Thought is the courage of hopelessness

-
Debord often cited a letter of Marx's, saying that 'the hopeless conditions of the society in which I live fill me with hope'. Any radical thought always adopts the most extreme position of desperation. Simone Weil said 'I do not like those people who warm their hearts with empty hopes'. Thought, for me, is just that: the courage of hopelessness. And is that not the height of optimism? 

— from an interview with Giorgio Agamben

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Japanese Contribution to Marxian Political Economy

-
Image
In this appraisal of historical materialism the peculiarity of Uno's position vis- a-vis other trends of Marxist thought is most clearly seen. The conventional and official view would argue roughly as follows: Marxism has extracted what is to be called dialectical materialism from Hegel's system by "inverting it"; then, the application of this dialectical materialism to social history has created the science of historical materialism; the political economy of capitalism consists of further specification of the principles of historical materialism for the analysis of capitalist society; hence, the discovery of the class-nature of capitalism has made Marxist socialism a science. The conventional view thus fails to distinguish between ideology and science; it even tends to glorify the confusion with the slogan of "the dialectical unity of theory and practice." The more recent and presumably "unofficial" view, inspired by the works of Luk'acs, K...
Read more

Being

-
Image
Painting:  Beksinski » Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further. The further one goes, the more private, the more personal, the more singular an experience becomes, and the thing one is making is, finally, the necessary, irrepressible, and, as nearly as possible, definitive utterance of this singularity  […] Therein lies the enormous aid the work of art brings to the life of the one who must make it. — : that it is his epitome; the knot in the rosary at which his life recites a prayer, the ever-returning proof to himself of his unity and genuineness, which presents itself only to him while appearing anonymous to the outside, nameless, existing merely as necessity, as reality, as being — . — From a letter on Cezanne by Rainer Maria Rilke to his wife (a painter), June 24, 1907 
Read more

The Destructive Character

-
Image
Berlin, Unter den Linden, 1945 It could happen to someone looking back over his life that he realized that almost all the deeper obligations he had endured in its course originated in people who everyone agreed had the traits of a “destructive character.” He would stumble on this fact one day, perhaps by chance, and the heavier the shock dealt to him, the better his chances of re presenting the destructive character. The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away. His need for fresh air and open space is stronger than any hatred. The destructive character is young and cheerful. For destroying rejuvenate, because it clears away the traces of our own age; it cheers, because everything cleared away means to the destroyer a complete reduction, indeed a rooting out, out of his own condition. Really, only the insight into how radically the world is simplified when tested for its worthiness for destruction leads to such an Apollonian image ...
Read more