The eclipse, Hegel, and the American Road

I logged 2400 miles of American roads, 14 hours of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, 3 full Brewers game broadcasts (all the enemy radio feed on XM), and 1 total eclipse as seen from Glendo State Park in Wyoming.

I woke up on Sunday morning and decided to forgo my Midwestern eclipse experience plans because the weather looked uncertain for optimal viewing.  En route to Deadwood, SD, I listened through the Preface (very familiar!), the Introduction and the early parts of A. Consciousness. 

My copy of Phenomenology was safely at home on my bookshelf, sitting right next to Susan Buck-Morss' excellent Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (which I have read in its entirety!).  I bought a used copy (originally Elizabeth Trejack's it seems) at a book shop in Minnesota.  It was highlighted and underlined in a few very specific sections (it opens automatically to Lordship and Bondage), and otherwise appears largely untouched.

I first learned of the existence of a fellow called Hegel and his friend "Geist" on my first day of classes at the University of Chicago.  I read the greatest hits from Hegel's masterwork, and nodded knowingly when his influence on later theorists was discussed.  On arrival to UW-M, I heard less about Hegel (though there was quite a lot more mention of Foucault, who I only heard come up once at UChicago, and that was in a joke from a Zadie Smith reading about introducing someone at an academic party as "... she likes Michel Foucault and costume jewelry"), but dutifully put Phenomenology and Buck-Morss' book on my prelim reading list.

Naturally, like most good reading lists, I did not read most of most of the books on the list, but excel at the academic art of talking about books you have not read.  I have also not read that book, though I've held it in my hands, and skimmed through bits, and I know people who have read it.

During my long drives of the last several days, I've read through the first 513 paragraphs of Hegel's work, starting and stopping and occasionally paying more and less attention as one is wont to do when reading or listening or existing at all, I suppose.  I think this might be the best way to read Phenomenology, not as one's only or deep reading of the text, but as a way to have read through it all.  As I drove, I would make notes of paragraphs I wanted to return to (don't worry, the highways of South Dakota and Wyoming are sparsely populated, even when there's an eclipse on!).  When I was first reading Shakespeare (or first reading it in college, I can't remember which), someone (either Jerry Davis or Mary Hull Mohr) gave me the advice to "just keep going" when you're reading it and not sure you're absorbing.  It's reading as muscle memory, and the deep read of certain sections can come later (or earlier!). 

Hearing "of Lordship and Bondage" after reading through the entirety of Consciousness changes the focus of the passage.  It makes the easy reading of Hegel as writing the heroic history of Haiti less easy and fancy free.  I've come to trust Buck-Morss, and don't think her reading is at all off the mark.  That said, I think it is important to remain aware of our academic practice of the use of texts to suggest meaning and significance.

*.  *.  *

I first learned of the Great American Eclipse earlier this year, and almost in the same moment committed in my mind that I would be there to see it.  I took a few days vacation, but made few other plans, except to choose Beatrice, Nebraska as my viewing sight.  Tim & Jen & the kids live in Omaha, and actually lived in Beatrice shortly after they got married.  When the day got close, weather across the Midwest started looking dicey, and I headed west.

A total eclipse is an awe-inspiring sight, truly an opportunity to see the most awesome, magnificent vision available on earth.  An eclipse is also a random conflation of events - a new moon that aligns with the earth and sun; a sun for a planet that is about 400 times larger than the planet's moon, which is about 400 times closer than that same sun (so they take up about the same amount of sky space).  Also, we also happen to be in the small window of time, cosmically speaking, that allows this confluence.

I've been struggling to describe what I saw, or what the experience was like, or why it was worth the trip.  Finding significance in the random confluence of hunks of rock hurtling through the galaxy is what we do as humans.  Making meaning from bringing texts, histories, moments - that's what humanists do.  We live in a strange confluence of psychology, philosophy, astronomy, physics, history, sociology, geology, chronology and on and ology.

My thoughts of late have been turning back toward the super-modern, and the importance of the small.  I'm still working at making meaning from the experience of the eclipse, and from reading Hegel on the way to and from seeing the eclipse, and the observations and thoughts I had about Americans and Trump and Mt. Rushmore and history on the way to and from seeing the eclipse.  I expect that I will continue to try to build this meaning for quite some time.

What I learned or have built or have decided for now is that my phenomenology of totality has provided me some perspective on our present American experiment.  We are a strange and strained people, but I still think this is all just crazy enough to work. 

mind the gaps...

I. Preamble -

This isn't a review - rather an overall critical analysis of ueber-narrative.  I've recently been on a mission to watch the Star Wars oeuvre in chronological order (dedicated readers {I presume they will be there in future, as they aren't currently turning out in significant numbers} will note that I'm also currently on the same project in the Star Trek universe).

I know Disney and J.J. Abrams own my viewership soul, but I frakking love filling in the gaps of mythologies.  I am eager to see the story of the new episodes - VII & VIII - but watching Episode III followed by Rogue One and then A New Hope is fascinating and fulfilling.  The fun fairy tale that I knew as a kid (still has whiny little Luke) has become a robust narrative. 

I'm equally (or perhaps more) excited for the start of the new Star Trek: Discovery series starting this fall, which will bridge the end of Enterprise to the days of ST: TOS (by way of the lost ship at the center of the plot of Star Trek Beyond).

Walter Benjamin has a concept called Jetztzeit (now-time), which he also calls messianic-time. The simplest framing of this concept for me is using the latter term, and imagining the potentiality of all times (of each moment) to contain salvation (or revolution, or clarity).  This concept is fundamental in Benjamin's oeuvre, and is related I think to the concept of hyper-modernity (or supermodernity), which is the idea of the whole being explained or understood or accounted for in every part. This is also a common theme for Benjamin, and in many ways his Arcades Project is the prototypical work of supermodernity.

I have my own (as yet unnamed) theory of reality and being and narrative. The line of thinking goes something like this: the act of literary creation is, in fact, an instance of literal creation. By imagining a thing (or perhaps by writing it down or filming it or publishing it,,, I'm not too clear on all of the specifics), that thing is created in reality. It is evoked. The actuality of the thing is explained scientifically (I use this word loosely) by multiple worlds / realities theory - the idea that every choice or possible outcome exists in parallel realities.

II. Messianic Time / Messianic Space -

The Arcades Project is Benjamin's masterwork.  It is a collection of quotes and fragments focused on a series of subjects relating to the Paris Arcades, which Benjamin works through.  Benjamin is sitting in the mid-20th Century looking back at the 19th Century for meaning.  The work is a strong candidate for bibliomancy; a lot of obscure passages that can be interpreted for a lot of situations. 



III. Container Story

We see ourselves as occupying 'the real' world, and the narratives we create are a part of our world.  The Chronicles of Amber has another, different starting place (actually 2, Amber and the Courts of Chaos), but contains the same conclusion, that there is a real space, which begets all else.

The Dark Tower is


IV. Narratives of scale -

Star Trek is the future narrative of a world much like ours.  Star Wars claims to be in the distant past, far away.  In time, both of these narratives might be found to be in the same universe (that's right, I'm loosely proposing that Wesley Crusher is the next last Jedi).

This weekend, The Dark Tower is being released in cinemas across the country - another new chapter in a long-established narrative.  The tag line on early images teasing the new movie was "The Last Time Around...". 

The narrative of the film (mild-spoiler alert warning) is in some ways an odd reformulation of Stephen King's first novel of the series - The Gunslinger -, but it's a bit hard to recognize as such.  In the novel, Jake Chambers is torn from his native New York (although we don't see this at this point in the series) and pulled into Mid-World.

This new iteration of a decades old story feels a bit out of synch when watched on its own.  Stephen King's Dark Tower universe is a narrative that contains all other narratives - all other realities in fact.  As a reader, familiar with the scope and scale of the Dark Tower universes, the new film feels like a sprinting tour of the whole series of novels.  At the same time, it's a reset button in which Jake Chambers saves Roland's quest, which has been lost to the pursuit of revenge.  The movie finds Roland having forgotten the face of his father.



VI. All of us are 'one of the most important figures' in our own universes, our own narratives


Much like Benjamin's "Capitalism as Religion", I intend this entry to be something robust and interesting... but I want to post (it's been a while!), so there may be a while before the overall outline gets filled in.