Faulty Schematics of the Ruined Machine

ABSTRACT

Here the intrepid reader will find a list, assembled by chance and improvisation. These severed digits are obscure, unreadable; but, in the context of Benjamin's fascination with the partial and the forgotten, they vibrate together, a field of spontaneous association. Instead of an order, there are the sensuous correspondences of shared concepts, forms, ideas, plus also the happy accidents of coincidence, a mastery of not-knowing: chords which seem to strike themselves. Here, then, this writing tries to transcribe the echoes of that uneven harmony. There is a hovering spectre, but it is invisible, it cannot be named. Or perhaps the unmeasurability of dream-time begets its infinite forgetfulness.

KEYWORDS:

• Parataxis
• montage
• juxtaposition
• metonymy
• cut up
• somnambulism

Notes on contributor

Max Suechting is a doctoral candidate at Stanford University, where he studies twentieth-century American popular culture and serves as a Teaching Fellow at the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity. His dissertation considers alternate formulations of the post-human at the intersection of music, technology and African-American culture. He lives in the East Bay with his girlfriend and their two cats, Fred and Bridget.