Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen. Can These Antiques Ever Prove Dangerous Again?, 2012.

In honor of Labor Day, today we want to thank the publications that made our Summer Reading series a success. We were honored to host articles from Artforum, Art Papers, Art Practical, the Brooklyn Rail, East of Borneo, Frieze d/e, Hyperallergic, MN Artists, MN Original, MOMUS, Rhizome, SFMOMA’s Open Space, Temporary Art Review, and un Magazine. And we credit the labors of the artists and writers, without whom this series would not be possible: Juana Berrío, Timothy P.A. Cooper, Steven Cottingham, Jarrett Earnest, Matthew Fluharty, Orit Gat, Claudia La Rocco, Patricia Maloney, Pippa Milne, Ceci Moss, Mohamud Mumin, Matt Stromberg, Matt Sussman, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Catherine Wagley, Caroline Woolard, Ben Valentine, and RM Vaughan. We are truly proud to share this space with you! 

Katja Novitskova. Branching I, 2013; digital print on aluminum and cut-out display. Courtesy of the Artist, Fluxia gallery, and Milan & Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin.

In the late 1940s, the Russian-born French philosopher Alexandre Kojève visited the USA. For Kojève—arguably the most influ­ential interpreter of Hegel in the 20th century, and one of the architects of the European Economic Community, a precursor to the EU—“history” was predicated on political struggle. Like Hegel and Marx before him, Kojève believed that humanity would ultimately reach a consensus about its means of governance. This consensus (likely a mixed economy, or social democracy) would spell out the end point of social evolution, what Hegel had called the “end of history.”

This trip to the U.S., however, led Kojève to feel that any prospective future had already transpired. Upon observing the “eternal present” of American society, Kojève claimed that “man” had already disappeared, giving way to a creature that, though looking exactly like him, shared nothing of the human. The human, he argued, is predicated on a historical process, whereas this new being was one devoid of historicity and, therefore, humanity. For Kojève, this “post-historical Man” had returned to an animal state, albeit retaining his civilized mores. Post-historical Man builds his edifices and works of art as “birds build their nests and spiders spin their webs” and performs “musical concerts after the fashion of frogs and cicadas.”

Read the full article here.