Essentially useful

Walter Benjamin. Perhaps now, when he is no longer exactly fashionable, would be a good time to return to him. But silently, without fuss, smuggle him into your thinking. There is a very well known Benjamin note:

Method of this project: literary montage. I needn’t say anything. Merely show. I shall purloin no valuables, appropriate no ingenious formulations. But the rags, the refuse - these I will not inventory but allow, in the only way possible, to come into their own: by making use of them.

Now what interests me is that last rather Brechtian notion, of things, including concepts and ideas, coming into their own when used. Especially concepts and ideas. i.e., Their essence resides outside them in their possible modes of employment, the relations to which they give rise, the possibilities they open up or activate..

I understand X not when I have prised it open and discovered its meaning, purely through an effort of comprehension; I understand it when I successfully put it to use. When it opens doors and sheds light, when it reconfigures a field of objects or liberates things from the skin of their familiarity.

This is perhaps the element of truth in the familiar theoretical gesture of saying, for example, ‘I will now use Lacan to interpret Wordsworth’s prelude’ etc – What’s wrong with such formulations is that they are not untypically disingenuous. What takes place is not interpretation but illustration. It is a mechanical and unedifying spectacle. But the basic intuition – that the interpretation of a concept is in a sense like musical 'interpretation', ie it is about practice and embodiment rather than pure intellection - this, surely this is worth tarrying with.

The idea is that concepts only have their life and meaning in the activity of interpreting, ie when they are grappling with, when they are in some sense wedded to (&feeding off) an object. Looking at the concept on its own, prior to its employment is not to confront the pure ‘uncluttered’ concept, but instead is a kind of residue of interpretive work already carried out. Examining the concept-at-rest is no more the key to understanding it than is examining, say, the tractor at rest.

(Come to think of it, a suggestion of the above is present when we us expressions like 'I've got the idea of it now' - say when we're showing someone how to ride a bike or use a tool. 'Getting the Idea' is about being able to use it rather than disinterestingly contemplating a concept).

See some reflections on the above here.