VV(12):

[Dave Monroe]

"'From Munich, and never heard of Hitler,' said Weissmann, as if 'Hitler' 
were the name of an avant-garde play.  'What the hell's wrong with young 
people.'" (V., Ch. 9, Sec. ii, p. 242)

>From Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical 
Reproduction," Illuminations: Essay and Refelctions (Ed. Hannah Arendt.  
Trans. Harry Zohn.  New York: Schocken, 1969 [1937]), pp. 217-52 ...

"Epilogue" (pp. 241-2)

The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into 
political life. The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with its Fuhrer 
cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an 
apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values. (241)

All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.    War 
and war only can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while 
respecting the traditional property system.  This is the political formula 
for the situation.  The technological formula may be stated as follows: Only 
war makes it possible to mobilize all of today's technical resources while 
maintaining the property  system.  It goes without saying that the Fascist 
apotheosis of war does not employ such arguments.  Still, Marinetti says in 
his manifesto on the Ethiopian colonial war: "For twenty-seven years we 
Futurists have rebelled against the branding of war as antiaesthetic.... 
Accordingly we state: ... War is beautiful because it establishes man's 
dominion over the subjugated machinery by means of gas masks, terrifying 
megaphones, flame throwers, and small tanks.  War is beautiful because it 
initiates the dreamt-of metalization of the human body.  War is beautiful 
because it enriches a flowering meadow with the fiery orchids of machine 
guns. War is beautiful because it combines
the gunfire, the cannonades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench of 
putrefaction into a symphony.  War is beautiful because it creates new 
architecture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, 
the smoke spirals from burning villages, and many others.... Poets and 
artists of Futurism! ... remember these
principles of an aesthetics of war so that your struggle for a new 
literature and a new graphic art . . . may be illumined by them!" (241-2; 
ellipses in text)

This manifesto has the virtue of clarity. (242)

Imperialistic war is a rebellion of technology which collects, in the form 
of "human material," the claims to which society has denied its natural 
material. Instead of draining rivers, society directs a human stream into a 
bed of trenches; instead of dropping seeds from airplanes, it drops 
incendiary bombs over cities; and through gas warfare the aura is abolished 
in a new way. (242)

"Fiat ars--pereat mundus," says Fascism, and, as Marinetti admits, expects 
war to supply the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been 
changed by technology.  This is evidently the consummation of "l'art pour 
l'art."  Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for 
the Olympian gods, now is one for itself.  Its self-alienation has reached 
such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic 
pleasure of the first order.  This is the situation of politics which 
Fascism is rendering aesthetic.  Communism responds by politicizing art. 
(242)

http://web.bentley.edu/empl/c/rcrooks/toolbox/common_knowledge/general_communication/benjamin.html


Question here, I suppose, is, how does Pynchon respond?  Or, at any rate, 
how do we, on, to the extent that we inevitably do so here, his behalf or 
otherwise?  In the meantime, see ...

Berman, Russell A.  "Aestheticization of Politics:
   Walter Benjamin and the Avant-Garde."  Modern Culture
   and Critical Theory.  Madison: U of Wiconsin P, 1989.

Golsan, Richard, ed., Fascism, Aesthetics, and Culture.
   Hanover, NH: UP of New Hampshire, 1992.

Hewitt, Andrew.  Fascist Modernism:
   Aesthetics, Politics, and the Avant-Garde.
   Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1993.

... speaking of keywords.  Reed Way Dasenbrock, by the way, accuses Pynchon 
of "fascism" of some sort in the Goslan anthology.  Will report back.  And, 
on that "dreamt-of metalization of the human body" ...

Theweleit, Klaus.  Male Fantasies, Vol. 2:
   Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror.
   Trans. Erica Carter and Chris Turner.  Minneapolis:
   U of Minnesota P, 1989.

Will post at least from Berman soon as I remember to dig MC&CT out.  While 
Benjamin's essay wasn't translated in English until 1968, and I'm under the 
impression that he wasn't all that well known even in, much less outside, 
his native Germany at the time, I'm also under the impression that this 
notion of fascism's aestheticization of politics has been nigh unto a truism 
for some time now.  I do think it was initially Benjamin's observation, but 
perhaps it gained currency before Benjamin's own publication in English via 
Hannah Arendt or Susan Sontag?  Let me know ...


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