Spheres

[Dave Monroe]

"In the end phase of globalization, the world system completed its
development and, as a capitalist system, came to determine all
conditions of life. Sloterdijk takes the Crystal Palace in London, the
site of the first world exhibition in 1851, as the most expressive
metaphor for this situation. The palace demonstrates the inevitable
exclusivity of globalization as the construction of a comfort
structure, that is, the establishment and expansion of a world
interior whose boundaries are invisible, yet virtually insurmountable
from without, and which is inhabited by one and a half billion winners
of globalization; three times this number are left standing outside
the door."

http://politybooks.com/book.asp?ref=9780745647685

The Crystal Palace

http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/extra/crystal-palace.html


On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 10:31 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Will our new Edge, our new Deathkingdom, be the Moon? I dream of a
> great glass sphere, hollow and very high and far away . . . the
> colonists have learned to do without air, it's vacuum inside and out
> ..." (GR, Pt. IV, p. 729)
>
> https://books.google.com/books?id=GGPm4I3BbxAC&pg=PT539#v=onepage&q&f=false
>
> https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/bubbles
>
> https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/globes
>
> The Trilogy Spheres of Peter Sloterdijk
>
> "Another, and more significant, example used by Sloterdijk is the
> spatial [sic] station, which is useful to philosophers in developing a
> new enlightened theory of human condition. Putting aside the
> romanticism of space conquest, the spacecraft reality and manned
> spatial station stands for three indispensable categories of a
> possible condition of human existence in the space (Weltraum):
> immanence, artificiality and upward drive (Auftrieb)....
>
> [...]
>
> "... Sloterdijk pauses and describes in the next topics the emergence
> and cultivation of artificial greenhouses like the Cristal [sic]
> Palace in London (1851), Laeken Park near Brussels, built in 1875 or
> the Botanical Gardens in Hamburg, Hannover, Munich, Berlin and other
> greenhouses directed to plantation of tropical species like Victoria
> Regia in the European cold winter (cf. vol. III).
>
> "Other atmospheric Islands analyzed by Sloterdijk are the experiences
> with bio-sphere performed in the USA, like the mega project Arizona
> “Biosphere 2” in 1991 ..."
>
> http://www.iop.or.jp/Documents/1121/Journal21_Rouanet.pdf
>
> "Spheres is a wildly eclectic work; the third part, on foam (Schäume),
> is full of reflections on such topics as the vitreous dreamland of the
> Great Exhibition, the Victorian invention of the concept of
> environment, the deployment of poison gas during the first world war
> and the geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller. Modernity, Sloterdijk
> contends, has long been a matter of control and liberation through a
> sort of air conditioning. And we live now, of course, with the
> constant knowledge that we have turned the system up too far.
>
> [...]
>
> "If Sloterdijk's reflections sound obvious or fanciful, consider again
> the long and vexed history of enclosed but transparent volumes as
> images alike of freedom and security, futurism and consolation. From
> the paradise of commodities corralled at the Crystal Palace – the only
> building, so the catalogue had it in 1851, in which the very
> atmosphere was visible – through the Millennium Dome and Eden Project
> to metaphors attached today to national security or cloud computing,
> we seem addicted to spaces that promise immunity and drift at the same
> time."
>
> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/10/bubbles-peter-sloterdijk-review
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l