Influential Books: AUFS for the Uninitiated 4 from An und für sich by Brad Johnson
The most obvious influence in this regard is Herman Melville’s final novel, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
. This was the first work of non-biblical literature I’d ever invested considerable energy in studying. I poured myself into not merely the book, but also the reception that met the book when it was first published and the evolution its various readings have undertaken since. (This doesn’t count as a book, per se, but if we were to include essays, I’d have to point to my long-standing devotion to Walter Benjamin
’s essay “The Task of the Translator.” Since encountering this I’ve been committed to the notion that texts and ideas in general have a kind of organic life-cycle — deformations, repressions, internal squabbles, decay, death, afterlife, etc. — and cannot imagine approaching them in a de-contextualized, non-materialistic way, even if this means, as it must, that all such thinking is radically incomplete. If I were to continue this passing comment into a full-fledged paragraph I’d go on at length about how W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn
illustrates all this perfectly, but I’ll just leave it as a parenthetical aside.) Reading The Confidence-Man provided me with the means, in fits and starts and via a warren of wayward paths, to cast about for a sense of theological subjectivity immersed in the complexity of its own self-creativity. I’ve come a long way since this, and none of the Melville stuff has seen the light of day in any official capacity, but perhaps one day.
. This was the first work of non-biblical literature I’d ever invested considerable energy in studying. I poured myself into not merely the book, but also the reception that met the book when it was first published and the evolution its various readings have undertaken since. (This doesn’t count as a book, per se, but if we were to include essays, I’d have to point to my long-standing devotion to Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Task of the Translator.” Since encountering this I’ve been committed to the notion that texts and ideas in general have a kind of organic life-cycle — deformations, repressions, internal squabbles, decay, death, afterlife, etc. — and cannot imagine approaching them in a de-contextualized, non-materialistic way, even if this means, as it must, that all such thinking is radically incomplete. If I were to continue this passing comment into a full-fledged paragraph I’d go on at length about how W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn illustrates all this perfectly, but I’ll just leave it as a parenthetical aside.) Reading The Confidence-Man provided me with the means, in fits and starts and via a warren of wayward paths, to cast about for a sense of theological subjectivity immersed in the complexity of its own self-creativity. I’ve come a long way since this, and none of the Melville stuff has seen the light of day in any official capacity, but perhaps one day.I ran into a number of philosophical impasses in the course of this project. I was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the tools deconstruction was offering, as I was no longer convinced by the status of the ‘freedom’ it described. It was fortunate, then, that I discovered Friedrich Schelling’s Investigations Into the Essence of Human Freedom
. Where Adam and Anthony found themselves changed by Nietzsche, Schelling was it for me. Though not as immediately “sexy” as Nietzsche, the middle-period of Schelling’s work is no less intense. I read this book at the perfect time: it harmonized in a shocking way with how I’d been reading Melville in particular; it was engaged in a profound philosophical dialogue that was not so much contradictory as excessive to the assumptions about Being that inform deconstruction; and, even more, it was written in a typically Teutonic non-clever tone whose mesmerizingly poetic cadence summoned a disturbing image of a God-who-is-created that emboldened me to keep advancing in my reflections on aesthetics in the thinking of ontology and theology.
. Where Adam and Anthony found themselves changed by Nietzsche, Schelling was it for me. Though not as immediately “sexy” as Nietzsche, the middle-period of Schelling’s work is no less intense. I read this book at the perfect time: it harmonized in a shocking way with how I’d been reading Melville in particular; it was engaged in a profound philosophical dialogue that was not so much contradictory as excessive to the assumptions about Being that inform deconstruction; and, even more, it was written in a typically Teutonic non-clever tone whose mesmerizingly poetic cadence summoned a disturbing image of a God-who-is-created that emboldened me to keep advancing in my reflections on aesthetics in the thinking of ontology and theology.I’ve actually not thought of this book in years, but another philosophical text that was absolutely crucial for me in this period was Michel Serres’ The Parasite
. Nothing else embodied the “network” (which I would now probably call “ecology”) of creativity I sought to theorize like that work — certainly not in that voice, which always seemed to simultaneously say more and less than it seemed. I felt as though Serres was beckoning his readers not merely to consume his work and ideas, but insisting instead that we had an ethical, indeed even a biological, responsibility both to consume and then shit out his ideas, for in that shitting we were fertilizing the field for something else. Whether we owned the field or laid claim to the crop, or whether we were trespassing, it mattered not, since the ideas weren’t really possessions — momentary sustenance, if anything. I can’t say that Serres’ philosophy has carried into my recent work, but this spirit, or at least the one I took from it, certainly has.
. Nothing else embodied the “network” (which I would now probably call “ecology”) of creativity I sought to theorize like that work — certainly not in that voice, which always seemed to simultaneously say more and less than it seemed. I felt as though Serres was beckoning his readers not merely to consume his work and ideas, but insisting instead that we had an ethical, indeed even a biological, responsibility both to consume and then shit out his ideas, for in that shitting we were fertilizing the field for something else. Whether we owned the field or laid claim to the crop, or whether we were trespassing, it mattered not, since the ideas weren’t really possessions — momentary sustenance, if anything. I can’t say that Serres’ philosophy has carried into my recent work, but this spirit, or at least the one I took from it, certainly has.Most recently, nothing has influenced me quite like Jacques Ranciere’s Disagreement
. Here my overarching concern with aesthetics was re-articulated for me in a political register. Ranciere resisted the denigration of aesthetics in our political philosophies, and instead presented a way for me to move forward with my work on the theological value of duplicity and creativity. His work has inspired me to direct attention to the concrete extension (dare I say ‘praxis’?) of my understanding of aesthetics — toward the fully-embodied, present struggles and practicalities of life faced by those who are denied a self-creative sensibility.
. Here my overarching concern with aesthetics was re-articulated for me in a political register. Ranciere resisted the denigration of aesthetics in our political philosophies, and instead presented a way for me to move forward with my work on the theological value of duplicity and creativity. His work has inspired me to direct attention to the concrete extension (dare I say ‘praxis’?) of my understanding of aesthetics — toward the fully-embodied, present struggles and practicalities of life faced by those who are denied a self-creative sensibility.And lastly, let me reiterate a book that both Anthony & Dan have already mentioned. Philip Goodchild’s Capitalism & Religion
. Just a stunning piece of work. In my opinion, if you only pick up one of the books any of us have mentioned, get it, and you’ll be well on the way to full-fledged AUFS initiation.
. Just a stunning piece of work. In my opinion, if you only pick up one of the books any of us have mentioned, get it, and you’ll be well on the way to full-fledged AUFS initiation.
No comments:
Post a Comment