M ATC H E S: A L IGHT B O OK Praise for Matches “The vision of history illuminating these pages is not the conventional one of progress, but the much more radical one of Rousseauism: a ‘left-wing nostalgia’ that performs a detour through the past—a world anterior to privilege and hypocrisy—with the aim not of restoring it, but of giving it a radically new form.” —Michael Löwy, Le Monde diplomatique “There are books that have the ability to throw your whole life into question, but these are the terms of engagement.... In the weeks I spent reading Matches I was more jittery than usual, my mind constantly reeling. I felt like I was on the edge of something, though I could not tell what that might be. I am always behaving badly, but this was different. I wanted to quarrel, I needed to question everything. Books seemed to be ruining my life.... But I love changing my mind.” —Anna Zalokostas, Full Stop “A truly thorough examination of Matches: A Light Book would map all the terrain and take an unusual form: a multi-week course containing lectures, slides, video, the- atre, playtime, and interactivity. S. D. Chrostowska is a writer of importance, and with this work she has raised her own personal bar.” —Jeff Bursey, Numéro Cinq “As in the writings of Nietzsche and Adorno, the targets of Chrostowska’s illuminating arson are cultural: the art world, publishing, academia, popular media, political economy, and the various phenomena that are the warp and woof of our daily newsfeeds.... At more than 500 pages, Matches is an epic of the little form. Encyclopedic in its range and ambition, it includes nearly every variant on the aphorism attempted since the Corpus Hippo- craticum . The book puts itself in dialogue with its most important practitioners as well as with today’s thinkers.” —Ryan Ruby, Lapham’s Quarterly “ Matches poses its greatest challenge to academic criti- cism, demonstrating that intellectually rigorous issues can be addressed in an accessible way without diluting or oversimplifying those issues....Certainly Matches demonstrates that an intelligent, informed critic can use the aphorism and the fragment to explore the most serious and substantive critical and philosophical subjects, providing sufficiently radiant illumination to guide us in our own consideration of these subjects. It is a very rewarding book, read either in sequence and in its entirety or in isolated selections, but ... it is less a specific model of what criticism might become in the digital age than simply a challenge to seriously reflect on what Matthew Arnold called ‘the function of criticism at the present time.’” —Daniel Green, Los Angeles Review of Books Before you start to read this book, take this moment to think about making a donation to punctum books , an independent non-profi t press, @ http://punctumbooks.com/about/ If you’re reading the e-book, you can click on the image below to go directly to our donations site. Any amount, no matter the size, is appreciated and will help us to keep our ship of fools afloat. Contributions from dedicated readers will also help us to keep our commons open and to cultivate new work that can’t fi nd a welcoming port elsewhere. Our adventure is not possible without your support. Vive la Open Access. Fig . 1. Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools (1490-1500) MATCHES: A LIGHT BOOK © 2015, 2019 S. D. Chrostowska This work carries a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license, which means that you are free to copy and redistrib- ute the material in any medium or format, and you may also remix, transform and build upon the material, as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors (but not in a way that suggests the authors or punctum endorses you and your work), you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form whatsoever, and that for any remixing and transformation, you distribute your rebuild under the same license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ First edition 2015 Second edition published in 2019 by punctum books Earth, Milky Way http://punctumbooks.com A number of the pieces in this volume have previously appeared in The Review of Contemporary Fiction , Convolution , 3:AM , BOMB , and Off the Books ISBN-13: 978-1-950192-21-2 (print) ISBN-13: 978-1-950192-22-9 (ePDF) DOI: 10.21983/P3.251.1.00 LCCN: 2019937768 Library of Congress Cataloging Data is available from the Library of Congress Cover and interior images: “Strike,” design by Schneck & Zweigbergk, HAY. With the striking surface moved from the side to the front, “Strike” matchboxes honour the activity of making a flame. The common matchbox and book have long been used for advertising, including of literature: though rarely, they have borne poems, short fiction, and reproductions of book covers. Putting “Strike” matchboxes on the cover of this book seconds their tribute to flame-making and acknowledges the small and unlikely role matches have played in promoting books. Cover and book design: Chris Piuma. MATCHES A LIGHT BOOK S. D. CHROSTOWSKA CON T E N T S xvii Foreword: Infernal Unity by Alexander Kluge xxv Proem 1 Book I Ethics of Reading · Ethics of Reading · Who Spits Farther · Called Literature · No Other Gods · Last Words · Burial Site · Unembarrassable · Broken Levees · The Good, the Bad, and the Beyond · Novel Experiments · Stranger than Fiction · Prise d’abyme · No Outstanding Work · Outpatients · Poetry of Genocide · Art / Barbarism · Under Attack · Page from the History of Cultural Warfare · Art, Alienation, Extinction · Down and Dirty · Scenes of Abduction · Coming Clean · Red Is the Colour of Attention · Ur-Colour · Art (Theory) Brut · Withdrawing · Et remotissima prope · Marmi finti · Unvarnished · It’s Alive! · Virtual Promiscuity · This Will Kill That · Return of the Image · What Did You Do in the Theatre? · The Mask-Produced Spectator; or, Drowning in the Theatre · Fatal Attraction · Pentimenti · Great Passion · Instrument of Instruments · Eupsychian · Mirabile scriptu · Genius and Truth · The Making Of · Look No Further · Work of Exception · Stranger in One’s Own Work · Abyss-Gazing · Little Pieces · Beasts for Kicks · Cannonball · Art Curation · Moratorium I · No Trespassing · Rubens in Furs · Fake Fires · Inscrutable Relation · Barbarogenesis · Perfect State · Letting Slide · Great Art Belonging to Everyone · De-Colonizing Art 67 Book II No Outside · Proof (in the Recipe) · Dry Run · From the Thinking Hat · A Kind of Illusionism · Three Clear Thoughts · Impressions · The Clarity of Clouds · Found Ideas · Finish Your Thought! · Think for Yourself . . . · Overheard · Proverbial Philosophy · Robust Arguments · Tyranny of Knowledge · Take My Word for It · Philosophizing without a Hammer · Settling Ignorance · The Umbrella of Unknowing · Professing Ignorance · Smarter and Dumber · Can Speak, Will Travel · Mark My Words · Almost Being · Don’t Imagine . . . · Think, Pig! · Thinking Thinking · New Line of Thought · The Thinking Head · Self-Inquisition · Phases of Power · One Leg in Paradise · False Analogues · Unconvinced · Humble Pie · Prison Yard · A Sublime Mind · Threaded · Vita contemplativa · Beheading Games · Scattered · Hoping for Queequeg? · Crime Is a Failure of Society · The Problem · How Playful! · Bodenlos · The Ineffable · Perish the Thought · Thinking in Tongues · Sancta simplicitas · Encyclops · Outline of a Shadow · Chicken Fence · Tripwire · Seeing the Light · Seek and Hide · Merveille du jour · Whose Time Has Not yet Come · On Time · Punctum · The Time Is Now · Time Out · House Arrest · Of “Saints” and “Miracles” of Reason · Furnished Rooms · Introspection · Sick · Family Business · Central Tenet of Modern Philosophy · Terms of Engagement · Notions · Babbling Brook · Not Taken Lightly · Freethinking · Casual Philosopher · Sides · Short Spam · Caecigenus · Pursuit of Ignorance · Amor vincit? · No Drinking at the Source · Critique as a Virtue · After Critique · Anchors and Switches · After Truth · Truth to Go · Gymnosophy · Consolation Prize · Modifications · Know Thyself · P4E (Philosophy for Embryos) · Peekaboo · Done In? · Brain-Machine · Ghost Machine · Sex Life of Tools · Criterion of Truth · The Beauty of Wildlife · Extremities · Family of Man · O Humanity! · A Deadly Presence · When Autumn Leaves · A Big If · A Mote in a Sunbeam · Keyhole · Crowded Fields · Memory Viewed · Fragility of Forgetting · Shaking the Tree of Knowledge · Changing Taxonomies · Go-Between · Fragments of a Hole · Mosaic · No Philosopher · Flypaper · The Flies · Most True · Small Talk · [Untitled] 163 Book III The Impossible Handshake · Verblendungszusammenhang · Politics and Truth-Power · New in States · Sua cuique persona · What Words Could · Privacy Settings · Snowdown · Noisemakers · Sleeper Cells · Private the New Public · Letting It All Hang Out · Naming Contest · Wanted: Amanuensis · Dictationship · Do As You’re Told · Intramurale · Daisy Chains · Doing Time · Habeas corpus · A Tale of Two Bodies · White on Black · Concrete Is Hard · Torn-Country Experts · Two-Way Terror · Uncanny Valentines · Apocalyptic Anti-Apocalypticism · Allegory of Politics · “Murderous Alphabet” · Friendly Fire · Rarae aves · The Seeing Eye · The Seven Years’ War Again · Origin of Revolution · Free Radicals · Nothing Doing · Hope Salve · Body Politics · #OtherwiseOccupied · “I’m not crying, I’ve just got some #CUPE3903 in my eye” · All Is Not Quiet · Arms · Last Man Dying · Customary Hail of Arrows · “In search of weapons and allies” · Armed to the Teeth · Made with Pride · Garden of Creativity · ♫ Imagine there’s . . . ♫ · Bromides · So-So · Night Watch · Nostalgia for the Middle Class · If the Shoes Fits · Mutual Parodies · The Gulf of Inattention · Clay Pigeon · Lying in State · Up the Ladder to the Roof · Holes in a Wall · Humility Itself · Excellence Clusters · Mottos for Morale · Feminist Taunt · Let Me See Your Report Card · Cliché Alert · Touché · Lose No Touch · Fetch! Now Roll Over! · Distimacies · The End of Sharing? · Mice · Damned to Fame · Escaping Criticism · Remember Me! · Writing-Ball · Talking Pencil · Doggedly Smart · The Story of Your Life · Poor in Spirit, Rich in Irony · Desk Jobs · No Go Stop · Subtle Reversal · Pretty Penny; or, Get Rich at All Cost · Fruit of Capital · Name Your Price · Make Me an Offer · Price of Life · Piss-Poor · American Poverty · Captives · Against the Grain · Breaking Even · Loose Change · Poison Ivy · Ad coelum et ad nihilum · Nail Soup · Of Wolves and Gatsbies · Piggy Bank · Worker Bee ·Tan Lines · The Eyes of the Poor · Engels and Marx at Chetham’s Library · Bottoms Up! · Call out All the Names under the Sun · Soft Landing · Uncomfortable Happiness · Sore Spots · [Untitled] · [Untitled] 251 Book IV Multitasking · Practically History · Farniente · Fingers Crossed · Mutatio mundi · Dip Sheep · Heart & Home · What’s What · Beggar Thy Neighbour’s Culture · Far Away, So Close · Pebbles · Born Idealist · Future Optimists · Future Humblebrag · Priceless · Critical Utopia · Missing Part · All or Nothing · Paeninsula fortunatorum · In the Dark · Impossible but Necessary · Great Expectations · Means without End · Getting Horizontal · Resentment · In Bad Company · Family Pet · A Parting Gift · Exuviae · Single-Minded Pursuits · Classified · Double Standards · Arcadius Makes Headlines · Beauty & Death · Hit and Miss · The Average American · Insulation · What You Want Is What You Get · Moratorium II · Rip-Off · Meterocracy · A Wide Selection · Outside the Text · Doubling Standard · The Candid Philosopher · Colla et labora · Ghosting Oneself · Publish and Perish? · Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Nazis but Were Too Lazy to Find Out · Uncontaminated · Wiggle Room; or, the Unhappy Customer · Token of Value · Life of a Writer · Literary Public Execution · Public Service · Vital Injection · Complete Sentences · Essential Killing · Completists · Happy Day · Once a Wolf, Always a Wolf? · On a Roll · Nodding Acquaintance · Black Leather · Counterproductive · Ripple Effect · Sleepless · Almost · At the Concession Stand · Discount on Top · “Friends for Life” · Amicitia aequalitas · Safety Deposits · Sexual Root of Kleptomania · Una harum ultima · On Edge · Pale as Death · Moored · Angel of Death · À la chienlit! · Pierre Tombale · The Origins of Work · Apply Within · Among the Living · No Posthumous Reproach · Wound Man · The Jargon of Inauthenticity · Wild Oats · Todesliebe · Between Stiff and Statue · Love & Love-Sickness · Incipit vita nova · Not a Peep from You · Sex & Democracy · Making Conversation · Romeos · Scale Models · To Scale · Unrecognized · The Takeaway Point · Reminder: Originals · Confession of a Knife-Swallower · You Can Take the Clown out of the Circus, but You Can’t Take the Circus out of the Clown · Cannibal on the Make · Soylent Green · Cities of God · Sand-Glass · The Man in the Street · Thoroughly Unthorough · Rise to the Occasion · Comedown · Iron-y · Choosing Gentleness · The Sacred Heart of Convicts · Misericords 339 Book V Better than Nothing · Greek Gift · Devotio moderna · Overripe · Hortus conclusus · Bad Apples · Call of the Wild · Speak for Yourself! · Falls the Shadow · Campanology · Death Being Our Final Act · Somewhere · “Universal Solvent” · Surprised by Death · Sainte Supplice · “The moral earth, too, is round!” · A Whole in a Mole · In saecula saeculorum · Sola · Skill Rewarded · Blunt Euphemism · At the Limit: A Medley · A Fate Worse than Fate · In the Oratory · Taken for a Ride · Laudator temporis acti · Wish Experience · Courage and Its Crop · Save the Date · Pied Pipers · Hitler Today · The True Believer · Uncannied · Departures · Dead Heroes · Heroes and Saints · Church Grotesque · Praying That They Last · Changing of the Guard · Repetition · Excuses, Excuses · History of Survival · What the Future Withholds · Event List · Digging Up the Past · Historian as Folk-Hero · Lower Down & Around the Corner · Blast from the Past · Romancing the Past · Gnomes · Ante-Bellum · Our Hour of Need · Standing Room Only · Profanum · Sticks and Stones · All of a Heap · Ends · Time Travel · World History 101 · A Healthy Stool? · Puer perennis · Spot the Difference · The Eyes of History · For Want of a Nail · Cannon-Fodder · Our Towton · About Time · Make It Count · Old Debts · The World Republic of Ends? · Godsend · Eat Me! · I’m Not Playing · Material Cultures · Consignment Shop · Inside Job · From the Gift Shop · “The younger, the more clear-sighted” · Where Do We Stand? · Shared Horizon · Myth of Modernity · Futurity by the Stars · Clarification of Time · Fidgety Sitters · Bespeculations · Faster! Faster! · You Can Say That Again · Prospecting · Salve! · So Long! · Unrecognized Twin · Nostalgic Appreciation · Faulty History · Le Temps perdu · Levelling with Time · Zerkalo · Tired Question · The Mark of Kings · Out of Torn Cloth · Thieves in the Night · World History in Reverse · Whiplash · Latecomers · Bidding Is Now Closed · Sapiens sapiens , or Nil admirari · Viva voce · Lost & Found · God Might be the Word, but the Devil Is Still the Tongue · Return of Desire · Attention! · Nihil obstat · Carpe noctem · Thick Skin · Circulus donationis · Take It Back · Do Not Open · Why I Made Fun of Holy Water · God Question · Comparing “Apples” · Default Inheritance · Disputed Inheritance 435 Paralipomena The Cunning of Folly · Running with It · Hikers and Runners · Crooked Timber · Facing Out · Portraits · Browbeaten · Life of Zilch · Spilling Your Beans · Making up Lives · Literary Effects · Working with Dreams · Fast Asleep · Dug Up · Law of Transformation · Quantity over Quality · Taking In, Letting Go · What Are the Chances? · Unbound . . . · Out of Print · “A Book”? · Moratorium III · Before You Put Pen to Paper · Lapidary · An Aphorism · “Uncombed Thoughts” · Held to Account · Juggling · More Is Less? · Chain Reaction · Culture Vultures · Culture Vultures · Hypocritics · A Common Cause · The Democratic Challenge · Free Ride · Not to Be Outdone · Invisible Tree · Late Spring, Late Summer · No Qualms · Got a Light? · Obscurantism · Misfired Insult · The Cynic’s Matchbox (That’s the Spirit!) · Illuminosity · Light Touch · Seeing Darkness · Safety Matches · Matches to Ashes · Book Advertising · Little A · Long Distance · Legacy of Modernism · First Things First · Correspondence · Writing For · Dead Letters · Envelope Stuffing · Diminishing Returns · Dashed Off · Other People’s Mail · News of Oneself · True Taste · Soho! · At the Stalls · Why I’m Not a Book Addict · What Are Shelves For · Will-o’-the-Wisp · “I am loath even to have thoughts I cannot publish” · Grasping Criticism · Mushy Criticism · Criticism as Self-Examination · Murine Criticism · The Draft · Around the Block · Keeping Up with the Joneses · On the Rails · Zoning In · The Easygoing Work · The Easy Part · Succès d’estime · Double-Check · Out Like a Light · Bridge of Boats · The Author’s Two Bodies · Inside the Tomb · “Come, my cold and stiff companion!” · Safer Bet · Leaving One’s Mark · Literary Sensation · High and Low · Castoffs · Claqueurs · No-Power · Public Intellectual · Following Leaders · Leading Motives · Easy Pickings (A Lamb Is a Lamb) · Decoration · Common, senses of · Madness in Literature · Ouroborous · In the Tower · Experimentalism · Paradoxes of Experimentalism · Tapped Potential · Magpies · Error Spotters · Scribes · Inkhorn · Wordsmith · Feathers · Coincidence of Invention · Philobiblon · Arks Out · Jazz Funeral · Fans · Copycats · Non-Potable · Seniority · “My Undertaking” · A Nagging Burden · Loose Moorings · Credo · The Burning Book · Out of Reach · Endings x v i i FOR E WOR D I N F E R N A L U N IT Y Alexander Kluge In spitzen Klammern die verbrannten Wörter In pointed brackets The burned words —Heiner Müller, “Mommsen’s Block” In a letter from August 2, 1935, written in Hornberg, in the Black Forest, and sent to Walter Benjamin, then living in Paris, Theodor W. Adorno makes a series of remarks on a line by Michelet, “Every epoch dreams the one that follows it.” These remarks are part of a complex designated by the keywords: prehistory of the nineteenth century; dialectical image; myth and modernity. The fetish character of merchandise is not a fact of consciousness, writes Adorno. Rather, it is dialectical, in the crucial sense of producing consciousness. That is, conscious- ness or the unconscious cannot simply reproduce this fetish character as a dream. On the contrary, consciousness or the unconscious disintegrates vis-à-vis commodity fetishism into desire and anxiety—without, however, ever becoming a new whole. In this sense, Adorno argues, immanent conscious- ness is itself “a constellation of the real,” “just as if it were the astronomical phase in which hell moves among mankind. Only the star-chart of such wanderings could, it seems to me, open a perspective on history as prehistory.” Not only xviii s. d. chrostowska can entire epochs not dream those that follow them, since epochs as a whole probably cannot dream, but individual consciousness or the individual unconscious, which is per- fectly capable of dreaming, cannot, through such dreaming, realize or animate dialectical constructions. The dream, then, to the degree that consciousness is capable of catching it, does not extend into the lurid current of history’s flow, where it too would be torn and destroyed. Adorno speaks also in this context of the dialectical image’s “objective power of the keys,” * instead of a subjective-objective power. He moreover stresses the obverse of the utopian dialectical image of the nineteenth century as hell . There is nothing that possesses the “power of the keys” to access utopia that is not at the same time capable of unlocking hell... It is this Adornian conception that comes through in Matches —a title evoking the conflict between ideas and the intensity of their confrontation. But such a book is not, for all that, a battlefield delivered over to chaos; the troops remain in formation at their post: aphorisms, pensées, epi- grams, fictional dialogues, apologues, short essays, ordered in six parts: aesthetics and literature; philosophy, science, and technology; politics; society; history, ethics, and reli- gion; literary culture, the writer’s vocation, and method. Undergirding the project is an encyclopedic ambition—a subjective encyclopedia, to be sure, pretending in no way to be exhaustive. It is more a question of highlighting elements essential for understanding our historical moment, which are grasped in their contradictory, conflictual, differential, as well as complementary relationships. The result is a complex that wears its solid erudition lightly, one that puts particular emphasis on thinkers exemplifying the genre of the apho- rism, such as Gracián, Chamfort, Lichtenberg, Nietzsche, or Jünger. Despite sorting its fragments into several books, Matches is an idiosyncratic universe, open and multiform, without an overarching principle. A “constellation of the * Theological notion expressing the apostolic power to bind or loose sins.—Trans. m at c h e s : a l ig h t b o ok xix real,” to borrow Adorno’s expression, and pervaded by its “infernal unity.” Among the book’s thematic nuclei one can mention the relationships between humans, animals, and machines; work, class relations and inequalities; truth and survival; the vagaries of creativity; the uncanny encounters between art and barbarism. Most important, however, is the idea of history understood not as progress but as a narrative thread kept taut by nostalgic longing and utopian expecta- tions— stretched between, on the one hand, the resources of freedom and happiness lived in the past, and, on the other hand, the dream of building a better world, upon the ashes of mounting catastrophe. To take up the words of Miguel Abensour, “Man is a uto- pian animal,” and, as Ernst Bloch wrote in The Principle of Hope, “There is the spirit of utopia in the final predicate of every great statement.” This implicit aspiration to something that has not yet come is everywhere joined in Matches to an explicit exercise of the critical faculty. One way to read the collection is as a kind of humanist manifesto calling on us to transform raw information into knowledge and communi- cable experience. The content here corresponds completely to the form: contemporary subjectivity, on account of its incredible fragmentation, can only be criticized and gathered up in fragmentary form. Far from being dogmatic and prescriptive, Matches asks us not to renounce the commitment to thinking in a reality that threatens to overwhelm reason at any moment and to radi- cally reduce the range of human feeling and sensation. Every page offers the reader an opportunity to interrogate and bring to light their own personal experience. In a style that is at once dense and incisive yet not without humour and irony, the author’s observations describe the contours of the world not just as it is, but above all as it should not be. It is thinking that resists the disjointedness of the world; thinking that tries to establish internal resonances where being and things continually fall apart and drift away from one another, despite their confinement on the same earthly vessel. This