Tomorrow night we’re going to forego a reading and instead play some surrealist games, drawing from Alaistair Brotchie’s A Book of Surrealist Games. We’ll have a few selected that seem especially conducive to a group like ours and will provide the necessary supplies, but feel free to look through the text and pick out any that interest you, as well as bring any art supplies or other materials you think might enhance the play. See you soon!

Next week, join us as we take a look at some excerpts from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature. We’ll discuss Chapters IV (“Language”) and V (“Discipline”).  Hope to see you there — stay fierce!

Benjamin on/and Kafka next time! We’ll discuss Kafka’s “The Judgment” (pp. 78-86) alongside Walter Benjamin‘s essay “Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death” (pp. 111-140). Around 37 pages of reading this week, so try and give yourself enough time for all of it, and if you find yourself short, perhaps read the Benjamin and some of the very short stories instead. “

Two pieces in conversation this week: Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator” (pp. 69-82) dialogues with Novalis’ “Miscellaneous Observations” (aka “Pollen”) (pp. 23-46). Hope you’ll join us for the collision.

More by Walter Benjamin this Tuesday. From One-Way Street and Other Writings, we will discuss “To the Planetarium” (pp. 103), “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man” (pp. 107), and “Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia” (pp. 225). Can’t wait to go over these with you — until then!

Next week we’ll take a crack at Walter Benjamin’s “Epistemo-Critical Prologue” to The Origin of German Tragic Drama. It runs from pp. 27-56. Enjoy, and stay fierce.

This week we’ll discuss the first two chapters of W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction (“The Black Worker” and “The White Worker”). See you there.

A last taste of Dionysian glories next week, as we conclude The Birth of Tragedy and select a new direction hence. Section 20 through the conclusion are up for consideration. Anon, anon…

“A coterie of perennial nuisances persists, despite pleadings from the local citizenry, in discussing Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. ‘Insularity has its virtue,’ one remarked.”

Sections 13-19 next time!

Pushing forward with The Birth of Tragedy, this week reading sections 6-12. See you soon!