In Memoriam

By the 1990s, there were even times when a channel surfer, perhaps startled by the abrasive industrial techno opening sequence of Kluge’s show 10 vor 11, might have clicked away, only to land on another even more puzzling Kluge production. Kluge didn’t mind that his shows occasionally aired at the same time; on the contrary, he saw it as an opportunity for channel flippers to participate in the production process by creating montages of their own.

We are near an old strain of folk utopianism, one that depicts the afterlife as a place with towers of food rising to the heavens. One of the first songs Hurley came up with was a sort of mantra he and his brother would chant aloud as children: “There’s such a thing as doughnuts / In the wide, wide world / Doughnuts! Doughnuts!”

As with any object under scientific investigation, theorizing philosophy scientifically requires locating its borders, which can only be accomplished by recognizing what is beyond and outside it—that is, what is non-philosophy.