Monday 1 September 2008

update and updated outline

On a positive note, all this time spent reading and obsessing and working myself into a nervous wreck seems to have paid off, as I'm making pretty good progress on the eternal recurrence chapter. Wrote about 1000 words yesterday, got another grand or so to go before I call it a night. In the meantime, I thought I'd post up some new developments to the structure of the project.



New Outline:

Introduction

· Introduce the idea of the project. Brief overview of Benjamin, Nihilism and Nietzsche

· Benjamin's Relationship to Nihilism and Nietzsche

· Said Relationship in the Secondary sources

· Overview/Outline for the project

Eternal Recurrence

· Baudelaire, Blanqui, and Nietzche.

· Eternal Recurrence = nihilism = affirmation

· Affirmation = creation

· Mass Production

· Eternal Recurrence as engine of mass production

· Viewed from outside the system.

· Mass production and the emergence of the ever selfsame

· Deleuze and the recurrence of the creative element.

· What is the status of Origin (ursrpung) within Eternal Recurrence?

· Origin as an eddy in the flow of becoming. – The recurrence of the moment of creation.

· An event that has no meaning in and of itself. Only makes sense in terms of the cycle.

Aesthetics/Authenticity

· What would a nihilistic reading of WofA mean?

· "Benjamin sought not merely recognition of the destructive side, but engaged nihilistically to affirm it as opening possibilities for the future. … Instead of lamenting the destruction of art by technology, Benjamin sought to affirm a different future for art in the wake of its destruction." (Caygill, 93)

· The crisis of meaning.

· Authenticity

· WofA fn4. – Authenticity is ascribed after the fact.

· Mass Production and Recurrence

· On an eternal scale, even the orginal wasn't original

· Meaninglessness is only a crisis from the point of view of meaning (WP §12)

· Call for revaluation/transvalution.

· Re: normalization of shock experience. See: III & IV in "On some motifs in Baudelaire". (4:317-21)

· Cult and Auratic Value as the consequences of re-valuation as opposed to trans-valuation.

History and Dialectics

· Recurrence, Mass Production, and History

· Universal/Primal History

· Against Meaning/Against Authenticity

· The Image: Dialectical Image vs. Dialectics

· Role of Affirmation

· Grasping the DI and the Decisional Character of Recurrence

· Nothing is ever lost to history, but at the same time, it has to be grasped. Moment of danger and the state of emergency.

· Progress, Remembrance, & Ressentiment

Conclusion: Politics

(Quote from TPF and then de Man)

· Political Implications of Nihilism.

· Against progress – No Wohlfarth (no move to the center)

· Against ressentiment – No Lowy (Revisionist history)

· Revaluation and Higher Values

· What becomes of the messiah? What of the constantly deferred revolution?

· Narrow gate and "Vision and the Riddle"

Afterword (If there's room?)

· What new questions are raised?

· What of Marxism?

· How does this translate into praxis?

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