The Death of Cool: Silicon Valley and Cultural Capital

 

There is no small irony in the fact that the Communist Manifesto, as text that, as the title suggests, is meant as a political program is read more for its description of the cultural logic of capitalism. "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned," is a line that is remembered cited, made the title of books essays, and panels, long after everyone forgot Marx and Engel's policy on the nationalization of industry. The flowing prose of the first section will always outlast the programatic statements of the latter section (and to be fair even Marx thought that they were dated by 1871, after the Paris Commune).

Nothing Less: On Death, Knowledge, and Affects

 

We all know Spinoza's famous line, "A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death." (EIVP67) I have turned to the line again and again, in graduate school it draw a line of demarcation if not a line in the sand between Heideggerians and neo-Spinozists, and, as I have argued, made possible different ways of thinking of finitude.  It makes for a great slogan, but, as they say in graduate school, let's unpack that.