[...]e in a technological era

(diffraction ==>) myopic: eyesight abnormality resulting from the eye's faulty refractive ability --> posthuman: an essentially ethical precondition of life in high-technology

background of posthuman theory:
•metamorphing --> premised on the liberatory potential of flow : processes objects and living systems are thought to be in a constant state of becoming =/= Campbell: flow is not always a liberatory metaphor -->{ (a politics or logic of) *inertia* =/= contemporary politics of flow }
•primal technology --> technology is not always s progressive civilizing inanimate force, rather it is a destructive-constructive rich-poor lively-inanimate force in the world
•proto-atavism --> modes of living at the edges of humanist life
•posthuman biology ==> *monolith of humanist life is myopic*

in a way, in my research i have been seeking ways to acknowledge the place of posthuman ways of being in the world --through-->
•observing the high-tech (cellular automata, database, bibliographic technologies)
•observing the ancient (medieval bestiaries ajayeb al makhlughat ajayeb technologies)
•


...................................

roots of ‘emancipate ourselves’ --in--> “being critical" = ability to be self-reflexive and to translate criticality into action and expressions of art (Renan)
transform knowledge sites --to--> knowledge scenes --> *communities of concepts* (=/= communities of people)
-(to form an artistic site not into a theme, a subject or a project --> discursive architecture)
how we could actually initiate solidarity through translation? (-->? internationalism) =/= equivalence of contexts
-how strategies of governance can be very sophisticated and can be embedded into what we see as good for instance in health (cleaning, or in providing food)
[*]naming: a way in which we could enter into each other's experiences, a process of conjunction and disjunction (with the problems of the previous naming process)
*investment: i'm investing into your thoughts and interests, to possible connections between us
-to look away from it momentarily, so that they can look into it again
(criticality is something that we can inherit)
faith into criticality ==> epistemological violence (~ criticality used as a counter capital to any problem or any situation that we seem unable to engage with)
(in relation of criticality --> the notion of) care: to ask is this the right place and the right time to “overperform” your criticality? when to be naive?
[yes, i am so tired of the Marxist lineage of criticality]
sometimes you don't have a voice in dialogue --> you need a space where you can do a monologue
*monological circuits* (Renan) --> monologue: you take the conversation out of value making (from a neoliberal logic)
(problem of) discourse = a sophisticated capital in arts (that is easily distributed and circulated)
-appoint [yourself] as institution =/= alternative art organization --> don't contribute to marginalizing yourself as alternative
research organization =/= magazine


Renan http://temporaryartreview.com/the-infantilization-of-local-contexts/
artworld's cynical consumption of the global periphery
international worship of dialogue
unified complicity
transnational capital of in-group favoritism
cosmetology of democratism
advanced capitalism: non-hierarchical transactions, horizontal decision-making
(business of) trading contexts
Western ethnocentrism
(1970s) “art played a vital role in the amassing of cultural resources, assimilation, and formation of national cultures” ==> “improving humankind” (the colonial definition of development)
*rhetoric of development ==shaped/shaping==> art*
•diverse group of global interlopers
•content-providing native informants
•regional mediators/specialists
•solvent-like multinational institutions
[cultural development:] art act adhesive for civil society --> good governance ==> dialogues (~= to create a new moral image of man)
-*conditionally inclusive vision of the international artworld: a politically legitimate place with pluralistic inter-institutional structures driven by economic liberalism, subsequently confirmed by the participation of civil society*
...a practice of dialogue between art and development, across geographies: banking on the coalition of ethno-nationalism and globalization, and promoting “indigenous” forms of capitalism, while avoiding the optics of exoticization }==>
•divides and controls localities
•contextual differences are distributed as needs and urgencies
•juridico-engineering structures (symbolized progress)
•cultural globalism with consumption at its core
•regions soused on the liberal democratic fantasy of salvation via harmonious, multilateral exchange
(we don't want dialogues, we need meaningful dialogues)
--Renan--> [to relocate the “struggle for exchange” in] monological circuits across the topographies of power and restitution =/= geographies of guilt and embarrassment


antagonistic knowledges (organise and rally actions and thoughts for resistance) --> changes how you are socialized


Robinson Crusoe
a miniature history of human development according to bourgeois individualism [...] changed into an encyclopedic storytelling of religious virtues
•using European technology, agriculture, economic individualism [<== spiritual autobiography], (rudimentary) political hierarchy, (civilizing effect of) Christianity [--> pursuit of meaningful spiritual engagement]
...as the inertia of the colonial world's knowledge system breaks into the streams of exploratory capital, the relay of fragments crystallizes before seeping through the colonial subject's social ground
http://www.curators-network.eu/blog-entry/lightning-studies-ctcccs-part-1-3 (Renan)


Cinderella's precarity
the question of: how can we translate contexts? (the context of which I bring my precarity differs from here in Brussels)

(the notion of *difficulty* in) Cinderella =/=? Robinson Crusoe
Crusoe's precarity (European) is something that you can overcome
•technology --> I can develop something out of my precarity and survive being struck on an island
•Crusoe's techne --> human =/= Cinderella's techne --> companion
•Crusoe ==> *rise of the ordinary individual in the nation* <== every individual values themselves high enough to consider themselves the proper subject of serious literature
◦modern individual: an ordinary & alone person is able to triumph over physical environment ~ to be able to exploit every situation

using diary format for Cinderella was inspired by respond to Crusoe's epistolary and confessional method of writing
(one of the earliest genre of) realistic fiction
written during the Enlightenment
one of the most widely published books in history
==> castaway narrative: improvise the means of survival from limited resources at hand
•progress through technology
•rebuilding of civilisation (civilisation = a form of triumph)
•unfriendliness of nature
◦he is with a dog, two cats and a parrot but he cannot talk to them =/= Cinderella
◦Crusoe starts making Bible fals (فال انجیل opening the Bible to a random page and read a verse that he believed was addressed at him)
◦he makes list (pro & cons --> debit & credit [--> mentality of business studies] --Weber--> book-keeping: distinctive technical feature of modern capitalism)
◦
•Crusoe: true protagonist of the empire (--Joyce--> prototype of British colonialism, *mythology of colonialism* --Sina--> #fable of imperialism)
•(romantic notion of) nature: idyllic =/= (Crusoe) nature: unforgiving + sparse }<-- utopian =/= dystopian nature --> Lord of the Flies


...................................

(with Annemarie's help @apass)

*sources of knowledge =/= styles of knowing* ==> tensions

judgment: an occasion to apply one's own standards =/= observation: a mean to get to know somebody else's standards

difference
which differences exactly?
what are their interferences and their diffractions?
--> the surprises that come with finding “variations”

(stories about)
vessels & fluids
pain & technicians
patients & doctors
techniques & technologies

(bracketing the practices =/=) foregrounding the prac[...]