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Notes

 1. In what follows I will refer to Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History by the individual Thesis number and to Konvolut N by the number of the entry rather than page numbers. Theses on the Philosophy of History comes from the recently published Volume 4 of Jennings and Eiland's Walter Benjamin—Selected Writings (2002), and is the best translation in English available. Entries in Konvolut N come from the recently translated The Arcades Project (Benjamin 1999).

 2. The theoretical proximity of the two texts lies not only in the premise put forth on the subject of writing history. The Theses on the Philosophy of History, written in February 1940, was sent to Theodor Adorno in New York Institute for the purpose of clarifying the philosophical premise on which Benjamin intended to proceed with writing of the ‘sequel’ to On Some Motifs in Baudelaire. It was not intended for publication for fear of misreading of the text's theoretical premise. O. K. Wreckmeister cites the letter that Benjamin wrote to Gretel Karplus Adorno in April 1940 (Wreckmeister 1988).

 3. Put briefly, historicism is an assumption that in order to understand anything, we must see it as a historically developing entity—an individual and unique whole that develops over time. Historicist ideas assume that a certain amount of time elapses in development and that this is critical to our understanding of history (Chakrabarty 2000, 22–3).

 4. Benjamin used the term to describe a wide range of phenomena, from the spectacle of modern Paris, to the position of the commodity in the market. As Margaret Cohen writes: ‘the phantasmagoria is sufficiently polyvalent to designate 1. The nineteenth century Parisian cultural products working ideological transposition, 2. Benjamin's principal theoretical apparatus in analyzing this transposition, 3. The psychological content of the experience of ideological transposition, 4. The social causes of such transposition, and 5. The relation of Benjamin's Parisian production cycle to his work on German Baroque’ (Cohen 1993, 249).

 5. See Benjamin's 1935 version of the Theses essay in Volume 4 of Selected Writings (Jennings and Eiland 2002, 33–4).

 6. I am relying here on Chakrabarty, who emphasizes the potential of locality and human difference to dislocate the working of capitalism by functioning within its structure. His reading of Capital divides Marx's genealogy of the spreading of capitalism into two historical progressions: ‘History 1’, a past posited by capital as part of its precondition; and ‘History 2’, a past which is intimate with, yet does not belong to, the process of capital or the narrative of its progress. Using Capital to develop this model of two essentially different histories that are imbricated in each other's progression, Chakrabarty argues that, according to Marx's logic, capital becomes a site where both the universal history of capital and the politics of human belonging are allowed to interrupt each other's narrative. Just as the politics of human belonging/embodiment can never transgress the logic of capital—because they are a constituent part of it—capital ‘cannot escape the politics of different and diverse ways of being human’ (Chakrabarty 2000, 47–72).

 7. The origins of Turbo-folk are still subject to some debate; however, it is widely agreed that it is a hybrid of nationalism, kitsch, dance music, explicit sexuality and sensory overload and became one of Slobodan Milosevic's most important methods of retaining power. The term Turbo-folk was coined by musician Antonije Pusic (better known by the pseudonym Rambo Amadeus) to describe his genre-bending parody of neo-folk; however, it was soon co-opted by Turbo-folk performers without the irony and used for commercial promotion. For Rambo Amadeus's homepage see http://www.ramboamadeus.cg.yu/ (accessed 31 March 2005). For an excellent analysis of the links between Turbo-folk and the rise of nationalism in Serbia, see Gordy (1999).

 8. Owing to an increase in pirate radio and TV stations in Serbia during the 1990s, as well as an incomprehensible over-saturation of the market with Turbo-folk music, the authors and performers of many songs are unknown. The lyrics are my own translation and come from an unidentified song. They were taken from Tarlac and Djuric (2001).

 9. Turbo-folk became popular during the worst years of the war and international sanctions, and presented escapist iconography that glamorized a reality that never existed. It was epitomized in the figure of the undisputed queen of Turbo-folk Svetlana ‘Ceca’ Raznjatovic, a woman synonymous with silicone, guns, fur and diamonds, and married to Serbia's notorious war criminal Arkan prior to his gang-related assassination in 2001. Despite her clear links to pro-war chauvinist propaganda and her former husband's machinations, Ceca always maintained that her songs were about love.

10. For an online article that discusses the packaging of Apple iPod, including the word ‘enjoy’, see http://playlistmag.com/weblogs/todayatplaylist/2005/02/boxes/index.php (accessed 31 March 2005); for an online picture of iPod packaging with the word ‘enjoy’ visible, see http://www.gregnorton.net/archives/DSCF0149.gif (accessed 31 March 2005). Coca-Cola used ‘enjoy’ as its promotional slogan during its 2000 advertising campaign. The word was featured on promotion posters, advertisements and the drink containers. For a listing of Coca-Cola slogans used since 1904 that includes the slogan ‘Coca-Cola Enjoy’, see http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/accessibility-version/article.asp?selectedcat = 3&articlenav = 4&articleid = 105&title = SLOGANS&section = ENJOY (accessed 31 March 2005).

11. See the Kazaa homepage at www.kazaa.com/ (accessed 31 March 2005) and the Soulseek homepage at www.slsknet.org/ (accessed 31 March 2005); for a ‘legalized’ version of Napster, through which music can only be purchased, see http://www.napster.com/ (accessed 31 March 2005).