when we dead awaken

. . . and we’re back. Actually had everything up and running several days ago, but was in too much pain to do anything. Moving stinks. Now I can’t find anything, and am having trouble adjusting to needing to go down a flight of stairs in the morning in order to have breakfast. And the whining about heating oil costs I predicted? You won’t have to wait a year, I promise you.  But anyway, what did I miss?

- The ICA opening, of course, or at least all the anticipatory press. The Globe did a great special section the other day, Artblog.net had photos of the press event, and there's lots more via Lee Rosenbaum, Geoff Edgers, and Big, Red, & Shiny.  There's far to much to link to everything, so click around to check it all out.  I may have more to say about this later--like, when I actually visit the place--but for now, let me say (like everyone else) wow, and also warn everyone not to draw too many conclusions from its initial exhibitions.  A building often needs to develop a certain level of trust (in its climate and humidity control, security, etc.) before many lenders will feel entirely comfortable.  Enjoy for now, and think harder about what they're doing  in a year or so (at least.)

- Via ArtsJournal, an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education marvelling at the continuing fame of Hannah Arendt decades after her death.  I save my own wonder at how many bad articles have been written about her work--on that count, this latest one is no match for Richard Wolin's shabby, dishonest one of a decade ago in TNR, about which don't get me started.  Russell Jacoby, the present author, does make one good point, that far too many Arendt scholars don't face up to the incompatability between her early use of "radical evil" as opposed to the later and more famous formulation of "the banality of evil".  I'd note that Arendt borrowed the former from Augustine, surely a more insightful (as she would be the first to admit) thinker on the question, and that the main value of her work lies elsewhere--but how is one to make the point to someone who values Eichmann in Jerusalem above The Human Condition?  Or who doesn't recognize that, for all of her debts to Heidegger, it can hardly be said that she "never conceptually broke with" him when her whole focus on natality can be seen as putting his ontology on its head?  Of course, for most of her career she explicity disavowed the title of philosopher, opting to be called a political scientist or theorist; but if Jacoby can't put in the needed work to understand her major works, that doesn't mean the rest of us should agree that her easier New Yorker articles are where to find her thought.

- Hm, I hate to put it in a post such as this, especially with the flip title, but I see from the Art History Newsletter that Robert Rosenblum has died.