The new year appears to be off to a fine start. I'm fortunate enough to be blogging from a gorgeous small hotel in Toronto, where I'm ensconced en famille, ipod cranked as the kids watch a movie (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs) as the snow falls softly on the other side of the windows and I embark on my first post of 2010. This time last year I wasn't yet a blogger; with nearly 100 posts under my belt, I'm feeling at least legit. As I mentioned two or three posts back, my idea is to take as a point of departure for the next several posts the question of what Walter Benjamin has to teach us, in our time - for example, about blogging. For the most part, I'll simply quote his writings, adding commentary where appropriate.
I begin by returning to a work that I cited recently: One-Way Street, which is translated and collected in Selected Writings, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Harvard University Press, 1996, vol. 1, 444). This is the first section of the text, entitled "Filling Station." Its pertinence to blogging seems to me self-evident.
The construction of life is at present in the power far more of facts than of convictions, and of such facts as have scarcely ever become the basis of convictions. Under these circumstances, true literary activity cannot aspire to take place within a literary framework; this is, rather, the habitual expression of its sterility. Significant literary effectiveness can come into being only in a strict alternation between action and writing; it must nurture the inconspicuous forms that fit its influence in active communities better than does the pretentious, universal gesture of the book - in leaflets, brochures, articles, and placards [and blog posts, and tweets... - ed]. Only this prompt language shows itself actively equal to the moment. Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.
Posted by: |