More Camille de Toledo

[ocvictor]

"Veteran partiers and party-members of the 20th century, connoisseurs of the barbaric delights of that age, I ask you, and try to use your imagination, do you think growing up is easy when your mother is a cemetery? Was Fukuyama right? That’s a question for philosophers, not for me. But take the phrase “We’re at the end of History”. Try to listen to that with the ears of a child at bedtime. Try to hear what those words sound like as the book closes and voices are hushed, as the lights are turned out and the dim figures of the people who put us to sleep slip away with a phrase gentle and disturbing at the same time: Sleep tight. Sleep tight was our pillow and our cradle. And we did sleep tight. No missiles kept us awake. The crisis was past. We were the happy campers. There was nothing left to do but live happily ever after and sleep tight. We are the children of that funeral elegy. It would have been easy to believe it. To believe that any attempt at creating something is in vain, that writing is just a form of masturbation, that resistance is futile. The various causes that might have given us a reason to keep going were either retro or obsolete, check the right box. Independence? Retro. Alienation? Obsolete. Punk Rock? Retro. Rock and Roll? Obsolete. Unionism? Obsolete. Communism? Retro. Modernity? Outmoded."

Comments

[dignam.livejournal.com]

That's it exactly. That's what I've been aiming at.

[ocvictor.livejournal.com]

De Toledo's book, "SuperHip Jolipunk," comes out in English this summer -- it was originally published in French -- and I can't recommend it enough. It's the most excited I've been about a work of social critique in almost 20 years.