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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/08/2026

Kein Wunder, dass wir gerade wieder über die Racket-Theorie diskutieren #KritischeTheorie #rackettheory

Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/06/2026

RE: hcommons.social/@rheinze/1167644653… Ich habe viel vom Besuch dieser Veranstaltung gelernt. Ginzburg Originalität und Offenheit, seine sorgfältige Methode und seine Sensibilität für das Kleine werden fehlen

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/05/2026

I love these little windows into what was going on every day in colonial societies, here: an anticolonial Christian sect being active across Angola and the Belgian Congo, in 1957

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/03/2026

Today, we go into the 2nd day of our conference on "Memory Processes in Imperial Lifeworlds". We look at all kinds of different objects, and discuss what roles they play in ongoing processes of #decolonization. Naturally, the question of restitution is […] [Original post on hcommons.social]

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/03/2026

In ihrem Nachwort zu der aktuellen deutschen Ausgabe von Eric Williams‘ „Kapitalismus und Sklaverei“ bringen @bafikush.bsky.social und @rarnsburg.bsky.social die, wie Stuart Hall es mit Althusser genannt hätte, Artikulation dieser beiden gut auf den Punkt […] [Original post on hcommons.social]

Aus dem Nachwort von Bafta Sarbo und René Arnsburg in der aktuellen deutschen Ausgabe von Eric Williams‘ „Kapitalismus und Sklaverei“:

„Genauso wie ein Teil den Charakter des Ganzen prägt (wie die Sklaverei die jeweilige Gesellschaftsformation beeinflusst), prägt das Ganze den Charakter einzelner Teile (Funktion und Integration der Sklaverei in die jeweilige Produktionsweise). Konkret bedeutet das, dass die moderne Sklaverei nicht einfach ein Überbleibsel aus vorkapitalistischen Zeiten war, das ohne Anpassung in die neue Zeit übernommen, sondern einen bestimmten, kapitalistischen Charakter bekam und wiederum den Charakter des Kapitalismus als System prägte.“

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/03/2026

Watches, passports, flags, gloves, artworks or big monuments: Objects shape our everyday lives. They play a role in history, and it's not always the one people thought they would. Objects also make the past visible in the present, they shape our memory of […] [Original post on hcommons.social]

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/02/2026

Ich habe aus verschiedenen Gründen zwei Exemplare und verschenke eins. Ich hab schon ein paar Mal erwähnt, dass ich das Buch für eine wesentlich bessere marxistische Kritik der postkolonialen Theorie halte als Chibber. Studis und nicht/prekär angestellte ECR und first come first serve, DACH only. DM

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/12/2025

Marx, 1856 (quoted in Anderson, Marx at the Margins)

An excerpt from a book discussing the impact of industrial and scientific forces on human labor and society. It reflects on themes of decay, the relationship between machinery and human experience, and the loss of character and agency in the face of industrialization. The text

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/11/2025

Trying something out for a presentation on Postcolonial Studies and African History

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2025

French book design remains undefeated

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/10/2025

Reading Lorena Herzog in @Ztschr_Prokla on AWS during Corona on the Metro for no particular reason

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/09/2025

Not to toot my own horn but I am very satisfied with this title slide

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/08/2025

Nice history of #Luddism article in the French Le Monde Diplomatique

An open newspaper, on it the title of the piece in French (translated „When unions confronted the digital“) and it’s about French unions in the 70s and how they agitated against computerization of their workplace

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/08/2025

Matteo Pasquinelli treffend in der Prokla 217(4/2024)

„In der Wissenschaftsgeschichte besteht Einigkeit darüber, dass die moderne automatisierte Berechnung (von Babbages Differenzmaschine bis hin zur KI) historisch als Maßnahme und Automatisierung von geistiger Arbeit und insbesondere des manuellen Rechnens im industriellen Milieu entstanden ist (Daston 1994), und nicht als Artefakt zur abstrakten Simulation von Intelligenz. In diesem Zusammenhang hat Daston (2018) klargestellt, dass das Wesen des Berechnens (einschließlich von KI) eine Art analytische Intelligenz von menschlichen Organisationen und sozialen Beziehungen ist, die Schaffers Interpretation der relationalen Intelligenz im Turing-Test entspricht.“

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/07/2025

This quote continues to occupy my thoughts, as I'm trying to develop a concept of how workers engage technology. Kline/Pinch: "users as agents of technological change", but also car manufacturers in the 1930s displaced consumers' ability to tinker (K. Frantz) […] [Original post on hcommons.social]

PowerPoint-Slide with a quote by Alfred Sohn-Rethel from his short essay „The ideal of the broken-down":

"What is conceived as technical is that which really begins where man makes use of his veto against the closed and hostile automatism of machines and plunges himself into their world. And when he does, he proves to be leaps and bounds ahead of technical laws. For he does not take control of the machines by studying the manuals and learning how to use them, but by discovering his own body inside the machine. To begin with, he has destroyed the misanthropic magic of intact mechanical functions, but he then installs himself in the unmasked monster and its artless soul and enjoys this literal incorporation: ownership which gives him limitless power, the power of utopian existential omnipotence. He now shuns the technical presumptuousness of the instruments thus incorporated; with his incorruptible gaze he has seen through the illusion and deception of their mere appearance: he knows a piece of wood or some old rag does the job just as well."

This quote is combined with a black-and-white picture of a statue of Jesus at the cross on which someone has installed lightbulbs to form a rough halo.

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/07/2025

Wenn Dir Negt und Kluge plötzlich in die #Barocktheorie reingrätschen (Angesichts ihres deutlichen Spinozismus in GuE nicht ganz überraschend)

Negt/Kluge, Geschichte und Eigensinn: „Die Differenz zwischen unmenschlichem Außen (Natur) und menschli chem Innen (Natur) hat zwischen sich als Vermittlung die Chiffren des Hirns, die einerseits eine hermetisch in sich geschlossene, interessiers Regulation betreibt und gleichzeitig ein Abbildungsorgan ist. Das Hirnis
150 Keineswegs ein Fenster, Realität dringt nicht durchs Hirn hindurcht irgendwelche tieferen Organe. Das, was das Hirn tut, und das, wie das Hirn seine Arbeit leistet, unterscheidet sich grundlegend. Im Wie senti Arbeitsweise ist das Hirn Selbsttätigkeit für sich, sein Wesen bester darin, daß es lebendig ist und nach seinen spezifischen Gesetzen, die sich zunächst weder um die Außenwelt noch um das Übrige im Menschel kümmern, noch mit ihm kongruent sind, sich betätigt. Erst wenn dies Eigentätigkeit von einigen Milliarden von Synapsen gelebt hat, erves sich, daß es zugleich in der Lage war, Funktionen zu erfüllen. Seine eigen:
Formbestimmung und seine Inhalte sind von Anfang an nichtidentis verhalten sich wie Monade und Fenster.“

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/07/2025

This sends me down some weird paths of association (Ououloguem, Assane, Elimane…)

A paragraph in the catalogue for the exhibition „Dakar-Djibouti - counterinvestigations“ at Quai Branly, describing the biography of an informant to the exhibition called Dousso Ouologuen, who fought with the tiralleurs sénégalais with honors in World War One and whose biography resembles that of Assane, the probably biological father of TC Elimane in Mohamed Mbougar Sarr‘s „The Most Secret Memory of Men“ - Elimane being obviously inspired by the biography of Yambo Ouologuem

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/06/2025

In der Druckausgabe der FAZ ist heute mein Artikel über eine Diskussion mit und zu Carlo Ginzburg erschienen, die an der Sorbonne stattfand. Viele Querverstrebungen & #Konstellationen mit meinen Überlegungen zur Aufgabe der Geschichtswissenschaft, aber auch #Barocktheorie, #Benjamin und #Allegorie

Screenshot von Ausschnitten des erwähnten Artikels

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/06/2025

„Die zweite Bedingung des Enstehens der Passagen bilden die Anfänge des Eisenbahnbaus. Das Empire sah in dieser Technik einen Beitrag zur Erneuerung der Baukunst im altgriechischen Sinne.“ Benjamin, #Passagenwerk

Eine einzelne Säule einer Eisenbahnbrücke in Viroflay. Die Säule ist aus Stahl, aber im Stil einer klassischen dorischen Säule gestaltet. Darüber symmetrisch zwei Bögen der Steinbrücke. Über dem dorischen Abschluss der Säule befindet sich eine kubische Verlängerung der Säule, darauf die Inschrift „Pinart Fr(ère)s, Marquise 1852“

Vier Säulen wie im vorherigen Bild beschrieben, darüber ist die Eisenbahnbrücke sichtbar, darunter Autos auf einer Straße.

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/05/2025

#Benjamin nennt die „Struktur der Fleurs du Mal eine monadologische“ und weil ich grad auch #FredricJameson las, stelle ich mir jetzt einen Greimas Square mit Baudelaire Benjamin Deleuze Leibniz vor

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/05/2025

In Barbara Cassins „Dictionnaire des Intraduisibles“ (ironischerweise nicht ins Deutsche übersetzt) findet sich folgender Eintrag zum #Barock: #Barocktheorie

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/04/2025

Amazing #allegory, in which Benjamin, as a labourer in the bowels of the castle, wants to give science in its ivory tower such a beating that it wakes up from its „sleeping beauty“ slumber, also sheds a different light on the failure of Habil and the form of the #Trauerspielbuch.

Photograph of a note by Walter Benjamin, in rather scrawly but legible writing:

"I would like to tell the fairy tale of Dorröschen for the second time.
She sleeps in her dome hedge. And then, after so and so many years, she wakes up.
But not from the kiss of a happy prince.
The cook woke her up when he slapped the scullion's ear, which echoed through the castle, resounding with the accumulated strength of so many years.
A beautiful child sleeps behind the thorny hedge of the following pages.
That no prince of fortune in the dazzling armour of science may come near him.
For in the bridal kiss it will bite.
Rather, the author has reserved the right to awaken it for himself as a chef. The slap in the face that is to resound through the halls of science is already too long overdue.
Then even this poor truth will awaken, which pricked itself on the old-fashioned distaff when it thought, forbiddenly, to weave a professorial tale in the junk room.
Frankfurt a/M July 1925
(Preface to the tragedy book)"

The catalogue identifies the source as follows: "Walter Benjamin: Ungedruckte Vorrede zum Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels. July 1925
Manuscript, I sheet (2)"

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/04/2025

How Walter Benjamin explained radio to kids, in the radio (translation in alt). This is such an absolutely wonderful piece, to accommodate a whole media theory in a short dialogue for a children's radio play. And how modern is this approach, centering voice […] [Original post on hcommons.social]

From: Walter Benjamin, The Cold Heart, radio play for children:

‘Kohlenmunkpeter: Don't be fooled, dancing floor king. For sure there are roots. In the land of voices, there is also a Black Forest and villages, towns, rivers and clouds, just like on earth. Only...

...you can't see them on earth, you can only hear them.
And so you cannot see on earth either, but only hear everything that happens in the land of voices. But as soon as you have entered, you will find your way inside just as well as here.

Narrator: And if you need anything else - that's what I'm here for: the speaker. We from the radio know our way around Voiceland like we know the inside of our pockets."

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/04/2025

That time when Jameson pulled the rug from under the New Materialism nonsense

from Fredric Jameson, Valences of the Dialectic, p. 7f.: „But what of that materialism in whose name the critique of idealism is most often waged? This is our second perspective on the problem of ideal-ism, and here the idealists celebrate their conceptual triumphs, making it clear that the idealist position is not a substantive one in its own right, but rather draws its real power and finds its true vocation reactively, as a critique of materialism as such. For as thinkers from Berkeley on have demonstrated, the concept of matter as such is an incoherent one, what Deleuze would call a bad concept: it follows that, however intolerable the idealist position in philosophy may be, the materialist one is an untenable alternative. We might add to this Berkeley's interesting (well-nigh Deleuzian) observation that materialism robs our existential life and our bodily sensations and…“

„…perceptions of their freshness and intensity by substituting for them just such a formless and non-immediate, sensorily unverifiable substratum as matter itself.“

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Robert Heinze @rheinze.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/02/2025

Feeling like it could be worthwhile to reread Mbembes „On the Postcolony“ rather than theories of fascism for the analytical tools to get at what’s happening to the US

same book, p. 145: „More precisely, the invisible was not only the other side of the visi-ble, is mask or its substitute. The invisible was in the visible, and vice versa, not as a matter of artifice, but as one and the same and as external reality simultaneously as the image of the thing and the imagined thing, at the same time. In other words, the reverse of the world (the in-visible) was supposed to be part and parcel of its obverse (the visible), and vice versa. And in this capacity to provide a basis for, and to state the inseparability of, the being and the nonbeing of persons and things that is, the radicality of their life and the violence of their death and their annihilation-lay the inexhaustible strength of the image.“

p. 128: „For the present, it is enough to observe that, at any given moment in the postcolonial historical trajectory, the authoritarian mode can no longer be interpreted strictly in terms of surveillance, or the politics of coercion.
The practices of ordinary citizens cannot always be read in terms of "op-position to the state," "deconstructing power," and "disengagement." In the postcolony, an intimate tyranny links the rulers with the ruled-just as obscenity is only another aspect of munificence, and vulgarity a normal condition of state power. If subjection appears more intense than it might be, this is because the subjects of the commandement have internalized authoritarian epistemology to the point where they reproduce it themselves in all the minor circumstances of daily life-social networks, cults and secret societies, culinary practices, leisure activities, modes of consumption, styles of dress, rhetorical devices, and the whole political economy of the body. The subjection is also more intense because, were they to detach themselves from these ludic resources, the subjects would, as subjects, lose the possibility of multiplying their identities.“

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