Joseph Weiss

"Because she is mute, fallen nature mourns [trauert]. Yet the converse of this statement leads still deeper into the essence of nature: her mournfulness [Traurigkeit] makes her mute." "Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Trauerspiel"Adorno once wrote that “[p]hilosophy has perceived the chasm opened by the separation [of sign and image ] as the relation between intuition [Anschauung] and concept [Begriff] and repeatedly but vainly attempted to close it; indeed, philosophy is defined by that attempt.”1 Contrary to the common narrative about the difference between Adorno and Benjamin—one likely propagated by Arendt's introduction to…

Following the work of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, this essay argues that there is an implicit conception of mimesis operative in Heidegger’s conception of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. More specifically, it argues that an examination of Heidegger’s theory of repetition and play in relation to Dasein’s uncanniness illustrates Dasein’s tendency to turn away from mimesis and, instead, opt for the comfort of “mimetology,” the comfort of submitting to a levelled down identification with the ready-to-hand and the they-self. Ultimately this analysis, which itself performs a mimetic re-reading of Being and Time, brings to the fore a counter-force within Heidegger’s thought that arguably resists what Lacoue-Labarthe calls Heidegger’s inadvertent reproduction of the metaphysics of presence and the worrisome political implications that attend it. Moreover, this re-reading suggests that, precisely when the implicit role of mimesis is emphasized, the temporal possibilities built into Dasein’s way of Being might also be understood in a new light

At stake in Adorno’s aesthetics in general, and his analysis of musical development in particular, is the manner in which artworks resist the formal, subjective characteristics of the death drive’s play. In order to win back control, as it were, of a mastery that has hardened nature’s particularity, Adorno conceives of a transformed, critical mimesis. Ultimately the work of the contemporary Finish composer, Kaija Saariaho, is revealed as an exemplary instance of a transformed mimetic play which critiques the menacing elements of the death drive, but does not altogether discard it.

Combining the philosophy and musicology of T.W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Gilles Deleuze, Joseph Weiss makes an original contribution to the field of aesthetics and critical theory. Highlighting previously hidden connections between these philosophers' work brings into focus a new perspective on the dynamic relationship between music, nature, history, and technology. Musical expression in this study is presented as one of the core ways in which human beings are able to escape their more base natures and instincts. The complex ways in which song is taken up across time and place is viewed through the prism of different technologies and histories. This historical process, which Weiss refers to as the 'instrumentalization of the voice', following Deleuze, is illuminated though a wide-ranging analysis encompassing lullaby, jazz, classical music, and the electroacoustic avant-garde. Deepening the aesthetic analysis of music in relation to the conceptual problems of continental philosophy, Weiss reveals enlightening theoretical consequences. By engaging with an eclectic range of 20th century theorists, including Primo Levi, James Baldwin, Édouard Glissant, Fred Moten, and Angela Davis, Weiss makes the argument that advanced music remains a refuge for political hopes that are as yet blocked from realization. Speaking to contemporary debates on post-humanism, memory, and the threat of neo-fascist social relations, the author outlines a bold new aesthetics of music.

The early Twentieth Century satirist, Karl Kraus, set himself the goal of exposing all journalistic language and advertising for what they are: essential links in the social reproduction of the imperialist epoch. Charlie Brooker, creator of the television program Black Mirror and the documentary series How TV Ruined your Life, is virtually the only contemporary critic who takes up the task of Kraus’s destructive judgment against the impoverishment of language and experience. Taking its formal and analytic cue from Walter Benjamin’s famous essay on Kraus, this essay traces the affinity and difference between the form and content of Kraus’s and Brooker’s social criticism and art. In presenting, for example, their respective methods of quotation, as well as the relationship between the “entertainment” of the twenty-four hour “news” stream and the false promise of participation in the bourgeois public sphere, the present form of domination comes to the fore in a new light. In order to grasp this form, that is, the completed or perfected illusion of the present composition of capital, Guy Debord’s conception of the “spectacle economy” is thought alongside T.W. Adorno’s conception of the “culture industry.”