... this conflict anticipates from the eighteenth century, but in a kind of reversal in advance, the ambiguous fate in which criticism decomposes into philistinism—and in which the cultivated philistine comes to be interested and circumspect, and to repeat, with a serious, portentous air, “This is interesting...

... knowledges, became a cultural consumer—at times even turning into what Hannah Arendt calls a cultivated philistine. These questions—and the questions that the an-­artist Duchamp Stiegler / Proletarianization 7 raises about the aim of the artwork in what...

... school—this all pains us. We find the familiar relations between philistinism and the classical secondary school [die humanitische Bildung] highly suspect” (2011: 95). At this early stage, Benjamin’s desire to transform the system of education is perhaps not altogether removed from...

.... • • • • The proletarianization of the receiver required by the new economic function of the aesthetic—which is also taking place in the cognitive field— has resulted in a generalization of what Hannah Arendt describes as culti- vated philistinism, which has become typical of our era. It is already what drove Duchamp’s...

... is something closer to: Who pays for culture? If the inherited income of the cultured rentiers (the Schlegels) depends on the vulgar present- tense moneymaking of the industrial or (like the Wilcoxes) the commercial bourgeoisie, can the bohemians in good conscience sneer at the philistine tradesmen? Good...

...- vated philistine Through readings in art history and philosophy (Kant’s Cri- tique of Judgment), Stiegler sets out to recover and revitalize the aesthetic figure of the amateur from underneath the ruins of technical history. On the far side of the mediocre judgment, Stiegler mounts a defense...

... of modern bar- baric culture,” he introduces the milieu of the cultural philistine, explored in further detail in Untimely Meditations. Here the very eternity and individuality of the spiritual and cultural leader—who for Nietzsche is an unhistorical or transhistorical individual— are rejected...

... abundantly upon the Goliaths of nineteenth century philistin- ism, how much better conditioned would their descendants be.” The true creative writers are Pynchon’s preterit—the passed over, the deliberately overlooked, written off, written out by the Elect. He gives as one example of a truly creative...

... of the English or Saxon middle classes, and vice versa. Viewed thus, the dreamy, imaginative, spiritual, nonmaterialistic Celt could supply the spiritual defi- ciencies of the practicalminded, philistine, secular, and unlovely commer- cial civilization that the English bourgeoisie had brought into the world...

... centuries of British rule were felt to have had detached it. However much the Revivalist and the more vanguard wings of the ‘‘Irish Renaissance’’ may have differed otherwise, both were searching for an alternative to what they saw as the genteel philistinism of English Victorian culture. For many...

...’ . . . was one of the five components of it—together with pity for the exploited, the aesthetic appeal of a perfect and comprehensive intellectual system, ‘dialectical material- ism,’ a little bit of the Blakean vision of the new Jerusalem and a good deal of intellectual anti-­philistinism. But in January...

... by its wild child, the proletariat, to the use of those powers to foster a new collective life. And always, however stertorous and philistine the previ- ous century’s slumber may have been, it was dreaming most deeply...

... spirit of a social work which had no need of childlike attempts to empathize with the soul of the workers or of the people—this spirit failed to develop in student communities” (Benjamin 2011: 201). Compare the critique of “youthful philistinism” (Benjamin 2011: 166 [“Erotic Education 210 boundary...

... to succumb to the logic of capital see no alternative or no reason to resist the present regime of social life, whereas those with no conscience and no moral scruples hold sway everywhere. With a Philistine twist of Nietzschean distrust of any inherited value and truth claim, the Chinese...

..., as the cabinet is circled or the bottle twirled in the hand. In his fragment on objects in bottles, Benjamin is reminded of a remark made by Adolf Loos in relation to Goethe and recorded by Franz Glück: “While reading Goethe’s rebuke to philistines and many other art lovers who like to touch copper...

... of the heaven of the sacred Germanic-Prussian Holy Roman Empire, with their antediluvian masquerades and the stench of junkers, churches, and above all, of philistinism” (¡Que se compare a los parisinos lanzados al asalto del cielo con los esclavos celestes del Sacro Imperio romano-pruso-germánico, con sus...

... Bruce: “May I commit an act of cul- tural blasphemy and abject philistinism? I never found Lenny Bruce that funny. He never set my attic ablaze. . . . Mort Sahl was always my guy” (CM, 103). Many people would never risk appearing so unradical. Many of us wanted to take a walk on the wild...

... and professors, dupe themselves into thinking that penning “topic sentences” is meaningful labor. Meanwhile, the “stunted race” exiled from “green paradise” remains illiterate, prone to grammatical errors such as “writes the development.” Is this a sad fate? The Philistines are top dog: they have...

... philistinism. In a mock pagan ritual idiom, and in the voice of Minerva, Byron blasts dazzling curses at Elgin: ‘‘First on the head of him who did this deed My curse shall light,—on him and all his seed: Without one spark of intellectual fire, Be all the sons as senseless...

... out a contemporary panorama for contemporary art framed by Hannah Arendt’s “cultural philistinism,” a social condition focused on utility. Duchampian unwork frames this discourse. 68 boundary 2 / February 2017 inquiry into the libidinal diseconomy. Stiegler points out that this economy...