Sentimentality is food for (reactive, passive) thought. But how are we to mourn those who are dead and gone? Is there a ”tradition of the surpressed” as Benjamin says, or should we only look to the future and try to forget the (obviuosly lost) struggles of the past?

I agree with Baudrillard that sentimentality is of little use, other than as a medicine for our own troubled minds.

The Swedish title of this post contains a heideggerian reference (actually to ”Building, dwelling, thinking”): at the border, where something begins (its presencing) rather than ends (quoted from memory). For me, this is more about the nature of man than about animals. That is, the Agamben quote should be viewed in his very close relation to Heidegger. The openness of man, the possibility of making him into almost anything (and therefore also into almost nothing) is an important experience to be drawn from history. But the question that Baudrillard raises is an important one: our sentimentality towards the victims of history, of what use it is? What does it do to our view of history? What does it do to our view of action? Where does it place us – or rather, if we are dependant on the animalistic, what does our sentimentality make us dependant upon?

I will link to your blog. We seem to have some similar interests. http://strategicfailure.blogspot.com.