James Crane

forgot to eat lasagna before sitting down to record the podcast episode on Bordiga so i’ll have to find another way to get into that headspace

“as long as they do not commit suicide they could hardly do anything other than exist” lmfao Teddie’s gloves off in Jargon of Authenticity

stay spooking

Tony Fitzpatrick, 1958-2025

to be clear they don’t idealize nomadism either—Adorno explicitly says that the image of expulsion from Paradise is a retrospective appearance of a condition free from the social domination reproduced in civilization after human settlement (from my translation here)
open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...

interestingly enough they tend to skip over subsistence agriculture & identify the beginning of the psycho-social pathologies of civilization even earlier—with the neolithic or first agricultural revolution & the gradual end of nomadism!

Revised Collection—Schemata for the 'Dialectic' (1939-1944) I. Domination of Nature & Social Domination & II. Spirit & Enlightenment (April, 1942); + Appendices with Preliminaries for and Companion texts to the 'Dialectic' (ca. 1939-1944)

one of the unpublished ‘42 “schemata” A&H write for DoE—“On The Relation Between The Domination of Nature and Social Domination.”—i found in the archive (transl. below) is abt how concepts of man’s ‘natural condition’ are Reflexionsformen of extant domination! jamescrane.substack.com/i/161511932/...

interestingly enough I think Adorno & Horkheimer, if they were pushed, would have to agree! They are very much willing to concede in other places that there never was a childhood of man, & that this is a projection backwards (which takes many mythical forms) from the society of domination!

Civilization itself cannot be cleared of the responsibility of having engendered its opposite: barbarism. History achieved the domestication of man only by continuous suffering.23 In the childhood of humanity all activity was directly conditioned by immediate need, under menace of danger. Vital instincts comparatively unfettered by social organization guided the first men. The path from that era until people first became used to organized labor was a painful one, and the necessity to provide for hard times was often impressed upon their minds. Ruthless conquerors who had come to rule the aborigines, tyrants and castes of military oppressors, —in one word, domination, did the job. The profound story of Paradise and the expulsion from it in the first chapters of Genesis may combine a theological truth with a historical memory which toiling and oppressed people harbored of happier days free from the burden of organized and regular work. Only during the last one or two thousand years has man learned to do his work without the pressure of the ruthless taskmaster by transforming the outside coercion into the power of conscience in his own soul, by translating the immediate need into concepts which comprise the future as well as the past and the present.

What I am referring to is the process which leads from a stage in which compulsion of the masses by the very few was a social necessity to a level where force finds its expression in the law, where people have become capable of molding their own relations by respecting their mutual interests and of making work a tolerable and even desirable expression of life. If we try to understand the psychology of the present-day human being, we have to remember that this whole transmutation is a recent one. It has left its imprint not only on the institutions of modern society but also on the character of its individuals. They still bear the marks of the terrible punishments, the humiliations and tortures which humanity had to undergo until it learned to respect law, the neighbor’s property and life, the woman’s or the stranger’s weakness. These marks are shown in the ambiguity with respect to such values, in the readiness of the individual to tear down the boundaries of civilized life not only because of a strong materialistic urge but also for the sake of the violation itself.

This is very insightful from Max Horkheimer. I can really feel what he means here, not only understand it. This text taken from @jamescrane.bsky.social's blog here:
jamescrane.substack.com/p/max-horkhe...

the short version of why I think this stuff is worth reading: they rewrite Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals through Marx’s history of (& as) class struggles to develop a socio-psychology of the formation & operation of the psyche analyzed by Freud. Insane. In like grant applications & public lectures

basically for ~10yrs they asked US universities, foundations, committees, & philanthropists to fund this for the sake of a more empirically robust argument that the sole adequate answer to modern race prejudice is classless society & the end of prehistory. dream big lol

the short version of why I think this stuff is worth reading: they rewrite Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals through Marx’s history of (& as) class struggles to develop a socio-psychology of the formation & operation of the psyche analyzed by Freud. Insane. In like grant applications & public lectures

added a note on why i think the accusation that Adorno & Horkheimer unilaterally ‘ground’ their 1940s social research in a pure speculative critique of civilization is a pretty fundamental misinterpretation of the relationship b/w theory & empirical research for them

screenshot of a recipe from an old newspaper Flap-Jacks Mince the breast of a chicken with some lean ham, half an anchovy, a little parsley, three or four shallots, and lemon-peel. Season with pepper, salt, cayenne, and beaten mace.

Now I'm looking up historical flapjack recipes. Pure chaos.

from the South Durham Herald, 5 July 1890

Very quick ink sketch of a rat, sitting on its butt.

5 minute study of a rat sitting like people.

God forbid a Gary have a life!!

South Gaza: Tents, Food & Water **With Famine on the rise, we will significantly lower tent purchases and focus on food (rice and bread) and water over the next couple of weeks**

The Sameer Project’s donations are down 45% today but their work is unfortunately far from over. Give to the South campaign, which supplies 200,000 liters of water a day: chuffed.org/project/1132...

Bordiga, “Préparez le kangourou !” (1951): « Socialisme ou barbarie » n’est pas notre alternative. Pour celui qui a dans les veines une goutte de dialectique révolutionnaire, c’est au contraire : Civilisation ou Socialisme ! www.sinistra.net/lib/bas/batt...

added a note on why i think the accusation that Adorno & Horkheimer unilaterally ‘ground’ their 1940s social research in a pure speculative critique of civilization is a pretty fundamental misinterpretation of the relationship b/w theory & empirical research for them

Said’s “Freud & the Non-European” has been on my list for a minute, but I don’t think I can put it off any longer since Freud’s M&M keeps popping up everywhere for me lately—from Adorno to Kanafani! Now kicking myself for not having realized Said is *exactly* where to look for that connection lol

probably just gotta write something on how much Adorno & Horkheimer’s 1940s thing was developing a critical (& historical materialist) response to Freud’s “Moses & Monotheism”

Link: open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...

Next up: archival reconstruction of two 1943 Horkheimer talks on the multidisciplinary scientific approach to the ISR’s 1940s “Studies” & the (Nietzschean-Marxian-Freudian) psychology of anti-Semitism as critique of civilization! + some fragments with/by Adorno on the same!

Horkheimer’s Schopenhauerian odyssey of will through the void—a “parable” he first proposes in his private philosophical journals in 1926!

Ja, in Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften (Bd. 12)! Unter dem Titel: [Diskussion über die Differenz zwischen Positivismus und materialistischer Dialektik]

Adorno & Horkheimer on the method of the critique of political economy (1) & towards a defense of the hysteric (2)

me n who

great soyface

type of shit i’ve been on lately