#decline and fall

[yeats-infection]

some malkmus / pavement screengrabs from 1992-4

frankfurt 1994 - reading 1992 - australia 1993 - london 1992 - rennes 1992 - bielefeld 1992

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anguish over the decline of civilisation is the affliction of a conservative. The leftist cannot lament the disappearance of something of which he is ignorant.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Ruins at Agrigento, Sicily, 1986.

[tilbageidanmark]

The saddest book collection in the library.

[quietparanoiac]

You see, I designed the house for human flow and increased functionality.

Decline and Fall (2017), 1x02

[heatdeathnews]

In the latest edition of Decline and Fall, we dig into the disintegrating politics of the terminal Republic, the nature of coups and purges, the boogeyman of American Empire, failure as a natural part of history, and what – precisely – it takes to make someone participate in an atrocity.

You can read the free edition – which is around 4,000 words – right here!

[duststooooorm]

this is fixing me

[asherelbein]

I'm busily working on the next Decline and Fall piece, part of a series that traces the decline of American empire through the lens of -- what else? -- Star Wars. We've reached REVENGE OF THE SITH, and this one is shaping up to be quite long. So, to whet your appetite, here's a little riff I wrote today on General Grievous.

Grievous is an interesting figure both in terms of design and thematics. A hulking, spider-like cyborg in a very fancy cape, he’s a pulp villain with glaring slitted reptilian eyes, squishy organs in his chest plate, and a bad cough. He’s certainly dangerous —he keeps a collection of lightsabers from dead Jedi in his cape. (The now-dubiously canonical Tartakovsky-animated Clone Wars underscores this with an absolute cracker-jack fight scene.)

But Grievous doesn’t really seem like an ideologue. He is, instead, generally shown to be a coward and opportunist. What was such a figure up to, before the outbreak of Galactic civil war? We’re never told, but we can infer: a professional general from the Outer Rim, or somewhere else beyond the borders of the Pax Republica. Someone akin to the mercenary captains of the Renaissance great companies: professional soldiers who kept an eye out for the main chance, and with a professional’s disdain for a fair fight. 

Grievous is also described — in the opening text and in conversation — as the “droid general.” This is, in part, a reference to his forces: those many marching battle droids churned out by the arms dealers of the Separatist alliance. But interestingly, people also talk about Grievous as if he’s himself a droid, rather than an organic being occupying a cybernetic shell. Interestingly, cybernetic prostheses don’t seem that remarkable in Star Wars: Anakin and Luke Skywalker both have them. But both also keep it covered by a glove. To the extent that we can draw conclusions from offhand decisions around design and costuming, open display of these sorts of prosthesis doesn't seem to be socially acceptable. Perhaps in the minds of Galactic citizens, any greater post-organic conversion — the sort that can’t be easily masked, the sort that reminds people of droids — comes with an implicit loss of personhood. 

Recall that droids occupy a deeply ambiguous position in Star Wars: impersonal threats, background workers, eternally subaltern. (Even those who are fully-realized characters —C-3PO and R2-D2 — express their agency in necessarily subversive ways, as befits eternal servants unable to act openly on their own.) As a cyborg, Grievous is thus a specific sort of threat to Republican order: a blend of the organic and cybernetic that has tipped decidedly toward the mechanical, living eyes glaring out of a droid skull like an indictment.

Want more DECLINE AND FALL? Interested in what we had to say about the other two prequels? You can find it right here -- in addition to plenty more -- at HEAT DEATH.

[sixohsixoheightfourtwo]

"Life is like the big wheel at Luna Park. You pay five francs and go into a room with tiers of seats all around, and in the centre the floor is made of a great disc of polished wood that revolves quickly. At first you sit down and watch the others. They are all trying to sit in the wheel, and they keep getting flung off, and that makes them laugh too. It's great fun. You see, the nearer you can get to the hub of the wheel the slower it is moving and the easier it is to stay on. There's generally someone in the centre who stands up and sometimes does a sort of dance. Often he's paid by the management, though, or, at any rate, he's allowed in free. Of course at the very centre there's a point completely at rest, if one could only find it; I'm not very near that point myself. Of course the professional men get in the way. Lots of people just enjoy scrambling on and being whisked off and scrambling on again. How they all shriek and giggle! Then there are others, like Margot, who sit as far out as they can and hold on for dear life and enjoy that. But the whole point about the wheel is that you needn't get on it at all, if you don't want to. People get hold of ideas about life, and that makes them think they've got to join in the game, even if they don't enjoy it. It doesn't suit everyone... Now you're a person who was clearly meant to stay in the seats and sit still and if you get bored watch the others. Somehow you got on to the wheel, and you got thrown off again at once with a hard bump."

evelyn waugh, decline and fall, 1928

[adnotocram]

Kinda dig the whole post apocalyptic Roman Empire destroyed aesthetic, overgrown ruins n all that shit

[yeats-infection]

assorted materials for the cranberries' third album to the faithful departed and single "when you're gone," 1996

[fabular-mr-fox]

I miss the way the internet used to be.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Noi fummo i Gattopardi, i Leoni; quelli che ci sostituiranno saranno gli sciacalletti, le iene; e tutti quanti gattopardi, sciacalli e pecore, continueremo a crederci il sale della terra.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo (The Leopard)(1958)

We were the Leopards, the Lions; those who'll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole lot of us, leopards, jackals, and sheep, we'll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the earth.

[whatameshugenah]

The Battle on the Bridge

Arnold Böcklin, Basel 1827–1901

[saintkevorkian]

For generations the British bourgeoisie have spoken of themselves as gentlemen, and by that they have meant, among other things, a self-respecting scorn of irregular perquisites.

Decline and Fall, 1928. Evelyn Waugh

[heatdeathnews]

New on Heat Death! As part of our ongoing premium series on Star Wars and American empire, we're digging deep into Revenge of the Sith. (The first half, anyway. It's a dense movie.) The full 10,000 word piece, as with the others, is available for paid subscribers. In this free 3,000 word preview, we put prequel-era Obi-Wan Kenobi — and the order he serves — under the microscope.

He is the very model of the modern Jedi mastery His clothes all pressed, a deeply stressed emotional disaster-y (In leu of civil limb-chopping he'll just resort to blastery) That's what you get with Obi-Wan: a modern Jedi master, he!

[leahazel]

Rereading some D&F and apparently I accidentally named Tristan's dad twice. Two different names. Gonna stick with the second one because I like it better and edit the older mention to fix it.