In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

TELEPHONES 231
workers' city.' Fredersen's eyes bulge as he suddenly shouts, shaking his
fist. Title: 'Open the floodgates!'" [see Action vs. Impotence]
The telephone ranks high among the emblems of the way in which
anonymous powers are intruding ever more brutally into the spheres of
nature and privacy. [see Automobiles, Gramophones] As a State employee,
the philosopher Theodor Lessing feels no less victimized by
electronically transmitted violence than all those protagonists of novels
and films who find themselves at the subordinate end of a telephone
connection: "Banish the 'symbols of culture' from the thoroughly wired
landscape, filled with advertisements and smokestacks; perhaps one site
will remain holy and unspoiled. I've decided to steal a pocketwatch at
some point-with the hope of being arrested. In prison I will at least have
peace from the rug beating, the piano playing, the car horns, the gramophones,
and the telephones" (Lessing, 401).
But nobody would seriously wish to renounce the telephone and its
technical benefits. In Ernst jiinger's war diaries, the description of a
bomb and gas attack culminates in the destruction of a telephone line:
"Clouds of bombers have visited the towns in the hinterlands. For hours,
powerful fires have battered the farthest camps. Every street under fire.
The artillery positions are blanketed with mustard gas, the telephone
lines are destroyed" (Junger, 106). Not unlike the connection between a
son and his mother, the power relation mediated by the telephone produces
situations that are both a vital necessity-and a source of fear.
Everyone suffers from the surveillance and dependency which the telephone
represents and imposes. At the same time, however, people have
the impression that life would be impossible without the structuring
interventions of power. [see Individuality = Collectivity (Leader)] It is
better to be connected to a violently authoritarian voice than to no voice
at all.
Related Entries
Airplanes, Automobiles, Elevators, Employees, Gramophones, Polarities,
Wireless Communication, Action vs. Impotence, Individuality vs.
Collectivity, Male vs. Female, Silence vs. Noise, Action = Impotence
(Tragedy), Center = Periphery (Infinitude), Individuality = Collectivity
(Leader)