For some time I’ve been interested in fashion models, like those who appear in the pages of Vanity Fair. I don’t necessarily like them as women, or even as models, for that matter. Rather, what’s strange about them is their being-in-the-world. They aren’t really people, because they’re supposed to be transparent to the clothes they’re modeling. On the other hand, the clothes wouldn’t be interesting, or certainly would be less interesting, without the model’s physical presence.
This suggests to me we use models as a strange kind of tool, or equipment, in the Heideggerian sense. What makes the model intriguing is because she skates the line between Dasein and equipment. In fact, this might give us an easy criterion to discern just exactly who is a “super-model” – when she starts being “regarded” (in pop culture terms) as more Dasein, than equipment, i.e., people know her name, she has an independently-viable, stand-alone identity as a Dasein, apart from the clothes she models, or the brand with which she may be associated.
Anyhoo, here’s a song I wrote about it, which also gave me a chance to use a famous Heidegger dictum, so despised by Carnap and others. I think the best way to translate it is, “the nothing that negates.” At least, this is the only way that makes sense in the context Heidegger uses it. I’ve had the basics of the song kicking around in my head for at least a decade, and finally found/designed the right synth patches to go with it.
2006, copyright
1 response so far ↓
1 Martin H. // Oct 18, 2009 at 12:25 pm
‘Nichts’ means ‘nothing’, while ‘nichtet’ does not exist in German – it is a verb feely invented by Heidegger. It is a powerful soundbite although it does not exist as a verb – which is brilliant as it does exactly what it says. It doesn’t quite sound right translated as ‘negate’: This would preclude that there is something in the first place which you could negate (‘verneinen’ in German.) ‘Nichten’ – which would be the infinitive of ‘nichtet’ which is a dative – actually means ‘niece’. Assuming that nothing does not make nieces (although you do indeed not have to do anything to get a few of them), ‘nichten’ is more something like ‘ making nil’, an anti-creation kind of thing.
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