Brecht

Summary

Dominique Pagani cites Brecht mainly for the poem "Questions from a Worker Who Reads," to which he returns often between 2017 and 2021. "Who built Thebes of the seven gates?": the history of kings forgets those who hauled the stones, and the poem makes the anonymous producers visible12. He uses it to unlearn a history in which kings do everything3, to argue that it is peoples who make history4, and to talk about labour: it takes the mason's hand to pass from essence to existence. He adds that gods, like kings, do not work5. He also brings up distancing, which teaches the audience to step back from the spectacle and which the phrase "social distancing" diverts from its meaning6. He also quotes the line from The Threepenny Opera about robbing a bank versus founding one, and the phrase "heaven abolished" from Life of Galileo, which in his view confirms Heidegger without lamenting it7. Finally, he notes that texts by Brecht were set to music by Eisler and Dessau.

1. 1#2.8 Between crisis and war: philosophising?1 Aug 2017 · 1:44:50
2. 2#9.14 How can sciences of history be real?5 Feb 2021 · 1:00:00
3. 3#2 Lenin, or the wings of dreams18 Apr 2021 · 9:55
4. 4Is history a subject?9 Mar 2017 · 48:22
5. 5#9.15 How can sciences of history be real?18 Feb 2021 · 14:36
6. 6#7 Harnessed to confinitude5 May 2020 · 1:20:02
7. 7Panzer-philosophy against the cogito: neo-fascism or the ideology of nature (Heidegger, Descartes)5 Mar 2022 · 43:13

Summary produced automatically from 18 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.