Garbage Eve!

I have the impression that Thursday must be Garbage Day all over the world. It is in certain neighborhoods in Bozeman, MT and Guadalajara, Jalisco and it certainly is here.



And, on a not entirely unrelated note, I read Walter Benjamin's "The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction." and started "The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception" by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. Both All three philosophers do have relevant things to say, even today and Adorno isn't as scary as I thought he was going to be. In fact, he's sort of closed-minded and maybe even hysterical (and not in a "ha ha" way). I will mercifully spare my reader the summary of the articles here. If I get up the guts, I will write my reaction paper on one of them and risk losing the above-mentioned reader by posting it here another day. It's time for me to stop being a baby. I figure it will be good for me to confront my fear of Critical Theory by taking on one of the big boys. Probably Benjamin because I can't see the name "Horkheimer" without pronouncing (mentally or aloud) the first syllable as a cough. I'm no longer being a baby, I've matured to adolescence. I guess I can't put this in my paper, but Benjamin is the one I'd be most likely to go have a beer with. When I mentioned this to my office mate this morning, he said flatly, "Benjamin's dead. He committed suicide." I figured the former, but was surprised by the latter. Unlike other members of the Frankfurt School who lived in exile in the States, Benjamin didn't make it out of Europe before the Nazis came to power. He died in Spain. That he may have committed suicide saddened me. His writing is so relatively accessible and comparatively balanced. Example: He says of the photographer Eugene Atget: "With Atget, photographs become standard evidence for historical occurence, and acquire a hidden political significance. They demand a specific kind of approach; free-floating contemplation is not appropriate to them. They stir the viewer, he feels challenged by them in a new way."

Not sure about political significance, but viewers are definitely invited or challenged to take a closer look.