Happy Birthday, Karl Marx

[...and a rollickin' 'Viva Cinco de Mayo!' to all the rest of you. There is this common misconception that Cinco de Mayo is Mexico's Independence Day (Grito de Dolores), it's not. (Grito de Dolores is actually 16 September, and the most important patriotic holiday in Mexico) Cinco de Mayo in fact celebrates the initial Mexican victory, led by General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín, over French forces in 1862 at the Battle of Puebla.]

In any case, the Frankfurt School: Marx and Freud contributed to this gestalt of the Frankfurt School, leading to a focus on both [alternatives to] capitalism and fantasy, as a means to understand culture. Why do I? Walter Benjamin studied here, and he is our lovely subject of discussion (read, lecture) today.

"There is something quintessentially modern," says JB, "about Paris." Introducing the concept of the Flaneur: acting as a man of the crowd - not readily extinguishable; acting in a public urban space to observe the world as culture. The Flaneur is not immersed in the environment which he is observing, he does not participate. The Flaneur does not have a destination; he is an idler. "He consumes the city, visually," noted JB, "You have no connection to society. Flaneurs don't have families. Where they get their clothes? Doesn't come up." "The crowd is his domain," says Baudelaire, "...his passion and his profession is to merge with the crowd." There is still detachment: he is 'of' the crowd, but not 'in' it.

How is a metropolis different from a large town? What is the 'urban experience'? Crowds, street life."You are experiencing things at every level of the body sensorium," (JB) Textual fragments, unexpected juxtapositions: the important commentary provided by Benjamin. "The [visual] fragmentation of the text," notes JB, "is a metaphorical rhyme... These textual fragments rhyme with the fragmentation of the [Parisian] arcades."