regime, to be returned to France would have meant certain deportation and death; the great critical thinker's US passport, obtained through the intercessions of his émigré friends, was his one and only lifeline, and the sole talisman that might allow the continuation of his work. In these circumstances, and carrying on his person as he did a substantial quality of morphine, to take his own life may have seemed the only dignified way out. It has been claimed that the Spanish border guards might have been willing to let him through after all the next day, subject to a 'small consideration', but the hotel owner, Juan Suñer Jonama, apparently had close connections with the Gestapo, and any notion of a police change of heart remains speculative. The death certificate, signed by the local judge Fernando Pastor Nieto, gives the cause of death as a brain haemorrhage. A heart attack cannot be ruled out, as Benjamin was known to suffer from cardiac problems. Nor is it impossible that he indeed swallowed morphine, but simply as a tranquilliser or a soporific, and that the efforts and stress of that terrible day may have turned an act of auto-sedation into an involuntary overdose. The experts now believe that the true cause of his death will never be established with certainty; meanwhile, for obvious symbolic reasons, the suicide story, true or not, remains the most potent. History was a little more merciful to Benjamin in the days following his death: the bundle of pesetas found on his person, together with the clement death certificate, sufficed to buy his remains a five-year rental in what is now Niche No 563 in Portbou's peaceful cemetery. Ironically, the authorities registered the deceased traveller not as Walter Benjamin but as 'Benjamin Walter', thus failing to identify his Jewish origins: thanks to this error, he was buried not in the 'outside' section reserved for non-Catholics and unbelievers, but in the cemetery proper, as the Christian and Catholic believer which, as a secular Jew and practitioner of materialist philosophy, he never was. In 1945, after the five years were up, his remains were moved to a common grave, and their exact location is now unknown.

The author of 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' might seem an unlikely candidate for the most-famous resident of a small coastal resort, far removed from the great intellectual centres, where he spent only the very last day of his life on earth. Certainly, at no point did Benjamin's work have anything to do with Catalonia or Spain. And yet it does seem appropriate that this most cosmopolitan of thinkers should have found his resting-place here in this border town, just after forging a passage across the mountains. His intellectual endeavours had always been marked by the crossing of disciplinary borders, and today it is difficult, indeed impossible to pigeon-hole him, whether as a philosopher proper, sociologist, literary critic, historian of aesthetics, or precursor of media studies: Walter Benjamin was all of those things and more. His analytic method was to seek out the hidden connections of things, to create links and passages between apparently unrelated phenomena. The vast, unfinished book which is his magnum opus (a tissue of French quotations and German commentary, drafted over the 1930s in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and finally published in 1982), is called Das Passagen-Werk [Le Livre des Passages; The Arcades Project], and is dedicated to the interpretation of the urban symbolism of nineteenth-century Paris, taking as its central symbol the glass-and-iron arcades which are, quite literally, passages between one street and another. Today, the author of that seminal work lies buried at the intersection point between two European nations, a place of passage par excellence.

Leeds Arcades has been at the crayons again

2010-11-29T12:01:00.000Z

The LeedsArcadesProjects draws Walter

2010-11-22T17:28:00.000Z

Genre

2010-11-21T17:36:00.000Z

Every great work dissolves a genre or founds a new one. - WB

History

2010-11-21T17:26:00.000Z

The nature of this melancholy becomes clearer, once one asks the question, with whom does the historical writer of historicism actually empathize. The answer is irrefutably with the victor. Those who currently rule are however the heirs of all those who have ever been victorious. Empathy with the victors thus comes to benefit the current rulers every time.

* Theses on the Philosophy of History, VII (1940; first published, in German, 1950, in English, 1955)

Mouse-mountain

2010-11-21T17:24:00.000Z

I would like to metamorphose into a mouse-mountain.

* Protocols to the Experiments on Hashish, Opium and Mescaline (1927-1934, English translation 1997)

The Storm

2010-11-18T14:43:00.002Z

What we call progress, Benjamin calls "the storm".

Walter sees the Angel of History (Klee's Angelus Novus)as a figure intently staring at something he is moving away from. "Where we percieve a chain of events he sees one single catastrophy which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. What we call progress, Benjamin calls the storm."

The Leeds Arcades has a go at sketching Walter

2010-11-15T17:56:00.000Z

The Aura and Hashish

2010-11-14T15:52:00.004Z

Walt no doubt hit on something with his theory of the aura, but it seems that alot of his ideas of the aura emerged from his drug taking, i mean we've all seen a few lights and shapes when off our heads, but we haven't extrapolated it into a theory of art/culture/mass production.
Here's a lovely early reference to auras from an article on Hash: "Perhaps nothing gives such a clear idea of aura as Van Gogh's late paintings, in which one could say that the aura appears to have been painted together with the various objects."

Proust Vortex

2010-11-14T15:42:00.003Z

WB on Proust: "Western literature has scarcely seen a more radical attempt at self-absorption. Proust's writing has as its centre a solitude which pulls the world down into its vortex with the force of a maelstrom. And the overloud and inconceivably hollow chatter which comes roaring out of Proust's novels is the sound of society plunging into the abyss of this solitude."

Technical First Aid

2010-11-14T15:33:00.003Z

"There is nothing more wretched than a truth expressed as it had been thought. In such a case, its being written down is not even a poor photograph. IN fact, truth (like a child, like a woman who does not love us) refuses, when confronted with the lens of writing, once we have crouched down under the black cloth, to keep still and smile........" - WB
Ah, and Walter, always with the women who no longer love us, always heartbroken, always inadequate, it's no wonder you inspire such devotion.

Images of Walter

2010-11-12T11:12:00.004Z

Walter has a headache

2010-11-12T10:54:00.000Z

Finding a brothel

2010-11-08T07:06:00.003Z

Discussing Proust and his unorthodox technique for giving directions Benjamin compares Prousts rambling style thus: "Anyone who has tried to get the address of a brothel in a strange city and has recieved the most long-winded directions, everything but the name of the street and the house number, will understand"

Try to ensure that everything in life has a consequence

2010-11-07T16:53:00.003Z

" 'Try to ensure that everything in life has a consequence' - This is without doubt one of the most detestable of maxims. It is the imperative of progress in its most dubious form. It is not the case that the consequence leads to what is fruitful in right action, and even less that the consequence is its fruit. On the contrary, bearing fruit is the mark of evil acts. The acts of good people have no 'consequence' that could be ascribed to them." - WB

Do not seek to dissuade

2010-11-07T16:49:00.001Z

"Anyone who is asked for his advice would do well to begin by finding out the asker's opinion and then endorsing it." - WB

Benjamin the gambler

2010-11-07T16:45:00.002Z

April 1927 and Walter's gambling in the casinos of Monte Carlo led to him winning a substantial amount of money. He spent most of this on a holiday for himself in Corsica.

Benjamin and the world of fashion

2010-11-07T16:41:00.001Z

In 1926 Walter's wife, Dora had become the editor of a Berlin fashion magazine.

Benjamin the player

2010-11-07T16:35:00.002Z

On his return from Moscow in 1927, after his failed attempt to get with Asja, Walter moved straight back in with his wife and son in his parents villa.

Thanks Holland

2010-11-06T08:02:00.000Z

Jean Cocteau

2010-10-31T14:15:00.000Z

"Spend a lifetime gazing into mirrors and you will see death at work" - Jean Cocteau

Walter appears in the Dictionary of Science, with the following quote: -

2010-10-31T08:36:00.000Z

With whom [do] the adherents of historicism actually empathize[?] The answer is inevitable: with the victor. And all rulers are the heirs of those who conquered before them. Hence, empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers. Historical materialists know what that means. Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. For without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

Flaubert on happiness

2010-10-28T16:30:00.001Z

"To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost" - Flaubert

Benjamin Cartoon

2010-10-26T20:21:00.000Z

Cartoons and Benjamin

2010-10-26T20:19:00.000Z

Benjamin was fascinated with childhood play and therapeutic laughter. This led him to an interest in mass reception of animated films. Benjamin suggests that cartoons can express the difficult circumstances of modern life, which force the everyday person into a cyclical and mechanized routine, full of bittersweet gags. Animated films “make clear that even our bodies do not belong to us – we have alienated them in exchange for money, or have given parts of them up in war. The cartoons expose the fact that what parades as civilization is actually barbarism”. Yet in highlighting this barbarism, cartoons open up room for therapeutic energy and self-understanding. Moreover, when animated films show disregard for cultural norms and physical laws, they suggest a realm of possible changes and creative combinations, not unlike the imaginative realm of playful childhood.

Benjamin on Blogging

2010-10-17T16:28:00.002Z

The blog can be seen as the most recent cultural manifestation of what Benjamin saw developing during the early half of the twentieth century with the popularization of printed media. Benjamin noticed that more and more people started to become “collaborators” in his own time through the rise of the newspaper, when editors created new columns according to the trendy tastes of their readers. These spaces were for the reader to feel in touch with her culture, and in this sense the reader became a type of author. Benjamin saw the reader redefining the literary text; his example is the Russian press:

"For as writing gains in breadth what it loses in depth, the conventional distinction between author and public, which is upheld by the bourgeois press, begins in the Soviet press to disappear. For the reader is at all times ready to become a writer that is, a describer, but also a prescriber. As an expert even if not on a subject but only on the post he occupies—he gains access to authorship."

Today, blogs follow the evolution of the newspaper writer, the newspaper reader, and the rise of the collaborator. Blogs have pushed the idea of the collaborator (as Benjamin saw it) to a new extreme.

Benjamin's death reported in the newspaper

2010-10-04T12:24:00.002Z

Walter

2010-10-03T13:31:00.000Z

Walter's Death - some more details

2010-10-02T17:46:00.003Z

The Portbou Judge, Fernando Pastor Nieto, claims he heard around 22.35 from the hotel owner that a 'foreign traveller' had died. He went to the hotel and found Benjamin lying on his bed, fully clothed.
The doctor gave Benjamin's cause of death as 'cerebral haemorrhage' dispite having visited Benjamin four times. Did the doctor see the x-ray Walter carried with him? Did he read the medical report in Benjamin's suitcase? It seems that noone thought for a minute that the death was anything but natural. There is no mention of morphine in the doctor's or the judge's report. Could Walter have really died from natural causes; the haemorrhage? Or a heart attack? or exhaustion?

When Benjamin met Koestler

2010-10-02T17:41:00.003Z

Where did Walter get the morphine tablets that killed him? Arthur Koestler, author of Darkness at Noon, tells us that when he met Benjamin whilst they were both on the run from the Nazis; "he possessed fifty morphine tablets, which he intended to take if captured. He told me that was enough to kill a horse, and gave me half of his tablets - "just in case"."

Walter's Death - some details

2010-10-02T16:13:00.003Z

Its difficult to unpick the actual details of Walter's death; information is sketchy, and the accounts of different people do not all add up. His companion at the time, Henny Gurland has been shown to be an unreliable narrator. So, what do we actually know:
A Spanish doctor, Ramon Vila Moreno attended Benjamin on the evening of 25th Sept. We do not know what time it was, and who called the doctor. Some have claimed the doctor was called in the evening, after Walter was found dead, others that the doctor came the following morning.
The doctor's bill shows that he attended Benjamin four times on different days, so it seems that he must have visited initially on the 25th, perhaps when Walter was still alive?
In the bill the doctor charged for several injections, taking blood pressure, and a blood letting, probably fearing Walter was suffering from a heart condition and his blood pressure was high.
To be continued........

Portbou

2010-10-02T16:04:00.002Z

In 1940 Hannah Arendt visited Portbou looking for Walter's grave. She described the cemetry: "The cemetry looks out over a small bay, directly on the Mediterranean. Its terraces are hewn out of stone, and coffins are also put in these stone walls. This is one of the most fantastic and beautiful places I have ever seen".

The last, bitter irony

2010-10-02T15:59:00.002Z

The last, bitter irony in Benjamin's story is that immediately after his death the Spanish authorities decided to waive the new regulations which had led to him being stranded in Portbou. His companions were allowed to proceed through Spain, as would Walter have been if he had just held out for one more day.

Benjamin's belongings

2010-10-02T15:51:00.002Z

Benjamin's final belongings from the leather briefcase 'like businessmen use', were lost in the Figueras archive which was 'visited by water and rats'.

Some speculate that his companion in those final days; Henny Gurland may have even destroyed his belongings for fear that the mysterious manuscript may have fallen into the wrong hands, or been discovered by the police.