We Slaves
It seems that for veteran authors an introduction will write itself—but often only after the body of their work has been well developed and recorded. I can say, at least, that this is the case here.
A few years ago a very good friend came to me full of excitement, “Justin, you know all those crazy ideas you have running around in your head? You’re not alone. I have found someone who is just like you!” She sat on the couch next to a few course books from her graduate program, along with a couple notebooks stuffed with lecture notes. In her hand there was an especially full notebook which looked as if it had been compiled in a complete frenzy. Somehow, I knew this last notebook was intended for me. Beneath the notes from her History of Western Philosophy course, she revealed a copy of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Of course, I speak of my girlfriend, Jacque Nodell. Her recommendation was right and I was hooked. Over the next few years I exhausted a syllabus-worthy list of Nietzsche’s major works. I took particular interest in the style exemplified in Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist, and admire the author’s disposition in Beyond Good and Evil. Following, I found myself guided like a mere marionette and I retouched on one of my past inspirations, Sigmund Freud. Specifically, I found myself enjoying Moses and Monotheism and Civilization and Its Discontents. Later, my new found independent scholarship expanded to include authors Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
During this time weslaves.com developed as an outlet for thoughts following these readings. However, the direction which I chose to begin my work crystallized following a weekend in Detroit, Michigan. Jacque and I enjoyed the company of a couple of friends local to the area. Following a few drinks and a conversation regarding the urban landscape of Detroit, we were brought to see Michigan Central Station. The purpose of the visit was simple: subject ourselves to the tower of long-lost utility. Standing there, humbled beneath that mammoth, I was brought into two minds. One said to me, “This is an eyesore! What a monument of failure!” The second said to me, “This is magnificent! What a monument to a lost time and place of achievement!”
That night it occurred to me that I had encountered, at some time earlier, a concept which had put into words an approximate description of my feelings. I recalled a Wikipedia article outlining what is known as the Uncanny Valley. Used in robotics, the Uncanny Valley describes the negative emotional response toward robots that near human resemblance. The “valley” is best expressed in graphical form, in which an industrial robot (unfamiliar) is plotted against a prosthetic human hand (more familiar), and an actual human hand (most familiar); wherein the industrial robot produces less emotional revulsion than the prosthetic hand. This concept is an application of an earlier idea, the uncanny, which describes that which is familiar, yet causes discomfort because of its familiarity.
At this point I wondered: had I been looking at the ruins of Persepolis, for example, would I have had such revulsion? I mean, could I have imagined myself saying, “What a monument of failure?”—to that? Could it be that because I understand it less, it offends me less—because it is so distant from me I can appreciate its value?
Following this, a direction for my work solidified. I continued to use the language of those authors which I had been reading; however, in reinterpreting my own writing through the lens of this new experience, I discovered a succession of thoughts occupied in aesthetics.
- Justin Bleep, March 16th, 2011