Mode...ein verführerisches Spiel

This is one of the geekiest posts I'm going to write.  The other day I discovered that Fink wrote a book on fashion, Mode...ein verführerisches Spiel [Fashion...a Seductive Play], published in 1969, placing him at 64 at the time of writing. The illustrations, done by Walter Niggli, who, as far as I can tell, is still alive, are particularly great. (I do doubt this, though, since that would make him 103.) The book was published by Modehaus Spengler, a Swiss fashion company. As far as I can tell, which is based only a quick Google search, the book isn't discussed anywhere except in a few bibliographies. This surprises me because this is a clear, approachable, and interesting take on Fink's philosophy, and it is awesome.

Fink's take on fashion is not unlike his take on anything else, meaning he anchors his discussion on what he takes to be the five fundamental phenomena of human being, i.e. work, mastery, love, death, and play, and always in a particular relationship to the world. The five Grundphänome are also what distinguish human from animal and other non-human being.

Fink shifts from an initial idea of clothing as decorative fabric to clothing as housing the body in the way that a house might, but at the same time it expresses something significantly different. What does it mean to have a body? What's the relation between the body, expression, and nudity? There's something, too, about the way we find ourselves moving about the world. Clothing has a particular symbolism that expresses these relationships.

There's something about fashion, which enables us to signalize at once both that we are different and that we belong, that lends a sociality. This sociality, though, isn't the same as a community, and also doesn't take itself as seriously. A great deal of this is due to the culture industry that forces us to fill free time in specific ways, such that this time isn't actually free. It also introduces a false conception of play, namely of play as opposed to seriousness. The way out isn't to give up play, but to rehabilitate it. The seductive element is precisely there in the role of the culture industry. The seductive part need not be strictly negative, though, since it still produces inspiration, excitement, and an interest in beauty.

Ultimately, "Fashion belongs to freedom and play, but also to the raging hunger of the sex, which masks itself, covers its face and through all masks, it pulls through. Fashion is adjacent to the superfluous and the superficial and is therefore already "necessary" in a higher sense. The dress of fashion is dialectic, a veiled revealing of a shameless shamefacedness, high tension of drive through covering of immediate ends, the transfiguration of flesh through the magical mean of textiles. Yes, even all of fashion as a phenomenon of being is dialectic, something, which is decided neither on the one side as positive character, nor on the other as negative; much more it portrays itself as a moving counterplay of opposites (113)." 

Of course last time I mentioned feeling like a jackass every time I think of Heidegger when I'm the woods, so naturally today I stumbled upon the Martin Heidegger Weg. Is it just a coincidence that it's a dead end?

Wandern

Despite my great affinity for Transcendentalism and the occasional Gerard Manley Hopkins, I am not exactly much of a nature person. In theory I like it a great deal. Practice though? Urgh. It takes great self-sacrifice for me to agree to go on a hike or anything athletically-inclined outside, save sledding or sitting. I do enjoy sitting outside. That one of my first adventures with Andrew was a hike says a lot. I think part of this is because the only time my family would go camping would be on the way to Florida in July. Gross. Very gross. In my self-sacrifice I've perfected the let-me-pause-to-take-a-picture-because-I'm-so-out-of-shape-I-can't-breathe-but-I-can't-let-you-know-that.  I'm sure, though, that most people have caught on.

So, imagine my own surprise when I found myself venturing out into the mountains behind my house on Sunday. It was very cold and very foggy and very wonderful. I could stop for as many pictures as I wanted and needed because I was gasping for breath. I think I came across three people for the majority of the walk. I've no idea how far I went, but it took about three and a half hours.

Freiburg is very, very beautiful.

 

As I came around a curve, I came unto this unbelievable clearing with beams of light shooting everywhere. Simultaneously all the church bells in the valley began ringing and I may or may not have gotten a little emotional at the majesty. 

Sometimes it makes me feel like a jackass that it's Heidegger who first comes to mind when I encounter these things, as if no one, myself included, had encountered nature otherwise. But this time, I think he's right on:

That which is can only be, as a being, if it stands within and stands out within what is lighted in this clearing. Only this clearing grants and guarantees to us humans a passage to those beings that we ourselves are not, and access to the being that we ourselves are. Thanks to this clearing, beings are unconcealed in certain changing degrees. And yet a being can be concealed, too, only within the sphere of what is lighted. Each being we encounter and which encounters us keeps to this curious opposition of presence in that it withholds itself at the same time in a concealedness. The clearing in which beings stand is in itself at the same time concealment. (Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art" in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter [New York: First Perennial Classics, 2001], 51-2).

It was enough just about to make my heart burst. 

Nature and I might just be okay.

Alter Friedhof

Today I was feeling cooped up and decided to take a long walk to the city's old cemetery. I had intended to go the last time I was in Freiburg, but never quite made it. It's quite a lovely area and today's cool and overcast whether provided a nice atmosphere. The cemetery was created in 1683, with most of the graves dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I'm going to try to make time for little adventures each week, otherwise it will end up like last time and I'll have missing seeing a great deal.

I guess I never did write about Minnesota, and I guess I never did write about the rest of the summer either. It was difficult to write because I was all over the place, really, and when I was home I tended to stay away from my computer except to work on my dissertation prospectus. In short, I went from Minneapolis to Atlanta (seven days) to Kansas (three days) to South Dakota (five days) to Kansas (two days) to DC (one day) to Turkey (ten days) to DC (one day) to Atlanta (five days) to Kansas (seven days) to St. Louis (one day) to Italy (twenty-one days) to St. Louis (one day) to Kansas (eleven days) to Minnesota (three days) to Kansas (seven days) to Atlanta (nineteen days) to Kansas (fourteen days) to St. Louis (two days) to Kansas (one day) to Freiburg, where I am now for the next 66 days. I guess it will be nice to be in one place for a while.

I wish there were some easy way to sum up everything that happened. I want to tell you about the chicken breast desserts and the ancient ruins and the bison and the giraffes having sex and the spontaneous picnics and feeling like I belongand seeing my closest friends and sinking feelings of despair and celebrating my grandma's birthday and relishing brief moments before flights. I guess, in short again, it was great and at times very difficult, and for the same reasons. To be away from Atlanta for a while was nothing short of wonderful, but it was also miserable. Fortunately, though, I think it will work better the next few months.

I wasn't surprised at how familiar Freiburg still is for me, since it was only four years ago that I was here, but I am surprised at the emotions it instantly awoke. Flashes of memory, I guess, and the feeling of grasping for something. I suppose things I had since buried. Two months will definitely be sufficient. I'm in better shape this time, I think. I wish I could say the same for my spoken German.

The newest and most foreign thing for me is actually to hear myself tell people that I'm working on my dissertation. It didn't seem strange to say that I was working on my prospectus, but it is strange that I have passed that point. I knew since a very young age that I wanted to pursue a doctorate (hardly a surprise given my parents), although at times I've wanted to be a neonatal nurse, a cardiothoracic surgeon, and a baker. And now here I am. I am writing a dissertation. I feel too young. But it's exciting and I'm doing it it.