.
Street view: a series of unfortunate events #5: photo by Michael Wolf, 2010
The less subjects live anymore, the more abrupt, frightening, the death.
Street view: a series of unfortunate events #7: photo by Michael Wolf, 2010
...without power over it and ridiculous before it...
Street view: a series of unfortunate events #51: photo by Michael Wolf, 2010
Death and history... form a constellation.
Street view: a series of unfortunate events #23: photo by Michael Wolf, 2010
... the downfall of the individual brings down the entire construction of bourgeois existence along with it...
Street view: a series of unfortunate events #1: photo by Michael Wolf, 2010
Hence the constant panic in the sight of death.
Street view: a series of unfortunate events #1: photo by Michael Wolf, 2010
Hence the constant panic in the sight of death.
Street view: a series of unfortunate events #23: photo by Michael Wolf, 2010
Death as such, or as a biological Ur-phenomenon, is not to be extracted out of the coils of history...
Street view: a series of unfortunate events #14: photo by Michael Wolf, 2010
...the form, by which the consciousness comes to grips with death,
varies along with the concrete conditions of how one dies...
Street view: a series of unfortunate events #30: photo by Michael Wolf, 2010
What death does to what is socially condemned, is anticipated biologically in beloved human beings of great age;
Street view: a series of unfortunate events #34: photo by Michael Wolf, 2010
not only their bodies but their ego,
everything which determines them as human beings,
crumbles without illness and violent intervention.
everything which determines them as human beings,
crumbles without illness and violent intervention.
Street view: a series of unfortunate events #33: photo by Michael Wolf, 2010
has, in its indifference towards that experience, something foolish and cynical about it.
Street view: a series of unfortunate events #35: photo by Michael Wolf, 2010
Whoever turns away from what negated their possible fulfillment, pulls a face at the metaphysical need.
Street view: a series of unfortunate events #38: photo by Michael Wolf, 2010
Theodor Adorno: Dying Today, from Negative Dialectics (1966) (edited excerpts), translated by Michael Redmond, 2001
7 comments:
With the exception of "the downfall of the individual brings down the entire construction of bourgeois existence along with it", which I either am not understanding fully in the context of Dying Today or, possibly, I disagree with, I find the remainder extremely moving, especially the section about the disintegration of old people and how we guard against thinking about their condition in a straightforward, moral and respectable way.
The Michael Wolf images are incredible. I’ve been in such a cocoon, I was unaware of Wolf’s work, but I spent a lot of time with it last night. (Your two posts were the last things that occupied me before going to bed.) The birds and the lower shadow figure, especially, haunted me through the late evening, sort of like seeing a real world version of The Omen. Unlike the movie, obviously, there's no distancing yourself or hiding from the action. Figures and phenomena captured in mid-life and transmitted over the internet seem perfectly real to me.
@Curtis ... I'm thinking of that line in the context of something like Ernest Becker's "Denial of Death," an overall societal death denial rather than just the individual.
Could be wrong there though ...
Don
Yes, these images from Michael Wolf are as Curtis says "incredible," the Adorno excerpts "extremely moving" (reading this just now I felt my skin begin to grip -- "beloved human beings of great age" (my father, 6 weeks shy of 90, passed away a year ago; my mother just turned 87). . . .
interesting!
I think Don's suggestion re. the overall societal denial of death comes near to the motive for this post. A recent New Yorker piece by a doctor went into the reaction of shock, rejection and and anger he has experienced from people who have been told they are going to die. I think the society enforces upon its subservient members and subjects an expectation that death will fit within the uniform administered structure of the society. In truth, however, there is no place in that structure for any peace and dignity in dying. I don't think this is equally true in all societies. Angelica's parents, who to save their lives once had to flee the society into which they were born (Europe), would later find themselves welcomed and ultimately offered a large measure of peace and dignity, at the end of their lives, by another kind of society altogether, on the other side of the world (in New Zealand). So obviously these things vary from society to society. Personally I am finding American society a terrifying site in which to approach the end of my life. The obstacles and ordeals all but overwhelming, the consolations certainly nowhere to be discovered in the area of society or any of its present structures.
The Wolf photos seem to complement the sense of coldness and numbed shock Adorno diagnoses in this section toward the end of Negative Dialectics. Adorno's world view had been changed irrevocably by his horrified reactions, first, to the news of the full extent of the events of Auschwitz, which he learned of in America, and second, by the experience of his social research project in America. I think he felt that extermination planning in Auschwitz and marketing strategy in America had much in common, particularly in the organized reduction of the individual human being to a statistic.
Men and women live as if they were never going to die and yet, we will all go through that door. The great mystery of what lies beyond has puzzled many minds. Mine is stuck with one question: why are we supposed to learn so much in life if then we have to leave it?
I no longer believe in heaven. Should we believe in Re-incarnation? Another dimension? Who knows... And yet, we will all learn about that one day...
Lucy,
Your question is a good one.
In my case, though, the lament would probably be more like, "Why do I have to leave now, when I haven't learned anything yet?"
If I could be reincarnated, I would like to come back in the form of an Andean Fox, or Culpeo.
That way I might get a peek at Patagonia...
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