Walter Benjamin: between academic fashion and the avant-garde

In the present context of the triumph of capitalism over real socialism, this article points out that, despite their ideological differences, both systems are bound to the same conception of history-as-progress. In contrast, it recalls Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history, marked by the critique of progress in the name of a revolutionary time, which interrupts history's chronological continuum. Benjamin's perspective is used to study the conflict of temporalities among the Soviet artists in the two decades after the October Revolution: on the one hand, the anarchic, autonomous and critical time of interruption – which is the time of avant-gade –, on the other hand, the synchronization with the ideas of a progressive time as ordered by the Communist Patty; this is the time of vanguard, whose capitalist Counterpart is fashion.Nestes tempos de triunfo do capitalismo sobre o socialismo real, o presente artigo mostra que, apesar de suas diferences ideológicas, ambos os sistemas baseiamse numa concepcão da história como progresso. Contrastivamente, é lembrada a filosofia da história de Walter Benjamin, marcada pela crítica do progresso e a concepção de um tempo revolucionário, que interrompe o continuum histórico. A luz da teoria benjaminiana é estudado o conflito de concepções de tempo entre os artistas soviéticos das duas décadas posteriores à Revolução de Outubro de 1917: de um lado, o tempo da interrupção, anárquico, autônomo e crítico – que é o tempo da avat-garde –, do outro lado, a sincronização com una idéia de um tempo progressivo tal como foi decretado pelo Partido Comunista; este é o tempo das vanguardas, cuja contrapartida capitalista é a moda

'Non-violent Resistance is Forceful'

Joanna Kusiak: You’re a politically engaged philosopher. You’ve signed a letter of support for Occupy Wall Street and CUNY’s student protests, you talk about OWS during your philosophical seminar and at the same time you claim there is no political ontology. Why? Susan Buck-Morss: My prejudice against ontology comes from reading Adorno and his virulent criticism of existential ontology as he sees it so powerfully expressed in Heidegger, but then leading to such disastrous political consequenc..

The show must go on: making money glamorizing oppression

This article presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the glamorization of the courtesan image as proposed by Baz Luhrmann’s film Moulin Rouge. The film sparked the appearance of high-street fashion inspired by the image of the 19th-century Parisian courtesan, which prompted the authors to examine how and why such images might appeal to female consumers. The critical analysis reaches beyond the images themselves to identify and discuss the modes of circulation of such images, and their function in achieving both the material ends of capitalism (ever-increasing consumption and production) and the promotion of one of the system’s core values (patriarchy). Moreover, the article hopes to illustrate the possibilities offered by integrating cultural and structural analyses of current social phenomena

‘Born to Shop’: Malls, Dream-Worlds and Capitalism

It has been twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a new generation, untouched by the previous communist regimes, has come to adulthood throughout the post-communist world. The Iulius Group’s logo – ‘Born to shop!’ – suggests that these are born shoppers: the capitalist babies of Central and Eastern Europe who are sustaining the largest growth in retail and shopping malls in Europe. With no living memory of shortages, queuing, or government restrictions, they know only the limit of their own – or their parents’ – pocket/credit. Their world could not be more different from the one that their parents and grandparents experienced: both the abundance of goods and services, as well as the opulent settings under which they are now sold, offer striking visual contrasts to the not-so-distant past. In addition, the very experience of consumption is directly connected to the way in which the current social fabric – and new social divisions within it – is interwoven with the physical and architectural changes taking place in the urban setting

Contemporary Art and Transitional Justice in Northern Ireland: The Consolation of Form

Abstract Contemporary artworks in Northern Ireland are explored here as critical constellations, in Walter Benjamin’s sense, that engage the cultural processes of transition through their problematisation of it. It is argued that the artworks become sites in which the assumptions of transition are opened up for critical reflection, requesting attention to the foreclosing of the meanings of memory, of past-and-future, of community. A mode of critical questioning of the present renders the present problematic not in terms of exclusions nor with reference to a past that cannot or will not be erased, but in terms of the present’s inability to be conceived through a linear conception of time. That is, the past and its relation to both the present and to the future are set in oscillation as artworks explore the complex temporalities of a present self-consciously attempting to narrate itself away from the past. The artworks, ‘without the bigotry of conviction’ as Seamus Deane put it, suggest that the task of dealing with the past is flawed wherever the past is conceived as a history that can be rendered present to be judged by subjects who are thereby placed beyond it. That is the illusion of a present ‘no-time’ that dovetails with the desires of commercial enterprise and neo-liberal conceptions of freedom. If this suggests an unceasing restlessness, the consolation is that this questioning does take a form, not as judgement or political decision but as artworks which by definition, remain open to reinterpretation and new understandings. These issues are discussed with reference to the work of four artists in Northern Ireland: the paintings of Rita Duffy, the photography and installation work of Anthony Haughey, and the sculptural works of Philip Napier and Mike Hogg

Walter Benjamin, a Methodological Contribution

This article examines the work and philosophy of Walter Benjamin as an important source of information for international relations (IR) and International Political Sociology (IPS) scholars, particularly in light of his methodological contributions, which could provide important ground for movements such as the aesthetic turn in IR and everyday life ⁄ popular culture studies within IR and IPS. Benjamin’s contributions are examined in light of his most controversial, albeit unfinished, project— The Arcades Project, a recently published volume that focuses on a selection of documents from the Benjamin archive; and a study by Howard Caygill on Benjamin’s attempt to create a ‘‘new philosophy,’’ and along with it, a new methodology for studying ‘‘experience.’’ The article focuses on three main elements that stand at the basis of Benjamin’s unique methodology: (1) his process of selecting the object of study; (2) his treatment of temporality and processes of change ⁄ history; and (3) his focus on the visual as key to escaping the limitations of traditional ‘‘philosophical’’ text

In Deadly Time: The Lasting On of Waste in Mayhew’s London

This paper examines the temporal dimension of waste in Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor as an instance of how modernity has produced a largely hidden domain of the non-identical and indeterminate. Through a consideration of the phenomena of uselessness, decay and poverty I argue that the temporal dimension of waste is constituted as a corrosive or malign ‘Deadly Time.’ In placing such emphasis on time directed towards death, I aim to show that Mayhew’s undisciplined researches can be seen as a valuable source for understanding why modern thinking struggles to come to terms with waste

Illuminating Vestige: Amateur Archaeology and the Emergence of Historical Consciousness in Rural France

This article provides a historical ethnography of an abrupt and transient awakening of interest in Roman vestige during the 1970s in rural France, and explores its implications for comparative understanding of historical consciousness in Western Europe. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Languedoc, and particularly the commune of Monadières, it details a vogue for collecting pottery shards scattered in a nearby lagoon that developed among local inhabitants. The article frames this as a ritualized “expressive historicity” emergent from political economic restructuring, cultural transformation, and time-space compression. It analyses the catalyzing role of a historian who introduced discursive forms into the commune for symbolizing the shards, drawn from regionalist and socialist historiography, which local people adapted to rearticulate the historicity of lived experience as a novel, hybrid genre of “historical consciousness.” These activities are conceptualized as a “reverse historiography.” Elements of historiographical and archaeological discourses—for example, chronological depth, collation and evaluation of material relics—are reinvented to alternate ends, partly as a subversive “response” to contact with such discourses. The practice emerges as a mediation of distinct ways of apprehending the world at a significant historical juncture. Analysis explores the utility of new anthropological theories of “historicity”—an alternative to the established “historical idiom” for analyzing our relations with the past—which place historiography within the analytical frame, and enable consideration of the temporality of historical experience. Findings suggest that the alterity of popular Western cultural practices for invoking the past would reward further study