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.

Well, everything is packed and my room is empty. My dad came yesterday to move all of my belongings to Kansas, but I'm staying in Atlanta for another week. Talk about heavy boots. 


I spent the last two weeks in Minnesota, but I'll write about that later. It was what I needed.


I wish I hadn't already sent home all of my kitchen equipment. I have an overwhelming urge to bake. 


Here are some links that I like a great deal.


Steven Pyke's photographs of philosophers.

Neche Collection Photographer Veronica Corzo-Duchardt writes, "Neche Collection (pronounced Ne Che) visually documents materials collected by my grandfather Neche Eugenio Hadad. A Cuban Exile of Lebanese descent, accountant, collector and sometimes thief. My grandfather greatly influenced my work as a artist/designer and passed on his obsession of printed matter and office supplies."

Oscar Ciutat's photographs of caged zoo animals

Isa Leshko's photographs of elderly animals

David Lynch's Interview Project Germany, which captures the stories of fifty different people encountered on a road trip across Germany. This one is from Karl of Buchenbach, which is just outside of Freiburg.

 

The documentary Marwencol from PBS's Independent Lens about Mark Hogancamp who, after being attacked and suffering severe brain and physical damange, creates a 1/6th scale WWII-era town in his backyard as a form of therapy. The town represents his family, friends, attackers, and enemies and he begins to come to terms with his attack and trauma while also redeveloping hand-eye coordination, stability, etc. 

Watch the full episode. See more Independent Lens.

April Inventory

What the heck happened to April? It was busy and I was gone a lot, that's for sure. Plus it's spring and the end of the semester, so the only thing I can expect of myself is to be flighty. This post will be more photos than words, too, since I have two term papers to write before Wednesday. Yikes! I finished teaching and gave the exam. I really liked this bunch of students and will miss them. I'm surprised at how much I enjoyed teaching logic, too.

At the beginning of the month I presented at the Philosophy at Play conference at the University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham, England. (You can find the abstracts here.) It was my first "grown-up" conference and I'm pleased with how it went. The mix was mostly between playworkers or practioners and philosophers. I think it was the first time I've gone to lectures that I understood and felt like I could respond to intelligently, so that was pretty nice. I'm not sure I learned very much about the particular figures I'm working on, but the conversations and other questions raised were quite fruitful.

The hotel I stayed in was crazy. The curtains looked as if someone had skinned a Muppet, but it was comfortable enough.  Unfortunately I didn't get to spend much time in Cheltenham or England since I had already missed a week of classes (a conference that runs from Monday to Wednesday is bizarre) and it was expensive. Na ja.

Since I've been home from the conference, it's been serious non-stop running. I did manage to squeeze in the FFwD Chocolate Eclairs. I'm not sure how I managed to make them so tiny and they were surprisingly easy to make. I'd never made pate a choux and I was excited by how instantly it came together. I think I'm beginning to trust myself as a baker a lot more now. I had chocolate ganache left over from making these cupcakes the week before, so I just drizzled it on top. In hindsight, I probably ought to have let the ganache warm up a bit more so it looked better, but it tasted fine. The boys polished them off in record time.

And then it was Easter! And I went home to Kansas, where it was cold and a very late spring. Thanks a lot, Kansas. Going home this late in the semester seemed like a terrible idea, especially since I was writing a paper while in the airport, on the plane, and waking up two hours before the rest of the family to squeeze work in, but it was absolutely worth it. I feel more like myself when I get to go home. My family likes to go bumming (Is this a phrase other people use? It sound kind of terrible, but it occurs to me that it might be derivative of the German "bummeln,"  which means to stroll around, go window shopping, that sort of thing, which what we do.) We all got new sandals and drove around to look at houses in the Kansas City area. We missed Ken a whole, whole lot.

Betsy made the above cake out of Melissa Gray's All Cakes Considered. Seriously, what is better than combining npr with baking? Not much, and the cake is proof. I made a bunch of chocolate chip cookies to distribute to people back in Atlanta. Betsy was competing with her boyfriend to see who could make the best cookies, so I helped her a bit, too. Her boyfriend was not allowed to receive any help from his mother, since she's a pastry chef. Betsy was dissatisfied with her cookies, I guess, and entered my cookies as her own. They tied with her boyfriend's, but then it was revealed that he had received help, and was disqualified. Betsy didn't bother to reveal that she had no hand in making her cookies and ended up winning. What a bunch of stinkers!

On Monday I made the Bistrot Paul Bert pepper steak to celebrate Andrew's successful thesis defense. Huzzah! The weather was warm, so we sat out in the backyard. Not bad for a Monday, eh? I wasn't especially wowed by the sauce. I had thought about flambéing it, but we were frying frites one pot over, so that seemed like a VERY BAD IDEA. I'd never made fries before and they went off without incident. I think we were both quite pleased with how it turned out. The dinner was really just lovely. We were both in particularly good moods and it was the perfect temperature out and it was the first time in a while that we really cooked together. Perfect.

I'm pretty stoked for this summer. I'm moving back home at the end of May, since I won't be in Atlanta really until February or March. In June, Betsy and I are going to Turkey for ten days. A classmate of mine has family there and will be in Istanbul while we're there and has very generously offered to show us around. Then I'll be in Italy for three weeks in July for the Collegium Phaenomenologicum, which is a series of lecture courses and text seminars led by some excellent people in my field. Actually, this year's theme is so closely related to my research that I can barely contain myself with excitement. The rest of the summer will be spent working on my dissertation prospectus. I have a committee now, so it's becoming more real as the days go by, especially since I'm now finished with coursework! I received a fellowship to be in Freiburg for the fall semester doing research. That's the plan, at least. 

She knows, she knows! She sings, she sings!

It might be the Catholic in me that thinks of spring as the start of a new year, or it could be that I usually find out in the spring what will happen in the coming academic year, so it feels like the start of something new, or it could be that a fair number of relationships have begun or ended in the spring. Yet while the start of something new, nothing makes me quite as nostalgic and overcome. Yes, Mez, it is springtime Katie. And these memories led me to read my old opendiary entries (and thought it was a good idea to share them with Andrew?). I've been working on the same  philosophical problems for nine years now. I wish I could have an organic food night to go along with it and that we could all frolic in MoBot for a while.

I posted this in OD on April 1, 2002, and I'm writing a paper on the topic again this semester:

Catch only what you've thrown yourself, all is
mere skill and little gain;
but when you're suddenly the catcher of a ball
thrown by an eternal partner
with accurate and measured swing
towards you, to your center, in an arch
from the great bridgebuilding of God:
what catching then becomes a power--
not yours, a world's.
-Rainer Maria Rilke, cited in the fronticepiece to Gadamer's Truth and Method


It's funny that only this time I realized the emphasis on world, rather than individual, play.

And this Rilke, from The Sonnets to Orpheus, I found for the first time yesterday:
XXI
Spring has returned. The earth resembles
a little girl who has memorized
many poems....For all the trouble
of her long learning, she wins the prize.

Her teacher was strict. We loved the white
in the old man's beard and shaggy eyebrows.
Now, whatever we ask about
the blue and the green, she knows, she knows!

Earth, overjoyed to be out on vacation,
play with the children. We long to catch up,
jubilant Earth. The happiest will win.

What her teacher taught her, the numberless Things,
and what lies hidden in stem and in deep
difficult root, she sings, she sings!

And this, which stings a bit:
VIII
You playmates of mine in the scattered parks of the city,
small friends from a childhood of long ago:
how we found and liked one another, hesitantly,
and, like the lamb with the talking scroll,

spoke with our silence. When we were filled with joy,
it belonged to no one: it was simply there.
And how it dissolved among all the adults who passed by
and in the fears of the endless year.

Wheels rolled past us, we stood and stared at the carriages;
houses surrounded us, solid but untrue--and none
of them ever knew us. What in that world was real?

Nothing. Only the balls. Their magnificent arches.
Not even the children... But sometimes one,
oh a vanishing one, stepped under the plummeting ball.