paradigm shift in contemporary critical theory

 …a with this much Walter Benjamin, a dead cert the contrary (digital) flâneuse (irony noted) would pick it. What else can I say? Shift happens. Omnivore is always a treat.

....From critical theory to psychological warfare — how Franwithkfurt School intellectuals fought the Nazi enemy: Ulrich Plass reviews Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort by Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, and Otto Kirchheimer (ed. Raffaele Laudani).

Craig Shrimpton (Goldsmiths): Fascism in Benjamin's Historical Materialism: Crisis and the Aestheticisation of Politics. Joel White reviews Working with Walter Benjamin: Recovering a Political Philosophy by Andrew Benjamin. Fallen angel: Ian Penman on the tragic life and enduring influence of critic Walter Benjamin. From TNR’s series “Book that changed my mind”, Stephanie LaCava: “Walter Benjamin was my first crush”.

Barbarism: Anna-Verena Nosthoff on notes on the thought of Theodor W. Adorno.

read the rest at paradigm shift in contemporary critical theory - bookforum.com / omnivore

Walk like a Roman | TLS

quelques mots sur l'histoire de la flânerie... c'est classique... 

In Walking in Roman Culture, Timothy M. O’Sullivan eloquently explains that how and why a person walked were crucial cultural indicators in ancient Rome: ways of walking divided barbarians from Romans, and good Romans from bad. If this aspect of Roman culture has not often bulked large in modern studies of the ancient world, that is partly because – as O’Sullivan notes – we have chosen not to recognize it, or have even actively “translated it away”.

The key Latin word is incessus, which literally means “gait” or “how a person moves on their feet”. It is now regularly translated as “bearing” or “demeanour”; but that removes all the sense of movement from it. “He has a noble bearing” may seem to us a more “natural” thing to say than “He has a noble way of walking”. It is not often what the Romans said, wrote or meant. In ancient Rome how you walked was a sign of who you were....Walking was also closely related to morals and social status. 


Walk like a Roman | TLS