MUSEUM FATIGUE

…but what About the Sea Turtles?

February 26, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

Yesterday in this semester’s anthropology senior seminar, Anthropology at the End of Worlds, we had an interesting discussion about the popular predilection of humans to be concerned with “saving animals” as a response to being confronted with the complexities of the climate crisis. In fact, at one point we suggested that the concern with specific species might actually be a feel-good distraction from addressing the more challenging systemic issues that are the foundation of the climate crisis. After all, cute, charismatic species offer […]

Categories: Anthropocene • Tags: "the intrusion of Gaia", David Wallace-Wells, Isabelle Stengers, Peter Brannen

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Experiences All The Way Down

February 24, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

Just before nine o’clock last evening, I received an email notification that I book I ordered from Amazon had been delivered to a shipment locker not so far from my home. In what I hope was a self-referential joke on the nature of capital, its name was “Vlad” no less! Since I had just finished my most recent book and was looking forward to adding the new arrival to the pile next to my favorite chair, I decided to head […]

Categories: Consumption, Uncategorized • Tags: Amazon, experiences

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And a Drone Shall Be the Sign

February 22, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

A few weeks back when the COVID-19 Coronavirus really hit the news, I was fascinated to see an outbreak in the news of drone stories coming from China. Over the past few years the drone has become a kind of, pardon the pun, a floating signifier for all that is rational, automated and “unmanned” about modernity in China. Never mind that drones loaded with disinfectant chemicals flying around “fighting the Coronavirus” are of limited value and probably not too good for […]

Categories: Surveillance • Tags: Coronavirus, COVID-19, drones

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Coal Burning and Climate Article from 108 Years Ago

February 22, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

I’ve had this image of a news article from 1912 floating around my computer for some time now, and really need to stick it somewhere for safe keeping. Posting it here should keep it somewhere where I can always find it! The article, from Wednesday, August 14th, 1912 issue of The Rodney & Otamatea Times, Waitemata & Kaipara Gazette in New Zealand, is titled: “Coal Consumption Affecting Climate” and reads: GOAL CONSUMPTION AFFECTING CLIMATE. The furnaces of the world are now burning […]

Categories: Anthropocene, Climate Crisis • Tags: CO2, coal

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Mystery Object #28: Imperial Examination Cheat Sheet Socks

February 3, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

Late last week while going through some of my photos for a talk on China, I came upon some images I took while visiting the Jiangnan Imperial Examination Museum in Nanjing (江南贡院) a few of years back—part of a small case displaying elaborate attempts at cheating on the imperial examinations. The photos were of some knee-high leggings completely covered with neatly hand-written characters—including the soles of the feet! I was very impressed at the detail, the care and the attention […]

Categories: Mystery Objects • Tags: cheat sheet, cheating, China, imperial examination, jiangnangongyuan

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Pokémon, Yokai, Animism, Anthropocene

January 20, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

This morning my son sat down and asked me to read through his Pokémon cards with him. Of course I’ve heard of Pokémon, and I remember the Pokémon Go mobile game craze back in the summer of 2016. But, until this morning I really had no first-hand experience with the game and the variety of Pokémon creatures. There were such a great variety of beasts and forces inhabiting all aspects of the planet—woods, waters, earth and sky, thunder, lightning, fire, […]

Categories: Anthropocene • Tags: animism, Pokémon, yokai

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The Living Life in Real Human Spheres

January 15, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

In the final three chapters of Peter Sloterdijk’s In the World Interior of Capital, he discusses the “spatial revolution of the present,” the idea of the local and its asymmetrical relationship to the global. Finally he concludes with the components necessary to “living in real human spheres.” Sloterdijk begins with the observation that the technologies of the global interior have seemed to make space an “ignorable factor”—compressing space to the point that it really seems to make no difference. In this […]

Categories: Reading Notes • Tags: In the World Interior of Capital, local, Peter Sloterdijk

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Exploding Machines

January 13, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

What is the history of the politics of pampering? If the universal agent of pampering is petroleum (214) as Sloterdijk asserts, then it follows that the material politics of energy might be a foundation for this history.” Sloterdijk suggests exactly this: “…it can be argued that all narratives about the changes in the human condition are narratives about the changing exploitation of energy sources–or descriptions of metabolic regimes” (224). From this perspective, the industrial revolution is not just about making […]

Categories: Reading Notes • Tags: engines, In the World Interior of Capital, motors, pampering space, Peter Sloterdijk

The Pampering Hothouse

January 12, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

In his chapter, “Mutations in the Pampering Space,” Sloterdijk finally gets to describing aspects of the comfort space of the great interior of the palace—the boredom of the hothouse existence on the inside. I like his idea of a “pampering space” because it suggests the hyper-abundance of material goods and security in the overdeveloped interior. Sloterdijk begins by observing that for the populations within the “comfort sphere” there is a shift from need and lack to “thinking in options.” While […]

Categories: Reading Notes • Tags: In the World Interior of Capital, pampering space, Peter Sloterdijk, The Crystal Palace

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Boredom and Fascination of the Crystal Palace’s Inhabitants

January 10, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

In his usage of the Crystal Palace as metaphor for the ordered interior space of the modern project, Sloterdijk describes the inhabitants as afflicted by a “palace boredom” (180). This boredom makes the inhabitants’ pine for “news from the outside” thus threats are experienced as a stimulant. This waiting for news makes their media nervous systems easy to invade through, for example, the violent acts of terrorism. In the dense contexts of encounters in urban and global communication networks, there […]

Categories: Reading Notes • Tags: In the World Interior of Capital, Peter Sloterdijk, The Crystal Palace

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