The journey and the dance..

2025-01-04

I tried to get Google Translate to do this automatically for me, but it wouldn't - the https://antroposmoderno.com/antro-version-imprimir.php?idrticulo=503 site would block it trying to verify if it was human.. So here it is, I pasted it piecemeal into google translate and this is what it spit out.

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Siegfried Kracauer's essays for the Frankfurter Zeitung during the Weimar Republic have not yet been translated into Spanish. Kracauer's aim, or his means, was to examine the philosophical problems of his time, so similar to our own, by means of analysing everything that normally suffered, or enjoyed, the disdain of the intellectual class, of a certain kind. Kracauer penetrates the cracks of mass culture, which usually offers a surface free of fissures at first glance (almost always the only one), in search of signs that indicate the way to much broader and deeper tendencies. According to him, it was necessary to explore the surfaces that were less conscious of themselves in order to reach the "fundamental substance of the state of things." Today this has become common practice, the modus operandi of hundreds of columnists in the daily press. However, there are few occasions when we can witness the philosophical daring of a journalist. There is often a lack of experience, intelligence, sensitivity or the desire to go against what fills the fridge and dresses the children. There are also many who have found employment directing our attention towards the latest pop culture novelties, which has nothing to do with analysis, since thought alone is the master of everything. Kracauer suffered first-hand the journalistic banishment, unemployment and finally exile in France, and then in the United States, when the single thought that would last a thousand years was established in his country. He was a companion of Walter Benjamin on the run and suffered on the Franco-Spanish border the same uncertainty that led the Berliner to suicide. (Incidentally, there is a new theory, according to which Benjamin was murdered by Stalin's agents). Already in the United States and supported by Theodor Adorno and other members of the Frankfurt School, Kracauer devoted his attention to cinema, becoming one of the main theorists of the 20th century; his books on cinema have been translated into Spanish and are easily found. In the last years of his life he rescued a series of journalistic articles from the 1920s to publish them in book form. "The Journey and the Dance" is one of them.

Alfredo Bruñó

http://librodenotas.com/almacen/Archivos/001468.html

TRAVEL AND DANCE

Siegfried Kracauer

Today, so-called "bourgeois" society indulges in the desire for travel and dancing with far greater enthusiasm than it has ever shown for these secular activities in any other age. It would be too easy to attribute these spatiotemporal passions to the development of transport or to understand them in psychological terms as a consequence of the post-war period. For, however correct these indications may be, they do not explain either the particular form or the specific meaning that these two manifestations of life have come to take in the present.

When Goethe travelled to Italy, he was travelling to a country that he sought with his soul. Today the soul - or whatever one wants to express with that word - goes in search of the change of environment offered by the journey. The aim of modern travel is not its destination, but a new place as such; what people seek is less the particularity of a landscape than the foreignness of its face. Hence the preference for the exotic, which one longs to discover because it is something entirely different, and not because it has already become the image one dreams of. The more the world shrinks thanks to cars, cinema and aeroplanes, the more the concept of the exotic becomes relativised. Although at present the exotic may still cling to the pyramids or the Golden Horn, one day it will designate any place in the world, as long as the place appears out of the ordinary from the perspective of any other point in the world. Such relativisation of the exotic goes hand in hand with its banishment from reality. So sooner or later those with romantic inclinations will be forced to demand the establishment of fenced nature reserves, isolated fairy-tale kingdoms in which people can still hope for those experiences which even Calcutta today seems unable to offer. This is increasingly the case. As a result of the comforts of civilization, only a tiny fraction of the globe remains terra incognita today; people feel at home in their own homes as well as elsewhere – or they are not at home anywhere. So, strictly speaking, the travel that is so fashionable no longer really allows anyone to savour the feeling of strange places; one hotel is the same as the next, and the nature of the background is familiar to readers of illustrated magazines. Instead, people travel for the sake of travel. The emphasis is on the detachment that travel brings, not on the contemplation of this or that kind of place that makes it possible. The meaning of travel is nothing more than that it allows us to have tea at five o'clock in a space that happens to be less mundane and numbing than the space of our daily lives. Increasingly, travel is an incomparable opportunity to be in a place other than the one we normally occupy. It fulfils its decisive function as a spatial transformation, as a temporary change of situation.

Just as travel has been reduced to a pure experience of space, so has dance been transformed into a mere way of marking time. The dream of the waltz has come to an end, and the minutely regulated joy of the Française belongs to the past. What was meant by the ceremonial dance - a pleasurable flirtation, a tender encounter in the realm of the sensual - is today evoked (at most) by the older generation. Modern social dance, alienated from the conventional network that governs the middle classes, tends to become a representation of rhythm alone. Instead of expressing a series of ideas in time, its content today is nothing more than time itself. If in the earliest ages dance was a cult practice, today it has become a pure cult of movement; if rhythm was a manifestation of eros and the spirit, today it is nothing but a self-sufficient phenomenon yearning to be rid of meaning. The secret end of jazz songs, however dark their origins, is a tempo that is not concerned with anything but itself. These songs want to extinguish melody and go ever further into improvisations that signal the decay of meaning. Here a shift has taken place, away from movement that refers to meaning and towards a purely self-referential movement. This is confirmed by the use of dance steps tailored by the Paris dance teachers. The progression of these steps is not determined by an objective, substantive law to which the music must conform. On the contrary, that law now arises freely from the motor impulses worked out in response to the music. An individualization, perhaps, but not one that is aimed at the individual. For jazz music, however vital it may be considered, leaves what is merely alive to its own devices. The movements it engenders (which are evidently spent in meaningless dancing) are therefore nothing more than rhythmic offerings, temporary experiences whose ultimate felicity is syncopation. Of course, as a temporal event, dance in general cannot exist without the rhythmic element; but there is a difference between the experience of something authentic through rhythm and the experience of rhythm itself as an inauthentic goal. The contemporary practice of turning jazz dance into a sport bears witness to its lack of any substantial meaning beyond that brought about by disciplined movement.

Travel and dance thus have a questionable tendency to become formalized. They are no longer events that take place in space and time, but mark the transformation of space and time in themselves as events. If this were not the case, their content would not be increasingly dictated by fashion. For fashion erases the intrinsic value of the things that fall under its control by subjecting the appearance of these phenomena to periodic changes that are not based on any relationship to the things themselves. The fickle dictates of fashion, which disfigure the world, would have a purely destructive character if they did not confirm - even in the lowest level - the intimate human connection that even objects can come to signify. The fact that today the creation and selection of seaside resorts depend largely on the whims of fashion is further proof of how unimportant the destination of the trip is. Similarly, in the realm of social dance, the arbitrary tyranny of fashion allows us to conclude that the season's favorite moves are not particularly saturated with substance.

As formal events, travel and dancing, of course, have long been overtaxed. The particular place and steps an individual prefers may have something to do (as the haircut) with the directives of that curious and profane anonymous entity whose whims the most fashionable society so blindly follows. It would almost seem that what is asked is the pure activity of surrendering oneself to space and time. The adventure of movement as such is exciting, and escaping the spaces and times of custom into other realms yet to be explored arouses passions: the ideal there is to wander freely through the dimensions. This double life of space and time could not be longed for with such intensity were it not for the distortion of real life.

The real person, who has not yet resigned himself to being a tool of mechanized industry, resists dissolving into space and time. Of course, that person exists in this space, here, but he is not dispersed in it nor is he overwhelmed by it. On the contrary, he extends across longitudinal and latitudinal parallels into a supra-spatial infinity that we must in no way confuse with the endlessness of astronomical space. Nor is he circumscribed by time experienced as expiration or as something measured by a clock. Rather, he is engaged with eternity, which is distinct from the infinite expanse of time. Although he lives on this side, which appears and where the person appears, he does not live only on this side; for, as anyone who has experienced death knows, this side is contingent and incomplete. How else could that which is disappearing in time and space participate in reality, if not through man's relation to the indeterminate that exists beyond space and outside of time? As someone who exists, man is actually a citizen of two worlds, or more correctly, he exists between these two worlds. Thrown into a spatiotemporal life to which he is not enslaved, he turns toward an Other Side in which everything on this side would find its meaning and its conclusion. The dependence of this side on this kind of supplement is manifested in the work of art. By giving form to the phenomenal, art offers a form that allows it to be touched by a meaning that is simply not given with the phenomenon; it thus relates the phenomenal to a relevance that goes beyond time and space, transforming the ephemeral into a construct. The real person has a real relation to this relevance, which in the work of art combines with the existing to form an aesthetic unity. Caught on this side and in need of the other side, man leads, in the literal sense of the expression, a double life. Yet this duality cannot be separated into two positions that can be occupied successively, for when understood as man's participation (caused by an inner tension) in both spheres, the duality resists dissection. Man suffers tragedy because he aspires to realize the absolute on this side; he experiences reconciliation because he has the vision of perfection. He always finds himself simultaneously in space and on the threshold of a supra-spatial infinity, simultaneously in the flow of time and in the reflection of eternity; and this duality of his existence is simple, for his being is precisely the tension that runs from this side to the other. Even if he were to travel or dance, for him the journey and the dance would never be self-sufficient events. Like all actions, the journey and the dance receive their content and form from that other sphere toward which man is oriented.

The forces that lead to mechanization do not look beyond space and time. They have been blessed with an intelligence that knows no mercy. Insofar as it is convinced that the world can be grasped on the basis of mechanistic presuppositions, that intelligence frees itself from any relation to the other side and minimizes the reality that man, stretched out through time and space, occupies. This detached intelligence engenders technology and aspires to a rationalization of life that will adjust it to technology. But since such a radical flattening of all living things can be achieved only by sacrificing man's intellectual complexion, and since he must repress his intermediate spiritual layers in order to make him as polished and shiny as an automobile, one cannot easily attribute any real meaning to the bustle of machines and people that this intelligence has created. Technology therefore becomes an end in itself, and from this arises a world that, to put it vulgarly, desires nothing more than the greatest possible technologization of all activities. Why? He does not know. He only knows that time and space must be conquered by the power of intelligence, and he prides himself on his mechanistic mastery. Radio, telephotography, etc. - each and every one of these offshoots of rational fantasy serve a single desire: that of the constitution of a depraved omnipresence within calculable dimensions. The expansion of land, air and sea traffic is the final manifestation of this process, and speed records its most radical forms. And rightly so, for if man is the bearer of intelligence and intelligence alone, he has nothing else to desire: success in overcoming the space-time barriers confirms his rational sovereignty. However, the more he tries to solve things by means of mathematics, the more he himself becomes a mathematical presupposition in time and space. Their existence disintegrates into a series of organizationally dictated activities, and nothing would fit better into this mechanization than man being shrunk into a point, so to speak, into a useful part of the intellectual apparatus. Being forced to degenerate in this direction is already a burden enough for people. People are driven into a daily life which makes them the servants of technological excesses. Despite or perhaps precisely because of the humanitarian foundations of Taylorism, people do not become the masters of the machine but something like a machine.

In a situation enveloped by mechanistic categories - one that conjures up George Grosz-like caricatured faces on a surface that leaves everything exposed - it is painfully difficult to lead a real double life. If one tries to occupy a place in reality in any case, one hits the wall of these categories and falls back into the realm of space and time. One wants to experience the infinite and is just a point in space; one wants to establish a relationship with the eternal and is swallowed up by the flow of time. Access to the sphere one seeks is closed, and therefore we can only express our demand for reality in an inauthentic way.

Civilized people, it is said, today discover in travel and dance a substitute for the sphere to which they have been denied access. Since they are locked within the space-time coordinate system and are not able to extend beyond the forms of perception to the perception of forms, they are allowed access to the other side only through a change in their position in space and time. To ensure that they are citizens of both worlds, these people (reduced to mere space-time points) must live intermittently in one place and then in another, they must move sometimes to one rhythm and sometimes to another. Travel and dance have come to acquire a theological relevance: they are the essential possibilities through which those caught in mechanization can live (even if not authentically) the double life that is the basis of reality. As travelers, they distance themselves from their everyday place; going to an exotic place is the only way left for them to prove that they have overcome the regions that enslave them on this side. They experience supra-spatial endlessness by travelling in endless geographic space, and especially through travel as such. It is the kind of travel that mostly and almost always lacks a particular destination; its meaning is entirely spent in the mere instance of changing location. This means that for them, the way reality is intertwined, its one-within-another quality (Ineinander) has been reduced to a sequence, a one-after-another structure (Nacheinander). While those attuned to the absolute are not only in space when they occupy a space, the people of the mechanized bustle are either in their normal place or somewhere else. For them, this disjunction never becomes simultaneity. They always separate this indissoluble double form into two distinct spatial events. It is the same with the experience of time. Dancing offers those who have been violated by intelligence the possibility of catching the eternal. For them, the double life becomes two kinds of behaviour within time itself: they only grasp the immortal within the mortal. Therefore, what is decisive within the temporal medium is the formal transformation, the abandonment of the temporality of profane bustle in exchange for another temporality, which is none other than that of rhythm itself and not that of the meaning of the dance. And in this medium, too, the point-people cannot attain the double life in one go, so to speak, like people who really exist. Torn from the tension that greets the eternal within time, they are not simultaneously here and there but first here and then somewhere else – which is also on this side. For them, the distorted image of eternity arises only from the sequentiality of council meetings and dance performances. The way in which special spatio-temporal events are currently appreciated abundantly confirms that what is at stake in this enjoyment is the distortion of a life that is becoming less and less attainable. What one expects and gains from travel and dancing - a certain liberation from earthly sorrows, the possibility of an aesthetic relationship to organized work - corresponds to the kind of elevation above the ephemeral and the contingent that could occur within a life in relation to the eternal and the absolute. With the difference, however, that these people do not realize the limitations of life on this side but abandon themselves to the normal contingency within the limitations of this side. For them, life on this side has the same relevance as the environment of any office: that is, it encompasses in space and time only the monotony of everyday life and not everything that is human (which, of course, includes travel and dancing). And when they give up their spatiotemporal fixity during breaks, it gives them the impression that the other side (for which they lack words) is already announced within life on this side. Through their travels (and for now it doesn't matter where they go) they throw off their shackles and imagine that infinity itself lies before them. They already feel like they are on the other side just by taking the train, and the world they get off in already seems like another world. The dancer also achieves eternity in rhythm: the contrast between the time in which he floats and the time that destroys him turns out to be a true rapture in a realm devoid of authenticity. The dance itself can be reduced to a few steps; after all, the only essential thing is the act of dancing.

In his book Justification of the Good, Vladimir Solovyov says: “If it is necessary for people in a given epoch to invent and construct all kinds of machines, to build the Suez Canal, to discover unknown countries, and so on, then it is also necessary for the successful accomplishment of these tasks that not all people be mystics; yes, one might even say that it is necessary that not all be sincere believers.” This uncertain and tentative confirmation of the civilizing impulses more realistic than the radical cult of progress, even if it comes from a rationalist lineage or points directly to utopia. But it is also more realistic than the condemnations of those who romantically flee from the situation assigned to them. It awaits promises without articulating them. It not only understands phenomena that, as deformations and distorted reflections, have been conclusively freed from their foundations, but also attributes to them certain possibilities whose character seems, after all, quite positive.

The passionate irruption into all dimensions also demands redemption, if its negativity is thought through to its ultimate consequences. It may be that the addiction to a mere change of place or pace is a side effect of the imperative to master in every sense the spatiotemporal domains opened up by technology (though not only technology). Our conceptions of the nature of the world have expanded so abruptly that it may take a long time before they are integrated into the empirical realm. When we travel we are like children, playfully thrilled by the new speed, the new relaxed way of wandering, the perspectives of geographical regions that could not previously be seen so widely. As for the ability to have all these spaces within our reach, we have taken the bait; we are like the conquistadors who have not yet had time to reflect on the meaning of their conquest. Similarly, when we dance we also mark a rhythm, a time, that did not previously exist. a time that has been prepared for us by a thousand discoveries whose content we cannot evaluate, possibly because for now their scale, which is unfamiliar to us, gives us the impression of being its content. Technology has taken us by surprise, and the regions it has opened up remain flagrantly empty...

The journey and the dance, in their present form, would then be simultaneously excesses of a theological kind and predecessors of a profane kind, distortions of the real being and conquests in the (in themselves unreal) media of space and time. These could be filled with meaning when people spread out from the newly conquered regions of life on this side towards the infinite and the eternal, which can never be contained by any life on this side.