Bergson and the declaration of WWI

As told 4

“It is only at a precise moment of its actual emergence that it begins to always already have been.”
2:01:49 The Return to Hegel2009 · 2:08:08

“people really didn't believe that it can happen”
1:03:19 Are Catastrophes Virtual?2010-10-13 · 1:41:41

“I experienced... a feeling of admiration for the facility of the passage from the abstract to the concrete.”
~1:09:17 Slavoj Žižek — On G.W.F. Hegel, Lecture 1 [Remaster]2009-08 · 2:33:15

What it carries

one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)

contents · one story, 2 jobsuses

fetishist disavowal ×3 retroactivity ×2

Its cast and sources

populated by

Henri Bergson3 Charles Rosen2 Charles Taylor2 Nikita Mikhalkov1 Agnieszka Holland1 Mikhail Chiaureli1 Atom Egoyan1 John Cassavetes1

alongside works

Under Capricorn2 Two Sources of Morality and Religion2 Sunset Boulevard2 The Selfish Gene2 The Romantic Generation2 Modern Times2 The Marriage of Figaro2 Fedora2

Told together with

40% Schumann's Augenmusik 2 shared talks 40% Nixon's trip to China as utopian act 2 shared talks 20% Engels' prediction of WWI 2 shared talks 4% Niels Bohr's horseshoe 2 shared talks

Every retelling 4

2:01:49 The Return to Hegel2009 · 2:08:08

Bergson describes how in August 1914 the outbreak of war, which everyone had abstractly expected but never truly believed could happen, suddenly became completely real and normal, showing that possibility is constituted retroactively by actuality, not the other way around., illustrating retroactive possibility,fetishist disavowal,the Lacanian act

1:03:19 Are Catastrophes Virtual?2010-10-13 · 1:41:41

Politicians and thinkers warned from the 1880s that a great European war was coming, but people really didn't believe it could happen even as it approached, paralleling today's ecological disavowal., illustrating fetishist disavowal,the gap between knowledge and belief

~1:09:17 Slavoj Žižek — On G.W.F. Hegel, Lecture 1 [Remaster]2009-08 · 2:33:15

Henri Bergson’s shock at the outbreak of WWI: it was subjectively 'impossible' until it happened, at which point it retroactively became 'possible' and normal, illustrating how reality creates its own possibility., illustrating retroactive movement,fetishist disavowal

1:33:34 The Divine Details: Enjoyment and Ideology in Cinema2008-08-20 · 1:57:12

Bergson observed that before WWI people knew it was coming but couldn't believe it; once it began, they adapted astonishingly fast. Žižek applies this to Sarajevo: the siege was unthinkable until it happened, after which the enlightened public absorbed it as normal background., illustrating ideological adaptation to catastrophe,charity as pacification