8 Thermidor XXXVIII
"The consciousness of exploding the continuum of history is peculiar to the revolutionary classes in the moment of their action. The Great Revolution introduced a new calendar. The day on which the calendar started functioned as a historical time-lapse camera. And it is fundamentally the same day which, in the shape of holidays and memorials, always returns. The calendar does not therefore count time like clocks. They are monuments of a historical awareness, of which there has not seemed to be the slightest trace for a hundred years. Yet in the July Revolution an incident took place which did justice to this consciousness. During the evening of the first skirmishes, it turned out that the clock-towers were shot at independently and simultaneously in several places in Paris. An eyewitness who may have owed his inspiration to the rhyme wrote at that moment:
Qui le croirait! on dit,
qu'irrités contre l'heure
De nouveaux Josués
au pied de chaque tour,
Tiraient sur les cadrans
pour arrêter le jour.
[Who would've thought! As though
Angered by time’s way
The new Joshuas
Beneath each tower, they say
Fired at the dials
To stop the day.]"
- Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History
The French Republican Calendar marked the escape from ecclesiastic stagnation. The rest of history would no longer be dedicated to the church-regulated repetitive celebration of Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection.
This was an epochal shift to liberté, égalité, fraternité and unfettered human creativity and cooperation that would lead to a true human progress.
But despite their deepest wishes, Capital undergoes no qualitative revolutions. The changes in form are temporary, and this transient nature serves to create an infinitely expanding cycle in the pursuit of only a quantitative increase. What use is rationality or science without the grand shift? It eventually became clear that the ideals of primordial liberalism are incompatible with rhythmic machinery.
Comments
Post a Comment