Author Archives: Babette Babich

Dionysus in Music: On the ‘God of Sex and Drums and Rock and Roll’

— In memoriam: Michael Lee Aday: 1947-2022 — If one could think the Dionysian in music, what would that be like? What would that sound like? Better still: who would that be? Nietzsche tells us in a book, starting with the very first section through to the end of The Birth of Tragedy Out ofContinue reading “Dionysus in Music: On the ‘God of Sex and Drums and Rock and Roll’”

Retrieving Agamben’s Questions

There is tremendous disquiet all around — enough for a lifetime and a half, lived and unlived.  But in this time of crisis, scholars otherwise keen to pick through Heidegger’s Nazi enabling complicity, attuned to what he said or wrote — or failed to say or failed to write — find themselves repeating currently standardContinue reading “Retrieving Agamben’s Questions”

The revolution will be televised.

The revolution will be televised. It is already underway. Already, the first generation of the Frankfurt School, including Günther Anders as well as the more prominent and well known Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, foregrounded the role of media in all of its many guises, mostly broadcast, radio, newsreel, film, television, but alsoContinue reading “The revolution will be televised.”

Figure/Ground

Sometime late last year, a lifetime ago, I had a terrible dream. This was late 2019, before Covid-19. I was left with the unpleasant insight, sudden and cold and clear, that from a certain point of view, the great thundering concern with Thunberg, the rightful and important Dakota pipeline protests, agitation and despair in theContinue reading “Figure/Ground”