I think it's important that still, even as he moves into the "poetic",
in TOWA concerning the shoes, the shoes are understood in terms of work,
lonliness and work. From the workshop examples, the "hammer" onward,
Heidegger really fails, I think, to open up the primary space of the
social world. For me, the shoes would be understood in their
equipmentality and the paths they walk according to the womans primary
relationships: who she's going home to, and so forth. There is an
example of Heidegger's concerning the social constitution of equipment:
the table and chairs for eating, which is, I think in this example, were
where the boys had lunch or something like that. He points to it in
almost a kind of longing, as crucial, yet the phenomenology of the boys
actually having lunch doesn't seem to appear anywhere. Even the story,
in the reading of the Holderlin poem, of wandering strangers (alone, of
course) on darksome paths, has them crossing the threshold (turned to
stone by pain for Holderlin) to sit at a table on which is laid bread
and wine. Like the table that was set for the boys, the table setter is
strangely absent. What is disappearing the people involved? How does
this disappearance occur?
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"It is only after one ceases to reduce public affairs to the business of
dominion that the original data in the realm of human affairs will appear, or,
rather, reappear, in their authentic diversity." -- Hannah Arendt
Crises of the Republic; lying in politics, civil disobedience on violence,
thoughts on politics, and revolution. Hannah Arendt [1st ed.] New York,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich [1972] pages 142-143
Tom Blancato
tblancato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Eyes on Violence (nonviolence and human rights monitoring in Haiti)
Thoughtaction Collective (reparative justice project)
521 Main Street
PO Box 495
Harmony PA 16037
412-453-0211
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