New Revolutionary Army

"Jurgen Habermas is the most influential thinker in Germany today". Thus begins Thomas McCarthy's 1975 translator's introduction to "Legitimation Crisis" ("Legitimationsprobleme in Spatkapitalismus", 1973), and he wasn't wrong. Whilst he may have fallen a little off the radar a bit in the last decades (especially after his attempted "post-secular" rapproachment with religion), fifty years as Europe's most important and serious philosopher is a fairly good innings. Habermas dies last month, aged 96, and I was fortunate enough to be offered to give a presentation to the Existentialist Society this weekend on his philosophy of universal pragmatics and communicative action, which was both well-attended and had many excellent questions. The video, alas, missed the first couple of minutes, but everything is available in the transcript.

The weekend was not only an afternoon of deep and complex emancipatory German social philosophy in the idealistic tradition, however. Marc C., joined me for dinner on Friday before we ventured to The Old Bar to see some music; opening act "Trappist Afterland" was a subtle one-man band with Indian sub-continent backing tracks and songs about dogs, Star/Time provided quasi-improvised space-funk, and headline act The Gruntled accurately describe themselves as "avant-medieval psychedelic noise combo"; it all helps when you know several of the band members. The following night, I caught up with Liza D., and we made our way to "Impossiblistic: A Night of Surreal Performances, which was poetry, theatre, music, costume, puppetry, clown shows, and more. It was less surreal than enjoyable nonsense and was just fine.

Between all this, I also managed to visit the "Creative Antarctica" exhibition at RMIT on its last day, on Australian artists and writers who visited that grand continent. Of course, my own emotional and intellectual attachment to said continent is very strong; not too many people can say that they've spent New Year's Eve there. The exhibition was quite delightful. I really like Janet Laurence's "Ice Remembers" and Sally Robertson's "Atlas Cove". But the standout image for me was Frank Hurley's photograph of 1916 of Shackleton and Worsley leaving Elephant Island on a tiny lifeboat that would somehow make it to South Georgia Island over a thousand kilometres away and would lead to the rescue of the crew of the Endurance. It is one the greatest stories of survival against all odds and, for what it's worth, Elephant Island was the last location of my own trip to Antarctica this year. As Sir Raymond Priestley, Antarctic explorer and geologist, poetically put it: "For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton."