Aesthetic Materialism

 Virginia Giuffre is the Briseis of modern times.

Language exists as a tool to facilitate empathy.  

The culture of the end of history is characterized by a particular type of irony - the subject, no longer having a meaningful political project (or religious project?) to which any given expression or act can either contribute or hinder, in a tone of pessimistic acceptance, mocks every form of power without affirming or committing to any kind of alternative.  This is the ascendance of "alternative culture," which only becomes dominant, ironically enough, when there is no alternative.  But when, exactly, does it begin?  Even before the formal collapse of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union had, long before, ceased to be a meaningful alternative to capitalism.  Arguably, the USSR had been capitalist from the beginning.  Besides, even if the world is divided into 2 more power blocs, this does not significantly add to any individual's power to make substantive political change.  If some people, halfway around the world, live differently, how does that help me?...

I find myself in opposition to the Frankfurt School in a way, and ultimately this may put me at odds even with Lukacs - perhaps even with my beloved Situationist International.  Because I went back and read Hegel.  And ultimately, I think all of these people got Hegel wrong.  A thread throughout Lukacs, the Frankfurt School, and the Situationist International is that reification is bad.  They think we should just fight against reification.  Just hold it back.  Stand athwart history, yelling "Stop!"  But I think one way to put Hegel in a nutshell is: Hegel was saying that reification is good, actually.  That's his whole point.  Reification is good.  If you like, you might put it this way: Hegel thought objectification is good.  Of course, this might put me at odds with certain feminists, people who simply assume that objectification is always bad.  And some animal rights activists will talk about the objectification of animals, ...

One thing I think about a lot: what if we cloned Nietzsche? You know, what if we cloned him back in the 19th century, and didn't tell his clone that he was Nietzsche's clone? Nietzsche was a pretty good writer.  And he was a bitch.  He was at times witty, insightful, cutting - the "stylus" - occasionally devastating.  He had a way with the one-liner - the "apothegm" as he called it.  Sometimes he could pack more meaning into a brief, offhand, dismissive remark than most writers can convey in a hundred pages.  But...  You get the sense, reading these jabs, of both restraint and indulgence. Take the "Untimely Meditations."  To my taste, they're timely - all too timely.  When I read Nietzsche's essay on David Strauss, my only thought was, "Him?"  Why bother?  Undoubtedly Nietzsche was trying to ingratiate himself to Bruno Bauer, his only reader, his "entire public" as Nietzsche called him.  It's like philosophy youtuber...

What Lenin failed to understand - and it was a fateful, disastrous failure - is that nationalism is a higher phase of imperialism.  Thus, by supporting the right of nations to self-determination, he was supporting imperialism.   The Leninist error is undialectical, and thus presents a one-sided interpretation of imperialism, which pits the struggle for national self-determination (good guys) against imperialists (bad guys).  A more dialectical approach to history recognizes nationalism not as simply opposed to imperialism, but as raising the contradictions of imperialism to a higher level.    People like Lenin, who have been thoroughly indoctrinated by a western (capitalist) ideology, tend to think that nationalism is just a natural thing that humans have always done and always will do.  The reality is that nationalism is a very recent invention in human history, and that nationalism was and is a project of imperialism.  In the 19th Century, the B...