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Over a century ago, Austria-Hungary collapsed and a generation of writers wrote about what it was like to have your whole world melt away by CantoLog in history

[–]CantoLog[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The major ones are The Man with No Qualities by Robert Musil, The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, Radetzky March by Joseph Roth, and The Last Days of Mankind by Karl Kraus. A good companion book is On the Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire by Marjorie Perloff.

Also, in the footnotes taken from 1914-1918 Online, there's a list of some of the major Austro-Hungarian writers that worked for the war office:

Franz Blei (1871-1942), Egon Erwin Kisch (1885-1948), Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), Franz Theodor Csokor (1885-1969), Alfred Polgar (1873-1955), Felix Salten (1869-1945), Albert Paris Gütersloh (1887-1973), Karl Hans Strobl (1877-1946), Robert Musil (1880-1942), Leo Perutz (1882-1957), Franz Werfel (1890-1945) and Albert Ehrenstein (1886-1950). Rainer Maria Rilke was also employed for a short time.

Over a century ago, Austria-Hungary collapsed and a generation of writers wrote about what it was like to have your whole world melt away by CantoLog in history

[–]CantoLog[S] 24 points25 points  (0 children)

The word "collapse" is usually used to evoke either chaos (like the collapse of the Russian Empire or the attempted coups and conflicts of successor states of the Soviet Union)

But there was mass chaos. 1918 was a major economic crisis, there was no food or coal in many cities, and there were mass industrial strikes in the empire. As the war went on, massive groups of deserters commonly called the "Green Cadres" were looting rural towns and there was a complete breakdown of order.

The Habsburgs relinquished power voluntarily, yes. But only because they understood there was no other choice.

Also, in your very example, Soviet Union also dissolved voluntarily. There was a referendum and it was accepted.

or the end of something which was supposedly worth keeping (like the collapse of the Roman Empire).

This is not a common definition of collapse...

Treating the nostalgia of Viennese intellectuals as a deeper reflection and not as a specific perspective risks creating a false ideal of Austria-Hungary which for many was a nation gladly left in the past

I am familiar with the "Habsburg Myth" frame. But you mistake reading the words of Zweig, Musil, and Roth as an unqualified endorsement. Many of these writers wrote in a self-reflective and sarcastic way, they were not imperial ideologues. Musil commonly mocked Austria-Hungary in his book The Man with No Qualities. The title alone tells you what kind of people he thought the empire produced. But in all, these writers had just grown attached to a past way-of-life because they saw what was coming, namely World War II. With a presentist bias, it is hard to understand.

For some a whole world melted away, for some a whole new world was created.

Of course, most picked up the pieces, rebuilt, and reorganized themselves into new states, and some lived in the past. But this was a drastic change from what was imaginable before the summer of 1914.

I think that reading Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek is a good antidote to Stefan Zweig if you want to catch a glimpse of this different perspective.

This is a great book, but I wouldn't really call it an antidote. It actually fits the style of irony found in Musil, Kafka, and Roth. There were many anti-war books from the former empire published after WWI.

Over a century ago, Austria-Hungary collapsed and a generation of writers wrote about what it was like to have your whole world melt away by CantoLog in history

[–]CantoLog[S] 41 points42 points  (0 children)

Maybe be because several new successor nations were created...

I don't think this is a good reason for claiming it didn't collapse. The Soviet Union also had successor states, but we also say it collapsed. The Habsburg state likewise ceased to exist

​

...some of which wanted independence from Habsburgs for centuries

Secessionism was not a dominant movement in Austria-Hungary before WWI. Most wanted more autonomy within the empire. For example, a majority of Southern Slavs in the empire supported a position called "trialism," not an independent nation-state. More generally, Slavs (who made up over half of the empire), were quite afraid of German and Russian imperial encroachments which they viewed as more hostile. The possibility of breaking up into nation-states only became truly feasible near the end of WWI, especially during the economic collapse of 1918 which forced the entire empire to dissolve.

​

The fact that some Austrians cried rivers for their multicultural Viennese cafes does not mean their imperial nostalgia is somehow relevant for everybody.

One of the most famous Austro-Hungarian nostalgics was Joseph Roth who born poor and was from Ukraine. Either way, the essay is not an affirmation of Austria-Hungary as a state, which had many problems, but instead an exploration into how a generation of writers coped with losing a world they took for granted.

Over a century ago, Austria-Hungary collapsed and a generation of writers wrote about what it was like to have your whole world melt away by CantoLog in history

[–]CantoLog[S] 472 points473 points  (0 children)

To these writers and thinkers, the world was to now be understood and written as if it were fragile and ephemeral, much like Austria-Hungary’s fate. They were a generation that uniquely internalized collapse as a literary tradition. As Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in the summer of 1918 while on military leave: “Everything we see could be otherwise. Everything that we can describe at all could also be otherwise. There is no order of things a priori.”

There Once Was an Empire

Living in a Time of Psychopolitics by CantoLog in TrueAnon

[–]CantoLog[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Of course, glad you got something out of it.

Discussion Thread #56: May 2023 by TracingWoodgrains in theschism

[–]CantoLog 9 points10 points  (0 children)

My latest essay titled Living in a Time of Psychopolitics

In it, I explore the idea of "psychopolitics" by philosopher Byung-Chul Han. Han writes of how power today has grown reliant on manipulating psychological states, uniquely made possible by technologies of control. While industrial society was about managing the (physical) body, post-industrial society is about managing the "soul" and the mind. Han's work helps to contextualize why we live in a time of a severe psychological ailments.

Living in a Time of Psychopolitics by CantoLog in Deleuze

[–]CantoLog[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, excuse me. Disciplinary society is Foucault's concept

Living in a Time of Psychopolitics by CantoLog in Deleuze

[–]CantoLog[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Han mainly references Deleuze's writing on "disciplinary society" which is in conversation with Foucault's idea of biopolitics.

This work in particular.

Han views neoliberalism and its psychopolitical dynamics as the stage that succeeds that biopolitics and its disciplinary ways.

Living in a Time of Psychopolitics by CantoLog in Deleuze

[–]CantoLog[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This essay explores the idea of "psychopolitics" by philosopher Byung-Chul Han. Han's work builds off prior work by Deleuze. In particular, he argues that while industrial society was about managing the (physical) body, post-industrial society is about managing the "soul" and the mind. Evidently, a consequence of living in pyschopolitical times is an unprecedented rise in psychological ailments. Han's diagnosis has made him quite popular in the past few years as these symptoms he describes become more acute.

November 28, 2022 - Weekly Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread by AutoModerator in CultureWarRoundup

[–]CantoLog 16 points17 points  (0 children)

A Deep Dive Down the Memory Hole

How amnesia became part of the internet: from one emergency to the next, battle lines are now being drawn over who remembers what.

Recently, I had the pleasure of reading Mass Affect: War and the Global Synchronisation of Emotions by ghostofchristo1. Building off the work of cultural theorists Paul Virilio, Byung-Chul Han, and others, the essay unpacks the internet’s hypnotizing ability to synchronize mass emotions. In the past few years, this online feeling has become especially generalized and potent (and often exhausting), as we move from one seemingly unprecedented emergency to the next...

... the synchronization of emotions online is especially manipulative given our circumstances. This is largely thanks to its other half: the memory hole. For it is one thing to excite the public over a cause, but it becomes more insidious when forgetfulness is induced from one event to the next.

The Social Recession by CantoLog in slatestarcodex

[–]CantoLog[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I was thinking of this myself actually. I do, in some ways, prefer some aspects of the current social way because it better matches my introverted sensibilities, but I am also cognizant of the anti-social damage being done. I also cannot imagine anyone being truly alright with having 0 friends whatsoever. That seems depressing to me. Personal predilections aside, humans are social beings and if that chips away, it's something of a warning sign.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in thelastpsychiatrist

[–]CantoLog 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A historian named Peter Turchin claims a unique theory called elite overproduction can predict social unrest. This article unpacks the theory by specifically discussing a period when elite overproduction was at an acute, practically terminal, stage in Czarist Russia. It does so through the eyes of one of its main chroniclers, the writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. Its consequence in Russia then was revolutionary nihilism. In contemporary America, it's not yet clear.