dr. clinton peter verdonschot

The sense of direct action

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

Even though direct action is as popular as ever, we lack an understanding of the sense of this unique form of activism. Sceptics reject direct action as wildly idealistic, counterproductive, non-constructive. This article attempts to show that, strictly speaking, the criticism is correct in holding that direct action is practically irrational: the paradoxes of direct action are irresolvable for practical agents. But this is no reason to reject direct action at all. Instead, this article aims to argue that direct action’s sense should rather be construed as aesthetic. Borrowing a concept from Theodor W. Adorno’s aesthetics, I argue that direct actions are social monads: separated from the practices of daily life under capitalism, they nevertheless express the contradictions of that life in a way that, at the same time, holds out hope for an alternative future.

Translating the oppressed: a Dutch controversy regarding The Hill We Climb (2021)

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Disclaimer: this blogpost was originally written as a contribution to De Filosoof, a magazine published for and by the philosophy students at Utrecht University. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of the editors.

A Dutch controversy

On 26 February 2021, Dutch poet and writer Lucas Rijneveld announced on Twitter he was declining the offer to translate Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb. It was not entirely unsurprising, but still rather sudden; less than a week after the Dutch publisher, Meulenhoff, had announced Rijneveld as their translator. Clearly, however, Rijneveld was a bad choice. He is not a translator by trade and just a year prior he had confessed to a poor command of the English language in an unrelated interview. This alone would be reason enough for criticising Meulenhoff. Here, however, I want to focus on a particular kind of criticism that questions Rijneveld’s ability to translate the poem not in terms of his English language proficiency, but in terms of his social location.

Escapisme als kunstpolitiek: de propaganda van Black Panther (2018)

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

Escapism is omnipresent in contemporary mass art, even though it has a bad reputation. This article traces that reputation back to a pragmatist conviction that art should give expression to experiences, and morals, from everyday practical life. Through a philosophical conversation with two pragmatist aestheticians, W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul C. Taylor, and an art-critical discussion of an escapist film, Black Panther (2018), I provide a pragmatist defence of the use of escapism as political-aesthetic motif. Works that set themselves the task of communicating standards of radical equality (among which: standards of racial equality applicable to white supremacist societies), cannot appropriately express what they want since they necessarily fail to appropriately address their audience. The only utopian course that remains is to react negatively to, by trying to escape, the norms that a present audience necessarily imports from white supremacist society.

Can art become theoretical?

Wed, 07 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

Can art-scientific works succeed against a standard properly belonging to them? In other words: can there be such a thing as art-science, or do such works merely belong to either art or science while superficially seeming to belong to the other sphere as well? Surprisingly perhaps, these concerns overlap with a chief point of contention as regards Adorno’s mature thinking, in particular his Aesthetic Theory: whether or not it is coherent to believe that knowledge can have an aesthetic form. Usually, this question is put as Rüdiger Bubner did: “Can theory become aesthetic?”

'Demand the impossible!', anarchism's ontological argument?

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The prefigurative politics of the ‘68 student movement

What is direct action? What differentiates it from civil disobedience, conscientious objection, and other forms of activism? Benjamin Franks argues that, while all these actions may be grassroots, only direct action is prefigurative. Only direct action is a way of exemplifying the kind of society one strives for, by performing the action itself.¹ But what does it mean to prefigure something?

As examples of direct action, Franks mentions sit-ins, squatting, occupying public spaces, violence and vandalisms most clearly when undertaken against oppressors (though Franks also counts certain kinds of racist terrorism as a form of right-wing direct action, p. 28-29).² What makes these potentially forms of direct action, is that people may do these things in order to instantiate the ideal they are striving for (Franks 2003, 18-19).

Dime store irony: The Mouse in the Mountain (1943)

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Norbert Davis’ dime store detective novel The Mouse in the Mountain (1943) is surprisingly good. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s favourite novel was, perhaps, ahead of its time.

In terms of both atmosphere and narrative, Davis reaches heights comparable to the greats of the genre; Arthur Conan Doyle, but especially Agatha Christie. The story even takes a page out of the play book of the classical Greek tragedy: there is first, an ominous setting that remains largely unchanged throughout the story, the ancient Mexican town of Los Altos, perched on the side of a mountain overlooking a deep abyss. And second, the plot is for the most part driven by the actions of its characters, where each actions seems both inevitably caused by its precedents yet also the free choice of its agent. There is, however, one deus ex machina and it is a big one, advancing the plot in several ways: a massive earthquake that shakes Los Altos and cuts off the only route of escape from it. One is tempted to grant Davis this one, as it permits him to create that isolated, engrossing atmosphere that the story shares not only with Greek tragedy, but also Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, and Death on the Nile.

'That They Point Is All There Is to It': Wittgenstein’s Romanticist Aesthetics

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

Why is aesthetics important to Wittgenstein? What, according to him, is the function of the aesthetic? My answer consists of three parts: first, I argue that Wittgenstein finds himself in an aporia of normative consciousness – that is to say, a problem with regard to our awareness of the world in terms of its relation to a norm. Second, I argue that the function of Wittgenstein’s aesthetic writings is to deal with this aporia. Third, through a comparison with Friedrich Schlegel’s writings on allegory, I try to show that the way in which Wittgenstein resolves the aporia renders him a Romanticist philosopher. The point of an aesthetic interaction, for Wittgenstein, is that it can render clear what cannot be described without running against the walls of our cage: the absolute. Through aesthetic interactions we are able to (indirectly) access a ground for norms by which we experience ourselves as unconditionally bound.

Fragments of the infinite in About Endlessness (2020)

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Infinity, as such, is unrepresentable because representations are, by definition, finite. So how do you make a film About Endlessness (2020, dir. Roy Andersson)? Precisely by representing the fragments. A fragment, represented as such, is not only about what it is, but also its own incompleteness: it is also about whatever it is a fragment of. In being able to represent what it does not, the fragment also gains the power to represent what is strictly speaking outside the bounds of all possible representation: that which is endless. This is all exceedingly abstract, but Andersson’s film is not. It is a wonderfully direct, extremely intimate, and surprisingly accessible series of tableaus that encapsulate, within the span of a view minutes, entire lifetimes.

Change, but don't improve your life: (mis)interpreting Rilke's 'Archaic Torso of Apollo' (1908)

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Rainer Maria Rilke has a famous sonnet. It’s about a headless sculpture with a strong affective power. The poem eventually became very famous, particularly the very last part of its very last line of verse: “Du mußt dein Leben ändern”, usually rendered as “You must change your life”. Though it is very famous, it is not often understood. A particular catalyst of misunderstanding is German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, who took this final line and made it the title of one of his books. The book is very long. But here, in this brief blog post, I will show that its length is not to be taken as an indicator of erudition. Rather, the interpretation of the poem which becomes the departure point of the entire book, is a blatant misreading.

'Perhaps laughter will then have formed an alliance with wisdom': Nietzsche in The Beach Bum (2019)

Sun, 31 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Professed Nietzscheans do not have a great track record when it comes to actually understanding Nietzsche. There’s even an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the topic of misunderstanding Nietzsche, but the following is a more practical test to determine whether someone claiming to create their own values is really Nietzschean about it: is this person capable of laughing at literally anything? Of feeling nothing but joy when it comes to reconciling oneself to one’s fate? Moondog, the protagonist from Harmony Korine’s new comedy The Beach Bum (2019), passes the test with flying colours.

To see that which is enlightened: Living the Light - Robby Müller (2018)

Fri, 21 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Light, for any cinematographer, is first and foremost a technical problem: how do you make sure that the scene’s action is adequately perceptible? At what point does the light’s brightness block out the detail of the shot? Beyond the technicalities, light exerted on Robby Müller a positively metaphysical attraction. When Müller died this summer (aged 78), cinema lost a relatively unsung hero. Luckily, we have Claire Pijman’s new documentary Living the Light - Robby Müller (trailer) to show us how light became for Müller an object of endless fascination, disarming and empowering him at the same time.

Beneath the cobbles lie the Hamptons: violence and aesthetics in Weekend at Bernie's (1989)

Thu, 24 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

During May ‘68, 50 years ago this past month, Paris students took to the streets, literally. Under the slogan “Sous les pavés, la plage!” (“Beneath the cobbles, the beach!”), protesters tore loose the stones that made up the streets of the Quartier Latin in Paris, so as to gain ammunition against the gendarmes. But this was not only an anticapitalist battlecry. At the same time, it was an affirmation of one of capitalism’s driving forces: the desire for leisure and luxury, the ‘beach’ waiting at the end of their struggles. While not an activist film, the 1989 comedy Weekend at Bernie’s (directed by Ted Kotcheff, written by Robert Klane) also represents an attempt to get to the beach, the luxury summer estates of The Hamptons, New York. And like the ‘68ers, the film’s protagonists are youths violently and aesthetically seeking to liberate themselves from the yoke of capitalism: by deploying the dead body of their boss as an object to be manipulated in a performance of the nouveaux riche lifestyle.

Aesthetic reasons against Kevin Spacey

Fri, 05 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Separating work and maker?

Author’s note (11 December 2022): this is an English translation of a post that previously appeared on Dutch philosophy blog BijNaderInzien.org. In this post, I react critically to a blog by dr. Kathleen Stock in which she argued that we can (and should) separate work from maker in aesthetically appreciating a work. Neither of these posts deal with what dr. Stock has become more famous for, her opinions on trans issues, opinions which I do not share at all. I believe in trans rights and do my best to stand up for them.

Dunkirk (2017) never happened: Christopher Nolan's fabrication of history

Thu, 24 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

In blatant honesty: I am not a fan of the films of Christopher Nolan. At best, his films provoke in me just a mild irritation. An annoyance which, sadly, gets amplified, when a reviewer, without the slightest sense of irony, glorifies him as the next Stanley Kubrick. So, with that confession in mind, one would be justified in thinking that I was stacking the cards against Nolan’s new war film Dunkirk (2017). To be frank, Nolan’s latest is also his finest yet. But I still don’t think it’s a good film. Dunkirk, while officially about the evacuation of British soldiers from France during the opening stages of the Second World War in 1940, is not really a war film. It barely even classifies as cinema, rather it is more akin to an episode of confabulation.

dr. clinton peter verdonschot

The sense of direct action

Abstract

Translating the oppressed: a Dutch controversy regarding *The Hill We Climb* (2021)

A Dutch controversy

Escapisme als kunstpolitiek: de propaganda van *Black Panther* (2018)

Abstract

Can art become theoretical?

Abstract

'Demand the impossible!', anarchism's ontological argument?

The prefigurative politics of the ‘68 student movement

Dime store irony: *The Mouse in the Mountain* (1943)

'*That* They Point Is All There Is to It': Wittgenstein’s Romanticist Aesthetics

Abstract

Fragments of the infinite in *About Endlessness* (2020)

Change, but don't improve your life: (mis)interpreting Rilke's 'Archaic Torso of Apollo' (1908)

'Perhaps laughter will then have formed an alliance with wisdom': Nietzsche in *The Beach Bum* (2019)

To see that which is enlightened: *Living the Light - Robby Müller* (2018)

Beneath the cobbles lie the Hamptons: violence and aesthetics in *Weekend at Bernie's* (1989)

Aesthetic reasons against Kevin Spacey

Separating work and maker?

*Dunkirk* (2017) never happened: Christopher Nolan's fabrication of history

Introduction

Translating the oppressed: a Dutch controversy regarding The Hill We Climb (2021)

Escapisme als kunstpolitiek: de propaganda van Black Panther (2018)

Dime store irony: The Mouse in the Mountain (1943)

'That They Point Is All There Is to It': Wittgenstein’s Romanticist Aesthetics

Fragments of the infinite in About Endlessness (2020)

'Perhaps laughter will then have formed an alliance with wisdom': Nietzsche in The Beach Bum (2019)

To see that which is enlightened: Living the Light - Robby Müller (2018)

Beneath the cobbles lie the Hamptons: violence and aesthetics in Weekend at Bernie's (1989)

Dunkirk (2017) never happened: Christopher Nolan's fabrication of history