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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 1m

interestingly enough I think Adorno & Horkheimer, if they were pushed, would have to agree! They are very much willing to concede in other places that there never was a childhood of man, & that this is a projection backwards (which takes many mythical forms) from the society of domination!

Reposted by James Crane

Tòfol @cristofol.org · 6h

This is very insightful from Max Horkheimer. I can really feel what he means here, not only understand it. This text taken from @jamescrane.bsky.social's blog here:
jamescrane.substack.com/p/max-horkhe...

Civilization itself cannot be cleared of the responsibility of having engendered its opposite: barbarism. History achieved the domestication of man only by continuous suffering.23 In the childhood of humanity all activity was directly conditioned by immediate need, under menace of danger. Vital instincts comparatively unfettered by social organization guided the first men. The path from that era until people first became used to organized labor was a painful one, and the necessity to provide for hard times was often impressed upon their minds. Ruthless conquerors who had come to rule the aborigines, tyrants and castes of military oppressors, —in one word, domination, did the job. The profound story of Paradise and the expulsion from it in the first chapters of Genesis may combine a theological truth with a historical memory which toiling and oppressed people harbored of happier days free from the burden of organized and regular work. Only during the last one or two thousand years has man learned to do his work without the pressure of the ruthless taskmaster by transforming the outside coercion into the power of conscience in his own soul, by translating the immediate need into concepts which comprise the future as well as the past and the present.

What I am referring to is the process which leads from a stage in which compulsion of the masses by the very few was a social necessity to a level where force finds its expression in the law, where people have become capable of molding their own relations by respecting their mutual interests and of making work a tolerable and even desirable expression of life. If we try to understand the psychology of the present-day human being, we have to remember that this whole transmutation is a recent one. It has left its imprint not only on the institutions of modern society but also on the character of its individuals. They still bear the marks of the terrible punishments, the humiliations and tortures which humanity had to undergo until it learned to respect law, the neighbor’s property and life, the woman’s or the stranger’s weakness. These marks are shown in the ambiguity with respect to such values, in the readiness of the individual to tear down the boundaries of civilized life not only because of a strong materialistic urge but also for the sake of the violation itself.

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Reposted by James Crane

James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 9h

the short version of why I think this stuff is worth reading: they rewrite Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals through Marx’s history of (& as) class struggles to develop a socio-psychology of the formation & operation of the psyche analyzed by Freud. Insane. In like grant applications & public lectures

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 9h

basically for ~10yrs they asked US universities, foundations, committees, & philanthropists to fund this for the sake of a more empirically robust argument that the sole adequate answer to modern race prejudice is classless society & the end of prehistory. dream big lol

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 9h

the short version of why I think this stuff is worth reading: they rewrite Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals through Marx’s history of (& as) class struggles to develop a socio-psychology of the formation & operation of the psyche analyzed by Freud. Insane. In like grant applications & public lectures

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Reposted by James Crane

James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 16h

added a note on why i think the accusation that Adorno & Horkheimer unilaterally ‘ground’ their 1940s social research in a pure speculative critique of civilization is a pretty fundamental misinterpretation of the relationship b/w theory & empirical research for them

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Reposted by James Crane

Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 13h

Now I'm looking up historical flapjack recipes. Pure chaos.

from the South Durham Herald, 5 July 1890

screenshot of a recipe from an old newspaper
Flap-Jacks
Mince the breast of a chicken with some lean ham, half an anchovy, a little parsley, three or four shallots, and lemon-peel. Season with pepper, salt, cayenne, and beaten mace.

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Reposted by James Crane

Deeply Unsexy Scary Gorgon Costume @scarygorgon.bsky.social · 1d

5 minute study of a rat sitting like people.

Very quick ink sketch of a rat, sitting on its butt.

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 15h

God forbid a Gary have a life!!

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Reposted by James Crane

Workshops4Gaza @workshops4gaza.bsky.social · 19h

The Sameer Project’s donations are down 45% today but their work is unfortunately far from over. Give to the South campaign, which supplies 200,000 liters of water a day: chuffed.org/project/1132...

South Gaza: Tents, Food & Water

**With Famine on the rise, we will significantly lower tent purchases and focus on food (rice and bread) and water over the next couple of weeks**

chuffed.org

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 15h

Bordiga, “Préparez le kangourou !” (1951): « Socialisme ou barbarie » n’est pas notre alternative. Pour celui qui a dans les veines une goutte de dialectique révolutionnaire, c’est au contraire : Civilisation ou Socialisme ! www.sinistra.net/lib/bas/batt...

Preparez le kangourou !

www.sinistra.net

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 16h

added a note on why i think the accusation that Adorno & Horkheimer unilaterally ‘ground’ their 1940s social research in a pure speculative critique of civilization is a pretty fundamental misinterpretation of the relationship b/w theory & empirical research for them

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 17h

Said’s “Freud & the Non-European” has been on my list for a minute, but I don’t think I can put it off any longer since Freud’s M&M keeps popping up everywhere for me lately—from Adorno to Kanafani! Now kicking myself for not having realized Said is *exactly* where to look for that connection lol

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 18h

probably just gotta write something on how much Adorno & Horkheimer’s 1940s thing was developing a critical (& historical materialist) response to Freud’s “Moses & Monotheism”

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 18h

Link: open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 18h

Next up: archival reconstruction of two 1943 Horkheimer talks on the multidisciplinary scientific approach to the ISR’s 1940s “Studies” & the (Nietzschean-Marxian-Freudian) psychology of anti-Semitism as critique of civilization! + some fragments with/by Adorno on the same!

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 21h

Horkheimer’s Schopenhauerian odyssey of will through the void—a “parable” he first proposes in his private philosophical journals in 1926!

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 22h

Ja, in Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften (Bd. 12)! Unter dem Titel: [Diskussion über die Differenz zwischen Positivismus und materialistischer Dialektik]

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Reposted by James Crane

James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 1d

Adorno & Horkheimer on the method of the critique of political economy (1) & towards a defense of the hysteric (2)

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 22h

me n who

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 22h

great soyface

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 22h

type of shit i’ve been on lately

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 1d

final go at Adorno’s sketch of a historical-philosophical materialist reinterpretation of Oedipus: “Perhaps the one who sleeps with his mother is doomed to be cursed by society because he takes for himself what belongs not to the individual but to the succession of generations…”

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 1d

Adorno on when human beings were probably more like corals than what we call individuals today: “The phase of myth is the phase of the swarm, of swarming.”

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James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 1d

Adorno & Horkheimer on the method of the critique of political economy (1) & towards a defense of the hysteric (2)

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