Kullturkampf

Whole ages of sensibility pass like geologic eras. The current Cenozoic era which has witnessed the advent of hominids and prehensile creatures who could stand, hold things in their hands and ultimately create tools. Who knows whether consciousness was the cause or the result of these morphological changes. That’s the stuff of Darwinian evolution but self-reflexive thinking along with the ability to recognize one’s own reflection and render it were the beginning of memesis and therefore art which not curiously relates to the growing knowledge of a “self”—something which is not mind or body or necessarily both. “Ghosting,” which in urban mythology means not showing up, may find its origins in this bipartisan relationship between physiology and thinking. And one day voila Ecce Homo!  Wagner's miraculous Liebestod  is sickingly repeated by Lars von Triers in Melancholia. And isn’t that what makes horse races or Kultur?

read Joan Baum's review of The Kafka Studies Department by Francis Levy

and watch the animation of Erotomania