THE
PUBLIC
SCHOOL
TELIC ARTS EXCHANGE

Sande Cohen agreed in principle to teach this class on one Sunday (3 hours) in May.

This class is now in the planning stage, after deliberation at The Public School committee meeting 01. The person who proposed/ people who have offered to teach the class has/have been emailed to finalize details.

I'm new to this--did this class already happen? Was it subsumed by the Arcades Project class? Any chance it will still come together?

Hi Ben,
What happened is that by the time this class got scheduled, Sande left the country for the year and we've been having trouble finding someone good to teach it. Should this be a Walter Benjamin scholar? a Rabbi? a Left Behind reading group?

I'll keep my eyes open for Benjamin scholars. And for the messiah, as always...

Indeed, where is this class going? and a derridian scholar would be good -- there are several in the area (USC, UCLA). For a class to-come, robt

Hi All! I am new to scene here, but would love to contribute. I found this proposal really interesting, and seeing its been hanging around for a while, perhaps it could be an idea to try it out. My starting point would be Benjamin but I also have an Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben in mind...coming from a European background that is.

hi stella b,

If you are interested in teaching, we'd love to have you! I'll send you an email shortly.

Thanks!

-caleb

Hi ,

Yes I would be up for teaching this one. Am putting a proposal together - apart from Benjamin and Agamben, there are some great texts by Derrida: altogether it is going to be a random collective of the texts I am interested in lately, on time and religion.
Looking forward to more comments and interest on this subject...

yes, this sounds fabulous. the text derrida and religion would be a great resource. also elanor kaufman would be a great person to get in contact with ...

This sounds great. Lets get it scheduled!

OK. great - getting the reading list under way and will upload to AAARG within next couple of weeks...
The very basic reading comprises of:
Walter Benjamin - Theses on the Philosophy of History
Howard Caygill - Walter Benjamin. The colour of experience
Eduardo Cadava - Words of Light
Jacques Derrida - Faith and Knowledge
Giorgio Agamben - The Time that Remains
& more are going to be added along the way...

I know the start date is a bit far in advance, but is there an order to the reading list, yet?
Thanks in advance, Robert

Ideally, all people attending this class should have read everything before hand. There is no structure to how we are going to approach the texts. All texts will be addressed: this means that it is not going to be an exhaustive analysis of them, neither interpretation of the given reading material.
I would like to see this as an initiative for opening up the reading material to the question of "messianic time" today, in light of recent political/religious/violent acts today (for example: Iranian elections). I encourage all to collect material for the course and bring it along. This can be in the form of audiovisual/newspaper clippings/ etc as long as it is not going to take up too much time of the class to consider it. So be considerate to everyone's time with regards to the material you bring along.

I will post some guidance notes to draw attention to some particular pieces of the texts and questions to which I call all interested participants to consider. There are just a couple more texts to be included, but having said that I don't think that over loading with reading material is of significant importance.
Some notes I have so far:
The Messianic as a "state of exception" more to do with Kairos/Chronos rather than Schmitt based interpretation
In Benjamin's "Theses on the philosophy of history" (XVII) there is a german term used meaning "to preserve, to elevate, to cancel" (from Hegel - "aufheben")
For Agamben (The Time that Remains, p.99-100) , this comes from St. Paul's greek word of "katargesis". Agamben comments the close relation with the Hegelian term. However, "katargesis" is closer to the messianic in terms of the weakness of its power. The messianic is not eschatological. In its weakness it finds power, in not showing or declaring its power it becomes powerful.
St. Paul's "the law of faith" or "nomos pisteos" is a realization and fulfilment of a promise, it is a manifestation of "justice without law"

The Messianic:
(looking at Acts of Religion, p. 56)
Involves - The "coming of the other" it exposes itself to surprise .
It is linked to a desire for justice.
Irreducible to pure knowledge
It is founded in the "testimony" of the other. This testimony has nothing to do with a reality or truth. It is a promise. Therefore, the basic founding element of the relation with the other is a promise to which one has to respond.
It is bound to a promise, a debt
Derrida mentions that "one has to respond" one is called to respond.

"the past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again..." Illuminations, Hannah Arendt, p. 247
"a historian who takes this as his point of departure stops telling the sequence of events like the beads of a rosary...Thus he establishes a conception of the present as the 'time of the now' which is shot through with chips of Messainic time" Illuminations, Hannah Arendt, p. 255
Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History, in Illuminations, p. 245-255

The relationship between photographic time/Benjamin's idea of the now-time or 'jetztzeit' as messianic time: see Eduardo Cadava, p. 98-99

There is a lot of discussion already about the works of Walter Benjamin and countless books, articles, reviews etc. The breadth and length of Walter Benjamin's work is indefinite. As most of his work has been re-interpreted by left/Marxist philosophy, I propose to not go down that path. The force of these texts is beyond a leftist/Marxist reading and they have immense creative power.

To this purpose and to the extent it is not disruptive in the readings, I propose the word "historical" or "history" be substituted by the word "memory" instead

But Benjamin *was* a Marxist, in his own words and the self-understanding of his work. The very title "Theses on the Philosophy of History" makes clear that he is working through a core concept of Marx.

Of course a re-reading can be justified, but i'm not sure that replacing a loaded word, history, one he specifically choose, with another should be done without such justification. Certainly at least not in the name of recapturing a lost authenticity.

This is not to say that it has not been re-interpreted by left/Marxist philosophy, but it is important, in my opinion, to be mindful of the irrefutably central role that Marx played in Benjamin thought.

Perhaps my tactic was a bit extreme: of course there is no question about the connection with this specific text and Benjamin's adherence to "historical materialism"
I am merely proposing a different way to approach this and to not overload it with the "marxist" meaning. It does not do justice to other parts of the work.

There is only a rough structure to the class and the meetings, but for the first meeting I propose something like this:
1) The term Messiah / Apostle
2) Berlin/Walter Benjamin
3) history and prophecy

Since someone has already kindly uploaded Potentialities, please also look at the essays "The Messiah and the Sovereign" & "Benjamin and the Demonic" ( I was just about to upload the essays myself!)
From the Time that Remains Chapter 4 , The Fourth Day
And from Derrida's Faith and Knowledge, p. 48, 55 "there where a certain concept of history itself becomes inappropriate...let us refer first to the messianic and...to chora"

Does anyone have access to Scholem's "The Messianic idea in Judaism and other essays" would be extremely helpful!

Talking to Stella, I think we should have a screening of the film/video _Derrida_, and then have a discussion with Stella and I afterwards. This "should" take place on a different date than one of the messianic meeting times, after all the film starts off with l'a-viner (the "to-come," the future as in "futurity") : perhaps the next day,or mid-week? at night, definitely. I am sure people who are taking the class would be interested, and even those not taking the class.

I will propose it on TPS proposal page.

As ever, Robert
robtsum@gmail.com

The aim of these classes is to get an insight into the messianic, but most of all, to discuss the relevance of the term today. Why is there a comeback with regards to the discussion of religion/religions today? What is the legacy of Christianity or its strange alliance with other religions?

1) Please read Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History" and find all relevant citations on Messianic. Benjamin's text is going to serve as a "backdrop" if we can imagine it so, to all that will follow, so it is good if we always keep his basic concepts in mind.
2) Eduardo Cadava's essay gives a good insight to Benjamin's "Jeztzeit" or "now-time"
We will discuss relationships between non-linear time, photographic time and the time of tele-technics (see Derrida Faith and Knowledge, p. 48-55)
3) Reading Agamben, The time that remains, Chapter 1& particularly 4:
Why does Agamben chose the term Messiah as opposed to Jesus (Iesous)
4) Also see the Appendix, Letter to the Romans, translation: St. Paul's text is widely available in the Bible, as it forms part of the New Testament.
We are briefly going to discuss the figure of St. Paul and the overall structure of the Letter. Consider the term Apostle Paul instead of Saint Paul.
5) History/prophecy: why messiah instead of prophet. Who can be a prophet today? What are the terms of historicity :
Particularly Derrida, Faith and Knowledge, p. 55 " there where a certain concept of history itself becomes innappropriate" ...let us refer first to the "messianic" and to "chora"

Even if you don't get around to reading all the texts, there will be plenty of time to come back to them. The structure will be quite non-linear, we will be going back and forth between the same texts.
Howard Caygill's text is not available yet, it is the only one we will come back to later.

Stella

Wouldn't "messianic" and 'messiamism" be more a Judaic idea, theology, spiritualism, philosophy, then a Christian one? Half the people you want to read are _Jews_ drawing on other _Jewish_ work, ideas, and scripture. I don't know why this is turning into a Christian theo-phio-sopical discussion. Christians' have a "messiah" -- they are simply awaiting his return, which is not at all related to messianism ...

-Robert

hey Stella,

i came across this other Agamben text that is a bit shorter but related - I haven't had a chance to compare them, but maybe this could serve as a placeholder to get a gyst of it for those of us who haven't read the full text:

The Time That is Left:
www.pdcnet.org/pdf/agamben.pdf

What do you think?

looking forward to it,
-liz

Hi,
Yes I do know the other Agamben text- it seems to me an earlier version of what later became Chapter 4 in "The time that remains"
A great one anyway!
Looks like we are all hard at work preparing for tomorrow!
stella

i thought of something that would be useful in bringing in an Islamic angle. It is very short and a good read:
‘Âshûrâ’: This Blood Spilled in My Veins
written by Jalal Toufic
http://a.aaaarg.org/text/3168/‘âshûrâ’-blood-spilled-my-veins

The link did not work, perhaps this one will?

http://a.aaaarg.org/text/3168/‘âshûrâ’-blood-spilled-my-veins

If Stella doesn't mind I want to show a clip from Lynch's Inland Empire next meeting.

As ever, Robert (robtsum@gmail.com)

Thanks for reminding me of Jalal Toufic's work: I was thinking earlier on this week about a performance piece "i am the martyr comrade jamal sati" ...this specific text is another good example.(b.t.w I think the link is working if you access from library).

Sure a clip from Inland Empire should work ; as long as you tie it in with our issues (Derrida/Agamben)

thanks to all for attending today. Now that I have a better idea of what the questions are we can become more concise and dwell on a bit further into the texts

For next week, I'm wondering if we could talk a bit more about some of the political implications of the texts. Here are some related questions...

What is contemporary, or how might we read a contemporary (admittedly American) sense of an increasingly precarious future onto these texts? (Post 9-11 / apocalypse / the idea of progress ending, etc.)

How does the idea of an end function structurally and metaphorically in the texts? Could we look comparatively at Benjamin / Derrida / Agamben and try to understand how each structures time?

This is perhaps where my personal interest in the texts is, more than the ideas about photographic representation, but that's just me, admittedly.

-L

Yes, I very much like that idea. Has anyone seen "9/11: -- the series of short films from 2002 (?) that was never shown in any major theater in the US? Also, I was wondering if anyone has read Judith Butler's _Precarious Life_ and "Afterword: After Loss, Now What," in _Loss_, which both hit on the US, politics, 9/11, loss, and futurity.
Hope to see you all at the Derrida Screening on 7 Aug. at 7PM. It will be so Derrridean ...

As ever, Robert

I absolutely agree about finding ways of making connections with these texts and political events.
Messianic time is a very political sense of time: it is as Agamben would have it, a state of exception or, speaking on the sovereign, "he who is at the same time outside and inside the juridical order" But I think in order to get to the point of the sovereign and law we need to elaborate first on the different notions of time.
I am not the expert on 9/11 and I am sure you have much more to say on the topic than I do, but I do see 9/11 as the quintessential event that happened via an image. Everyone remembers what they were doing and where they were when the images of New York started 'flashing' up on a screen...followed by the countless repetition of the event over and over again in the media. However I find that 9/11 is a complex (and sensitive) issue.
Situating the messianic in a contemporary context and updating it is via what Agamben speaks of towards the end of "the time that remains"; he refers to Benjamin's method of writing or citation. Agamben says this work is most effective when performed incognito.Maybe this way we can begin to understand the inversion or contraction of time. It reminds me of a parallel method of writing, like a Paul Auster novel, or a text within the text, where you are carried away by the footnote more than the main text itself.
One way of comparing time in Benjamin and Agamben is if we look at Benjamin's "jetztzeit" as compared to Paul's "ho nyn kairos" - This connection is made quite explicit by Agamben himself in the last chapter of the "Time that remains" . The issue of a time that is contracted rather than an end (chronological)time is also commented via kairos/chronos.
In Derrida the sense of messianic time is not made explicit at all and I think exactly this could be the entry point in comparing Derrida with the two above: for Derrida it has a lot to do with a "haunting," thus bringing it closer to a post-traumatic, almost psychoanalytic event (his reference to chora). Again, please see p. 48-55 and we will discuss the issues.
9/11 I think comes in as a post(post) colonial event. I mean it could belong to the messianic, as it is an inversion of the event of terrorism right in the heart of the 'empire'. But apart from the event itself there needs to be an understanding of the other side, of the terrorists as martyrs. The very poetic texts of Jalal Toufic are poignant in this discussion.
I would also like to draw attention to today's event; the endorsement of the Iranian president. This is interesting in the fact that western media were restricted in the coverage of the event/ we won't have immediate images of what exactly is happening in Iran. It has been very concealed. I attach some links below:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2009/aug/05/ahmadinejad-sworn-in
http://www.facebook.com/mousavi
http://a.aaaarg.org/issue/3227/messianic-time

http://la.thepublicschool.org/class/1415

oops, i meant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXuqb275Gy4
sorry...

Hi everyone,
For our second meeting this Saturday, I propose to structure it specifically around the texts of Agamben and Derrida. (together with all we have posted and discussed so far, including audiovisuals etc.)

From the "Time that Remains" p. 59-87 & 113-145 with particular attention to citation in Benjamin, Kairos/Chronos, oath, belief in and performative.
From Derrida "Faith and Knowledge" p. 42-82 with particular attention to historicity, legacy of Kantian philosophy,reflecting faith, Messianic - promise -l'avenir...

Which of course we will be discussing this Friday with the event of Derrida documentary.
Look forward to seeing you at the screening tomorrow!

Stella

In taking up this issue I feel somehow I have made a pact with you to reach a metaphorical promised land; what better than the coming of the Other, he/she who arrives too early or too late//out of sync, out of joint/a detail that always eludes us and escapes into the desert/a sense of failure that is always somehow present/faint representations that you can hardly draw out a shadow from/neither in darkness nor in total light/that which finds power in its weakness/l’avenir or what is to come?

So for our last and final session I would like you to take the lead. It’s time to talk violence and start tearing apart or tearing through : empowerment/weak power, state of exception, acts of violence, katargesis, Islam, power of the unexpected, remote acts of violence/warfare tactics/martyrdom...etc. How far and to which extent can we stretch the state of exception? What could the messianic be in connection to the state of exception? bring in anything that you want to discuss with regards to the above and messianic
And because we can’t feed the soul without keeping the stomach content too, I would like to share with you folded leaves - mediterranean appetizers...as a thank you and a gesture of a physically folded [time]
Stella

some excellent online links:

http://contaminations.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/seven-days-with-agamben-v/

http://notesforthecomingcommunity.blogspot.com/2008/04/tiqqun-de-la-noch...

Inoperative time/idleness/destructive time

Katargesis

And also look at TIQQUN

Thanks Stella for a really interesting last class that spread across many areas. It was, indeed, very enjoyable and productive today, even if some questions were left as questions, which is hardly ever a "bad" thing.

I am most interested in all the non-western and South American artists that were brought up, and I am highly interested in the artists/intellectuals that Caleb raised, or brought (literally) to the table. Thanks for that.

I hope that any of you may provide me with more names of non-western and South American artists (esp. performance, body, and video artists); I know that my teaching on this matter is not as broad -- or reflective -- as the students need it to be, so any name dropping will be most appreciated.

Again, thanks for the great class, and I do believe it left many doors open for other classes to-come.

As ever, Robert

Thanks to all of you who participated and made this such a great class!
I too agree with Robert and think there are many more potentialities opening up; new territories within the contemporary art scene that are just recently surfacing beg for more attention, with the example of South American art. From a personal point of view, I would like to see more photographically oriented discussions as well.
I can only see this as a starting point and look forward to many more collaborations, projects, discussions, experiments...the L.A. Public School is an amazing place where theoretical ideas meet practice in a public space that is extremely open and accessible. I am really happy for being introduced into this scheme by Adam in the first place and felt so welcome by all of you in the process...

stella,

it sounds like you basically wrote a class proposal. i would take it: "the messianic and photography in western and non-western photography." reading benjamin, barthes, sontage, derrida, cixous and others ...

as ever, robert

I can't take all the credit for that one! Collaborative work is more productive!!
I am in ;-)

Stella

Here is an email exchange between me and my adviser, which touches on a point raised in class: Christianizing "messianic time" ...

My Email:

Dear dP,

I was wondering if you would want to have a brief email
exchange about Agamben and messianic time. I am reading
_The Time that Remains_ by Agamben, and I am a bit
"irritated" by this turn to the Apostle Paul (other philosophers have
done the same; for example, Badiou) and his attempt to think messianic
time through Christian texts. It seems to me that there is this
certain Christianizing of messianic time -- one may even say a
"Christian (re-)turn" in philosophy.

I mean with Derrida, in all he wrote on messianism without messanicity,
it is from a "Jewish tradition,"or field of thought, a space of
intensities and virtualities, and it seems to me that Agamben and
Badiou are christianizing messianic time, which first came from Benjamin,
Blanqui and others. It seems as soon as the Jew died (Derrida), to put it
bluntly, and for strategic reasons, there has been this (re-)turn to
Christianity (or "simply" a re-foregrounding of it), which, as far as I
know, Derrida was always undermining, given Western philosophy is
based on Christina idea(l)s.

I bring up messianic time because I am trying to reckon with this in
parts of my dissertation, which troubles the teleology of art history,
and I think that Agamben and Badiou (and others) are, in some ways,
un-doing the force of Derrida (and others) when it comes to messianic
time as a concept that comes from specifically Jewish thinkers.

Thoughts? Insights?

Reply:

dear rbt,

I don't have the time to adequately respond right now except to say that I think your take on things,
and especially regarding the recent blunting / blurring of the force of Derrida's profoundly unsettling
critique (especially on the part of the [not-so-crypto]-neocon Badiou) is right on the mark.
I look forward to seeing how this plays out in your text.

best, dp