Barely moving a solid thesis, the creative essay is atmospheric. Yet the wind, although it slips through fingers, grasps at them, a fluid hand on our hands.
A process begun in Pisa, Italy in April of 2016 during a workshop on political theory in the Anthropocene, The Wind ~ An Unruly Living is a philosophical exercise (askêsis, translated, following Ignatius of Loyola, as “spiritual exercise”). In his exercise, Bendik-Keymer throws to the void: the ideology of self-ownership from a society of possession. By using the Stoic kanôn, the rule of living by phûsis, he follows an element. Unhappily for the Stoic and happily for us, the wind is unruly. A swerve of currents through a social fabric, it’s full of holes, all holely. Stretch and stitch as you want, it might settle more shapely tattered into light, but it will never become whole. The wind’s only holesome.
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Further reading:
- Chris Mooney, “Plastic within the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is ‘increasing exponentially,’ scientists find,” Washington Post, March 22, 2018.
- Jeremy Bendik-Keymer with Misty Morrison, “The River,” Cleveland Review of Books, April 30, 2018.
- Jeremy David Bendik-Keymer, “Art’s Plain Art of Living,” e-flux conversations, May 29, 2018.
- Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, “How To Do Things Without Words: Silence as the power of accountability,” Public Seminar, June 28. 2018.
- Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, “Philosophy in the Contemporary World: How to Disagree, or Experiments in Social Construction,” Blog of the APA, July 12, 2018.
The book is as intriguing as the wind; I want to move toward it.