Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
For a long time, we have been told that humanity is in a state of 'crisis' and in response to this terrible impasse, a stream of countless voices has poured forth numerous solutions. Each of them have advocated the need for a different way of understanding culture, politics, economics, humanity, or the world itself. But do these numerous remedies only identify a deeper problem? Is there actually just something wrong with how we humans turn the mystery of existence into a form of 'reality'?
In an exciting continuation of Technic and Magic (Bloomsbury, 2018), Federico Campagna argues that if the crisis afflicting humanity is to be solved, then humans need to embark upon a new journey of discovery within reality itself. For Campagna, the main task of cultural work today, and indeed tomorrow, is to draw a new map of the universe that is hidden within each thing and outline the reality that is specific to that generation. As has happened countless times in history, those who rebuild societies face the prophetic challenge of allowing the mystery of existence to speak once again, whilst also containing it within a new system of reality. This innovative and unique book shows that each time humans attempt to produce prophetic culture, culture itself emerges transformed at its very core.
Synopsis
'Time' and 'world' are such familiar concepts that we rarely take their fragility into account. The rhythm of time and the feeling of the presence of a world provide us with a metaphysical landscape where we might be able to live - a place where reality makes enough sense to be existentially navigable. Several different worlds have emerged throughout history, each with its own range of what seemed possible and reasonable to do, to think and to imagine. Each of them has survived only as long as there have been voices singing out their metaphysical rhythm, and it has vanished together with the silencing of their world-song, leaving behind only ruins.
At times, culture has to operate in a world that is about to exhaust its historical arc, speeding towards a horizon turned into a wall. What can a world say, when its only audience belongs to a time that will come after the end of the future? How can a world think about the cultural heritage of its own ruins?
Throughout history, a tradition has been able to speak across time-segments. Its grotesque style of culture has carried forward a multi-dimensional cosmology, nestled within every speck of reality. A constant insurrection against the rule of mortality, which severs the solidarity between worlds, prophetic culture is a vessel sailing eternally over the boundaries between worlds. Perhaps, it might be possible also for us, today, to speak through its voice to those 'adolescents' who will inhabit a new world and a new time, somewhere beyond the approaching wall of the future.
Synopsis
Throughout history, different civilisations have given rise to many alternative worlds. Each of them was the enactment of a unique story about the structure of reality, the rhythm of time and the range of what it is possible to think and to do in the course of a life. Cosmological stories, however, are fragile things. As soon as they lose their ring of truth and their significance for living, the worlds that they brought into existence disintegrate. New and alien worlds emerge from their ruins.
Federico Campagna explores the twilight of our contemporary notion of reality, and the fading of the cosmological story that belonged to the civilisation of Westernised Modernity. How are we to face the challenge of leaving a fertile cultural legacy to those who will come after the end of our future? How can we help the creation of new worlds out of the ruins of our own?