'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
|
|
'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
|
|
|
hope is memory mobilized around desire.
« Previous |
|Next »
|
|
|
October 9, 2007
David Harvey from this interview
My favourite line from Balzac is “hope is a memory that desires” and that was how I wrote Spaces of Hope, around that idea. Everybody has a memory, but memory can become nostalgia when it’s left on its own; nostalgia is not hope. Hope is memory that’s mobilized around desire. So the question is what do we desire and how do we want to desire it? For me, that is the crucial aspect of everything we do. So if I focus on Balzac, to whom I return again and again, I might conclude, “wow, yeah, that’s what’s it about, I desire things, but I can not do this absent of thememory.” As Walter Benjamin says about memory, “memory is not history, its something that flashes up, in moments of danger,” it somehow or other animates things. And actually that’s where revolutions come from — that is my theory of revolution if you want to put it that way.
What the authorities want to do is to corral memory into a monument; they wish to memorialize and monumentalize in some way or other. They don’t want it to be alive, they want t it to be dead. I want it to be alive.The most dangerous thing in the world, Benjamin is right, is memory — which is not contained in memorialisation, monumentalization, and all the rest of it,he’s dead right. Things flash up.
|
|
|
| | Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:06 PM | Permalink |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
