Pill Pod 160 - Walter Benjamin on Leftist Content (exclusive)
Added 2024-03-18 04:53:12 +0000 UTCWe read Walter Benjamin's (perhaps) undelivered address to the Anti-Fascist Club: The Author as Producer, and try to test whether or not it holds up. Please see the attachment to follow along.
Comments
Love Eric’s takes on pretty well everything. Eric, you are so amazingly articulate.
Greg Ireland
2025-07-08 00:42:36 +0000 UTCI’m paying like $12 to access all the regular (non-video) episodes
Jonny Blade
2024-05-12 18:12:09 +0000 UTCSo cold mediums are fascist and tone is a medium? Makes sense of text based social media. And demonstrates how agency is siphoned out of us and into the medium, which makes me think of Mesoamerican heart extractions. Were they just fishing for likes?
Alex B
2024-03-30 12:53:42 +0000 UTCyou know Benjamin writes about the fragment, the broken vessel … maybe in one of his language essays. He’s for the fragment as opposed the totality of the whole. But i think there’s a big diff between his notion of infinite fragmention and marketing demographics. Anyway, Benjamin and Brecht were also buds… vacationing in Denmark? Also, just to note, a big deal was made to correct the title to the ‘good PERSON of schezuan’ . It’s also a didactic play a bit different from his other didacticism bc here the play itself is his theory about audience. And shows that the distanciation thing in Brecht is distorted by later critics. In fact schechuan contains his theory of audience which is to find one worthy person for whom he has written his play. I am being too brief here bc i am walking.. However I kid u not. Look it up. I think theres a 70s translation of the play and the introduction goes into this and the correct title . Forgetting the details of who wrote the intro and when. I will send along later. And i think your explanation of having a position in the process of production is spot on, and what Eric says, and this also folds into that audience theory of Brecht’s ( and maybe Benjamin). Fair enough to find it impossible or even to disagree w WB’s position, however, it may be the only position that could produce a diff relation to consumption, or a diff position than the ‘critical’ self reflective ,separated, position of the critic. In this i disagree that Benj or Brecht r putting all on rhetoric or tropes or stances of irony… I think Eric is onto something in foregrounding production… and all that implies.. means of production. Echoes of Deleuze’s emphasis on production. But I also agree that it seems nearly impossible to do as a content creator especially if u want what constitutes an audience to support you…especially in 21c North America. But, I think we have to consider at least, if not totally believe ,that there’s a possibility of experimental form that produces a different effect from the overproduction of images, etc. etc. Maybe what’s needed is how you, as author/producer , weigh in to control the venue and format of viewing or the consumption of your production. As much as I love Baudrillard, this is where you cannot take him. It can’t be the “solution “that you just have to find the joy in the disaster of capitalism. I think Baudrillard must himself be ironic in this and perhaps he was just a little bit out of gas for the moment. But, I think it’s very important to still be able to consider the possibilities presented by Benj/Brecht here in someway. And though there appears then to be a need for explanation ( ‘criticism’) to explain the form bc an experimental form is so difficult to understand…but this seems to be what’s at stake with looking for the one good person/reader/audience. If you have to explain it, you have lost the apsect of what makes it resist the machine/system. It’s really on ‘the good person of Schezuan’ — the reader/viewer/audience to take up the struggle involved in ‘art’ and intellectual activity, and this task does not or should not be in any way a matter of class elitism either. Anyway, I am happy for y’all’s excellent teaching—- as opposed to explaining—didacticism does not serve the same function as explanation—- and helping me connect the dots. I hope my lazy ass doesn’t fail entirely at the task. I do hope I am worthy of Pils’ pod work… haha. Also so glad to hear more on Benjamin and Brecht, great thinkers of the revolutionary and not succumbing to the bourgeois normy status quo, even if it means death…heroic Walter.
Zachary Manenti
2024-03-27 19:16:05 +0000 UTCWe in the disc love your memes heh
Akepa
2024-03-21 03:29:04 +0000 UTC41:45 Eric on memes. Hell yeah meme coverage. Blessed are the memes, for they will inherit the earth. I think there can be a lot of depth to memes, if you make them and put them out there. Most of the memes I make are Shitposts of weird ass mental connections and images that come up as I read a certain passage in philosophy. It sort of serves as a bookmark or a reminder of something I once read that moves me. It's sort of beautiful honestly. Enjoyed this one. Thanks.
ageOfBumFires
2024-03-20 23:43:35 +0000 UTCSame!
Waya Dalimber
2024-03-20 17:45:43 +0000 UTCim pro banter and pro tangent! Rhizome away!
Socialswine
2024-03-20 12:01:26 +0000 UTCWell geez I would ask what y’all thought about the corecore aesthetic on tik tok…but I get it. Art is dead and aesthetic doesn’t matter.
Jack
2024-03-20 03:29:45 +0000 UTCIt’s ironic how just a couple episodes ago you mocked the imaginative conservatives for complaining that people like Disney and not what they think is valuable, but then you yourselves call people stupid for essentially the same thing. I hope ya’ll can find room for each other in that ivory tower. Oh wait, I forgot, the masses are the snobs because we can’t see that ya’ll know what’s best for us and failed the give you your revolution because, you know, alienation and stuff. My bad! 😉
Timothy Kenner
2024-03-20 02:16:38 +0000 UTCI think u guys should do an episode on dune I know victor wasn’t a fan but it does have interesting discussion material. It also kind of relates to the Christianity episodes because dune deals heavily with religion as manufactured control over the masses and the problem of messiah figures
Giovanni
2024-03-19 16:38:31 +0000 UTCI think any meaning people walk away from engaging with a work of art says more about them than the art itself. I'm a non traditional Christian in deep south Mississippi and the Dune films sparked conversation about people being manipulating in waiting for a Messiah. There is such plurality in art nowadays even within a single work that the only way engaging with it can grow someone in any direction is if the viewer is thoughtful enough to be reflexive on what is triggered in their world of meaning. This is something I've seen some of my friends do automatically, even very conservative ones, although I don't really know how common it is.
Nicholas Leach
2024-03-18 15:49:06 +0000 UTCAligned with the Benjamin quote about boredom an creativity is Fishers statement that, with the advent of the smart phone, "The modern condition is one in which no one's ever bored, but everything is boring."
Jonas Ludvigsen
2024-03-18 09:33:07 +0000 UTCFor some Brechtian standup comedy, checkout Stuart Lee
Andy Madeley
2024-03-18 09:09:54 +0000 UTC
