Intermittent Benjamin: Pretzel, Feather, Pause, Lament, Clowning

[all_unnecessary]

Such unconnected words are the starting point of a game that was very popular during the Biedermeier period. What you had to do was link them up meaningfully without changing their oder. The shorter the sentence and the fewer the intervening clauses, the more the solution was admired. This game produced the most wonderful discoveries, especially

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Harman on DeLanda's assemblages

[agoraphiliac]

"Proximally and for the most part, we would not claim that there is a real assemblage formed by the Pacific Ocean, Helmut Kohl, and the set of all coins and beans that have ever existed and ever will exist. Bizarre scenarios might be invented in which this strange assemblage might be able to exert its force in the world, but this would require immense literary or mechanical labor-- which simply proves that this assemblage does not yet exist. The fact that many strange assemblages can become real should not obscure that they are not now real."

"DeLanda offers some criteria for what makes a real assemblage. One is that an assemblage is able to retroactively affect its parts. The absurdity of the Ocean-Ex-Chancellor-Coin-Bean Assemblage, its ludicrous status as a mere thing of reason, is shown in part by its lack of impact on any of its members. By contrast, we find real assemblages in the form of London and Cairo, Opus Dei, a spider web, and the Knights of Malta, which do set their components into new vibrations. Emergent properties are another sign for DeLanda that an assemblage is real. Opus Dei may bring about flagellations and poisonings that few of its members would have attempted alone. We can also speak of 'redundant causation' here, which for DeLanda is another index of a real assemblage. That is to say, the components of Opus Dei are redundant insofar as no member of the order is likely to be irreplaceable; its ritual conspiracies will unfold with grim regularity through generations to come, long after all current members are deceased."

--"Networks and Assemblages: The Rebirth of Things in Latour and DeLanda," by Graham Harman.

:)

[all_unnecessary]

an assemblage formed by the Pacific Ocean, Helmut Kohl, and the set of all coins and beans that have ever existed and ever will exist.

Coins and beans. :)

real assemblages...set their components into new vibrations: This is very like Benjamin's constellations. Curious about "redundant causation" for the choice of example: ritual conspiracy unfolding with grim regularity. Ça me rechauffe!

Re: :)

[grashupfer]

The sad life story of Helmut Kohl's wife might make for some powerful vibrations in any assemblage.

Re: :(

[all_unnecessary]

Driven to suicide by an allergy to sunlight, yegods.

"I can't go out when the sun comes out," she told the newspaper Die Welt last year. "If it gets cloudy, now and then it's OK. I must avoid bright light. Also from lamps."

In an interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, she expressed sadness that Kohl's Berlin apartment was too bright for her.