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Contributed by Scott Horton
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Walter Benjamin is a vogue figure among post-modernists in American academia. I?ve been to a number of conferences at which speakers quote his works, usually followed by a grating mispronunciation of his name and some silly po-mo interpretation of his writing. I wonder how Benjamin would rate his late-found notoriety and the metamorphosis of his thought that it presents. But Benjamin is an important writer and thinker?he?s a literary critic, a philosopher, an impressive word sculptor. . . .
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Contributed by Scott Horton
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Poems in Terza Rima . . .
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Contributed by Administrator
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?One of the most peculiar characteristics of human nature,? writes Lotze, ?is. . . alongside so much selfishness in specific circumstances, the lack of jealousy which the present displays toward the future.? This observation leads us to guard an image of happiness which is thoroughly tinted by the particular era to which the course of our own existence has assigned us. The kind of happiness that could arouse envy in us exists only in the air we have breathed, among people we could have talked to, women who could have given themselves to us. In other words, our image of happiness is inextricably tied up with our image of salvation. The same applies to our view of the past, which is the subject of history. The past carries with it a secret index by which it is connected to salvation. Are we not touched by a whiff of the breeze which surrounded those who passed before us? Do we not find in voices to which we lend our ear and echo of those now made silent? Do the women who now we court not have sisters, whom they no longer recognize? If so, then there exists a secret agreement between the generations which have passed before and our own. Our appearance on earth was anticipated. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past lays claim. That claim cannot be simply dismissed. The historical materialist understands why. . . .
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Contributed by Ken Silverstein
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Until recently, I thought the odds that the United States would attack Iran were less than fifty-fifty, but the chances of a military confrontation are clearly growing (as my colleague Scott Horton has been reporting on for some time). Earlier this year, I asked a former CIA official, who was stationed in the Persian Gulf during the first Gulf War and served in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, if he though the administration was planning a military strike. ?I don?t think the administration is about to carry out military action,? he told me. ?The military does not want to do this. We will lose planes if there is a massive air strike over Iran. We?ll have pilots killed and captured.? . . .
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Contributed by Administrator
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John T. Scott was born in Gentilly and raised in the Lower Ninth Ward. He used to say he tried to capture the musicality of New Orleans in the colors and rhythms of his sculptures. Scott, who was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, died Saturday at the age of 67.
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