Discussion - Week Seven - Convolute D - Boredom, Eternal Return p. 101-119

[MarkB]

"We are bored when we don't know what we are looking for." (D2,7)

Boredom has long been a favored theme for writers and philosophers. Fredrich Nietzsche, Alberto Moravia, Jean Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Fernando Pessoa, and David Foster Wallace, to name a few, have found the subject worth deep treatment.

The advent of the Industrial Revolution brought a whole new meaning to boredom. (For a touch of historical comic relief, check out Lamartine's story about Debrau in D3a,4). Days, weeks, and months were filled with drudgery, endlessly performing the same task for minimal wage or satisfaction. The few hours per day spent in sub-standard hovels were barely sufficient for rest or replenishment until it all started over again.

At some point, enough just has to be enough. "This weather is so depressing." "I am tired of these old clothes." "I wish we could meet some new people." "If only we could hit the jackpot."

But what to do? "The crowd is the supreme remedy for boredom." (D5,3) And, where better to find the crowd than the Arcades? The Arcades offer it all - shelter from the elements, fashion, flâneurs, gambling.

However, even the best of days or nights at The Arcades can only provide the illusion of respite. Benjamin uses the final portion of the Convolute to muse on Eternal Recurrence. He cites Nietzsche, as well as the ardent revolutionary Blanqui, to illustrate that boredom is not a temporary state of mind, but, arguably, the essence of being.

[Jim]

Mark B wrote: ""We are bored when we don't know what we are looking for." (D2,7)

Boredom has long been a favored theme for writers and philosophers. Fredrich Nietzsche, Alberto Moravia, Jean Paul Sartre, Samuel ..."

I haven't had a chance to read this section yet. Does Benjamin make any mention of boredom as related to the repetitive activities found in factory settings?

[MarkB]

Yes, he does, with some reference to Engel, though not in any great detail, more as a matter of fact.

[Nathan "N.R."]

Have been enjoying The Arcades in its unexpected form more than I may have anticipated. For the most part it's been of the fictional kind of enjoyment (in the mode of narrative), containing a stronger narrative thread than I had anticipated given it's assemblage nature. This chapter on boredom has a much stronger aroma of the philosophical/argumentative than heretofore. I thought I felt a contrast being developed between Blanqui and Nietzsche. Also, given my just having come from reading Zizek on Kant, I sensed a pretty significant Kantian background to the Nietzsche quotations, especially the one on [D8,7] page 116, "We have created the weightiest thought--now let us create the being for whom it is light and pleasing!" Which is to say, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant asks, Since we know that we have experiences, how must such an entity [ourselves] capable of having experiences be structured. So Nietzsche discovers a thought unbearable to us puny humans ; the Uebermensch arises! In contrast, Blanqui's infinity seemed to be a rather banal infinity, the kind Hegel may have called the "bad infinity" ; it just goes on and on.

And then, nice touch when Benjamin does the dialectical dance of the mythical eternal return with the modernist march of progress, [D10a,5] page 119 "The idea of eternal return appears precisely as that 'shallow rationalism' which the belief in progress is accused of being, while faith in progress seems no less to belong to the mythic mode of thought than does the idea of eternal return."

Also, for a philosophical treatise on boredom, I'd recommend Heidegger's The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude.

[MarkB]

Excellent points, Nathan.

I feel as you, that the work has a deeper impact the more you let it penetrate.

And thanks for the Heidegger recommendation. Very useful.