TIKKUN / repairing the world

Lurianic Kabbalah has also been used to explain the role of prayer and ritual action in tikkun olam. According to this vision of the world, God contracted part of God's self into vessels of light to create the world. These vessels shattered and their shards became sparks of light trapped within the material of creation. Prayer, especially contemplation of various aspects of the divinity (sephirot), releases these sparks and allows them to reunite with God's essence. Wikipedia

According to Isaac Luria's Kabbalist doctrine of Tikkun, the breaking of the 'vessels' of God's attributes scattered divine sparks in fragments throughout the material world. The task of healing these broken vessels, an enterprise in which "man and God are partners", reestablishes the "harmonious condition of the world" not as a restoration, but "as something new".

Susan Buck Morss p235 Dialectics of Seeing

Verweile doch, du bist so schön*

[…T]he bourgeoisie no longer dares to look in the eye the order of production that has set itself in motion. The idea of [Nietzsche's] Zarathustra of eternal recurrence and the motto embroidered on the pillow covers - "Just a quarter hour more" - are complementary.

Benjamin notes similarly that the 'phantasmagoria' of Baudelaire's reve parisian "reminds one of the world expositions in which the bourgeoisie calls out to the order of property and production: Stay awhile. You are so lovely!

Susan Buck Morss The Dialectics of Seeing p 283


The phantasmagoria of " Rêve parisien" recalls that of the world exhibitions, where the bourgeoisie cried out to the order of property and production their " Abide, you are so fair!"

[J71,7] p355 The Arcades Project

*The phrase is Goethe's from Faust.

Stay, thou art so fair! To prolong the instant forever…
Faust's lust for knowledge is limitless and he makes a contract with Mephistopheles: he will die at the moment he declares himself satisfied,

"Werd' ich zum Augenblicke sagen:
Verweile doch! du bist so schön!
Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen,
dann will ich gern zugrunde gehn!"

universal history/ peace march

As a final conclusion, this question: scholars have argued that the architecture of cathedrals, temples, and mosques creates a sense of the community of believers through the ritual practices of everyday life. Benedict Anderson has claimed that the mass readership of newspapers and novels creates an imagined community of the nation. What kind of community can we hope for from a global dissemination of images, and how can our work help to create it?

Susan Buck-Morss, 2004

image-event

metamorphosis

discourse of nature

discourse of history

discourse of myth