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Ep. 237: Walter Benjamin Analyzes Violence (Part Two)

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Continuing on Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” (1921).

Mark, Wes, and Seth keep trying to figure out this difficult essay. Is Benjamin really advocating a workers’ revolution to end the state, or just reflecting on a hypothetical to explore the limits of the concept of violence?

According to Judith Butler’s interpretation of the essay, the takeaway is the alternative to motivation through force, i.e. speech, which Benjamin (in other essays) gives some religious significance, but the way he actually concludes the essay is in a discussion of “divine violence” as somehow transcending means-end analysis and the corruption inherent in violence.

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End song: “Jericho” from hackedepiciotto, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #116.

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Ep. 237: Walter Benjamin Analyzes Violence (Part One)

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On “Critique of Violence” (1921). What is violence? Benjamin gives us a taxonomy: law-creating, law-preserving, mythological, and divine. Then he deconstructs his own distinctions to demonstrate that all state power is rotten through its being founded on and continually re-established by violence or the threat of it.

Don’t wait for part two. Get the full ad-free Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL!

Sponsor: Visit thegreatcoursesplus.com/PEL for a free month of unlimited learning with The Great Courses Plus Video Learning Service.

Ep. 237: Walter Benjamin Analyzes Violence (Citizen Edition)

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On “Critique of Violence” (1921). What is violence? Benjamin gives us a taxonomy: law-creating, law-preserving, mythological, and divine. Then he deconstructs his own distinctions to demonstrate that all state power is rotten through its being founded on and continually re-established by violence or the threat of it.

End song: “Jericho” from hackedepiciotto, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #116.

Episode 189: Authorial Intent (Barthes, Foucault, Beardsley, et al) (Part One)

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On four essays about how to interpret artworks: “The Intentional Fallacy” by W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley (1946), “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes (1967), “What Is an Author?” by Michel Foucault (1969), and “Against Theory” by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels (1982). When you’re trying to figure out what, say, a poem means, isn’t the best way to do that to just ask the author? Most of these guys say no, and that’s supposed to reveal something about the nature of meaning.

This continues on part two, or support us for access to the ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition plus a one-hour follow-up discussion.

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Episode 189: Authorial Intent (Barthes, Foucault, Beardsley, et al) (Citizen Edition)

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On four essays about how to interpret artworks: “The Intentional Fallacy” by W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley (1946), “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes (1967), “What Is an Author?” by Michel Foucault (1969), and “Against Theory” by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels (1982). When you’re trying to figure out what, say, a poem means, isn’t the best way to do that to just ask the author? Most of these guys say no, and that’s supposed to reveal something about the nature of meaning.

End song: “The Auteur” by David J (2018). Listen to Mark’s interview with him in Nakedly Examined Music #73.

Also check out the follow-up discussion.

Episode 136: Adorno on the Culture Industry

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On Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” from Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), plus Adorno’s “Culture Industry Reconsidered” (1963).

How does the entertainment industry affect us? Adorno (armed with Marx and Freud) thinks that our “mass culture” is imposed from the top down to lull us into being submissive workers.

End song: “All Too Familiar,” from around 1992 with all instruments by Mark Linsenmayer, released on The MayTricks..

Episode 136: Adorno on the Culture Industry (Citizen Edition)

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On Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” from Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), plus Adorno’s “Culture Industry Reconsidered” (1963).

How does the entertainment industry affect us? Adorno (armed with Marx and Freud) thinks that our “mass culture” is imposed from the top down to brainwash us into being submissive workers.

End song: “All Too Familiar,” from around 1992 with all instruments by Mark Linsenmayer, released on The MayTricks.

About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

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