Henry Sussman
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823232833
- eISBN:
- 9780823241170
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823232833.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Part of the system's very openness is its resistance to the mutating static and noise that are the critic's walking papers, less than reputable edition of the social contract. According to Benjamin, ...
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Part of the system's very openness is its resistance to the mutating static and noise that are the critic's walking papers, less than reputable edition of the social contract. According to Benjamin, in this interpellation into Convolute D of The Arcades Project, by the time the conversation arrives at the weather, it has sunk to the emptiest chatter. Critique, in keeping with Benjamin's long-term struggle to make it compatible with attitudes and practices of material history, is no longer the paraphrase, expiation, and distillation of telling concepts from diverse rubrics and housings in which they have been archived, with no anticipated or foregone outcome. There can be no sublimation, purification, or occultation of the material from critique. Furthermore human's tendency, to manage moods and transitions, along with similar conditions of attentiveness, via a range of approaches including pharmacology is redolent when physical turbulence remained the property of the engineering school.Less
Part of the system's very openness is its resistance to the mutating static and noise that are the critic's walking papers, less than reputable edition of the social contract. According to Benjamin, in this interpellation into Convolute D of The Arcades Project, by the time the conversation arrives at the weather, it has sunk to the emptiest chatter. Critique, in keeping with Benjamin's long-term struggle to make it compatible with attitudes and practices of material history, is no longer the paraphrase, expiation, and distillation of telling concepts from diverse rubrics and housings in which they have been archived, with no anticipated or foregone outcome. There can be no sublimation, purification, or occultation of the material from critique. Furthermore human's tendency, to manage moods and transitions, along with similar conditions of attentiveness, via a range of approaches including pharmacology is redolent when physical turbulence remained the property of the engineering school.
Drew Daniel
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823251278
- eISBN:
- 9780823252701
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251278.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
A book may be more referred to than read, often started but rarely finished. Too shapeless in its form and unclear in its intentions to hold a casual reader, this book becomes the preserve of a small ...
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A book may be more referred to than read, often started but rarely finished. Too shapeless in its form and unclear in its intentions to hold a casual reader, this book becomes the preserve of a small community of bickering experts. Two books which fit this narrative are Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy and Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project. Whereas the former focuses on the dwindlingly fashionable humoral illness of melancholy, the latter tackles the first Parisian glass-ceilinged shopping arcades. And yet both texts function as creative and personal assemblages expressive of what might be called “melancholy structure.” This chapter examines the notion of melancholy in The Anatomy of Melancholy and Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project. It looks at melancholy assemblage and Burton’s explanation on the “inward causes” of melancholy as well as Benjamin’s philosophical view on the “mosaic” of melancholy.Less
A book may be more referred to than read, often started but rarely finished. Too shapeless in its form and unclear in its intentions to hold a casual reader, this book becomes the preserve of a small community of bickering experts. Two books which fit this narrative are Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy and Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project. Whereas the former focuses on the dwindlingly fashionable humoral illness of melancholy, the latter tackles the first Parisian glass-ceilinged shopping arcades. And yet both texts function as creative and personal assemblages expressive of what might be called “melancholy structure.” This chapter examines the notion of melancholy in The Anatomy of Melancholy and Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project. It looks at melancholy assemblage and Burton’s explanation on the “inward causes” of melancholy as well as Benjamin’s philosophical view on the “mosaic” of melancholy.
