Aura, authority, relocation, Literary Change

This is an interesting discussion of Benjamin and the aura. I brought
Benjamin
into G2K via http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/daily.html and other
mentions such as http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/CryingGame.html.

In March 1994, before I had ever read any Walter Benjamin, I wrote the
pamphlet
Literary Change (see
http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/LiteraryChange1.JPG,
http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/LiteraryChange2.JPG,
http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/LiteraryChange3.JPG,
http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/LiteraryChange4.JPG,
http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/LiteraryChange5.JPG,
http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/LiteraryChange6.JPG). I think it
may help to articulate some of the concepts and issues that have come up
in this thread.

Prior to writing Literary Change, I had spent one semester in the MS
program with creative writing emphasis at SUNY-Binghamton, where I wrote
"Shakespeare's Ghost" and
www.geocities.com/genius-2000/HandOPaperWord5.html, as well as
www.geocities.com/genius-2000/CoupDeTete1993.tif. I was at Binghamton
from Sept. to Dec. 1993.

In early 1994 I was working as a home remodeling subcontractor and we
would listen to NPR's talk of the Nation. They did a series about the
Ten Commandments, and the one about the Second Commandment prompted me
to print up Literary Change and to place photocopies in local coffee
shops.

This was all before the internet was widely used. I was frustrated with
Derrida and Foucault so I looked on "alt.postmodern" later in 1994 for
other names, finding Habermas. At the library I found his book
Political-Philosophical Profiles, finding there essays on Benjamin and
Adorno. Integrating these fellows' ideas into LC formed the basis of my
later application and acceptance to graduate school (Syracuse, 1995-98).
However, the Frankfurt School was not the direct source of Genius 2000
as the main lineaments of G2K derive more from Literary Change.

All this could be compared to the idea of "the novel as network and the
network as history," which is my alteration of Mailer's "history as the
novel/the novel as history."

It may also be that the first new art-historical period of the 21st
century is Networkism in the same sense that the first of the twentieth
was Modernism.


Best regards,

Max Herman


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