{"id":38905,"date":"2018-10-09T06:11:20","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T11:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38905"},"modified":"2018-10-09T06:11:20","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T11:11:20","slug":"the-emergency-brake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38905","title":{"rendered":"The Emergency Brake"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Emergency Brake<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Photo Source spinster cardigan | CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Although the Trump Administration, it was recently\u00a0revealed<\/a>, concluded that it\u2019s too late to do anything to avert catastrophic climate change (and, so, why even bother), the UN just announced that there\u2019s still time to avoid mass death and suffering \u2013 if there is \u201cmassive, immediate\u00a0transformation<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0But how would such an immediate transformation unfold?<\/p>\n

Because we seem to be living through a stretch of history in which history is threatening to extinguish history itself, an examination of the 20th century philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin\u2019s concept of the angel of history, and his interrelated notion of the emergency brake, may point to a way.<\/p>\n

Evoked by the Swiss artist Paul Klee\u2019s watercolor Angelus Novus, Benjamin introduced the figure of the angel of history in his final essay, \u201cTheses on the Philosophy of History<\/a>.\u201dAppearing with its face \u201cturned toward the past,\u201d hurtling backward through space by \u201ca storm blowing from paradise,\u201d the angel is unable to close its wings and determine its own movement. Overpowered by this storm, it can do little more than watch impotently as catastrophic wreckage (the manifestation of history and progress) piles up at its feet.\u00a0That is, caught in the storm blowing from paradise, the storm of history is preventing the angel from doing what it desires to do. But just what does it desire?<\/p>\n

As Benjamin writes: the angel \u201cwould like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what is smashed.\u201d Although prevented from doing so by the storm of progress that determines (and undermines) its flight, the angel\u2019s utopian desire is to repair the world \u2013 not in order to restore paradise (a longstanding tendency of utopian messianism), but, rather, to restore life and autonomy to a social world destroyed by the coercive and destructive forces of history and ideology.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Emergency Brake Photo Source spinster cardigan | CC BY 2.0 Although the Trump Administration, it was recently\u00a0revealed, concluded that it\u2019s too late to do anything to avert catastrophic climate change (and, so, why even bother), the UN just announced that there\u2019s still time to avoid mass death and suffering \u2013 if there is \u201cmassive, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[141,5493,7844,22200,827,22201],"class_list":["post-38905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-counterpunch","tag-donald-trump","tag-elliot-sperber","tag-united-states","tag-walter-benjamin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38906,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38905\/revisions\/38906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}