A Century of Atmospheric Warfare: 1915-2015

[jochen stremmel]

"If asked to say in a single sentence and as few words as possible what,
apart from its incommensurable achievements in the arts, the 20th century
introduced into the history of civilization by way of singular and
incomparable features, the response would emerge with three criteria."

That single sentence is representative for most if not all of Sloterdijk's
writing. He simply can't do it. But that he does well.

2015-04-23 11:27 GMT+02:00 Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>:

> Terror from the Air
> By Peter Sloterdijk
> Translated by  Amy Patton and Steve Corcoran
>
>
> According to Peter Sloterdijk, the twentieth century started on a
> specific day and place: April 22, 1915, at Ypres in Northern France.
> That day, the German army used a chlorine gas meant to exterminate
> indiscriminately. Until then, war, as described by Clausewitz and
> practiced by Napoleon, involved attacking the adversary's vital
> function first. Using poison gas signaled the passage from classical
> war to terrorism. This terror from the air inaugurated an era in which
> the main idea was no longer to target the enemy's body, but their
> environment. From then on, what would be attacked in wartime as well
> as in peacetime would be the very conditions necessary for life.
>
> This kind of terrorism became the matrix of modern and postmodern war,
> from World War I's toxic gas to the Nazi Zyklon B used in Auschwitz,
> from the bombing of Dresden to the attack on the World Trade Center.
> Sloterdijk goes on to describe the offensive of modern aesthetics,
> aesthetic terrorism from Surrealism to Malevich—an "atmo-terrorism" in
> the arts that parallels the assault on environment that had originated
> in warfare.
>
> http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/terror-air
>
> On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 2:27 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
> <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
> >
> > http://aphelis.net/century-atmospheric-warfare-1915-2015/
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0210&msg=71071&sort=date
> > http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0210&msg=71069&sort=date
> >
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