PANZER
(via museoleum)
Good Night … Strong Dream, 1929 by Paul Klee
Man Ray, Emak Bakia 1926
Since it is at variance with the aims of our society [συμπαρανεκρώμενοι, the fellowship of the dead] to provide coherent works or larger unities, since it is not our intention to labor on a Tower of Babel that God in his righteousness can descend and destroy, since we, in our consciousness that such confusion justly occurred, acknowledge as characteristic of all human endeavor in its truth that it is fragmentary, that it is precisely this which distinguishes it from nature’s infinite coherence, that an individual’s wealth consists specifically in his capacity for fragmentary prodigality and what is the producing individual’s enjoyment is the receiving individual’s also, not the laborious and careful accomplishment or the tedious interpretation of this accomplishment but the production and the pleasure of the glinting transiency, which for the producer holds much more than the consummated accomplishment, since it is a glimpse of the idea and holds a bonus for the recipient, since its fulgeration [Fulgeration] stimulates his own productivity–since all this, I say, is at variance with our association’s inclination, indeed, since the periodic sentence just read must almost be regarded as a serious attack on the ejaculatory style in which the idea breaks forth without achieving a breakthrough, to which officiality is attached in our society–therefore, after having pointed out that my conduct still cannot be called mutinous, inasmuch as the bond that holds this periodic sentence together is so loose that the parenthetical clauses therein strut about aphoristically and willfully enough, I shall merely call to mind that my style has made an attempt to appear to be that what it is not: revolutionary.
— Kierkegaard, “The Tragic in Ancient Drama,” Either/Or
Support the JHU Humanities Center →
It’s been a while since I’ve been active on Tumblr, but I thought some of those who read this might be sympathetic to the present plight of Johns Hopkins’ Humanities Center. I’m currently a PhD student there in art history and work closely with this department.
The administration is threatening the potential closure of Johns Hopkins’ Humanities Center at the end of this academic year in July 2017. This would be a very depressing situation not only for the department’s current students, for me (who was drawn to Hopkins in no small part by the Center), and for the Hopkins community at large, but for any of us who value the humanities and are disturbed by their increasingly diminished profile at an increasing number of institutions.
You can read more about the Humanities Center and the current situation here: http://www.supporthumctrjhu.com/ A petition has been set up in opposition to the possible closure, and support from those beyond the university means something. Please sign if you, like me, would hate to see this exciting and storied department close its doors: https://www.change.org/p/support-the-jhu-humanities-center
Please sign, please share, please get word out about an escalation of bureaucratic aggression against the humanities–a series of actions that amounts to little less than an act of intellectual vandalism.
There was a time in our lives when we were so close that nothing seemed to obstruct our friendship and brotherhood, and only a small footbridge separated us. Just as you were about to step on it, I asked you: “Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?”– Immediately, you did not want to anymore; and when I asked you again, you remained silent. Since then mountains and torrential rivers and whatever separates and alienates have been cast between us, and even if we wanted to get together, we couldn’t. But when you now think of that little footbridge, words fail you and you so sob and you marvel.
— Nietzsche in The Gay Science
F. Linkerhand
Theodor-Heuss-Brücke Straßenbrücke Düsseldorf, 1953-1957
Friedrich Tamms, Architekt Fritz Leonhardt, beratender Ingenieu
Scene from the Spanish Inquisition by Henri Regnault (c. 1868-70)
