JUST DO IT?: THE DILEMMA OF ENGAGEMENT

ONE BRIEF ANECDOTE amid the carnage; possibly a parable.

A few weeks back, I was involved—against my inclination, probably out of a misplaced sense of duty to students—in a debate with two theologians about the limits of secularism. This took place at the New School for Social Research in New York, where I have my day job. My intent was to say as little as possible, just respond politely to the theologians and make my excuses and leave to get a drink. (After all, it was Friday evening.) Inevitably, everyone started to talk about Trump and how depressed they are and what we should all

print October 2014

DECLARATION ON DIGITAL CAPITALISM

1. WE BEGIN OUR DECLARATION with an act of global positioning, a location capture of the place in and from which it will first have been delivered. Düsseldorf has been home to many heroes of the INS: to wartime radio operator and base materialist Joseph Beuys; to “Negativland” authors NEU!, whose blank, motoric drum patterns transform the fake, hippy emancipation of rock music into an empty baroque Trauerspiel; and, perhaps most significantly, to Kraftwerk, epochal plotters of the signal-transmission structure that, for us, is the secret grid of all literature and all art.

2. YET WE MUST ALSO,