walter benjamin

August 29, 2014

Random Thing #3

Jack Graham class, historical materialism, history, marx, marxism, progress, walter benjamin 0

And one more. Please bear in mind, this is a fragment.

Marx saw creativity as essential to human nature. He famously once said that “Milton produced Paradise Lost in the way that a silkworm produces silk, as the expression of his own nature”. The difference is that Marx saw such creativity as a potential in all people, and believed that class society stunted such potentials in the majority by forcing them to do work that was alien to their natures.

Yet there is some truth to the idea of progress in the history of class society. Marx is quite comfortable – sometimes a little too comfortable – with the idea that the accumulation of capital can also be the accumulation of progress, that even the imperialistic development of class society can push people ‘forwards’. It’s just that he also sees horror in the process, eventually calling the ‘progress’ that British imperialism and capitalism brought to India as resembling a “hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.” This is far from an unproblematic way of putting it, but the point stands.

It is a point later taken up by Walter Benjamin in On the Concept of History, in which he describes history as both a triumphal procession and a great piling up of wreckage and horror.

Moral progress is only found when the increase of power and knowledge is used to make life fairer or better for common people (i.e. the majority), and this is the exception rather than the rule. And when it does happen, it isn’t a trickle-down effect. It is the result of struggle from below. And even the accumulation of power and knowledge in the hands of the rulers can only come from the unrequited labour of the masses. Even when a genius makes an individual discovery, he usually sits on top of a great pyramid of unacknowledged workers. Charles Darwin was only able to spend years in his study working and thinking and writing because he had servants, inherited wealth, and a wife who was related to the Wedgewoods. And that’s the history of class society at its prettiest. At other times it looks like Alexander, invading and slaughtering. Alexander was one of those potentates who poured the fruits of human labour into makewaste vanity projects like wars and great opulent buildings for the top people. Contrary to the assertions of classicists (who tend to assume that they would be reincarnated in the past as fellow aristocrats) Alexander achieved little to better mankind, even if he was taught by Aristotle, one of the undoubted ‘great men’ of history. But then Aristotle himself defended slavery in his Politics, as he had to, given that his leisure to sit around all day thinking depended on it.

Terry Eagleton has frequently pointed out that the Marxist view of history as simultaneously progressive and barbaric is a Tragic one, as Tragic (with a capital T) as Othello. He asks (rhetorically) if even communism (as Marx envisaged it) would justify the necessary slog through class society. …

November 17, 2013

15

Jack Graham 50th anniversary countdown, atheism, capitalism, crisis, gridlock, hitchens, marx, new atheism, opium of the people, religion, shelley, walter benjamin 1

“What if there’s no one out there?” asks the Doctor. He’s inside the Brannigans’ floating car, stuck in gridlock.

What if the world ended when you weren’t looking?

“Someone’s got to ask, because you might not talk about it, but it’s there in your eyes. What if the traffic jam never stops?”

“There’s a whole city above us,” says Brannigan, “The mighty city state of New New York. They wouldn’t just leave us.”

“In that case, where are they?” counters the Doctor. “What if there’s no help coming, not ever? What if there’s nothing? Just the motorway, with the cars going round and round and round and round, never stopping. Forever.”

What if the whole system is an utterly insane roundalay, going nowhere, getting noplace, just leaving everyone stranded, doing nothing but belching out endless clouds of toxic smoke? What if the crisis is permanent. What if normality is the crisis? What if everyday life is the end of the world?

Walter Benjamin said that history was a train crash, and revolution was when the passengers pulled the communication cord. The people of New New York left it too late to pull the cord. Capitalism crashed around them, shattering as one of their products ran out of control (a bit like, say, a stock market or a credit system). In the story, the product was a patch that managed mood. It was a palliative against the horror, which only intensified the horror. The Heaven of the state was depopulated, leaving lofty council chambers full of skeletons. The Hell of the lower levels filled up with fumes, and monsters of the repressed started to breed within them. And Limbo filled up with the survivors.

“Shut up! Just shut up!” cries Valerie, Brannigan’s wife.

Sally Calypso appears on the screen. “This is Sally Calypso, and it’s that time again. The sun is blazing high in the sky over the New Atlantic, the perfect setting for the daily contemplation.”

“You think you know us so well, Doctor,” says Brannigan, “But we’re not abandoned. Not while we have each other.”

Contrary to what most pop-culture will tell you, ordinary people are generally pretty damned good to each other in the aftermaths of disasters.

There’s a sense in which the amazing co-operation to be found, for the most part, in Tahrir Square and Occupy, was something akin to mutual aid in the aftermath of a disaster. Under capitalism as it stands (or tries to stand) every single day is the aftermath of a disaster. Prescient in so many ways, this episode.

The people of the gridlock are all locked away from each other in their seperate boxes, the way capitalism locks us away… but in the aftermath of the ongoing disaster of modernity, they’re also making lives and friendships and networks of support.

“This is for all of you out there on the roads,” says Sally, “We’re so sorry. Drive safe.”

And everyone in gridlock starts to sing in unison. This may be another patch, another mood stabiliser… but it is also a real and material act, an act of solidarity. …

November 15, 2013

22

Jack Graham 50th anniversary countdown, art, capitalism, city of death, commodification, john berger, modernity, renaissance, value, walter benjamin 0

The Doctor, Romana and Duggan have found a painting hidden behind a panel in the basement of Count Scarlioni’s house in Paris.

“It’s the Mona Lisa!” says the Doctor.

“Must be a fake,” replies Duggan.

The Doctor says he doesn’t know what’s currently hanging in the Louvre, “but this is the genuine article”.

Duggan’s astonishment increases when the Doctor folds back yet more panelling to reveal yet another Mona Lisa. And another. And another. Eventually, six identical copies are revealed.

“They must be fakes,” says Duggan again.

“The brushwork’s Leonardo’s,” the Doctor asserts, “It’s as characteristic as a signature. The pigment, too.”

“What,” blithers Duggan, “on all of them?”

“What I don’t understand is why a man who’s got six Mona Lisas wants to go to all the trouble of stealing a seventh.” (The Count has been casing the Louvre, preparing to steal their Mona Lisa.)

This is Duggan’s area. “Come on, Doctor, I’ve just told you. There are seven people who would buy the Mona Lisa in secret, but nobody’s going to buy the Mona Lisa when it’s hanging in the Louvre!”

“Of course,” says Romana, “They’d each have to think they were buying the stolen one.”

Because only ‘the original’ is valuable. These collectors wouldn’t even want the Mona Lisa to sell or to display… they’d want it for – to use Duggan’s phrase – the “expensive gloat”.

But where does the value of the work of art lie? In its ‘authenticity’? Huge amounts of time, effort, money and research are expended to establish the ‘authenticity’ of artworks; their provenance and history, tracing back to their origins. Experts compete over the ‘authenticity’ of various iterations of a single painting, fighting over which institution owns the ‘real’ one. Duggan, the private detective hired to investigate art as a catalyst of crime, responds to the Mona Lisas found by the Doctor with an instantaneous attempt to evaluate their ‘authenticity’, and hence their ‘value’. (A set of assumptions that the Doctor explicitly rejects later in the show, when he mocks the idea that a painting needs to be x-rayed before its value can be ascertained.)

In the modern age, the ‘age of mechanical reproduction‘ as Walter Benjamin put it, the artwork is viewed in a new and historically unique way. The camera destroyed the idea of timeless images arranged for a single spectator. The photographic representation cast painting adrift, since it usurped the painter’s role as portrayer of the patron’s property and ideology. Mass-reproduction of images destroyed the “aura” of a work of art (Benjamin’s word for its unique and materially-intact history), making it seperable from its original time and place and locational context. The Mona Lisa, for instance, proliferated around the world. It is now no longer to be found in the Louvre. It is all over millions of greetings cards, the pages of magazines, the pages of books, posters, tourists’ photos, the internet, the covers of execrable paperback novels. All this raises the fame of the painting while destroying its singular and unitary itselfness. …

November 12, 2013

30

Jack Graham 50th anniversary countdown, capitalism, feudalism, historical materialism, history, slavery, walter benjamin, warriors gate 1

“My goodness…” says the Doctor as yet more fine fare is brought to the Tharils already-laden table, “You live like kings.”

“We are kings,” says Biroc impassively. He merely states it as a fact. He is both part of this feast and an observer of it. He was at it, and now he returns later in his personal timeline. He can travel along his own trajectory. He sits at a table he once sat at long ago, in the same seat. He acknowledges this past life and does not disown it, yet he does not embrace it either. His tone is neutral. Truthful.

Meanwhile, at the same table many years later, after history has revolved, men – who make their living capturing, chaining and shipping creatures like Biroc for sale and industrial use – are sitting down for their lunch break. They pass round sandwiches, pickles, thermos flasks.

Their boss, Rorvik, regards them with the wary contempt that only a truly stupid person can feel for those slightly more stupid than he is. He has so little success trying to make them listen to his inanities that he has to wave his blaster pistol at them.

Back in the ‘past’, back at the other meal, the Doctor asks where all the Tharils’ luxury and variety comes from.

“The universe is our garden,” says Biroc simply. Again, the abrupt tone of factual statement.

“Ah. So this is what it was all like.”

“At the height of our empire, before the Tharils became the slaves of men.”

The mention of slaves turns the Doctor’s mind instantly to the servants moving around the table. He responds to Biroc’s barely-implied complaint by calling him out on his apparent hypocrisy.

“I notice you don’t do too badly for staff,” says the Doctor. “This garden of yours, the universe… how do you manage it”

“We use our power. For those who travel on the time winds, the vastness of space is no obstacle.” The Tharils have the power to travel where they will – the basic requirement of any imperial project. “Everything is ours.”

The serving girl by the Doctor makes a mistake, spilling the wine that she is pouring into a goblet. The Tharil whose goblet it is knocks her to the floor, as one swipes irritably at a fly. The Doctor glares at him and gets up to help the young woman.

“Including her?” he asks.

“They’re only people.” Again, Biroc’s tone is flat. He does not endorse or condemn… except in so far that simply saying such things is its own condemnation. He simply recites the truth of how this system operated. To the Tharils, their slaves were only people… just as, to Rorvik, his slaves are only Tharils. But there is no self-justification from Biroc. He makes no pleas, and gives no excuses. Rorvik is losing control of his present. Biroc owns his past.

“So you’re the masters the Gundan spoke of, hmm? The enslavers?”

“The weak enslave themselves, Doctor. You and I know that.” …

July 30, 2013

A Found Object

Jack Graham bbc radiophic workshop, delia derbyshire, john berger, modernism, music, owen hatherley, walter benjamin 0

“A close equivalent to Brutalism’s avant-garde quotidian is in the work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Banham makes a more than punning connection between the techniques of concrete brutalism and those of musique concrete, in that both are based on the use of manipulated found objects, both have a disdain for harmony but not for structure. The Workshop applied musique concrete to TV jingles, soundtracks, mundane everyday sound. What made both so valuable is that they were so totally immersed in everyday life. Switch on the radio or walk out of the door to find yourself in a new world.”

– Owen Hatherley, Militant Modernism

…

March 8, 2011

Abide With Me 2.0

Jack Graham alienation, christopher bailey, entropy, gothic, gridlock, macra terror, marx, religion, russel t davies, walter benjamin 7

This is an edited and partly-rewritten version of something I posted at the old site.

In a world in which 99% of all TV is 99% predictable 99% of the time, ‘Gridlock’ seems like an impertinent rejoinder to everything else on the screen, as though the Doctor Who production team are blowing contemptuous raspberries at the people who churn out all the beige wallpaper that constitutes most modern telly. ‘Gridlock’ hammers every bit of mass-produced, by-the-numbers, formulaic drama that clogs up the channels. Then, just for good measure, it laughingly refuses to play by the rules of Doctor Who, old or new.

There is no invasion and no tyranny to topple; there are no corridors and no captures (well, there’s one… sort of) and no escapes; there are no fascist guards, no rebels, no evil masterminds; there is no ticking time-bomb, no race against time, no evil plot for the Doctor to foil. Other writers might have made the story about the Doctor trying to stop everyone dying because of the BLISS patches. In ‘Gridlock’, RTD has the Doctor arrive when this is all over and almost everyone is long dead. Imagine what ‘The Ark in Space’ would’ve been like if the Doctor had arrived years after the Wirrn had already eaten almost the whole of the human race… mind you, even then there could’ve been a Doctor-and-rebels-fight-monsters tale. In ‘Gridlock’, there are no monsters in the proper sense. The cat people are both nice, the Face of Boe is without malice. Even the Macra are not allowed to take over the script or be this week’s baddies. Their fate is not even alluded to at the end. The Doctor’s priority is to clear the gridlock. The death of the Macra that feed on the exhaust fumes is a by-product of his main aim (one assumes that some of the unscrupulous entrepreneurs of the undercity are going to get rich selling lots of crab meat). Some fans have criticised what they perceive as the way the Macra were underused… but really, did we need another story about the Macra running a colony of slaves? I know the original Macra tale is sadly missing, but a story that was all about CGI Macra being naughty wouldn’t have brought it back. Besides, ‘The Macra Terror’ is a tale of its time, expressing the anxieties of the 60s generation about brainwashing, conformity and consumer culture. Putting the Macra at the centre of ‘Gridlock’ would’ve made ‘Gridlock’ a story about the Macra, yet another bad old monster stomping about.

‘Gridlock’ is almost unrelentingly surprising, even to people me who, let’s face it, watch far too much telly. Not only is ‘Gridlock’ unpredictable, it’s tricky too. It deliberately leads you down blind alleys and then presents you with a basket of kittens. Just when you think it’s going to be about urban guerrillas kidnapping Martha, the urban guerrillas turn out to be a nice guy and his pregnant girlfriend who just needed an extra passenger.…

November 24, 2010

Rise Like Lions

Jack Graham angel of history, anti-cuts, day x, history, protests, season 18, steve gallagher, tharils, tom baker, walter benjamin, warriors gate 2

Even as I type this, protestors are clambering over the stone lions at the base of Nelson’s Column, waving anti-cuts placards while sat astride the petrified leonine relics of an imperial age that is still decaying… and trying to take us all with it.

‘Warrior’s Gate’ came up for discussion at Gallifrey Base today. It seems almost ridiculously appropriate. Well, it does to me anyway.

Biroc makes me think of Walter Benjamin’s ‘Angel of History’:

The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair, to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm.

Benjamin’s exegesis was inspired by a figure in a painting by Klee… but, sometimes, when I read that passage, I see Biroc. To me, Biroc is the angel, haunted by the cruelties of the past and propelled forwards by the inexorable progress of brutality, yearning to pull the emergency cord and stop the train of history, to burst apart the continuum of repetitive exploitation. The media of his travel are the mirrors, the shimmering reproaches that reflect his and his people’s ruin back at him, and allow him through into the past where he can see – and even participate in – the horror of the lost empire that has doomed his people to their turn in servitude, the lions now kings no more, the king’s beasts in chains.

The Doctor walks into the cobwebby, ruined Tharil dining hall and sets right a goblet that was left on its side centuries ago. Later in the story he is taken back to the moment when the Tharils began to lose control of their empire, when they were attacked at the height of their power by the revolution they thought they could dodge forever. Disgusted by their treatment of their slaves, the Doctor pours wine into the very same goblet (but centuries before he first saw and righted it) until … well, until the Tharil’s cup runneth over… and then knocks it over in a gesture of splendid, ironic contempt for their decadence; decadence built on the suffering, servitude, abuse and unrequited labour of those the Tharils call “only people”.

The grand feudalism of the Tharils has crumbled, demolished by the revenge of history, by the revolt of the serfs and their faceless machines of violent liberation… and the industrious serfs have built their own civilisation, which has become mercantile and imperialistic, technological and temporal, perhaps with their time engines based on the looted skills of the time sensitives who used to loot their skills long ago.…