Rogueish
Trinketization with respect to Benjamin’s obsessions with kitsch – mediation between magic and positivism « trinketization→
02/12/13
To express this another way: the theological motif of calling things by their names tends to switch into the wide-eyed presentation of mere facts. If one wanted to put it rather drastically, one could say your study is located at the crossroads of magic and positivism. This spot is bewitched. Only theory could break this spell – your own resolute and salutarily speculative theory. (Adorno to Benjamin 10 November 1938, Benjamin/Adorno 1994/1999:283).
But did Benjamin want to “break the spell”? Thinking of his description of the dreamer who, awakening, seeks to “turn the lining of time to the outside,” it seems to me that Benjamin’s approach to bewitchment would be rather different from Adorno’s.
Piccolo: Dreaming without 'Meaning'→
08/20/12
Rather than dreams being the simulacra, the attenuated forms and copies of what lies elsewhere and previous, the dream-world consists of things newly fashioned and without citable precedent, conceived and executed by the dream itself.
