Episode 101: Our Fear of the Dark: On Tanizaki's 'In Praise of Shadows'

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 11:30:00 -0400

In modern physics as in Western theology, darkness and shadows have a purely negative existence. They are merely the absence of light. In mythology and art, however, light and darkness are enjoy a kind of Manichaean equality. Each exists in its own right and lays claim to one half of the Real. In this episode, JF and Phil delve into the luxuriant gloom of the Japanese novelist Jun'ichirō Tanazaki's classic meditation on the half-forgotten virtues of the dark.

Get your Weird Studies MERCH! https://www.redbubble.com/people/Weird-Studies/shop?asc=u
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies
Find us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp
Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies

REFERENCES

Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows
Chiaroscuro, Renaissance art style
John Carpenter (dir.), Escape from L.A.
Weird Studies, Episode 13 on Heraclitus
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Yasujiro Ozu (dir.), Late Spring
Wabi Sabi, Japanese idea
John Carpenter (dir.), Escape from NY
Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the End of Sleep
Eric Voegelin, German-American philosopher

Episode 26: Living in a Glass Age, with Michael Garfield

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 13:30:00 -0400

Stone, bronze, iron... glass? In his recent thought and writing, transdisciplinary artist and thinker Michael Garfield defines modernity as an age of glass, arguing that the entire ethos of our era inheres in the transformative enchantments of this amorphous solid. No one would deny that glass plays a central role in our lives, although glass does have a knack for disappearing into the background, at least until the beakers or screens crack and shatter. Glass is weird, and like a lot of weird things, it can serve as a lens (so to speak!) for observing our world from strange new angles. In this episode, Michael joins Phil and JF to talk through the origins, the significance, and the fate of the Glass Age.

Michael Garfield is a musician, live painter, and futurist. He is the host of the brilliant Future Fossils Podcast.

REFERENCES

Michael Garfield's website + Patreon + Medium + Bandcamp
Michael Garfield, "The Future is Indistinguishable from Magic" (This is the essay we discuss that was unpublished at the time of the recording)
Michael Garfield, "The Future Acts Like You"
Michael Garfield, "The Evolution of Surveillance Part 3: Living in the Belly of the Beast"

Artist David Titterington's Patreon page
Richard Doyle, On Beyond Living: Rhetorical Transformations of the Life Sciences
Corning, "The Glass Age" (corporate video)
Jean-Paul Sartre, Baudelaire
John David Ebert, "On Hypermodernity"
John C. Wright, The Golden Age
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects
Christopher Knight and Alan Butler, Who Built the Moon?
Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy
Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage
Spinoza, Ethics
Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity
Martine Rothblatt, Virtually Human: The Promise and the Peril of Digital Immortality
John Crowley, Little, Big
Jose Arguelles, Dreamspell Calendar
William Irwin Thompson, Lindisfarne Tapes
Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past
Karl Schroeder, “Degrees of Freedom,” in Heiroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future
Michael Garfield, “Being Every Drone”
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution

Special Guest: Michael Garfield.

Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Modernity”

Episode 101: Our Fear of the Dark: On Tanizaki's 'In Praise of Shadows'

Episode 26: Living in a Glass Age, with Michael Garfield