Below is a translation of ‘General Observations’, the concluding passages of Georges Sorel’s 1903 work Introduction à l’économie moderne. It’s a piece that I find interesting for several reasons. Most importantly, it provides an early sketch of his particular concept of the myth, which will subsequently become important in his much better known Reflections on […]
Read More Georges Sorel: ‘General Observations’ (1903)“The history is unendurable, its contents need to be concealed, therefore myth appears inseparable from revolutionary crisis. Given the compulsion to create ‘something entirely new’ the nightmare of dead generations will overpower the consciousness, ghosts will walk, and whatever novelty comes into existence will be the unwilled and unpredicted effect of time’s ironical victory.” — […]
Read More Repetition, Innovation, Class WarI’ve recently decided to read through a series of works that could be described as ‘romantic anti-capitalism’ (or subjectivist anti-capitalist, vitalist anti-capitalism, though none of these really capture the nature of this constellation, often Marxist but also proto-Marxist, but whatever): the writings of the young Lukács, young Gramsci, Lucien Goldmann, Ernst Bloch, etc. Lukács’ The Theory […]
Read More Time and Epic“[We] should not reduce[conspiracy theorists] to the phenomenon of modern mass hysteria…. the problem is not that ufologists and conspiracy theorists regress to a paranoid attitude unable to accept (social) reality; the problem is that this reality itself is becoming paranoiac” – Zizek Great new post up from Cockydooody on paranoia, the proliferation of conspiracy […]
Read More Paranoid StyleA few weeks back I wrote a post on the uncanny similarities between postmodernism—as a kind of all-encompassing and generalized cultural condition that has persisted since (roughly) the early 1970s—and ‘decadence’, the elusive ensemble of expressions, traits and (sub)cultural norms that rolled across Europe in the so-called fin-de-siecle era. On the surface, what brings the two […]
Read More Catastrophic Marxism in the Age of DecadenceOn the tl, Moct chimes in on my post about capitalist space-times: https://twitter.com/Moctezuma_III/status/1193667057864368128 It’s an interesting point that says something about the distinct social and cultural patterning that typifies capitalist development. I would absolutely agree with Moct here in that the frozen desert of temporal spatialization is the defining characteristic of our current epoch. We can see […]
Read More Decadence & (Po)MoI’ve been feeling like I’ve been in a rut lately, at least when it comes to writing and blogging and things of that nature. There’s certainly no shortage of ‘projects’ to be had—there are too many self-imposed tasks, as a matter of fact!—but the concrete follow-through of these has to date been negligible. Part of […]
Read More New Blog, New Era
Reciprocal Contradiction 