{"id":17372,"date":"2025-02-18T21:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T02:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=17372"},"modified":"2025-02-18T21:00:16","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T02:00:16","slug":"episode-626-martin-mittelmeier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-626-martin-mittelmeier","title":{"rendered":"Episode 626 – Martin Mittelmeier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 626:
\nMartin Mittelmeier<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_626_-_Martin_Mittelmeier.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

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“I always had the feeling that if I understood Adorno’s texts, then everything would be clear . . . I would understand how society works, how fascism came into being, how we can get to a better society.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>With NAPLES 1925:<\/strong> Adorno, Benjamin, and the Summer That Made Critical Theory<\/a> (Yale University Press, tr. Shelley Frisch), Martin Mittelmeier<\/a> traces the roots of the Frankfurt School in southern Italy. We talk about the epiphany on the lip of a volcano in Lanzerote that brought this book to life, the years he spent poring over Theodor Adorno’s writing (and the temptation to mimic Adorno’s style), how Walter Benjamin’s principle of porosity arose from both the tuff stone & the way of living of Naples, and the challenge of evoking the Naples of a century ago and how it led to a theory of society. We get into Critical Theory’s attempts at understanding populism and oligarchic takeovers and why Adorno is having A Moment in Germany, the fun of speculating about meetings among great thinkers \u2014 yeah, I get into George Orwell, Henry Miller, and Inside the Whale<\/em><\/a> \u2014, the utopian aspect of local life in Naples and Capri, the complexities of reputation and destiny, and whether Critical Theory can hold up during the hyper-internet era. We also discuss the difficulties of translation with critical theory’s associative language and how translation is only the first interpretation of a text, why I need to read Hern\u00e1n Diaz’ Trust<\/a>, his new work about Thomas Mann working with Adorno on Doctor Faustus<\/em> in Pacific Palisades (a.k.a. Weimar Under The Palm Trees), how he’s changed in the decade-plus since writing the book, and more. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read Naples 1925<\/a>!<\/p>\n

“The interesting challenge is to reconstruct what could have happened at this meeting, only with what they did before and what they did after.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n