Ontologies of the Present
I just finished reading Fredric Jameson's A Singular Modernity: An Essay on the Ontology of the Present. Like a lot stuff that Jameson writes, this book is both fascinating and infuriatingly vague at key moments in its argument. This vagueness might be justified as a form of "dialectical" writing, which I enjoy at the level of style, but which I enjoy less when trying to diagram the book's argument or figure out what claims Jameson will commit to. That said, the book's last line is terrific. Jameson writes, basically anticipating and advertising his newest book (Archeologies of the Future), "We need to combine a Poundian mission to identify Utopian tendencies with a Benjaminian geography of their sources and a gauging of their pressure at what are not multiple sea levels. Ontologies of the present demand archeologies of the future, not forecasts of the past." Cool.
Ontologies of the Present
I just finished reading Fredric Jameson's A Singular Modernity: An Essay on the Ontology of the Present. Like a lot stuff that Jameson writes, this book is both fascinating and infuriatingly vague at key moments in its argument. This vagueness might be justified as a form of "dialectical" writing, which I enjoy at the level of style, but which I enjoy less when trying to diagram the book's argument or figure out what claims Jameson will commit to. That said, the book's last line is terrific. Jameson writes, basically anticipating and advertising his newest book (Archeologies of the Future), "We need to combine a Poundian mission to identify Utopian tendencies with a Benjaminian geography of their sources and a gauging of their pressure at what are not multiple sea levels. Ontologies of the present demand archeologies of the future, not forecasts of the past." Cool.
Postirony’s Revenge
Even as I imagine that my (eh, academic) interests are expanding into newer, hipper domains, I find myself always coming back to postirony. I purchased McSweeney's #18 yesterday (as a reward for having sold at least a dozen books I would never read on Amazon.com Marketplace; trust me when I say I've never done anything so drastic in my life; books are kind of sacred to me). Included in this issue was the first issue of Wholphin, Eggers & co.'s new DVD magazine. Included on this DVD are an assortment of strange items: documentary footage of Al Gore, a man singing "Stairway to Heaven" backwards in front of St. Paul's Cathedral (on the DVD, the footage is replayed backwards, so that it at times almost sounds like he's singing the song normally, whilst people walk [giving him befuddled looks] backwards); a psychadelic Iranian animated film; a Turkish sitcom; and most interestingly (for me) an animated film by this young director named Carson Mell. I say interestingly because his films exemplify almost perfectly what I have in mind when I use the term "postirony": when I watch the films and shorts he's posted on his website I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. His style of presentation exemplifies a major, to my mind new aesthetic sensibility that has come to dominate many arts since the 90s. Pinning it down is hard, but I guess that's part of what I'm trying to do. It's my white whale. Wish me luck killing it.
Postirony’s Revenge
Even as I imagine that my (eh, academic) interests are expanding into newer, hipper domains, I find myself always coming back to postirony. I purchased McSweeney's #18 yesterday (as a reward for having sold at least a dozen books I would never read on Amazon.com Marketplace; trust me when I say I've never done anything so drastic in my life; books are kind of sacred to me). Included in this issue was the first issue of Wholphin, Eggers & co.'s new DVD magazine. Included on this DVD are an assortment of strange items: documentary footage of Al Gore, a man singing "Stairway to Heaven" backwards in front of St. Paul's Cathedral (on the DVD, the footage is replayed backwards, so that it at times almost sounds like he's singing the song normally, whilst people walk [giving him befuddled looks] backwards); a psychadelic Iranian animated film; a Turkish sitcom; and most interestingly (for me) an animated film by this young director named Carson Mell. I say interestingly because his films exemplify almost perfectly what I have in mind when I use the term "postirony": when I watch the films and shorts he's posted on his website I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. His style of presentation exemplifies a major, to my mind new aesthetic sensibility that has come to dominate many arts since the 90s. Pinning it down is hard, but I guess that's part of what I'm trying to do. It's my white whale. Wish me luck killing it.