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A review by casparb
Breathing: Chaos and Poetry by Franco "Bifo" Berardi
Curious little one which reminds me to read more Hölderlin. I have very real ups and downs with Bifo Berardi here but it's interesting and probably worth the time especially if one has a general understanding of FBB's Deleuzo-Guattarian background. Found his read on Hegel (and to a lesser extent, Baudrillard) pretty crass.
I think it's fair to say that this text loses sight of the poetry aspect during the midsection and has a general look at 21st century politics. Žižekian ring. Reading recent leftish books on politics seems increasingly difficult to me - anything written before 2018 seems quite divorced from the present and I don't think that's just the character of time passing. Anyway, Breathing was published in 2018 and I think evades most of the embarrassing 2017ish breathlessness (pun etc etc) though we do see the usual histrionics about the trump regime and irony which we've all seen before endlessly and it's not unique in the conclusions there. I feel that time was mostly wasted and FBB could have put his energies into something more structurally useful concerning the future but alas.
Probably I came about quite sceptical because Auden was in mind the entire time and I never felt the case for poetry quite came to a conclusion. Not that FBB ought to or even could provide a poetic praxis that could dispel. There are really interesting angles that come about in this text and I feel I'll come back to it some time. I'd read more Berardi.
I think it's fair to say that this text loses sight of the poetry aspect during the midsection and has a general look at 21st century politics. Žižekian ring. Reading recent leftish books on politics seems increasingly difficult to me - anything written before 2018 seems quite divorced from the present and I don't think that's just the character of time passing. Anyway, Breathing was published in 2018 and I think evades most of the embarrassing 2017ish breathlessness (pun etc etc) though we do see the usual histrionics about the trump regime and irony which we've all seen before endlessly and it's not unique in the conclusions there. I feel that time was mostly wasted and FBB could have put his energies into something more structurally useful concerning the future but alas.
Probably I came about quite sceptical because Auden was in mind the entire time and I never felt the case for poetry quite came to a conclusion. Not that FBB ought to or even could provide a poetic praxis that could dispel. There are really interesting angles that come about in this text and I feel I'll come back to it some time. I'd read more Berardi.