We have to save Walter Benjamin from the fate of providing decorative quotations for the anglophone humanities. From being quoted by every idiot in the anglophone humanities. From being a supplier of beautiful epigraphs for dullard anglophone essays. These pitiful fuckers in English lit or Architecture or Music studies trying to jazz up their essays … trying to sneak in some poetry … quoting some gorgeous prose that would never normally be permitted in the Anglophone humanities …
Anglosphere types with their dutiful prose, their never-catching-fire prose. Humanities scholars with their utilitarian prose. Their not-allowed-any-flourishes prose. Anglosphere intellects with their laboured prose. Their zombie prose. Their killers-of-ideas prose.
Who presume to quote Walter Benjamin in their essays. Who think they can add some Walter Benjamin epigraph to make their work more enigmatic, more seductive, more old European, or whatever.
Reducers! Diminishers! Who are themselves reduced! Themselves diminished! The small-souled. The reckoners and calculators. Who think they can redeem their work with a few well chosen quotations from Walter Benjamin!
Work in Progress 