10/6 Pre Class

This week's reading from Habermas gave a very clear insight into some of the identities of where a lot of the modernist culture derives from. We got a picture of the influencers and theorists from the time. After each reading, it is quite interesting to understand and analyze the intertextuality amongst all of our authors and theorists. The pieces are starting to connect with the framework being set up from a cultural aspect. Specifically, this week, the concept of aesthetic project and theory was mentioned and this set up the style and form of media delivery and the methods on how culture was perceived and shaped. The Enlightenment shaped culture and society in ways that are still impacting us today merely through the ripple effect.  Habermas had mentioned the surrealists and the effects they have and will have on future cultural norms, as Habermas says, “Communication processes need a cultural tradition covering all spheres - cognitive, moral-practical and expressive… The surrealist revolt would have replaced only one abstraction” (Habermas, 1981, p. 105). Below, I have attached a series of highly important quotes that will later be quite effective for analysis of further topics discussed in the course. These quotes are what I believe are important concepts and theories moving forward. I have now been slowly shifting my perspective with analyzing the past and using those thoughts to further predict and understand how the past will shape the future from today and so on. 

"With varying content, the term 'modern' again and expresses the consciousness of an epoch that relates itself to the past of antiquity, in order to view itself as the result of a transition from the old to the new" (Habermas, 1981, p. 98). 

"Specifically, the idea of being 'modern' by looking back to the ancients changed with the belief, inspired by modern science, in the infinite progress of knowledge and in the infinite advance towards social and moral betterment" (Habermas, 1981, p. 99). 

"Drawing upon the spirit of surrealism, Walter Benjamin constructs the relationship of modernity to history in what I would call a post-historicist attitude. He reminds us of the self-understanding of the French Revolution: 'The Revolution cited ancient Rome, just as fashion cites an antiquated dress. Fashion has a scent for what is current, whenever this moves within the thicket of what was once.' This is Benjamin's concept of the Jetzeit, of the present as a moment of revelation; a time in which splinters of a messianic presence are enmeshed" (Habermas, 1981, p. 100).