The background has moved forward. The backdrop has become the protagonist. The facts are known. Repeating them does not bring any gain in knowledge. The only thing that remains important is how we relate to them. But the world continues to act as if the reports of species extinction, forest destruction, floods and heat deaths could be slipped in between the sports news and the latest celebrity scandal. This business as usual has a paradoxical effect: not only the disaster seems unreal, but also and above all everyday life. In view of this, it is urgent to bring unrest into the public debate and to reflect on the conditions of the possibility of thinking today. In the texts of the tiring belief in progress of the 1960s and 1970s, Paoli already encounters everything it takes to understand the situation. His essay thus becomes at once an archaeology of repressed insights, a prolegomena of a science of garbage, and a rigorous condemnation of our present.
Essay
Sample translation available
Sample translation
English sample available
French sample available
Guillaume Paoli is a French journalist and philosopher living in Berlin. He is one of the founder of the movement of the „Happy Unemployed“.
By the same author(s)
"Paoli has succeeded with his essay Mind and Garbage a briskly written, a rousing book that directly intervenes in the public debate and could not be more topical. [...] Right thinking seems to be only a weak solution in view of the impending apocalypse, but at the same time probably the best we can hope for. Guillaume Paoli has made a valuable contribution to this with Mind and Garbage." – neues deutschland
