Marx’s concept of bird-freedom or Vogelfreiheit— drawn from German legal history in which it mean... more Marx’s concept of bird-freedom or Vogelfreiheit— drawn from German legal history in which it meant “outlaw status” — describes the situation of free labor as “doubly free”: not enslaved as well as landless. The metaphorical valences of his satirical emphasis on the cynicism of the idea of “free labor” returns in many of Marx’s other satirical reworkings of concepts which refer to the state of nature. This essay looks at two such concepts engaged in explaining the process of “primitive accumulation” in Capital, Volume 1: the notion of the idyll (“idyllic relations” or “idyllic proceedings”) and the notion of outlawry as “bird-freedom.” The essay exemplifies the ways in which both moments constitute “natural-historical images,” in Theodor Adorno’s terms: a concept of hybridity, historical texture, and transition that might add to the scholarship on Marx’s philosophy of nature.
Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, 2022
This essay constructs an understanding of Sean Bonney’s occult poetics, especially in his prose-p... more This essay constructs an understanding of Sean Bonney’s occult poetics, especially in his prose-poem ‘Second Letter on Harmony’, through its mediation of past traditions of ‘occult poetry’—specifically, Stephen Jonas and the Boston school—with the philosophy of history of Ernst Bloch in Heritage of our Times and Bertolt Brecht’s uses of alienation, particularly the notion of ‘gesture’. Bonney’s methods of apprehending a multifaceted reality, composed of darkness, antipodes, contraries and hiddenness, as much as clarity, self-sameness, light and truth, are related to although different from the occult’s methods of transformation which make the hidden ‘visible’. I argue that Bonney estranges already estranged and fetishised knowledges and facts in their contradictoriness, as a mode of turning knowledge ‘inside out’, whose results are channelled towards anti-fascist struggle and revolutionary praxis. Bonney’s occult poetics seeks to re-appropriate zones of fascist cultural hegemony, such as the occult, making these ripe for revolutionary rediscovery. This very practice sets out a materialist means of communicating with the dead.
Matters of Time: Material temporalities in Twentieth-century French culture, ed. Lisa Jeschke and Adrian May, Sep 2014
A reading of Frank O'Hara's late poem Biotherm, and how it reads and criticises Jean Cocteau. Bot... more A reading of Frank O'Hara's late poem Biotherm, and how it reads and criticises Jean Cocteau. Botany, reversibility, and reverse motion.
Stan Brakhage: The Realm Buster, ed. Marco Lori and Esther Leslie, 2018
Stan Brakhage's conceptions of historicity, depth and style are interrelated and come to a crisis... more Stan Brakhage's conceptions of historicity, depth and style are interrelated and come to a crisis point in 23rd Psalm Branch, his 'war film'.
Experimental essay-collage which criticises the poet Susan Howe's technique of écriture feminine ... more Experimental essay-collage which criticises the poet Susan Howe's technique of écriture feminine - and its relationship to transmission and exemplarity - in 'My Emily Dickinson', through references to Thomas Carlyle, Marx, Machiavelli, Kant and W. C. Williams.
Fragments on preservation, statues, Rococo, Empire, volcanoes, second nature, revolution, fountai... more Fragments on preservation, statues, Rococo, Empire, volcanoes, second nature, revolution, fountains in Walter Benjamin.
Marx’s concept of bird-freedom or Vogelfreiheit— drawn from German legal history in which it mean... more Marx’s concept of bird-freedom or Vogelfreiheit— drawn from German legal history in which it meant “outlaw status” — describes the situation of free labor as “doubly free”: not enslaved as well as landless. The metaphorical valences of his satirical emphasis on the cynicism of the idea of “free labor” returns in many of Marx’s other satirical reworkings of concepts which refer to the state of nature. This essay looks at two such concepts engaged in explaining the process of “primitive accumulation” in Capital, Volume 1: the notion of the idyll (“idyllic relations” or “idyllic proceedings”) and the notion of outlawry as “bird-freedom.” The essay exemplifies the ways in which both moments constitute “natural-historical images,” in Theodor Adorno’s terms: a concept of hybridity, historical texture, and transition that might add to the scholarship on Marx’s philosophy of nature.
Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, 2022
This essay constructs an understanding of Sean Bonney’s occult poetics, especially in his prose-p... more This essay constructs an understanding of Sean Bonney’s occult poetics, especially in his prose-poem ‘Second Letter on Harmony’, through its mediation of past traditions of ‘occult poetry’—specifically, Stephen Jonas and the Boston school—with the philosophy of history of Ernst Bloch in Heritage of our Times and Bertolt Brecht’s uses of alienation, particularly the notion of ‘gesture’. Bonney’s methods of apprehending a multifaceted reality, composed of darkness, antipodes, contraries and hiddenness, as much as clarity, self-sameness, light and truth, are related to although different from the occult’s methods of transformation which make the hidden ‘visible’. I argue that Bonney estranges already estranged and fetishised knowledges and facts in their contradictoriness, as a mode of turning knowledge ‘inside out’, whose results are channelled towards anti-fascist struggle and revolutionary praxis. Bonney’s occult poetics seeks to re-appropriate zones of fascist cultural hegemony, such as the occult, making these ripe for revolutionary rediscovery. This very practice sets out a materialist means of communicating with the dead.
Matters of Time: Material temporalities in Twentieth-century French culture, ed. Lisa Jeschke and Adrian May, Sep 2014
A reading of Frank O'Hara's late poem Biotherm, and how it reads and criticises Jean Cocteau. Bot... more A reading of Frank O'Hara's late poem Biotherm, and how it reads and criticises Jean Cocteau. Botany, reversibility, and reverse motion.
Stan Brakhage: The Realm Buster, ed. Marco Lori and Esther Leslie, 2018
Stan Brakhage's conceptions of historicity, depth and style are interrelated and come to a crisis... more Stan Brakhage's conceptions of historicity, depth and style are interrelated and come to a crisis point in 23rd Psalm Branch, his 'war film'.
Experimental essay-collage which criticises the poet Susan Howe's technique of écriture feminine ... more Experimental essay-collage which criticises the poet Susan Howe's technique of écriture feminine - and its relationship to transmission and exemplarity - in 'My Emily Dickinson', through references to Thomas Carlyle, Marx, Machiavelli, Kant and W. C. Williams.
Fragments on preservation, statues, Rococo, Empire, volcanoes, second nature, revolution, fountai... more Fragments on preservation, statues, Rococo, Empire, volcanoes, second nature, revolution, fountains in Walter Benjamin.
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