through europe - Ernst Junger

Ernst Jünger, the forest anarch

Federico Campagna — Fri, 22 Aug 2014 10:10:28 +0000

“We were both Waldganger.
We preferred the forest to the city.”
Albert Hofmann on Ernst Jünger

103 Years

In 1895, the year Ernst Jünger was born, Wilhelm II was holding the reins of the German Empire, while Wilhelm Rontgen experimented with the first X-rays machine. In 1998, when Jünger died at the age of 103, Pathfinder had already landed on Mars and Google was about to launch its campaign to conquer the digital world. In the course of his life, fit for a Biblical patriarch, Jünger survived two world wars, twice witnessed the passage of the Halley comet, and took part to the full unfolding of modernity. Yet, it would be fair to say that he was scarcely ever there. Whether fleeing to the Algerian desert, fighting in the mud in La Somme, or secluded in his hermitage in High Swabia, Jünger shared with monks and dandies the ability to be in the world, while remaining at an observant distance from it. He was a theoretician in the original meaning of the word: in a contemplative position even in the heat of battle.

It was as if sliding along an orbit around the present that Jünger managed to turn his perspective almost at 360 degrees, moving from the revolutionary conservatism of his youth, to the extreme existential anarchism of his old age. It was also for this reason that my first encounter with his work left me at once fascinated and skeptical. Jünger, the anarcho-nazi? How could anyone take this man seriously?
Yet, how could I remain indifferent to the flying architecture of his prose, the blade of his thinking, and the charm of his life? I learned to love Jünger against my ingrained ideological judgement, like a slowly acquired taste. Over the years I’ve kept returning to Jünger’s toolbox, and every time, without fail, I’ve found in it new weapons and methods to apply to my own existence.

The Discovery Of A Malign Host: Anxiety and Work

Federico Campagna — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 11:48:41 +0000

Apollonio di Giovanni, Ulysses and Nausicaa, 1435

Notes for a talk at South London Gallery, 20th June 2014, as part of Anxiety Festival

I would like to discuss anxiety and its relationship with work today, from a philosophical perspective. I will examine anxiety as connected to the problem of hospitality, and particularly to broken hospitality, then I will explore the changes that the traditional concept of hospitality has undergone under the current condition of Nihilism. It will be in the field of Nihilism that I will explore the connections between anxiety and contemporary work. Finally, I will try to look for a philosophical alternative.

Before starting, I must acknowledge two debts. Most of the first part of this talk derives from a conversation I had with my friend and fellow writer Robert Prouse, whom I would like to thank. The final part of this talk, on the other hand, has been very influenced by the poet Lucy Mercer, and I would like to thank her for that.

Total Working Soldiers

Federico Campagna — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 17:25:51 +0000

Der Arbeiter

In 1932, Ernst Junger published the first edition of Der Arbeiter (The Worker), one of the most penetrating and controversial investigations of modernity to have appeared during the 20th century. At that time, Junger – later to become an anarchist – was one of the most prominent voices of the young German national-bolshevik movement, and one of the sources of inspiration for Adolf Hitler’s party. Decorated as a hero after WWI, Junger wrote Der Arbeiter both as a description of a future world in which the ‘form’ of the Worker (a new human ‘type’ which expresses itself through ‘technic’) would take dominion over the world, and as an invitation to take part to the ‘total mobilization’ operated by the new regime of ‘total work’.

Mixing a crystalline prose with ante litteram cyberpunk visions, Der Arbeiter reads today as a bleak premonition of the world that is unfolding in front of our eyes. Its prediction of the rise of a ‘new race of the Worker’, transcending nationality and ethnicity, finds its realisation in the human landscape of today’s metropolises. Its description of a future ‘cult’ of work - so deep as to invade every aspect of the daily, social or personal, rational or emotional life – loses its sci-fi tone if applied to the world we live in. Junger’s vision of a world ‘totally mobilised’ by work appears to have found a much greater application within contemporary capitalism, than it ever did during the brief experience of national-socialist Germany. It might not be a coincidence that Heidegger’s text The Question Concerning Technology – deeply inspired by the book of his friend Junger – only appeared in 1949, under the dawning light of the new world order.