[...]ge for everyone” [--> there is a very thin line between the impulse to democratize and commodify knowledge]; --could multiculturalism be radical capitalism in action?! ...faking diversity to build more diverse companies <-- “lip service”: to just say something but not actually do it)
[--> the hegemony and horror of “different experience” of the so-called different cultures (a form of racism?)]
[multiculturalism =/= trans-species]
[multiculturalism =/= eurasia]
[--> the hegemony and horror of “the completely different” (==>? deskilled society)]
Manning: “in senseLab we work with the people who don't use language, don't write, etc.” (<-- what does that legitimates, conceals, or smuggles? what sorts of hierarchies and ideologies of status emerge out of that?)
-as the philosopher of nonintentionality how did she responded (paranoically?) to our intents when questions where asked?
-as the philosopher of discord how did she responded to disagreement?
(?how do you tell the tale of) *your adventures سلوک and achievements کرامت* (karamat va soluk)
(why self-promoting is such a turn-off? it makes the listener into someone to convince or win over into the Förderung of the speaker. [with Campbell:] self-marketing creates a ‘perverse knowledge’ about the work of the speaker, that means you give information about ‘healthy’ parts of your practice, your achievements and moral/material awards, with the assumption that the listener is going to make a good decision about the ‘halo effects’ of the speaker, but in fact you are made ‘brand literate’)
or [it is seems elementary but neccesory to ask Manning:] what is the difference between advertisement and knowledge?
there are innumerable ways to adapt to the world without creating a philosophical understanding of the world
(Manning) “we feel the force of form. this kind of beauty has nothing to do with an external aesthetic judgment.” (--> how the personal judgment is not worthy of philo when a tsunami is coming or one is on the way of being gang raped?)
during the workshop Manning remains the center of command. she constantly “knows” (better). and she insists that through letting go of our critical thinking the participants can understand her notions ==>? how can she not build disciples?!
on production
replacing the name of ‘production’ with ‘but we must leave a trace’ (which exactly do let the notion of production sneak back in under an other name)
(Manning on p.16 5th paragraph is an example of an) unaccountable unsituated abstract claim of reality:
•unaccountable --> where do you stand saying this?
•unsituated --> for whom is this good?
•abstract --> how you are saying it?
the notion of “care for the event”
=/= perspectives
=/= subjects
=/= persons
<[...]
(1)[...notes/midday review.txt]%11[...] which all culture rests.
Henri Lefebvre distinguishes Representations of space and Representational spaces . ... Representational spaces are “directly lived” through associated images and symbols which overlay physical space, making symbolic use of its objects.
the conceiving mind over the perceiving body (vision/touch)
touching was considered “a cruder scanning at close range,” and seeing “a more subtle touching at a distance.”
for Berkeley there is no such thing as visual perception of depth, and Condillac's statue effectively masters space with the help of movement and touch. The notion of vision as [Ouch is adequate to a field of knowledge whose contents are organized as stable positions within an extensive terrain.
•a technological gaze
•way of seeing (Derridean deconstructed)
•high-tech images
•artifact (cultural artifact, social)
•image of the or a body and its environment
•impossible subject-positioning, the codification of flesh, a visualization of scientific narratives and the aestheticization of information, all of which tell us about a longer line of cultural fantasies about information, code and technology. (Norah Campbell)
•Everything said is said by an observe (Maturana and Varela)
•framing the world
•virtual gaze (Baudrillard)
•achieve absolute vision, while seeing nothing.
•very much as real; human and technological, both
•i say this as someone who thinks that we are part of this digital world, but we are not necessarily subject to its terms
•splicing of direct and tactile human perception of reality with another reality, one that is mediated and technical
•the naration is not pure nor whole (why cyborg?)
•place of visibility (/ field of articulability)
•it is an aesthetic dream, dream of ismorphism between the discursive object and the visible object
•exteriorization of the body (relation between face / hand / tool )
•The “exact meeting place” of form, matter, tool, and hand is the touch(Henri Focillon)
•
////////////////////////
In this interconnection of embodied being and environing world, what happens in the interface is what is important.
--Don Ihde, Bodies in Technology
At first glance, strapped to the body of critters such as green turtles in Shark Bay, off Western Australia, humpback whales in the waters off southeast Alaska, and emperor penguins in Antarctica, a nifty miniature video camera is the central protagonist. Since the first overwrought seventeenth-century European discussions about the camera lucida and camera obscura, within technoculture the camera (the technological eye)seems to be the central object of both philosophical pretension and selfcertainty, on the one hand, and cultural skepticism and the authentic[...]
(2)[...otes on kinect performance.txt]%45.8[...]o a form of its totality that i shall call orthhopaedic - and, lastly, to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject's entire mental development. thus, to break out of the circle of the Innenwelt into the Umwelt generates the inexhaustible quadrature of the ego's verifications.
Electronic Reserve Text: from Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, New York: W. W. Norton, 1977.
The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience
Delivered at the 16th International Congress of Psychoanalysis, Zurich, July 17, 1949
...................................
Flusser, Gestures - beyond machines (reading)
the project investigates the way in which Seifee as an artist engages tactics of fieldwork, embodiment and materiality (in a manner that reveals or instigates processes of knowing).
(In this moment of increasing standardization and specialization regarding how people learn, art is a space for innovative thinking and experimentation outside given frameworks.)
...our ability to share the experience of the habits of the world that we discover. (Kohn)
...................................
Campbell on Harman's philosophy
(problem of) object-oriented ontology as social theory [insights of object-orientation mechanically applied to the social by Harman, “immaterialism"]
•innovative adaptation of phenomenology
•critique of how objects have been failed by philosophy
•insistence upon an aesthetic attitude of investigation
--but-->
•object-oriented social theory lacks the rigor and imaginative potential to envision the ontology of the social
•the way object-oriented ontology is stuck in a no-man's-land of not-quite-nonhuman-not-quite-human
•as ooo enters social theory it commits a performative fallacy --> missing the fundamental starting point of social theory: ***objects come into the social world as expressions of (negotiated, perceptual, political, agentic) value*** [social theory is fundamentally predicated on the socius --> social theory is about the association between things =/= homogenous things]
}=/= Campbell's *posthuman relationism*: another form that better understands the abyssal point between the non-human and the human
(2007 conference) speculative realism {antipathy to “human-centred” intellectual traditions} ~=> object-oriented ontology
(objectivity =/= obliqtivity)
Harman's immaterialism: realism without materialism : objects can only ever be captured obliquely
object-oriented ontology's development:
•characterised by a consistent lament for how post-Kantian philosophy in general (Continental philosophy in particular) has abandoned hope of describing objects as objects
•the real: absolute autonomy of objects (w[...]
(3)[...otes on kinect performance.txt]%46.2[...] specialization regarding how people learn, art is a space for innovative thinking and experimentation outside given frameworks.)
...our ability to share the experience of the habits of the world that we discover. (Kohn)
...................................
Campbell on Harman's philosophy
(problem of) object-oriented ontology as social theory [insights of object-orientation mechanically applied to the social by Harman, “immaterialism"]
•innovative adaptation of phenomenology
•critique of how objects have been failed by philosophy
•insistence upon an aesthetic attitude of investigation
--but-->
•object-oriented social theory lacks the rigor and imaginative potential to envision the ontology of the social
•the way object-oriented ontology is stuck in a no-man's-land of not-quite-nonhuman-not-quite-human
•as ooo enters social theory it commits a performative fallacy --> missing the fundamental starting point of social theory: ***objects come into the social world as expressions of (negotiated, perceptual, political, agentic) value*** [social theory is fundamentally predicated on the socius --> social theory is about the association between things =/= homogenous things]
}=/= Campbell's *posthuman relationism*: another form that better understands the abyssal point between the non-human and the human
(2007 conference) speculative realism {antipathy to “human-centred” intellectual traditions} ~=> object-oriented ontology
(objectivity =/= obliqtivity)
Harman's immaterialism: realism without materialism : objects can only ever be captured obliquely
object-oriented ontology's development:
•characterised by a consistent lament for how post-Kantian philosophy in general (Continental philosophy in particular) has abandoned hope of describing objects as objects
•the real: absolute autonomy of objects (withdraw from subjects)
◦objects: sleeping giants holding their forces in reserve
•prefer the excess of the aesthetic over the reduction by the scientific (materialism's tendency to reduce objects to a primary substratum ==> rendering them susceptible to mathematical capture) --Campbell--> *aesthetic foundationalism* [==engender==> an attitudinal response to objects] (@apass, this is also a problem in artistic research):
◦aesthetic appreciation above the reduction of the phenomenon achieved by science --> “art (art criticism) is a style that gets us closer to the nature of objects” (+ bad example of Clement Greenberg)
◦(to make the invisible deep conditions of objects perceivable) prioritize *allusive style* above *literal description*
•claims to post-phenomenological sovereignty
•over-mining approach to knowledge production =/= objects's surplus of reality
◦methodological approach which encounters objects as objects (=/= actor [...]
(4)[...otes on kinect performance.txt]%46.2[...]ntal starting point of social theory: ***objects come into the social world as expressions of (negotiated, perceptual, political, agentic) value*** [social theory is fundamentally predicated on the socius --> social theory is about the association between things =/= homogenous things]
}=/= Campbell's *posthuman relationism*: another form that better understands the abyssal point between the non-human and the human
(2007 conference) speculative realism {antipathy to “human-centred” intellectual traditions} ~=> object-oriented ontology
(objectivity =/= obliqtivity)
Harman's immaterialism: realism without materialism : objects can only ever be captured obliquely
object-oriented ontology's development:
•characterised by a consistent lament for how post-Kantian philosophy in general (Continental philosophy in particular) has abandoned hope of describing objects as objects
•the real: absolute autonomy of objects (withdraw from subjects)
◦objects: sleeping giants holding their forces in reserve
•prefer the excess of the aesthetic over the reduction by the scientific (materialism's tendency to reduce objects to a primary substratum ==> rendering them susceptible to mathematical capture) --Campbell--> *aesthetic foundationalism* [==engender==> an attitudinal response to objects] (@apass, this is also a problem in artistic research):
◦aesthetic appreciation above the reduction of the phenomenon achieved by science --> “art (art criticism) is a style that gets us closer to the nature of objects” (+ bad example of Clement Greenberg)
◦(to make the invisible deep conditions of objects perceivable) prioritize *allusive style* above *literal description*
•claims to post-phenomenological sovereignty
•over-mining approach to knowledge production =/= objects's surplus of reality
◦methodological approach which encounters objects as objects (=/= actor network theory's manner of focusing upon an object's effects) [+ bad example of Dutch East India Company]--Campbell--> object-oriented social theory produces a rudimentary narrative with no discernible innovation on the level of:
◾objects --> the actors are recognisable companies, personalities, infrastructures
◾relations --> the major symbiotic moments are legal contracts, infrastructure and formative moments in a human's life
◾time --> there is standard chronology from birth to death, with emphasis on human-centric causes and effects
•“social theory = a mode of knowledge production” (=/= a decontextualised reflection of the world) ==> withdrawal: a psychological alibi, an aesthetic (=/= cognitive concept) ==stimulate==> an attitudinal response: humility [+ passivity?] in the face of overwhelming non-human existence [~ appeal ==produce==> a paternalistic-arrogant-instrumentalist attitude to the nonhuman =/= *appeal ==foster==> responsibility* (a nor[...]
(5)[...otes on kinect performance.txt]%46.2[...] lament for how post-Kantian philosophy in general (Continental philosophy in particular) has abandoned hope of describing objects as objects
•the real: absolute autonomy of objects (withdraw from subjects)
◦objects: sleeping giants holding their forces in reserve
•prefer the excess of the aesthetic over the reduction by the scientific (materialism's tendency to reduce objects to a primary substratum ==> rendering them susceptible to mathematical capture) --Campbell--> *aesthetic foundationalism* [==engender==> an attitudinal response to objects] (@apass, this is also a problem in artistic research):
◦aesthetic appreciation above the reduction of the phenomenon achieved by science --> “art (art criticism) is a style that gets us closer to the nature of objects” (+ bad example of Clement Greenberg)
◦(to make the invisible deep conditions of objects perceivable) prioritize *allusive style* above *literal description*
•claims to post-phenomenological sovereignty
•over-mining approach to knowledge production =/= objects's surplus of reality
◦methodological approach which encounters objects as objects (=/= actor network theory's manner of focusing upon an object's effects) [+ bad example of Dutch East India Company]--Campbell--> object-oriented social theory produces a rudimentary narrative with no discernible innovation on the level of:
◾objects --> the actors are recognisable companies, personalities, infrastructures
◾relations --> the major symbiotic moments are legal contracts, infrastructure and formative moments in a human's life
◾time --> there is standard chronology from birth to death, with emphasis on human-centric causes and effects
•“social theory = a mode of knowledge production” (=/= a decontextualised reflection of the world) ==> withdrawal: a psychological alibi, an aesthetic (=/= cognitive concept) ==stimulate==> an attitudinal response: humility [+ passivity?] in the face of overwhelming non-human existence [~ appeal ==produce==> a paternalistic-arrogant-instrumentalist attitude to the nonhuman =/= *appeal ==foster==> responsibility* (a norrnativity that withdrawal cannot) ---> go to Haraway + Campbell]
}=/= posthuman relationism: realists who draw on contemporary advances in disciplines like geology, biology, mathematics and neurology to make the case that non-human reality is not a sub-set of human reality -->
•commitment to an object-oriented realism (~= Harman)
•occupy an *anthropic* event horizon: their social analyses occur in the shifting, impossible ground hetween the human and the nonhuman (=/= Harman)
•dialectic of object **withdrawal + appeal** (=/= Harman's object withdrawal) ~ ***interaction between objective withdrawal & subjective appeal***
(Moss) earth as making an appeal --Freud--> a demand for work
“when the attention of an experienced person is drawn to the ch[...]
(6)[...otes on kinect performance.txt]%46.3[...] *literal description*
•claims to post-phenomenological sovereignty
•over-mining approach to knowledge production =/= objects's surplus of reality
◦methodological approach which encounters objects as objects (=/= actor network theory's manner of focusing upon an object's effects) [+ bad example of Dutch East India Company]--Campbell--> object-oriented social theory produces a rudimentary narrative with no discernible innovation on the level of:
◾objects --> the actors are recognisable companies, personalities, infrastructures
◾relations --> the major symbiotic moments are legal contracts, infrastructure and formative moments in a human's life
◾time --> there is standard chronology from birth to death, with emphasis on human-centric causes and effects
•“social theory = a mode of knowledge production” (=/= a decontextualised reflection of the world) ==> withdrawal: a psychological alibi, an aesthetic (=/= cognitive concept) ==stimulate==> an attitudinal response: humility [+ passivity?] in the face of overwhelming non-human existence [~ appeal ==produce==> a paternalistic-arrogant-instrumentalist attitude to the nonhuman =/= *appeal ==foster==> responsibility* (a norrnativity that withdrawal cannot) ---> go to Haraway + Campbell]
}=/= posthuman relationism: realists who draw on contemporary advances in disciplines like geology, biology, mathematics and neurology to make the case that non-human reality is not a sub-set of human reality -->
•commitment to an object-oriented realism (~= Harman)
•occupy an *anthropic* event horizon: their social analyses occur in the shifting, impossible ground hetween the human and the nonhuman (=/= Harman)
•dialectic of object **withdrawal + appeal** (=/= Harman's object withdrawal) ~ ***interaction between objective withdrawal & subjective appeal***
(Moss) earth as making an appeal --Freud--> a demand for work
“when the attention of an experienced person is drawn to the child's state by this path of discharge, [the path of discharge] ... acquires a secondary function of the highest importance, that of cornmunicalion
--> initial helplessness of human beings is the primal source of all moral motives
(child's) creaming and kicking --> appeal (made by the earth) is a combination of demand + accusation
contemporary social theorists are turning towards objects
<==Bennett== object produce a ‘gestalt shift’ in perception
}==Tsing==> (amounts to) a political act <== (turning towards objects) requires us:
•to re-divide the world
•to re-prioritise matler(s)
•to create different causalities
•to follow new agencies
•to produce new spacetimes
•to interrupt the ‘mind-lulling presence of common sense’
}----> acknowledge the importance of traditional *social theory* in identifying gross inequalities + advocate a po[...]
(7)[...otes on kinect performance.txt]%46.3[...]en difficult to analyse =/= discrete
•traits are inherited outside of sexual dissemination (digestion, infection, donation, other complex forms of partnerning) --> consortia: amorphous symbiotic complexes (metabolic energetic networks) =/= organism: anatomically bounded objects (systems of information and exchange)
}==Margulis==> focus on how perceptual, political, social and scientific conditions precede objects: *objects = boundary-work*
--> differential speeds of change (sudden and unlikely mixes + slow and causal)
--> deconstruction of individuality
(co-constitutive bio-econornic-political-social context:)
**ideological contest between individualism and collectivism in political economy <==> intellectual development of symbiosis theory**
•socialist and anarchist concept of mutuellisme in the mid 1800
•Hobbesian-Malthusian-Darwinian bio-economic concept of struggle for existence in zero-sum games of all-against-all
>
•Kropotkin's symbiosis as evidence for the benefit of global cooperation towards the common good, the division of labour, protection of elements and interdependent organisation
•evolutionary theory used to champion individualism and the social policies of laissez faire
Campbell --> what Harman misses is the elementary starting point for sociologies of science: *that social science translates science* just as science translates “reality”
serial endosymbiosis theory ==>
1. no theory of social change is going to be value-free (endosymbiosis is a process that is always already highly charged with rich metaphor, entailing a ‘host’ that is in an ‘exchange,’ ‘relation’ or ‘merger’ with a ‘guest’ --> a form of ‘living together’ that becomes ‘close’ over time)
2. extraordinary range and nature of these relations can act as strategies for other worldings (other ways of being with each other) --> important normative function [at the cataclysmic endingsndings =/= catastrophic ending]
3. a way to think about temporalities (when a bacterium nestled into a simple cell, creating an intimacy that has lasted four billion years)
4. a template for unlikely intimacies
Harman's philosophical monologue on social theoretical practice (which might yet be remedied by actual dialogue with social theorists) ==> performative fallacy (<-- common in artist writing)
@apass****
(Campbell asking) why has object-oriented ontology become such a popular force in other disciplines?
<== complex interplay between sociological + logical factors
+ rise of *para-academia*
@artist (in proliferation of artist writing)
****speculation = the alibi for a doctrine that wishes to spare itself the trouble of justification****
--> we need closer attention to rationality as the basis of judgement when we talk about speculation
--> we need to be more informed by (sciences) wh[...]
(8)[...otes on kinect performance.txt]%46.5[...]ganisation
•evolutionary theory used to champion individualism and the social policies of laissez faire
Campbell --> what Harman misses is the elementary starting point for sociologies of science: *that social science translates science* just as science translates “reality”
serial endosymbiosis theory ==>
1. no theory of social change is going to be value-free (endosymbiosis is a process that is always already highly charged with rich metaphor, entailing a ‘host’ that is in an ‘exchange,’ ‘relation’ or ‘merger’ with a ‘guest’ --> a form of ‘living together’ that becomes ‘close’ over time)
2. extraordinary range and nature of these relations can act as strategies for other worldings (other ways of being with each other) --> important normative function [at the cataclysmic endings =/= catastrophic ending]
3. a way to think about temporalities (when a bacterium nestled into a simple cell, creating an intimacy that has lasted four billion years)
4. a template for unlikely intimacies
Harman's philosophical monologue on social theoretical practice (which might yet be remedied by actual dialogue with social theorists) ==> performative fallacy (<-- common in artist writing)
@apass****
(Campbell asking) why has object-oriented ontology become such a popular force in other disciplines?
<== complex interplay between sociological + logical factors
+ rise of *para-academia*
@artist (in proliferation of artist writing)
****speculation = the alibi for a doctrine that wishes to spare itself the trouble of justification****
--> we need closer attention to rationality as the basis of judgement when we talk about speculation
--> we need to be more informed by (sciences) when we stretch relations to our rational outposts, without ignoring their appeals
...................................
posthumanism --> any discursive or bodily configuration that displaces the human, humanism, humanities --> (21st century) technology is the center of critical thought about culture and about nature
[*]posthumanism: a structure of feeling (sense of an era starts to be experienced in the social imagination --> social forms become more recognisable when we had some time to classify them, articulate them, theorize them)
(Williams > Campbell) structure of feeling
we can point to times in the past and say that as an X sensibility (they were romantics, enlightenment, postmodernism) =/= sensing here and now --> practical consciousness, a period at an embryonic stage, at the very edge of *semantic availability*
what structure of feeling is forming in the contemporary western world? --> posthumanism
(postbiological, postcorporal, cyborg existence, etc.)
to be human <--attack-- genomics, global finance, nature of social in virtual commu[...]
(9)[...otes on kinect performance.txt]%46.5[...]ht yet be remedied by actual dialogue with social theorists) ==> performative fallacy (<-- common in artist writing)
@apass****
(Campbell asking) why has object-oriented ontology become such a popular force in other disciplines?
<== complex interplay between sociological + logical factors
+ rise of *para-academia*
@artist (in proliferation of artist writing)
****speculation = the alibi for a doctrine that wishes to spare itself the trouble of justification****
--> we need closer attention to rationality as the basis of judgement when we talk about speculation
--> we need to be more informed by (sciences) when we stretch relations to our rational outposts, without ignoring their appeals
...................................
posthumanism --> any discursive or bodily configuration that displaces the human, humanism, humanities --> (21st century) technology is the center of critical thought about culture and about nature
[*]posthumanism: a structure of feeling (sense of an era starts to be experienced in the social imagination --> social forms become more recognisable when we had some time to classify them, articulate them, theorize them)
(Williams > Campbell) structure of feeling
we can point to times in the past and say that as an X sensibility (they were romantics, enlightenment, postmodernism) =/= sensing here and now --> practical consciousness, a period at an embryonic stage, at the very edge of *semantic availability*
what structure of feeling is forming in the contemporary western world? --> posthumanism
(postbiological, postcorporal, cyborg existence, etc.)
to be human <--attack-- genomics, global finance, nature of social in virtual communities (telegram) ==> yet-to-be formalized paradigms of human experience
==> fracture the concept of legal self [legal theory (arbiter of human rights) --> concerned with what is to be human]
(taxonomies of the human species at its time -->) humanitas: legal term used in public in ancient Rome to distinguish Romans and Greeks from Barbarians
humans in persistent vegetative states
international trade of human organs
human genome project
xenotransplantation
technological unconscious
(tree of life replaced by) a model that:
•classifies species according to DNA
•disregards morphological type (how elements of body appear)
•reveals human to be a tiny subspecies in a mass of absolute diversity
classical philosophy --> scientized for a momden audience (by Descartes 17th century) --> special status of human <-- seen as a totally transparent, secular, scientific, liberal way of thinking about the world
humanism = a belief in progress (implicitly conceived as a technological in[...]
(10)[...otes on kinect performance.txt]%46.6[...]Barbarians
humans in persistent vegetative states
international trade of human organs
human genome project
xenotransplantation
technological unconscious
(tree of life replaced by) a model that:
•classifies species according to DNA
•disregards morphological type (how elements of body appear)
•reveals human to be a tiny subspecies in a mass of absolute diversity
classical philosophy --> scientized for a momden audience (by Descartes 17th century) --> special status of human <-- seen as a totally transparent, secular, scientific, liberal way of thinking about the world
humanism = a belief in progress (implicitly conceived as a technological instrumental profit-oriented) + technological masery over nature + ‘human =/= animal’ + therapeutic approach to scientific inquiry }<-- a 19th century anachronism --> deeply ingrained in contemporary self-consciousness and everyday common sense
human: hero of liberty <-- french in origin, political in purpose
August Comte --> the universe can only e understood when the scientific exploration of phenomena was separated from supernatural superstition =/= ajayeb
Campbell making the case --> humanism needs to be deconstructed (not in a blithe نرم وملایم postmodern discursive way, rather) the definitions of what it means to be human are of life-changing importance --> humanism's supposed universality and transparency masks the fact that it is *an inherited western relatively recent philosophical perspective of the world*
in consumer research --> human: culturally inflected, psychosocial producer of + produced by the market =/= human: a disembodied information-processor with a rationalistic indentity and a computatinoal approach to the market
--Campbell--> how can interpretative consumer research benefit from a perspective which acknowledges this ideology of humanism?
the term posthuman has been used to describe anything which extends human capcity --ironically--> something as ubiquitous banal ancient and human as *tool-use* could itself be described as posthuman (Hayles, Stiegler, Wills) ==> **posthuman is as ancient as the human itself** }--> [*]posthuman: (a radical recognition that) technological = *originary logic* + *ethical sensibility* (= a stepping-out [=/= coming-after] of the enclosure of what is only important and necessary to the human)
•a concept that draws attention to the cracks that have always existed in the water-light descriptions of the human
•the ethical and radical realisation that the human only comes into existence by the work of (organic + technological) nonhuman others
cyborg --> associated with liberatory modes of identity
**technology deconstructs everyday human experience of agency, free will, cho[...]
(11)[...otes on kinect performance.txt]%46.6[...]ntific, liberal way of thinking about the world
humanism = a belief in progress (implicitly conceived as a technological instrumental profit-oriented) + technological masery over nature + ‘human =/= animal’ + therapeutic approach to scientific inquiry }<-- a 19th century anachronism --> deeply ingrained in contemporary self-consciousness and everyday common sense
human: hero of liberty <-- french in origin, political in purpose
August Comte --> the universe can only e understood when the scientific exploration of phenomena was separated from supernatural superstition =/= ajayeb
Campbell making the case --> humanism needs to be deconstructed (not in a blithe نرم وملایم postmodern discursive way, rather) the definitions of what it means to be human are of life-changing importance --> humanism's supposed universality and transparency masks the fact that it is *an inherited western relatively recent philosophical perspective of the world*
in consumer research --> human: culturally inflected, psychosocial producer of + produced by the market =/= human: a disembodied information-processor with a rationalistic indentity and a computatinoal approach to the market
--Campbell--> how can interpretative consumer research benefit from a perspective which acknowledges this ideology of humanism?
the term posthuman has been used to describe anything which extends human capcity --ironically--> something as ubiquitous banal ancient and human as *tool-use* could itself be described as posthuman (Hayles, Stiegler, Wills) ==> **posthuman is as ancient as the human itself** }--> [*]posthuman: (a radical recognition that) technological = *originary logic* + *ethical sensibility* (= a stepping-out [=/= coming-after] of the enclosure of what is only important and necessary to the human)
•a concept that draws attention to the cracks that have always existed in the water-light descriptions of the human
•the ethical and radical realisation that the human only comes into existence by the work of (organic + technological) nonhuman others
cyborg --> associated with liberatory modes of identity
**technology deconstructs everyday human experience of agency, free will, choice, self** @apass
21st century --> technology is the center of critical thought about culture and nature (--> that is why it became organically part of my ajayeb research)--> *to think about technology in a manner which reflects its ubiquity, its deeper symbolic and aesthetic dimensions, the way in which it can radically chnage humanness and human-centered approaches
(humanistic epistemology ==>) mode of the human:
1. information processor
2. cognitive subject
3. cultural subject
posthuman mode:
1. to widen the temporal range of research (deep future, deep p[...]
(12)[...otes on kinect performance.txt]%46.7[...]r />
•*excessive* life of the brnad image
•*virtual* life of Facebook
•
consumer research focuses on the ontological and epistemological givens of only the consumer
(Turkle theorizing) how consumers change through their relationship with the nonhuman
•children view certain objects in the world around them as having degrees of aliveness
•children who have grown up with computers do not experience a dichotomy between biological and computatinoal processes
•playing with a toy like transformers, the toy shifs from being machines to being robots to being animals --learning--> fluid boundaries between mechanism and flesh
•(the ontological stickiness of the) [*]computer: a mind that is not yet a mind, inanimate yet interactive, it does not think yet neither is it external to thought
(Menser + Aronowitz) television: a complex object constituted by and related to many fields (solid-state physics, politics, etc.)
Latour...
}--> (such way of theorizing ==> precondition of) an era where radically mew technologies produce entities as indefinable complex global (as the Human Genome project) biofuel supply-chains or climate change models [--> also cryptocurrencies, blockchain]
}--Campbell--> consumer researchers are creating new concepts and figurations in order to expand the borders of waht constitutes life [for example “living-product” metaphor]
(the problem of the) [ontological division of] consumer =/= world of objects ==> (ideological move -->) privileges human : it is understood by the human, because the human (the only source of analytical attention) is the only thing doing the consuming, having the experience, making the meaning
figuration: new ways of taking account of the world =/= anthropomorphism
--Haraway--> practices that create *knots* of material-semiotic actors {<-- art does that? art's sometimes unreal figurations =/= **interpretative consumer research makes the most realistic figurations of this century**}@Chloe2
the metaphors of our time:
•becoming (=/= being) <-- a shift towards a *process metaphysics*
•
(Parsons + Maclaren)
items of disposal (do not fail to exists, but rather they) are *moved along* to other spaces or politics and become other things
•becoming a precious antique
•becoming a water blockage
•becoming a source of marine death
•becoming a materially precious thing (in another part of the world)
•
--> **how things actually move, how they transition between many states**
--> *object = data about the object =/= tangible thing* <-- (transition) from thinking of object as the primary reality --to--> perceicing the object as data in computatinoal environments
==?==> (change of the nature of object ==>) radical shift in theorizing consumer behavior
[...]
(13)[...otes on kinect performance.txt]%46.8[...]s ascent to ever greater degrees of humanity
(greek tradition -->) *to think deeply about technology, we have to think about its ontology*
•techno-sociology --> Latour
•ecological feminism --> Haraway
•post-Marxism --> Tiziana Terranova
•
•philosophy of tech --> Heidegger: the most dangerous thing we can do is to think of technology as something neutral --> we often make two ***intuitive ideological jumps of reason*** when we think of technology:
1. “technology = means to an end”
2. “technology is created by humans”
}<-- example of anthropological truth (about technology) ~ it is a truth as it appears to human beings & it is an *instrumental truth: truth aimed at getting things done or making things work* =/= [*]technology: the mode by which realities are brought into existence in the world (hervorbringen) {unconcealing ==> a concealment of another reality}= (process of) *poiesis = bring out + conceal*
-the greek word *techne = technology + art* derived from the term episteme (the ways in which one can know reality) ==> ****technology: a type of epistemology, a way of knowing****
}==Heidegger==> *technology needs to be understood beyond its instrumentalist humanist history* --Campbell--> *seeing technology historically as an ancient phenomenon*
technology thought of as something that comes from the west & does something to other people in other placers <-- a framework (even well-intentioned) that denies both agency & contemporaneity to the ‘other’
(-McQuire)
(we are told that)
•the era we exist in is the “information age”
•the world is “networked”
•marheting is “service-dominant”
--Campbell--> what realities do the terms “information” “network” “service-dominant” create, unconceal, conceal?
==> questions of:
-what is the consumer?
-the nature of consumer consciousness, knowledge, desire
*far from being a neutral uncomplicated relationship, consumers develop strategic behaviors for *coping with technology* that is paradoxial + fantastical + ideological + multidimensional
(-Konzinets)
•DIY technologies: forms of competence redefined + redistributed between hardware & human
•technology & identity interpolate each other
global debates of:
•fear of genetic determination
•nature of consciousness --> similarities and differences between computation and human being
•
--> intimately concerned with the status of humanness
1990s theories of gift-giving, possession, labour, self-concept =/= *cyber consumer* --> circulation of desire and commodities in environments that are so highly mediated and technological that it begins to generate behavior and situations that are quite foreign to existing thinking about that markets are and what consumers want
**technology: a[...]
(14)[...otes on kinect performance.txt]%46.9[...]want
**technology: an active force that both consumes & creates consumers**
(problem of) sustainability
1. to sustain: rest, retreat --> humannes is a major threat to all nonhuman planetary existence ==> the idea that radical threats to nonhumanness must be warded off by radical decreases in human population, consumption, normtive standards of living
<-- this notion of sustainability exists radically at the limits of human capability (more than ecological crisis or human inequality, more than the threat of terrorism or nuclear proliferation)
2. to sustain: to extend, strengthen --> the idea that if we are not here then nothing on the planet has worth; if humans ado not exists, then the earth does not exists ==> our efforts of ecological sustainability are intrinsically human-centered [--(implicit attitude)--> prolonging humanness]==> ecological problem = crisis: an intense, short-lived episode in human history + it will be solved by high-technology solutions
technology has co-evolved with being throughout billions of years --Hayles--> (myriad profound subtle ways) to make nature
--paradox--> *it is “human nature” to use technology + technology changes “human nature”*
--Campbell--> ***while not everything is technical, everything is technological***
*posthuman stance (strategically oriented towards deep future, pays attention to the lives of nonhuman others) gets ontological with technology*
...................................
McQuire
defining the technological --activate--> the border between nature & culture = (the heart of) what it means to be human
...................................
[title]
system attic
...................................
(in my work with apass digital designs, i have been trying to negotiate with the notion of)
*technological gaze*
what new modes of subjectivity are filtered through technological gaze?
(?how) high-tech images are cultural artifacts
technological gaze's method to put its meaning together:
1. impossible subject-positioning
2. codification of flesh
3. visualization of scientific narrative
4. aestheticization of information
(Maturana + Varela) everything said is said by an observer =/= philosopher
marketing communication theory
[*]gaze: (a technical term for) the ways we visually consume images of people and places + the ways images are constructed to entertain & encourage certain ways of seeing
•(using psychoanalysis) Mulvey's gaze: the way in which the camera acts as the eyes and ears of the spectator, presenting ways of framing the world (power-laden + not neutral position) ==> certain understanding of the world is assumed
•Shroeder --> gaze signifies a psychological relationship of p[...]
(16)[...otes on kinect performance.txt]%47[...]ntention and purpose of the gaze became medicalized and technologized [---> go to cartography]
•
}--> (from technoscience to feminism) theorists have noticed a *splicing* of direct and tactile human perception of reality with another reality, one that is mediated and technical ==produce==> a new reality that negotiates the individual's knowledge of the universe in diverse and complex ways (<-- not catastrophic =/= Hörl)
(time of) intellectual and artist upheaval ==> new and surprising modes of imagining the human
1950s concept of cybernetics constituted a fundamental change in thinking about control, communication, information, life itself (+ new language of feedback, autopoiesis, cellular automata, neural net)
1990s
computers + information --> cybernetic theory: (stressed that) information patterns are more important in understanding organisms than materiality
*cybernetic view of the world --> information coded in pattern & randomness =/= material absence & presence*
•(both) human and technological = informational entities
•human = cyborg: (human conceived as) cybernetic organism
[?how] discourses (narratives + metaphors + symbols) of science and technology --Campbell--> use in advertisement to create meaning
**technological imagination --seize--> social imagination**
always reinforcing the *awesome power of technology to capture reality* (objectively + without any agenda)
•movie Fantastic Voyage 1966 <--Dijck-- fascination with envisioning the body from a different perspective
•status of foetus (float in black and white) <--Haraway-- meanings whose legitimacy comes from technological systems of perception
•[computer-generated images =/=?] camera-generated images <--Cartwright-- (paradox of) camera's role in capturing the real + camera's capacity to evoke emotion and present a sense of the unattainable ~= (to appear to be at once) both *magical* & *truthful* ==introduce==> new subjectivities into marketplace
mediation of visual phenomena through the eye of technology ~=> new sets of truths (about the body, environment, etc.) --often--> a **disembodied technological gaze looks at the body**
advertisement becomes more highly finished, excessively produced, artificialized --> a technological gaze is found in the discourse of advertising --> scientized & technologized images celebrate a particular view of ***life as information***
...................................
nature = figures + stories + images (~= topos, commonplace)
paying attention to nature like a child <-- Haraway
[*]trope: a verse interpolated into a liturgical text عبادات to embellish or amplify its meaning
language --> material-semiotic flesh
liturgical possibilities of nature
•Christian liturgical year
[...]
(17)[...otes on kinect performance.txt]%47.1[...]ned” is “explained away.”
unreasonable is not concealed necessarily.
Duty to irresponsibility
any phantasmatic organization, whether collective or individual, is the invention of a drug, or of a rhetoric of drugs, be it aphrodisiac or not.
In talk, i respond to the how of a poem or text dictating a kind of addictive reading or desire in the reader.
The project of a text, the project of a theory
according to Freud, when the work of mourning is completed the ego becomes free and uninhabited again. Funeral speeches and related writings, are possibilities that structures the movement of identification. Mourning is the interiorization of the dead other, also its contrary. Politics is figured as first and foremost an organization of the time and space of mourning.
After him, it is all war and crumbling.
We know better than ever today that the dead must be able to work. And to cause to work, perhaps more than ever.
The meaning of meaning [...]
...................................
[*]deconstruction: a sort of strategic device + opening onto its own abyss (one of the most influential approaches to texts) =/= method
Campbell --> Derridean deconstruction is visual
Derrida's thinking helps us take images seriously (as philosophical artefacts)
•organizational image: the aesthetic ambassador for the organization (it visualizes + gives aesthetic value to it)
•advertisement: preeminent image of production and consumption of the global economy
image = logocentric vision --need--> problematizing =/= solutionizing
-is there a spirit of critique that is not liberatory in purpose?
Derridean deconstruction: a critical approach --draw--> attention to the operations of method itself (=/= method):
[~? feedback types:]
1. interventionist --advocate--> different/contradictory readings (of images)
2. radical --interest--> roots of meaning-making activity
3. liberatory --seek--> evoke justice (forcing an image to account for itself)
4. ethical --concern--> what is overlooked
5. innovative (productive) --promote--> non-traditional ways of reading (of interpretting, of finding meaning)
intellectual climate in 1960s ==>
•Derrida's deconstruction --> bringing Saussure's own work to its own radical paradoxical conclusion
•Foucault's archeological approach [question the idea that human is an a priori --> how humans have been diagnosed in psychiatry and (ab)normalized in criminal and sexual *discourses* ==produce==> reality effects at the level of body]
•Barthes's semiology =/= the idea that the author is the single and authoritative source of meaning
Derrida's list of concepts:
differance
retrait
revenant
[...]
(18)[...notes/Derrida old notes.txt]%51.6[...]e level of body]
•Barthes's semiology =/= the idea that the author is the single and authoritative source of meaning
Derrida's list of concepts:
differance
retrait
revenant
dissemination
deconstruction
hymen
invagination
archiécriture
supplement
khora
pharmakon
scrypt
parergon
subjectile
}--> levers applying torque گشتاور and displacement in the textual machinery
deconstruction
==> counter-intuitive analyses
--> presupposes a detailed knowledge of construction (one must become intimate with the ways something is assembled) [=/= cart blanche for meaning]
--> (Jassem's style of) reading otherwise: passing the classical discipline (=/= abandon, jettison it) to explore what it omits, forgets, excludes, expels, marginalizes, dismisses, ignores, scorns, slights, takes too lightly, waves off, not serious enough
•anthropcentric truth: a truth that appears to human beings
•instrumental truth: a truth aimed at getting things done (making things work)
•teleological truth: a truth which closes debate and fastens meaning
[*]visual = a form of control (<--Campbell-- this aspect makes it central to organizational analyses) <==
1. *visual organizes reality by claiming status as the preeminent form of representation* (vision is the dominant tyrannical phenomenology of the contemporary world ==> all forms of knowledge can be presented visually)
2. *conflation of the ‘seen = known’* : “vision = ways of knowing = experiencing the world” (<-- imagined inseparable) ==> the idea that depiction/picturing/seeing are ubiquitous features of the process by which most human beings come to know the world as it really is for them
3. *visual organizes the worldview of the seer* --> visual is at its most powerful when it is most invisble (for example: scientific diagrams, mapping @apass)
***instances of visual control:
•uniforms
•packaging
•computer software packages
•brand logos
•buildings
•websites @apass
•management reports
•staff
•servicescapes [an environment where the first/primary perceived aspect is service]
•
harmful, deficient, deformed, secondary =/= superman, supergirl
logocentrism: letting the logic lead the letter --Campbell--> images are logocentric in that they create meaning by appealing to a central apparently undeconstructible system of authoritative truth (appealing to sources of transcendence outside of the image) [--> for example forensic architecture images =/= Derrida's *there is nothing outside of the text*]
•in investigating an image we often posses a logocentric vision, drawing it into convergence, making it coherent and giving it a non-contradictory and singularl[...]
(19)[...notes/Derrida old notes.txt]%51.7[...]ens meaning
[*]visual = a form of control (<--Campbell-- this aspect makes it central to organizational analyses) <==
1. *visual organizes reality by claiming status as the preeminent form of representation* (vision is the dominant tyrannical phenomenology of the contemporary world ==> all forms of knowledge can be presented visually)
2. *conflation of the ‘seen = known’* : “vision = ways of knowing = experiencing the world” (<-- imagined inseparable) ==> the idea that depiction/picturing/seeing are ubiquitous features of the process by which most human beings come to know the world as it really is for them
3. *visual organizes the worldview of the seer* --> visual is at its most powerful when it is most invisble (for example scientific diagrams, mapping @apass)
***instances of visual control:
•uniforms
•packaging
•computer software packages
•brand logos
•buildings
•websites @apass
•management reports
•staff
•servicescapes [an environment where the first/primary perceived aspect is service]
•
harmful, deficient, deformed, secondary =/= superman, supergirl
logocentrism: letting the logic lead the letter --Campbell--> images are logocentric in that they create meaning by appealing to a central apparently undeconstructible system of authoritative truth (appealing to sources of transcendence outside of the image) [--> for example forensic architecture images =/= Derrida's *there is nothing outside of the text*]
•in investigating an image we often posses a logocentric vision, drawing it into convergence, making it coherent and giving it a non-contradictory and singularly authoritative meaning
[title]
ruined coherent heritage
there is no escaping the enclosure of (logocentrism of western tradition of) metaphysics <-- we can critically engage it from within
bricolage
bricoleur --> one is participating in the intellectual heritage one is critiqing
death of man
•Barthes --> death of author
•Strauss --> structuralist approach to human nature
•Foucault --> history of the historical arbitrariness (of the human sciences)
•
}--> antihumanism (of Barthes and Foucault) suggests it might be possible to stand outside the humanist legacy (and analyse from a position outside) ==Derrida==> (escaping from human constitutes) a very human tendency that has been at work in the cultural and social imaginary since antiquity for example Foucault's archaeology: (to understand) *how reason determined madness in different eras by looking at how reason evolved historically* ==> puts the analyst outside the humanist legacy of reason ==restore==> the metaphysical illusion of mastery and control
=/= Derrida
(my problem with making alternative *archives, [...]
(20)[...notes/Derrida old notes.txt]%51.8[...] processes of resonance (--> Sarah's fermentation concert, Sina's popup book)
}==rethink==> *media technologies = technologies of measure*
sensual mathematics
rethink the digital in terms of the “numerical dimension of the virtual”
the potential for mutation immanent to the numerical code itself
(indeterminacies understood in terms of) new processes of quantification that recognize the “full densely packed zones of information that are the intensive surrounds of zero and ones
Clough - Goodman - Parisi
*question of knowing = a politics of capacities* (that crosses every scale of matter/energy)
=/= interpellation and determination of the subject
=/= identity politics (politics of difference)
control society = collection of dynamic quasi-subjects (constituted by a grear number of variables) =/= collection of subjects of right (constituted by the partial alienation of their natural rights to the sovereign)
[*]population only reveals probabilistic regularities once considered at the mass level (=/= collection of controlable subjects)
(in both terms of capital and governance) *modulation and mutation are operative in relations of power* (---> go to Campbell)
[*]publics: addresses of communicated affective states (=/= subjects of discourse about and argumentation over narrative knowledge with truth claims)****
--> matters of vitalizing information
*digital technologies have been fundamental to the deterritorialization of the relationship between individual and collectivity* --Terranova--> (digital technologies through provisional capture and dissemination of affect ==>) constitution of publics
[*]biopolitics: a matter of distributing affective capacities unevenly across population (--> is volatile)
***distribution of affect reshapes society*** --requires--> to restore discursive argumentation (over narrative and its truth claims --> *narrative = a form of truth claim*)
(#telegram with Rai, we need more analysis of... in terms) *ecologies of sensation*: media assemblages with emergent properties that impel new tendencies, new forms of attention, new forms of intention, new forms of distraction, new forms of habit, new forms of practice
*politics of intervention: a matter of entering in the middle in order to *modulate* ~= (Rai's) counter-actualization (~= criticism): moving down from the extended, back to the intensive or potentiality (not merely a deconstructive practice, but) an ontologically oriented practice, a performative intervention brining a change of speed, rhythm, vibration --> politics of vibration (Pia's method)
media technological developement ==deploy==> (which?) ontological and epistemological implications
to give criticism more specificity and width
measure and media technologies
[...]
(21)[...notes/khmarchive.txt]%71.6[...]mulations of X
•reverence for libraries of long gone days...
•accolades مراسم اعطای منصب شوالیه for librarians as heroes...
•libraries as the saviors of the people...
•as just another manifestation of government intrusion (paternalism, library: robust civilizing apparatuses, an ideal philanthropic gift)...
--Calvert--> **libraries are potent resources with vast possibilities for creating the worlds we inhabit** -->[*]library: (collectively produced ~ both collectively funded and collected from many sources) vibrant sites of knowledge generation + of power (for those who generate knowledge through libraries in turn diffuse this knowledge through other places and other people)
without a robust definition of power ==Calvert==> librarians have been unable to see or articulate how libraries have been in the service of disciplining subjugating power (a power that is productive not just for readers but of readers)
..weak appeals to market freedom
...................................
service-dominant logic = an enframing act --> a way of framing the world (which like all logics) chooses what to include and what to exclude from its frame of investigation and theory --Campbell--> how it enframes the world
marketing history --> (delineated between) “material (raw) resources =/= immaterial (dynamic) resources”
resources-assets-capabilities
(in math)
operand: passive objects that are manipulated (3, 5)
operator: specific actions that act upon operands (+, x)
importance of the operand resource
-the relative role of operand resources began to shift in the late 20th century as humans began to realize that skills and knowledge were the most important types of resources
operand resource: (raw material and land) an act is performed on them =/= operant resource: (technologies, knowledge, skill) those employed to act on operand resources
}--> a conceptual separation with roots in Greek philosophy:
•Plato: “material embodiment = distraction to true knowledge”
•Descartes: privileging of mental life over physical matter
==> we inherit this style of philosophy (in the west) that values formal abstract objectless thinking as the standard canonical way of knowing the world
--> *information age*:
•endorses the pre-eminence of the immaterial and disembodies (mind, skill, mental life) over the material and embodied (brute matter, physicality)
•celebrate a *culture of demateriality*
•
=/= object oriented philosophy:
•Heidegger's theory of tool-being
•Latour's displacement of the human proposed by the actor-network theory
•Merleau-Ponty's sensual phenomenology
•
(continental philosophy + analytical philosophy in West -->) **philosophies of access** t[...]
(22)[...notes/khmarchive.txt]%74[...]subjectivity where it encounters the abyss of destructive jouissance.
-(Emma Bovary had busted) a logic of reappropriation, collapsing the dreams of restoring a self
@constantvzw's investment in the critique of hallucinated plenitude and pure communication (enabled by digital media) --> transcendental telepathy (being online/connected over distances in a Facebook sense)
-pleasure and liberty values freely exercised upon a coded body
*hallucinator: a creature of simulacrum*
-what is wrong with the social media stream addict? a transport going nowhere; addictive, artificial, and beside oneself; [genuinely clean or drug free ~=? being exposed to existence, placing one's body in the grips of a temporality that pains]; phantasm of lack in abstinence; (like drugs they are) linked to *a mode of departing*, to desocialization, (like the activity of writing) nonproductive and somehow irresponsible, being-in-drugs (being-in-Facebook) supposedly resists the production of real value (incapable of stabilizing the truth of a real world); figure of drifter/dissident: obsessed and entranced, narcissistic, private, unable to achieve transference; movement of the simulacrum without address;
speed: going nowhere fast
...................................
[Campbell] on marketing theory
bacteria: entities that threaten our secluded sovereign cleanliness
our ideas of bacteria are shaped through the filter of advertisements for antibacterial products
[*]climate change: “[t]he moment I turn the engine of a car and ignite the 165 million-year-old microscopic fossil faunae, connecting me to the 35 billion ancient barrels that are drilled, fracked, refined, and transported every single year. Climate change is in the 100 trillion objects that are in, that are the Earth, traversing the stomach lining of the Burmese python and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which churns a quarter of the planet’s heat flux. Climate change is the daily operations of simplification, extraction, purification, replication, and acceleration--all of which are needed to create the philosophy of ‘progress’ that is embodied by nearly every human in this world.” -Campbell
= *a context which will last for thousands of years and will be the fundamental starting point of every action, every thought, every expression of organization*
==> irreversible *death of difference* (biodiversity), end of “human project” (--✕--> despondency دلسردى)
creative foreclosure of the old World
preparing for an end without apocalypse @Jassem
(we need to) experiment with (organizational forms of) justice, ethics, politics, reason**
Holocene ==> fundamental modes through which we organize still today:
•births of language and religion
•concept of resources and exchange
•invention of all known technology
•d[...]
(23)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%94.5[...]in-Facebook) supposedly resists the production of real value (incapable of stabilizing the truth of a real world); figure of drifter/dissident: obsessed and entranced, narcissistic, private, unable to achieve transference; movement of the simulacrum without address;
speed: going nowhere fast
...................................
[Campbell] on marketing theory
bacteria: entities that threaten our secluded sovereign cleanliness
our ideas of bacteria are shaped through the filter of advertisements for antibacterial products
[*]climate change: “[t]he moment I turn the engine of a car and ignite the 165 million-year-old microscopic fossil faunae, connecting me to the 35 billion ancient barrels that are drilled, fracked, refined, and transported every single year. Climate change is in the 100 trillion objects that are in, that are the Earth, traversing the stomach lining of the Burmese python and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which churns a quarter of the planet’s heat flux. Climate change is the daily operations of simplification, extraction, purification, replication, and acceleration--all of which are needed to create the philosophy of ‘progress’ that is embodied by nearly every human in this world.” -Campbell
= *a context which will last for thousands of years and will be the fundamental starting point of every action, every thought, every expression of organization*
==> irreversible *death of difference* (biodiversity), end of “human project” (--✕--> despondency دلسردى)
creative foreclosure of the old World
preparing for an end without apocalypse @Jassem
(we need to) experiment with (organizational forms of) justice, ethics, politics, reason**
Holocene ==> fundamental modes through which we organize still today:
•births of language and religion
•concept of resources and exchange
•invention of all known technology
•development of agriculture
•development of domestication
•development of urbanization
Campbell's posthuman
•computation of life
•laboratorization of life (simple categories of liveness and deadness over the last 30 years)
•miniturization of life
•complexification of life
•automation of life
relation: smallest possible unit of analysis, extremely prosaic and mundane ==> world
theorizing in the way of relation (as in feminist science, actor-network theory, or nonrepresentational theory) ==Haraway==> engendering a more humble, more modest attitude in the human observer --✕--> Meillassoux's non-relational theory
(since Kand) western philosophy has been epistemological [~ investigating human relationship to things =/= ontological]
--> correlations (between thinking and being), we turn things into affordances when we think about them --> correlati[...]
(24)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%94.5[...]n the 100 trillion objects that are in, that are the Earth, traversing the stomach lining of the Burmese python and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which churns a quarter of the planet’s heat flux. Climate change is the daily operations of simplification, extraction, purification, replication, and acceleration--all of which are needed to create the philosophy of ‘progress’ that is embodied by nearly every human in this world.” -Campbell
= *a context which will last for thousands of years and will be the fundamental starting point of every action, every thought, every expression of organization*
==> irreversible *death of difference* (biodiversity), end of “human project” (--✕--> despondency دلسردى)
creative foreclosure of the old World
preparing for an end without apocalypse @Jassem
(we need to) experiment with (organizational forms of) justice, ethics, politics, reason**
Holocene ==> fundamental modes through which we organize still today:
•births of language and religion
•concept of resources and exchange
•invention of all known technology
•development of agriculture
•development of domestication
•development of urbanization
Campbell's posthuman
•computation of life
•laboratorization of life (simple categories of liveness and deadness over the last 30 years)
•miniturization of life
•complexification of life
•automation of life
relation: smallest possible unit of analysis, extremely prosaic and mundane ==> world
theorizing in the way of relation (as in feminist science, actor-network theory, or nonrepresentational theory) ==Haraway==> engendering a more humble, more modest attitude in the human observer --✕--> Meillassoux's non-relational theory
(since Kand) western philosophy has been epistemological [~ investigating human relationship to things =/= ontological]
--> correlations (between thinking and being), we turn things into affordances when we think about them --> correlationism: we only have access to the correlation between thinking (thing-for-us) and being (thing-in-itself) ==> ‘all knowledge is relative’ [=/= realism]
Meillassoux's absolutes:
•there might be something outside thought
lack of a necessary ultimate cause or meaning (facticity) --Meillassoux--> fundarnental source of being (ontological contingency ~ “facticity itself is necessary”) : no ‘higher’ or ‘supreme’ force or reason (metaphysical, physical, spiritual) is guiding it [~ total ontological absence of a necessity] ==> *contingency* is absolutely necessary in the universe
“Everything in the universe is without reason and is therefore capable of becorning otherwise without reason.” --> this has happened already at least 3 times (where new sets of laws enlerge from nowhere):
•Big[...]
(25)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%94.6[...]wledge is relative’ [=/= realism]
Meillassoux's absolutes:
•there might be something outside thought
lack of a necessary ultimate cause or meaning (facticity) --Meillassoux--> fundarnental source of being (ontological contingency ~ “facticity itself is necessary”) : no ‘higher’ or ‘supreme’ force or reason (metaphysical, physical, spiritual) is guiding it [~ total ontological absence of a necessity] ==> *contingency* is absolutely necessary in the universe
“Everything in the universe is without reason and is therefore capable of becorning otherwise without reason.” --> this has happened already at least 3 times (where new sets of laws enlerge from nowhere):
•Big Bang
•life from non-life (==> new laws of biological life)
•thought
absolute is wider
“two billiard balls strike into each other, resulting in both balls flying off into the air, or fusing together, or turning into two immaculate but rather grumpy mares, or into two maroon but rather affable lilies”
(@apass)
every research agonizes about:
•the ontological status of their ‘objects’ (of enquiry)
•the epistemological status of their knowledge claims
--Campbell--> we need to “go ontological” about consumption, global warming, (hyperobjects)
hyperobjects:
•viscous (literally real, and you cannot throw it away)
•non-local
•larger on the inside than they are on the outside
•they call for forms ofjustice, ethics, politics and reason that are beyond humanist economies of identification and representation
social constructivism ==> everyone's interpretation of the real is legitimate [equal status of interpretation] =/= (Meillassoux's) speculative realism
understand the world at the level of the hyperobject <== we are creating (consumer) objects that are massive in scale and temporality
inter-generational justice (imagining till your grandchildren)
service-dominant logic (of consumer research) =/= object oriented (more than humanist/naturalist trophies)
service: that intangible value extracted from stuff by humans --to--> the increasing ability to separate, transport, and exchange information, apart from embodiment in goods and people
Meillassoux's arche fossil ~=? jinn
witnesses of the universe before humans
objects withdraw infinitely from humans
universal quality of all objects: *reserve*
==> (narcissistic) philosophy of a uniquely lonely human fate [--> popular contemporary depiction of human with one foot in animality and the other in consciousness]
----> then how *withdrawal* (should) play out in social theory?
Lingis's ‘imperative’: worlds are filled up with imperatives (human and nonhuman) that summon us --> enmeshe[...]
(26)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%94.6[...] stuff by humans --to--> the increasing ability to separate, transport, and exchange information, apart from embodiment in goods and people
Meillassoux's arche fossil ~=? jinn
witnesses of the universe before humans
objects withdraw infinitely from humans
universal quality of all objects: *reserve*
==> (narcissistic) philosophy of a uniquely lonely human fate [--> popular contemporary depiction of human with one foot in animality and the other in consciousness]
----> then how *withdrawal* (should) play out in social theory?
Lingis's ‘imperative’: worlds are filled up with imperatives (human and nonhuman) that summon us --> enmeshed pre-cognitive, atavistic, technological, embodied modes in which we respond to the world --> how this does not get recuperated into the existing models of sociology
[flipside of withdrawal:] to think of capital: an extraordinarily force overthrowing any imagination of an alternative --> there is no possibility of ‘intervention' in Capital ==> ‘accelerationism’: an inside-out radicalism, believing in unleashing productive forces of human wrought to continue its dynamism : “the only way out is to plunge further in”
Campbell: ‘withdrawal from capital' = passing through the eye of the needle
[that which is expressed in philosophy, political economy, science and science fiction, and in transhumanist, lifehacker, accelerationist movements:] *flight from consumption*
}--✕--> Campbell's *speculative consumption*
what if consumption has something relational about it?
(we must become interested in consumption @apass, Pierre, Foad, constantvzw)
*non-correlationist marketing theory* [=/= correlationism: humans doing things in the world to inanimate objects to make immaterial effects happen ~-> access]
interobjective consumption
ask anyone to give a definition of ‘food’ --> ‘a source of fuel or energy for the body’ --> most people will give you the engineer's perspective of the world when they are asked =/= the marketers know that everything we buy has a deeper, emotional motivation behind it
innocuous purchase:
•pleasure-seeking
•status seeking
•identity-building benefit
•
ask anyone to give a definition of ‘clothes’ --> ‘textile materials that we use on our skin to provide protection from heat and cold’ =/= marketer will tell you that clothes are portals to different realities
*we don't buy bread --> we buy sustenance for the soul
*we don't buy lightbulbs --> we buy illumination
*we don't buy lipstick --> we buy dreams
****food is not fuel, but fashion****
that means:
•food is a psycho-social comfort blanket
•we use it to compete for status
•we use it to define boundaries[...]
(27)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%94.7[...]verything we buy has a deeper, emotional motivation behind it
innocuous purchase:
•pleasure-seeking
•status seeking
•identity-building benefit
•
ask anyone to give a definition of ‘clothes’ --> ‘textile materials that we use on our skin to provide protection from heat and cold’ =/= marketer will tell you that clothes are portals to different realities
*we don't buy bread --> we buy sustenance for the soul
*we don't buy lightbulbs --> we buy illumination
*we don't buy lipstick --> we buy dreams
****food is not fuel, but fashion****
that means:
•food is a psycho-social comfort blanket
•we use it to compete for status
•we use it to define boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’
obesogenic
obesity
‘superwicked’ problem (in social policy):
-those who are causing the problem are attempting to solve it [for example: food marketing's power trying to solve obesity (~= putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank)]
-time is running out
(this is absolute bullshit -->) “we simply need more education to finally understand that X (for example junk food) is bad for us”
(Campbell:) fashion brands (with their 400% growth in the last 20 years) have intensified their campaign to change the perception of clothing: from a functional investment in practical shelter to a vital projection, extension and affirmation of one's very identity
(shift in manufacturing and delivering) *fast fashion* (spearheaded by the Italian design house Benetton, but perfected by fashion brands Zara, H&M and Forever 21) mimics luxury fashion trends at very low costs
increasing efficiencies in production ==> increasing inefficiencies in consumption
*psychological dissonance*: the uneasy feeling that your laptop, car, trainers or coffee machine is no longer ‘right’ [stimulated in two principal ways in marketing:]
-1- physical obsolescence (<== down-grading the quality of product)
-2- psychological obsolescence (<== acceleration of the ‘fashion cycle’: the social phenomenon whereby a design moves through bleeding edge to mainstream to despised mainstream)
-3- ***to make clothing (or any product) a vital prop that is needed to create authentic sense of who we are*** (<== protagonist: Chanel-clad Parisian on the rain-soaked cobbles of a Montmartre morning, the sweat-soaked Nikes of a determined athlete in an empty basketball court in the Bronx, etc. disseminated through Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr. [--> this works together but in reverse in film industry the protagonists wearings and style are used to sell that specific identity who wears them])
}==> *every single person cares about the clothes they wear*
-4- *to re-categorize clothing* (perceptual categories are critical to marketers, for example:[...]
(29)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%94.8[...]eded to create authentic sense of who we are*** (<== protagonist: Chanel-clad Parisian on the rain-soaked cobbles of a Montmartre morning, the sweat-soaked Nikes of a determined athlete in an empty basketball court in the Bronx, etc. disseminated through Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr. [--> this works together but in reverse in film industry the protagonists wearings and style are used to sell that specific identity who wears them])
}==> *every single person cares about the clothes they wear*
-4- *to re-categorize clothing* (perceptual categories are critical to marketers, for example tourism brands worked hard for decades to change the idea of a holiday abroad from the category of luxury to that of necessity, clothes have moved to the status of a coffee to grab and go) <== equivalencing: degraded quality of the garment allows a decrease in the price [==> powerful psychological effect compounded by the retailscape: shoes in are sold on rails like packets of sweets, T-shirts offered in basins at the check-out, etc.]
***advertising (images) = secular magic***
==inducing==> a powerful desire to indulge in the fantasy of being:
•a solitary and steely-gazed athlete
•a sophisticated and urbane Parisian girl
•
Campbell: “The moment that I say that fashion brands do not affect me is the very moment that they have”
pleasurable daydreaming innate to us all
marketing is often a practice of *breaking taboos* ==guarantees==> brand success
detergent, apparel, car or cosmetics brands ==produce==> the monolithic, repetitive idea of ‘clean flawlessness’ that infiltrates our value systems
clothes = portals to different realities
*enclothed cognition*: the influential way clothes change psychological mood, the way clothes allow us to take up certain social roles more authentically
Alessi: fashion is social (its Latin root ‘factio’: a group of people acting together) =/= Campbell: i use clothes (fashion) as a social grammar to communicate with these others
universal clothing in sci-fi is such a lie, because that would remove one of the primary ways in our culture that we have for expressing ourselves
we need to change the manifestation rather than deny the yearning }--> Campbell proposes: slow fashion, re-categorization of clothing back to investment in long-term, high-quality items
...................................
[title]
nonhuman rationality
(Meillassoux's) speculative realism ==> climate change = a new world (for which we do not have categories)
Meillassoux's concepts { nonhuman + rational --Campbell--> ontologically think about climate change =/= (despondency & passivity) equivocal status of climate change }==> bleak optimism: climate change has already happened + human civilization must learn how to d[...]
(30)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%94.9[...]ed to the status of a coffee to grab and go) <== equivalencing: degraded quality of the garment allows a decrease in the price [==> powerful psychological effect compounded by the retailscape: shoes in are sold on rails like packets of sweets, T-shirts offered in basins at the check-out, etc.]
***advertising (images) = secular magic***
==inducing==> a powerful desire to indulge in the fantasy of being:
•a solitary and steely-gazed athlete
•a sophisticated and urbane Parisian girl
•
Campbell: “The moment that I say that fashion brands do not affect me is the very moment that they have”
pleasurable daydreaming innate to us all
marketing is often a practice of *breaking taboos* ==guarantees==> brand success
detergent, apparel, car or cosmetics brands ==produce==> the monolithic, repetitive idea of ‘clean flawlessness’ that infiltrates our value systems
clothes = portals to different realities
*enclothed cognition*: the influential way clothes change psychological mood, the way clothes allow us to take up certain social roles more authentically
Alessi: fashion is social (its Latin root ‘factio’: a group of people acting together) =/= Campbell: i use clothes (fashion) as a social grammar to communicate with these others
universal clothing in sci-fi is such a lie, because that would remove one of the primary ways in our culture that we have for expressing ourselves
we need to change the manifestation rather than deny the yearning }--> Campbell proposes: slow fashion, re-categorization of clothing back to investment in long-term, high-quality items
...................................
[title]
nonhuman rationality
(Meillassoux's) speculative realism ==> climate change = a new world (for which we do not have categories)
Meillassoux's concepts { nonhuman + rational --Campbell--> ontologically think about climate change =/= (despondency & passivity) equivocal status of climate change }==> bleak optimism: climate change has already happened + human civilization must learn how to die in a way that is a *creative and just foreclosure of the earth's organizational forms*
organization: an environment-making process
--> drawing of ‘general lines’ in the fabric of the whole ==constitute==> most basic mode of existence
--> making of some sort of cut in the universe to simultaneously create & order an inside from an outside [~ *bracket ‘a’ reality out from an undifferentiated plasmic whole* ~= framing]
==produce==> elements of a reality that can be controlled by human intervention
*how we frame climate change will determine the future of life on earth*
[--Sina--> that is why we need more curatorial skills: variational + organizational]
fr[...]
(31)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%94.9[...]abilizing --> fixing, delimiting, controlling
3- bring into view --> empirical, technologies of representation, controlling
frame:
•useful models for viewing reality
•recursive lenses through which that phenomenon is measured and acted upon
climate change and new frames emerge side-by-side:
climate change as:
•externality
•superwicked problem
•anthropocene
**what if climate change is unframeable?** [<-- art is good at dealing with this]
climate change qualities:
•unboundedness: hard to separate what is climate change and what is not
•incalculability: intotalizable effects ==> emergencies and materialities that are beyond known forms of planning and organizing
•unthinkability: it escapes each time we try to capture it empirically, organizationally, psychologically
}--> *questions that have no logical or empirical answer ==> ontological* (they concern its ontology) ~ we do not see its fundamental being
end of empirical/logical = beginning of ontological (secular)
=/=
end of empirical/logical =? beginning of eschatological (nonsecular)
}--Campbell--> **ontologization of climate change**
*climate change = the world we live in =/= a problem within the world*
[*]climate change: the absolute context that determines what is possible + what has replaced a previous world
(i find Meillassoux + Campbell argumentation more convincing than Morton's hyperobject)
climate change as “problem” (that can be framed), “thing”, “within the world” [=/= the world: generative context from where problems emerge ==> forms of organization without precedent] ==problem==>
1. epistemological assumptions (+ expectations + responses)
2. unable to encompass (the qualities of climate change)
3. misrecognition of climate change
speculative realist idea of world
[*]speculative realism: a strategy for thinking, organizing, solving at the *widest rational angle: a form of thinking and acting that is concerned with the fundamental structure of reality in its absolute and unconditioned form (=/= manifestations of phenomena) ==> to deliver metaphysical truths unto the world without deforming them with the forceps انبر جراحى of one's own epistemic apparatus
(as) ontological threat ==Campbell==> escalation and absolutization of ethics (*that is necessary to aithentically occupy it*)
@apass: constant investigation of one's epistemology (=/= ontology) in artistic research
--Sina--> the danger of ontologization...
**massively expansive vista of rationality** =/= disavowing rationality
(the old philosophical idea of) the absolute =/= equivocal status
bleak optimism: organizing[...]
(34)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%95[...]logical (nonsecular)
}--Campbell--> **ontologization of climate change**
*climate change = the world we live in =/= a problem within the world*
[*]climate change: the absolute context that determines what is possible + what has replaced a previous world
(i find Meillassoux + Campbell argumentation more convincing than Morton's hyperobject)
climate change as “problem” (that can be framed), “thing”, “within the world” [=/= the world: generative context from where problems emerge ==> forms of organization without precedent] ==problem==>
1. epistemological assumptions (+ expectations + responses)
2. unable to encompass (the qualities of climate change)
3. misrecognition of climate change
speculative realist idea of world
[*]speculative realism: a strategy for thinking, organizing, solving at the *widest rational angle: a form of thinking and acting that is concerned with the fundamental structure of reality in its absolute and unconditioned form (=/= manifestations of phenomena) ==> to deliver metaphysical truths unto the world without deforming them with the forceps انبر جراحى of one's own epistemic apparatus
(as) ontological threat ==Campbell==> escalation and absolutization of ethics (*that is necessary to aithentically occupy it*)
@apass: constant investigation of one's epistemology (=/= ontology) in artistic research
--Sina--> the danger of ontologization...
**massively expansive vista of rationality** =/= disavowing rationality
(the old philosophical idea of) the absolute =/= equivocal status
bleak optimism: organizing without hope <== climate change has already happened
--> how to die : a creative form of foreclosure that unlocks a justice that cannot exist without realizing the ontological dimensions of climate change
frame: general organizing device ==>
•define problems
•diagnose causes
•suggest solutions
(their) argumentative strength ==influence==> organization
frame --> define climate change ==> produce climate change --through--> (the work of:)
•problem-identification
•claim-making
•attribution-laying
•boundary delineation
•counter-framing
•bridging
•amplification
•constructing identity-forming vocabularies and discourses
==> *alter an audience's ideological beliefs*
climate change literature has been dominated by economics, (geo)engineering, legal theory/policy studies ==> solutions (to climate change) --invoke--> markets, technologies, policies (with differing criteria about what constitutes legitimacy, authority, efficacy) }<--Campbell-- *before they get a solution, the phenomenon has already been scientized, politicized, mediatized, organized*
indigenous framing[...]
(36)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%95[...]r />
**massively expansive vista of rationality** =/= disavowing rationality
(the old philosophical idea of) the absolute =/= equivocal status
bleak optimism: organizing without hope <== climate change has already happened
--> how to die : a creative form of foreclosure that unlocks a justice that cannot exist without realizing the ontological dimensions of climate change
frame: general organizing device ==>
•define problems
•diagnose causes
•suggest solutions
(their) argumentative strength ==influence==> organization
frame --> define climate change ==> produce climate change --through--> (the work of:)
•problem-identification
•claim-making
•attribution-laying
•boundary delineation
•counter-framing
•bridging
•amplification
•constructing identity-forming vocabularies and discourses
==> *alter an audience's ideological beliefs*
climate change literature has been dominated by economics, (geo)engineering, legal theory/policy studies ==> solutions (to climate change) --invoke--> markets, technologies, policies (with differing criteria about what constitutes legitimacy, authority, efficacy) }<--Campbell-- *before they get a solution, the phenomenon has already been scientized, politicized, mediatized, organized*
indigenous framing of climate change
drawing from indigenous cultures in the hope that a deeper emotional maturity might lead to a deep engagement with the environment which ultimately bestows life }--> framed as an existential threat ==> (question what it means to be) an ecologically interdependent species with moral agency @Chloe2
eschatological cliche --> “existentially significant activities are no longer possible ==> the loss of meaning” (=/= Cinderella)
[*]frame, framing: enfold audiences into an enclosure that is conceptually accessible
for example
•*ecological modernization* : a frame for climate change that seems to enclose the grreatest number of diverse stakeholders --- uses carbon as a way to engage diverse stakeholders, a centrifugal locus that is calculable, non-political, scientific ==> presents opportunities for innovation }--Campbell--> short-term strategy: a reification process that transforms climate change into “the carbon problem” ==> production of carbon markets that ironically serve as creative new modes of accumulation <-- reifies ecological maladaptation
•*catastrophic framing* of climate change --> backfires, moomerang effects, causing audiences to disbelieve the entire message
•*frame-bridging* --> when two issues ostensibly different are linked in complementariness in the same sphere as the concept in question (for example emphasizing the religious and moral dimensions of climate change ==> environment central to faith
•*emotional fram[...]
(37)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%95.1[...]erature has been dominated by economics, (geo)engineering, legal theory/policy studies ==> solutions (to climate change) --invoke--> markets, technologies, policies (with differing criteria about what constitutes legitimacy, authority, efficacy) }<--Campbell-- *before they get a solution, the phenomenon has already been scientized, politicized, mediatized, organized*
indigenous framing of climate change
drawing from indigenous cultures in the hope that a deeper emotional maturity might lead to a deep engagement with the environment which ultimately bestows life }--> framed as an existential threat ==> (question what it means to be) an ecologically interdependent species with moral agency @Chloe2
eschatological cliche --> “existentially significant activities are no longer possible ==> the loss of meaning” (=/= Cinderella)
[*]frame, framing: enfold audiences into an enclosure that is conceptually accessible
for example:
/>
•*ecological modernization* : a frame for climate change that seems to enclose the grreatest number of diverse stakeholders --- uses carbon as a way to engage diverse stakeholders, a centrifugal locus that is calculable, non-political, scientific ==> presents opportunities for innovation }--Campbell--> short-term strategy: a reification process that transforms climate change into “the carbon problem” ==> production of carbon markets that ironically serve as creative new modes of accumulation <-- reifies ecological maladaptation
•*catastrophic framing* of climate change --> backfires, moomerang effects, causing audiences to disbelieve the entire message
•*frame-bridging* --> when two issues ostensibly different are linked in complementariness in the same sphere as the concept in question (for example emphasizing the religious and moral dimensions of climate change ==> environment central to faith
•*emotional framing* --> we are suffering from a deficiency of *emotionaotional knowledge* about climate change (=/= deficit of information) ==> locus of problem moves to the psychological affective realm ==> elevation of the problem to an existential threat or trauma --> (climate change becomes a factor in *identity formation*) we become more ecological in our cognition behaviour, affect
◦managers in organizations perform complex ‘affect-based’ work to translate the broader social emotions of climate change into the *local emotional landscape* ==establish==> new norms ==> alter the emotional salience of climate change (in the workplace) [<-- 26/06/2021 this has become the dominant framing in artistic research environments @apass, Pierre, Chloe2]
*(successful) frames: work through the integration of the phenomenon into a reality that is manageable* (=/= Campbell)
focus on the sustainability of discourses that are imaginable and thinkable and connectable with people's existing world =/= focus on the reality of the moving targe[...]
(38)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%95.1[...]l maladaptation
•*catastrophic framing* of climate change --> backfires, moomerang effects, causing audiences to disbelieve the entire message
•*frame-bridging* --> when two issues ostensibly different are linked in complementariness in the same sphere as the concept in question (for example emphasizing the religious and moral dimensions of climate change ==> environment central to faith
•*emotional framing* --> we are suffering from a deficiency of *emotional knowledge* about climate change (=/= deficit of information) ==> locus of problem moves to the psychological affective realm ==> elevation of the problem to an existential threat or trauma --> (climate change becomes a factor in *identity formation*) we become more ecological in our cognition behaviour, affect
◦managers in organizations perform complex ‘affect-based’ work to translate the broader social emotions of climate change into the *local emotional landscape* ==establish==> new norms ==> alter the emotional salience of climate change (in the workplace) [<-- 26/06/2021 this has become the dominant framing in artistic research environments @apass, Pierre, Chloe2]
*(successful) frames: work through the integration of the phenomenon into a reality that is manageable* (=/= Campbell)
focus on the sustainability of discourses that are imaginable and thinkable and connectable with people's existing world =/= focus on the reality of the moving target
‘climate change’ politically more palatable مطبوع به ذائقه than ‘global warming’ in conservative circles
discursive evolution of climate change:
•1932 --> externality --> economics
•1960 --> wicked problem --> policy studies, public management
•1980 --> threat --> public media
•1988 --> global warming --> physical chemistry
•2000 --> contested debate --> science
•1968 --> tragedy of the commons --> ecological philosophy
◦collective action dilemma, common property dilemma, non-commitment =/= responsibility, transnational commons dilemma, historical versus new emitters, fossil fuel lobby and corporate power }--response-->{ develop techniques for more thorough understanding of ecological interdependencies, manage multi-stakeholder interests, unite common goals in public bad game, transnational issue-spanning, pragmatic incremental gains, address value-action gaps in individual consumption regimes
•1990 --> risk --> mathematics
•1990 --> war --> political economy
•1990 --> crisis --> science
•1990 --> catastrophe --> mathematics (used differently in public imaginary)
◦“dnd of days”, worst-case scenario, complete system collapse, extreme events, irreversible, non-calculative, non-gradual }--response-->{ use catastrophe framing to induce immediate action, fix temporal focus on visualization of the possible aftermath to prevent it Disrupt business-as-usual[...]
(39)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%95.2[...]etorically amplifies climate change --> logic of outsideness : ‘climate change = an enemy that is fought against’, (drawing from) emergency logic ==urge==> single-shot unified geotechnical solutions
•crisis frame --> emotional framing --leverage--> temporal logic : a climax point (peak oil, peak carbon, etc.) points to the narrowing window of opportunity to act -->
•catastrophic framing --> (using emotional language) locates the frame in the aftermath of a climate changed [<-- a popular public framing of the problem]
•super wicked problem --> temporal logic of time running out --pointing-->
◦irrational future disounting
◦lack of a central organizing authority
◦
•anthropocene --> temporal logic + pervasive spatiality ==> situating the category in deep time + planetary scale [<-- a frame used by organizations]
[*]problem: analytical techniques that lend themselves to core framing tasks of “what, who, why, when, where” of a particular issue (<-- ‘research problem’ is a foundation of this technique)
define boundaries of climate change --to-->
•focus on who is responsible
•ask why is it happening
•identify when is it happening
•locate where
(Campbell's) meta-observation ==> more each field discovers about climate change ==> category expansion (the more it seems to grow in scale)
*what Campbell finds in the discursive evolution of climate change*: a manifestation of (what the philosophical movement known as speculative realism criticizes as) [*]correlationism: we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking & being, a means to temper the real, to constrain it such that is becomes thinkable to human categories (yoke thinking & being together : we cannot think the unthought without relating it to existing correlates) }--Meillassoux--> never able to get out of the relation being thought and being to distinguish between an object & properties belonging to the subjective access to the object --> bad idea of epistemology ==> recuperates climate change within categories that make it seam manageable =/= (Campbell claiming) *climage change : ontological world* ==> it is everywhere and nowhere, present at all levels and yet absent as a distinct “thing” we can point to
Meillassoux --> how difficult it is to think anything without in some way introducing a qualification that one cannot know it without rendering it “for-us” though our framing = *it cannot be known absolutely*
(problem of access:) anti-realism within continental tradition of philosophy ==> the idea that reality is inaccessible in-itself =/= Meillassoux's attempt to ***fuse reality with speculation in a logical manner***
to deploy speculative leap to defuse the problem of access --> *weird realism* to avoid the paths of analytic thought, positivism, scientism (~?!=> religion, faith, con[...]
(40)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%95.3[...]/>
[*]problem: analytical techniques that lend themselves to core framing tasks of “what, who, why, when, where” of a particular issue (<-- ‘research problem’ is a foundation of this technique)
define boundaries of climate change --to-->
•focus on who is responsible
•ask why is it happening
•identify when is it happening
•locate where
(Campbell's) meta-observation ==> more each field discovers about climate change ==> category expansion (the more it seems to grow in scale)
*what Campbell finds in the discursive evolution of climate change*: a manifestation of (what the philosophical movement known as speculative realism criticizes as) [*]correlationism: we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking & being, a means to temper the real, to constrain it such that is becomes thinkable to human categories (yoke thinking & being together : we cannot think the unthought without relating it to existing correlates) }--Meillassoux--> never able to get out of the relation being thought and being to distinguish between an object & properties belonging to the subjective access to the object --> bad idea of epistemology ==> recuperates climate change within categories that make it seam manageable =/= (Campbell claiming) *climage change : ontological world* ==> it is everywhere and nowhere, present at all levels and yet absent as a distinct “thing” we can point to
Meillassoux --> how difficult it is to think anything without in some way introducing a qualification that one cannot know it without rendering it “for-us” though our framing = *it cannot be known absolutely*
(problem of access:) anti-realism within continental tradition of philosophy ==> the idea that reality is inaccessible in-itself =/= Meillassoux's attempt to ***fuse reality with speculation in a logical manner***
to deploy speculative leap to defuse the problem of access --> *weird realism* to avoid the paths of analytic thought, positivism, scientism (~?!=> religion, faith, conspiracy theory, paranoia, ,,)
correlationism ==> despite repeatedly showing that it creates massive sudden fluctuating geologic singularities, climate change is still folded back into known organizational coordinates
}--> *interactional openness* (+ temporal boundedness) (@apass) ==> negotiation complexity, high technical policy instrument, multiplication of actors, multiplication of negotiation tracks
}==> *solutions shift from a field-endogenous catalyst of institutional change --to--> a mechanism of field maintenance*
}--Campbell--> framing of climate change ==dictate==> the organizational structure to address it ==> misrecognize what it is
=/= ***a world [=/= a problem] ==generates==> problems (that no current organizational form can address)***
correlationism (--> prevailing belief that human reason cannot attain ce[...]
(42)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%95.3[...] and nowhere, present at all levels and yet absent as a distinct “thing” we can point to
Meillassoux --> how difficult it is to think anything without in some way introducing a qualification that one cannot know it without rendering it “for-us” though our framing = *it cannot be known absolutely*
(problem of access:) anti-realism within continental tradition of philosophy ==> the idea that reality is inaccessible in-itself =/= Meillassoux's attempt to ***fuse reality with speculation in a logical manner***
to deploy speculative leap to defuse the problem of access --> *weird realism* to avoid the paths of analytic thought, positivism, scientism (~?!=> religion, faith, conspiracy theory, paranoia, ,,)
correlationism ==> despite repeatedly showing that it creates massive sudden fluctuating geologic singularities, climate change is still folded back into known organizational coordinates
}--> *interactional openness* (+ temporal boundedness) (@apass) ==> negotiation complexity, high technical policy instrument, multiplication of actors, multiplication of negotiation tracks
}==> *solutions shift from a field-endogenous catalyst of institutional change --to--> a mechanism of field maintenance*
}--Campbell--> framing of climate change ==dictate==> the organizational structure to address it ==> misrecognize what it is
=/= ***a world [=/= a problem] ==generates==> problems (that no current organizational form can address)***
correlationism (--> prevailing belief that human reason cannot attain certainty in metaphysical, religious, moral matters) ==Meillassoux==> fear of dogma/absolute (deep-seated desire to be non-dogmatic) ==> *knowledge becomes a matter of belief* ==>{ reason undergoes a process of religionizing : ‘reason = a means to buttress claims based on faith’ =/= aiming to capture absolute knowledge itself, condemning irrational claims upon it }==> ***discourage hierarchies of reason (always to slightly disblieve waht we believe) [<-- happens in apass!]
speculative realism ==>
1. *organizational research* (@Chloe2) in the future must be deidicated to finding the right categories to account for a new worl (and not for a superwicked problem)
2. enables us to approach climate change from the *widest rational angle*
3. (‘climate change = world’ ==>) we can begin to theorize the escalation and absolutization of ethics that is necessary to authentically occupy it --Campbell--> bleak optimism: acceptance of ecological collapse + begin the necessary work to organize within the new world of climate change (@Inga)
dialectical process of critique and reassessment <-- absorbed by organizations
•strategic agenda
•framed as an opportunity
•how climate change is always conceived as something “outside” that needs to be internalized by the organization
[...]
(43)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%95.4[...]m of field maintenance*
}--Campbell--> framing of climate change ==dictate==> the organizational structure to address it ==> misrecognize what it is
=/= ***a world [=/= a problem] ==generates==> problems (that no current organizational form can address)***
correlationism (--> prevailing belief that human reason cannot attain certainty in metaphysical, religious, moral matters) ==Meillassoux==> fear of dogma/absolute (deep-seated desire to be non-dogmatic) ==> *knowledge becomes a matter of belief* ==>{ reason undergoes a process of religionizing : ‘reason = a means to buttress claims based on faith’ =/= aiming to capture absolute knowledge itself, condemning irrational claims upon it }==> ***discourage hierarchies of reason (always to slightly disblieve waht we believe) [<-- happens in apass!]
speculative realism ==>
1. *organizational research* (@Chloe2) in the future must be deidicated to finding the right categories to account for a new worl (and not for a superwicked problem)
2. enables us to approach climate change from the *widest rational angle*
3. (‘climate change = world’ ==>) we can begin to theorize the escalation and absolutization of ethics that is necessary to authentically occupy it --Campbell--> bleak optimism: acceptance of ecological collapse + begin the necessary work to organize within the new world of climate change (@Inga)
dialectical process of critique and reassessment <-- absorbed by organizations
•strategic agenda
•framed as an opportunity
•how climate change is always conceived as something “outside” that needs to be internalized by the organization
(Campbell thinking with Meillassoux) laws of nature changing (~ *forms of emergence without precedent* [three cases/advents --> *radical discontinuities rupture the fabric of what has come before*]):
**world of material =/= world of life =/= world of thought**
1. matter: reducible to what can be theorized in physico-mathematical terms
2. life: (understood more specifically as a set of terms:) affections, sensations, qualitative perceptions, etc. (--> cannot be reduced to material processes)
3. thought: understood as a capacity to arrive at the ‘intelligible content’ bearers of eternity (--> cannot be reduced to life processes)
}--> ****n the transition from non-life to life : the laws of biological life were not contained in the pre-life world --> they emerged ex nihilo (they were not immanent in [nor emerged from] the previous laws)****
--> (Meillassoux:) reality can generate advents on its own =/= the idea of vitalism: the idea that reality contains a hidden organization guided by transcendent intervention
to think of an ontological core for climate change where it is regarded as a world (in the Meillassouxian sense) --> situate climate change as a discontinuity --> *n[...]
(44)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%95.4[...] reality can generate advents on its own =/= the idea of vitalism: the idea that reality contains a hidden organization guided by transcendent intervention
to think of an ontological core for climate change where it is regarded as a world (in the Meillassouxian sense) --> situate climate change as a discontinuity --> *new world will create novelty in organization that exceeds thinkability today*
(from the position of speculative realism) what is important is (the “=/=” of) ‘holocene =/= anthropocene’ (and not the anthropocene)
•what did the world look like at the beginning of holocene?
holocene ==created==> epistemological categories that lasted thousands of years and became the most fundamental modes through which we understand & organize:
◦birth of language
◦birth of religion
◦concept of resources
◦concept of exchange
◦concept of exchange
◦invention of all known technology
>
◦development of agriculture
◦domestication
◦urbanization
==(by this metric)==> ‘climate change = world’ marks the end of organization as we can think it 😱
(let's widen rationality rather than abandoning it)
speculative realism --Campbell--> (a strategy for thinking at the) widest rational angle
example of speculative realism --> Meillassoux's spectral dilemma: [theist] resurrection of the dead (to provide justice for unjust deaths) + [atheist] inexistence of God (to absolve God of past injustices ~ meaningless deaths) ==> it is possible that God might emerge in the future --> complete justice has an ontological & real basis }-->
•the possibility of living according to *absolutizating thoughts* (one of Meillassoux's main tactics is to raise the stakes extremely high to show that *ethical commitments are either absolute or not* [--Campbell--> to speak in absolutizating ways about climate change]) (=/= focus on rthical dilemmas as epistemological conundrums and escalation of ethics to the status of a universal absence of justice ==> despondency + cynicism)
(the problem of) critical philosophy wants to avoid dogmatism, but it also incubates dogmatism because in abandoning any ratinoal access to the absolute (they want to be devoid of the slightest pretension to rationality) it renders this space accessible only by dogmatic faith and irrationality
--> (an unintentional and undesirable by-product of healthy scientific scepticism:) the mild sensible scepticism we hold towards “reality” cab be exlpoited to undermine any and all belief in it : climate change ==> logic schism =/= object of/for knowledge (both sceptics and believers use knowledge to deepen their differing positions =/= to elucidate the situation) [---> go to Tsing's coalescence]
correlationism ==activate==> a deeply seeted belief that *we are a necessary part of reality* (a permanen[...]
(46)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%95.5[...]ne?
holocene ==created==> epistemological categories that lasted thousands of years and became the most fundamental modes through which we understand & organize:
◦birth of language
◦birth of religion
◦concept of resources
◦concept of exchange
◦concept of exchange
◦invention of all known technology
◦development of agriculture
◦domestication
◦urbanization
==(by this metric)==> ‘climate change = world’ marks the end of organization as we can think it 😱
(let's widen rationality rather than abandoning it)
speculative realism --Campbell--> (a strategy for thinking at the) widest rational angle
example of speculative realism --> Meillassoux's spectral dilemma: [theist] resurrection of the dead (to provide justice for unjust deaths) + [atheist] inexistence of God (to absolve God of past injustices ~ meaningless deaths) ==> it is possible that God might emerge in the future --> complete justice has an ontological & real basis }-->
•the possibility of living according to *absolutizating thoughts* (one of Meillassoux's main tactics is to raise the stakes extremely high to show that *ethical commitments are either absolute or not* [--Campbell--> to speak in absolutizating ways about climate change]) (=/= focus on rthical dilemmas as epistemological conundrums and escalation of ethics to the status of a universal absence of justice ==> despondency + cynicism)
(the problem of) critical philosophy wants to avoid dogmatism, but it also incubates dogmatism because in abandoning any ratinoal access to the absolute (they want to be devoid of the slightest pretension to rationality) it renders this space accessible only by dogmatic faith and irrationality
--> (an unintentional and undesirable by-product of healthy scientific scepticism:) the mild sensible scepticism we hold towards “reality” cab be exlpoited to undermine any and all belief in it : climate change ==> logic schism =/= object of/for knowledge (both sceptics and believers use knowledge to deepen their differing positions =/= to elucidate the situation) [---> go to Tsing's coalescence]
correlationism ==activate==> a deeply seeted belief that *we are a necessary part of reality* (a permanent fixture), even when we know rationally that we have not always been
=/= (more ontologically authentic) non-correlationist perspective --> we are a moment in time
--> speculative realism: تدارکی preparatory device, an attitude engine, a strategic lens (to see ‘climate change = world’):
1. climate change has already happened
2. climate change marks the end of human civilization
}--> how do we adjust?
The greatest challenge we face is a philosophical one: *understanding that this civilization is already dead*. The sooner we confront our situation and realize that there is n[...]
(47)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%95.5[...] change -->) multi-leveled death:
•loss of a civilization
•irreversible death of difference (biodiversity)
•ultimate limit of the human project
•
=/= (modernity -->) secret belief that this civilization will last forever
(what could be opportunities for) **creative foreclosure** of the old world --> space for optimism ♥
--> ****preparing for an end without apocalypse**** [= foreclosure, @Goda and Sina dictionaryofapocalypse.com] ([curatorial?] organizing for the end of the world that is an escalated absolutizing commitment to divest justly) --> ****organizing without hope*** [=/=? death drive]
(we need دورویی) two-faced {<-- I think artists from Iran and former Soviet Union countries with *double consciousness* تجربه چندگانگی تجربه دوگانگی are good at *hopeless optimism* خوش بین ناامید}
1. acknowledge the unbounded unthinkabile incalculable nature of this new reality
2. a chance to experiment with organizational forms of justice, ethics, politics, reason (that are without precedent)
{(examining growing boundaries of) climate change ==> increasing category expansion ==> epistemologies cannot encompass climage change reality}--Campbell--> (we are) afforded a chance to ontologize it
speculative realism: a mode of commitment to a non-correlated reality --Campbell--> an organizational strategy ==> a mood --> bleak optimism
unthinkability: refusal to let framing occur
...................................
how mythology is being used in consumer research
[...]
[Tillotson and Martin offering various myth typologies to support theorists in evaluation of myth theories and appropriate integration of theoretical advancements in the field of consumer culture theory:] --> how consumer researchers have sailed though every discipline--from psychology, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, to literary criticism, history and political economy...
myth has been understood in consumer research from five perspective:
•symbolic
•functionalist
•semiotic
•structuralist
•critical theory
•monomythic
Weber{ modern bureaucratization and intellectualization ==> disenchantment of the world }--> modern experience = rationalization and mythological mysticism ==> marketplace, *no institution has been more willing and able to respond to this (Weberian) desire for enchantment than the modern marketplace* ~=> ***normative preference for enchantment = consumption***
--problem--> *the market remains firmly in charge of myth of consumption, its rewards and its consequences* : marketplace mythology has increasingly become an all-encompassing construct of assorted descriptions and theoretical advancements including the sacred, extraordinary, symbolic and tran[...]
(48)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%95.6[...]tionalist
•semiotic
•structuralist
•critical theory
•monomythic
Weber{ modern bureaucratization and intellectualization ==> disenchantment of the world }--> modern experience = rationalization and mythological mysticism ==> marketplace, *no institution has been more willing and able to respond to this (Weberian) desire for enchantment than the modern marketplace* ~=> ***normative preference for enchantment = consumption***
--problem--> *the market remains firmly in charge of myth of consumption, its rewards and its consequences* : marketplace mythology has increasingly become an all-encompassing construct of assorted descriptions and theoretical advancements including the sacred, extraordinary, symbolic and transcendental
myth: a way of organizing perceptions of realities
consumer culture theory
{[Mead & Blumer's] symbolic perspective of myth: how symbols are adorned with meaning and that affect social interaction --> symbolic myth research: verbal/nonverbal forms of communication, with an emphasis on how people behave in day-to-day circumstances in the context of socio-historical structure and ideological of their environment ==> “mythology = narrative” }=/= Joseph Campbell: “interaction with the symbolic ==> mythology”
•Freud's use of mythic stories as metaphors in psychoanalysis ==> (early) symbolic perspective
•Jung's archetype: embodiment beliefs/images ==collectively==> myth and religion }==> “mythology = extension of the collective unconscious into society”
•Blumer's social life: construction built up by the actor (=/= relationship of structures directing human life); ability to act toward oneself, ability to internally define themselves as objects [self with goal] as the symbols of their own actions
--McAdams--> personal myth: narrative storyline as a means to organize meaning in their lives --in--> context <==forms== historical, religious and state-influenced belief systems, culturally specific themes and ideology
}--> identity and society --responsible-for--> life story --negotiated--> personal myth as interpretive strategy
}==> concepts of ‘consumption’ and ‘identity’ in consumer culture theory
identity work =/= personal myth
[Velliquette + Murray + Creyer:] example of tattoo culture: private and public burrs physically with the attachment of personal meaning to physical marking of the skin and symbolically through the personal stories attached to public brands --> *individuals attach meaning to consumption* <== negotiating the cultural tensions <==throu== perception of self contrasted with the influence of institutional structures (race, class, gender, age) and ideological pressure }==> “meaning = dialectic of object and consumer”
•(Jung's archetype ==>) Joseph Campbell's monomyth: universally applicable narrative of mythology (like in Holl[...]
(50)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%95.7[...]br />
•Blumer's social life: construction built up by the actor (=/= relationship of structures directing human life); ability to act toward oneself, ability to internally define themselves as objects [self with goal] as the symbols of their own actions
--McAdams--> personal myth: narrative storyline as a means to organize meaning in their lives --in--> context <==forms== historical, religious and state-influenced belief systems, culturally specific themes and ideology
}--> identity and society --responsible-for--> life story --negotiated--> personal myth as interpretive strategy
}==> concepts of ‘consumption’ and ‘identity’ in consumer culture theory
identity work =/= personal myth
[Velliquette + Murray + Creyer:] example of tattoo culture: private and public burrs physically with the attachment of personal meaning to physical marking of the skin and symbolically through the personal stories attached to public brands --> *individuals attach meaning to consumption* <== negotiating the cultural tensions <==throu== perception of self contrasted with the influence of institutional structures (race, class, gender, age) and ideological pressure }==> “meaning = dialectic of object and consumer”
•(Jung's archetype ==>) Joseph Campbell's monomyth: universally applicable narrative of mythology (like in Hollywood films about the hero's rites of passage --> experience of life in accordance with the phenomena of time)
myths/dreams find expression in symbolic form --> “participating in ritual == engaging myth”
}--> **consumer research as hero's journey** : Consumer Behavior Odyssey's travelling across America in a motorhome to learn about self, the world, and other people [@Jassme and Mia] --> transcendental knowledge of the American consumer ==> academic literature
(consumer Odyssey found that) ‘the journey’ holds a sacred status that transforms knowledge generation into new mythological epistemologies and opens up new doors to understanding (of consumption)
&
‘extraordinary experiences as rites of passage’ [--example: white water river rafting --> (emergent themes of) personal growth, communitas harmony with nature translated to other consumer experiences]
‘rites of passage’ [~= ‘monomyth']:
•separation [~= departure]
•transition [~= initiation]
•reintegration [~= return]
(river rafting ~=) ritual ~= enactment of myth
}--(Arnould & Price)--> narrative of service embodies the initiation of the journey
‘extraordinary experience' = event & *enchanted temporal period*
liminality: the threshold of a ritual where ambiguity and disorientation occurs before the ritual has been completed [Van Gennep, Turner]
[Dobscha and Foxman:] how a joyous activity is actually stressful and invokes *transcendent experiences of a mythic journey* --> ‘call to adventure’ in a chaotic retail s[...]
(51)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%95.8[...]tuations’
...................................
with Ereshefsky
how to do scientific metaphysics?
•conduct piecewise and local metaphysics (not universalist metaphysics, not science fiction)
•balance naturalism and normativity
◦naturalism --> learn about different scientific practices that have different aims
◦normativity --> evaluate how well those practices achieve those (epistemic and pragmatic) aims
•
...................................
filial piety --> family formation + consumption behaviours (in Asian context)
(public policymakers and) social marketers addressing family dissatisfaction
understanding family identity has important implications for consumption --western-->
•how meal consumption helps to maintain family bonds
•how home-made meals are useful in constructing and communicating family identity (@apass, Leo, Sarah, food-ing, ‘formulations of family identity ~=!? collective’)
•how families preserve identity through the transfer of inalienable possessions
•how families navigate complex consumption choices such as involving parenthood
•
...................................
(Campbell + Saren -->) [*]posthumanism: an aesthetic (not just an epistemology) that blends:
1. the primitive
2. technology
3. horror
[*]metamorphosis: (an engine that encourages the viewer) to recognize life not as being, but as perpetual becoming =/= (liberatory promises of) ‘flow’
(each articulating opposing fantasies of posthumanism:)
morphing =/= mutating
primal technology
proto-atavism نياکان گرايى --> ***multiple paradigms of life exist on the peripheries of humanist life***
Campbell --> a posthuman biology (an ethical imperative that in a technological age, that life is not just life)
Golem --> perennial horror in western imagination
Jewish psalms of the 6th century
formation of life (golmi: unformed limb) <==emanate== mother's womb & nonhuman earth itself
--exemplifies--> how *western humanist versions of technology tend to create a master-servant dialectic* (master-slave) and anything that threatens this divide invokes horror
(roots embedded in the Romantic tradition:)
•“frankenfood” (mash up original and unexpected food combinations, genetically modified crops)
•genetic engineering technologies
•“revenge of nature”
•“nature out of control” leitmotif
•
*since antiquity (in the west) technology has been simultaneously imbued with magic and rationality, evil and redemption, trickery and transparency [---> go to Baxstrom + Meyers Realizing The Witch]
Descartes: the philosopher who provided the western imagination with the most enduring model of the hum[...]
(52)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%96.1[...]ours (in Asian context)
(public policymakers and) social marketers addressing family dissatisfaction
understanding family identity has important implications for consumption --western-->
•how meal consumption helps to maintain family bonds
•how home-made meals are useful in constructing and communicating family identity (@apass, Leo, Sarah, food-ing, ‘formulations of family identity ~=!? collective’)
•how families preserve identity through the transfer of inalienable possessions
•how families navigate complex consumption choices such as involving parenthood
•
...................................
(Campbell + Saren -->) [*]posthumanism: an aesthetic (not just an epistemology) that blends:
1. the primitive
2. technology
3. horror
[*]metamorphosis: (an engine that encourages the viewer) to recognize life not as being, but as perpetual becoming =/= (liberatory promises of) ‘flow’
(each articulating opposing fantasies of posthumanism:)
morphing =/= mutating
primal technology
proto-atavism نياکان گرايى --> ***multiple paradigms of life exist on the peripheries of humanist life***
Campbell --> a posthuman biology (an ethical imperative that in a technological age, that life is not just life)
Golem --> perennial horror in western imagination
Jewish psalms of the 6th century
formation of life (golmi: unformed limb) <==emanate== mother's womb & nonhuman earth itself
--exemplifies--> how *western humanist versions of technology tend to create a master-servant dialectic* (master-slave) and anything that threatens this divide invokes horror
(roots embedded in the Romantic tradition:)
•“frankenfood” (mash up original and unexpected food combinations, genetically modified crops)
•genetic engineering technologies
◾“revenge of nature”
•“nature out of control” leitmotif
•
*since antiquity (in the west) technology has been simultaneously imbued with magic and rationality, evil and redemption, trickery and transparency [---> go to Baxstrom + Meyers Realizing The Witch]
Descartes: the philosopher who provided the western imagination with the most enduring model of the human --> preoccupation with mechanism as something that pervaded machines, bodies and animals but never the non-material, spiritual realm of the mind
*eschatological significance attached to technology*
schizoid stance, alternating between the technophobic and the technophilic (--> expressed in avant-garde): Dadaism, Futurism, Cubism, constructivism)
•technocs aestheticized and fetishized: world expos such as the Crystal Palace, garden cities, the cite industrielle, Citta Nuova, the Werknund, etc.
•military machinery of first world war which alienated human [...]
(53)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%96.2[...]go to Baxstrom + Meyers Realizing The Witch]
Descartes: the philosopher who provided the western imagination with the most enduring model of the human --> preoccupation with mechanism as something that pervaded machines, bodies and animals but never the non-material, spiritual realm of the mind
*eschatological significance attached to technology*
schizoid stance, alternating between the technophobic and the technophilic (--> expressed in avant-garde): Dadaism, Futurism, Cubism, constructivism)
•technocs aestheticized and fetishized: world expos such as the Crystal Palace, garden cities, the cite industrielle, Citta Nuova, the Werknund, etc.
•military machinery of first world war which alienated human life while at the same time making the human inhuman
*technology as revold*
imagined as rebellious and repellent
(human civilization) haunted by the temptation of a reverse evolution which coexists in it with the potential for progress
--> *techno-anxiety: potential infallibility of the technological
(teratology, wider context of studies on monsters)
logic of contemporary technoculture --trope-->
•primitive
•technology
•horror
(Campbell drawing from a larger) intertextual repertoire consisting of advertising, film, and other images in visual culture
--> aesthetic conflation of the primitive, technology, and horror points to three new concepts:
•metamorphing: {<<--** exactly my problem with Manning's process philosophy}
◦(a logic of) ***identity as constant becoming***
◦***emphasis on flow*** (as a necessary way to understand process)
•primal technology =/= (humanist and pervasive) concept of technology as modern, progressive, clean, nonalive
•proto-atavism: evolutionary traits from the future can exist in the present (=/= atavism: evolutionary traits from the past can exist in the present) []
==> type of posthuman biology conception of life
(let's have atavism instead of activism)
Campbell --> *critique the almost universal celebration of flow in contemporary philosophical thought* {<-- yes yes! thank you! ♥}
primitive: a site of primordial simplicity ~= originary unity }<== history of technology <--(told from a western lens)-- gradual progression and sophistication of the technical (for example Black Panther film)
-the presence or absence of specific technologies has often been read as a marker of cultural ‘backwardness’ <== “technology = something that comes from the West (rich-world technologies) and does something to other people in other places such as the “third world” (a well-intentioned framework that denies both agency and contemporaneity to the ‘other’ --> for example Eliasson's Little Sun)
technological progress is not a force unique to modern ‘civilized’ socie[...]
(54)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%96.2[...]br />
imagined as rebellious and repellent
(human civilization) haunted by the temptation of a reverse evolution which coexists in it with the potential for progress
--> *techno-anxiety: potential infallibility of the technological
(teratology, wider context of studies on monsters)
logic of contemporary technoculture --trope-->
•primitive
•technology
•horror
(Campbell drawing from a larger) intertextual repertoire consisting of advertising, film, and other images in visual culture
--> aesthetic conflation of the primitive, technology, and horror points to three new concepts:
•metamorphing: {<<--** exactly my problem with Manning's process philosophy}
◦(a logic of) ***identity as constant becoming***
◦***emphasis on flow*** (as a necessary way to understand process)
•primal technology =/= (humanist and pervasive) concept of technology as modern, progressive, clean, nonalive
•proto-atavism: evolutionary traits from the future can exist in the present (=/= atavism: evolutionary traits from the past can exist in the present) []
==> type of posthuman biology conception of life
(let's have atavism instead of activism)
Campbell --> *critique the almost universal celebration of flow in contemporary philosophical thought* {<-- yes yes! thank you! ♥}
primitive: a site of primordial simplicity ~= originary unity }<== history of technology <--(told from a western lens)-- gradual progression and sophistication of the technical (for example Black Panther film)
-the presence or absence of specific technologies has often been read as a marker of cultural ‘backwardness’ <== “technology = something that comes from the West (rich-world technologies) and does something to other people in other places such as the “third world” (a well-intentioned framework that denies both agency and contemporaneity to the ‘other’ --> for example Eliasson's Little Sun)
technological progress is not a force unique to modern ‘civilized’ society; it is intimately bound with art and antiquity
•Heidegger (seeks the origin of technology in ancient Greece) --> technology referred to the ways in which realities are brought into the world, a mode of unconcealing reality (hervorbringen) [=/= mere means or instrument]
+ every unconcealment of reality is also by necessity a concealment of another reality
*poiesis: bring hither out of concealment forth into unconcealment* --> techne = tech + art
paleolithic hunters (so-called primitive societies) have been shown to have been affluent and technologically advanced
technological primitivism, as aesthetic in subcultures of high-technology, incorporating into their philosophies icons of: shamanism, esotericism, hermeticism, the occult, mythology
=/= my ajayeb.net
h[...]
(55)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%96.3[...]n read as a marker of cultural ‘backwardness’ <== “technology = something that comes from the West (rich-world technologies) and does something to other people in other places such as the “third world” (a well-intentioned framework that denies both agency and contemporaneity to the ‘other’ --> for example Eliasson's Little Sun)
technological progress is not a force unique to modern ‘civilized’ society; it is intimately bound with art and antiquity
•Heidegger (seeks the origin of technology in ancient Greece) --> technology referred to the ways in which realities are brought into the world, a mode of unconcealing reality (hervorbringen) [=/= mere means or instrument]
+ every unconcealment of reality is also by necessity a concealment of another reality
*poiesis: bring hither out of concealment forth into unconcealment* --> techne = tech + art
paleolithic hunters (so-called primitive societies) have been shown to have been affluent and technologically advanced
technological primitivism, as aesthetic in subcultures of high-technology, incorporating into their philosophies icons of: shamanism, esotericism, hermeticism, the occult, mythology
=/= my ajayeb.net
horror in commercial images (Campbell's investigation =/= fear appeals that act to discourage or warn)
horror (like primitive) is a historically specific form =/= an eternal constant (~ whay is horrific today might be completely unhorrific tomorrow --> for example ajayeb's horror)
horror = science fiction + primitivism
liberatory/avant-garde horror
female-as-victim
female-as-horror
--> apparatus of phallogocentrism
--Campbell--> *horror works to produce figures that contain within them an overflow of contradictory signs*
20th century high-tech machines induce horror : depiction of *technology out of control* inducing horror in the humanist consciousness (for example Black Mirror TV series)
(both primitive & technical) borderline figures of contemporary culture: replicants, androgynes, zombies, androids, posthumans, avatars, clones, undead
}--> *almost-not-quite ontologies* <-- displacing the unitary subject of classical humanism <== {new processes and quasi objects} <==create== ***{globalization, questions of history, social change, political movements, collapse of communism, fundamentalism, feminism, post-communist nationalism, global immigration flows, transnational projects such as human genome, digital human}***
•mothers
•machine: the scientific, political and discursive field of technology
•monster: emblematizes the history and philosophy of the biological sciences + their relation to difference and different bodies
enlightenment ==> a comprehensive philosophical and scientific discourse of positioning “people of color, native australians, females, slaves (+ scai[...]
(56)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%96.3[...]m horrific to hopeful)
•concerned with deconstruting the human as an ancient concept [~?~> dissatisfied and alienated by nature]
ectogenetic foetus (growth of an organism in an artificial environment)
surrogate mother جایگزین
pregnant man {in the fear-fantasy of miscegenation
(crossing:)
animal
human
inanimate
technologies
}==> horror (accompanying the posthuman)
[title]
monstrous logic of ajayeb
monstrous =/= neat categories
teratology
in a wider context of studies of monsters
written texts (not only physical manifestations) ~ defy canonical categories
[*]gothic: (not only a genre,) any type of text that makes coherent interpretation fail*** <== text suffers from an overload of contradictory meanings which make it literally fall apart at the seams
(Derrida:) monster: *species of the nonspecies* = as-yet unnameable which is proclaiming itself --> make people turn their eyes away
-the figure of the monster embodies a means of thinking otherwise
-event of the Derridean text signalling a rupture with the discourses in which it is gestated
--Campbell--> both Derrida and Darwin were engaged in the *practice of revealing monstrosity to the world*
***contemporary Iran = postmodern gothic***
آخوند akhoond: social imaginary of post-industrial society producing teratological monstrous formations <== their technological character transgresses conventions of taxonomical description --Braidotti--> cyber-teratological (fascinatino with grotesque + technological)
-what are the non-unitary subjectivities in Tehran today? (monster = horror + marvel)
monster =/= demonstrate, de-monstrate <-- vision + monstrosity
*monster: sites of otherworldliness* --used--> teratoscopy
1- Greek and Roman --> race of monsters: ethnic entity horrific & fantastic
2- baroque and enlightenment --> began to produce a scientific, wondrous, fantastic, rare, entertaining --(such as: madmen and dwarfs and other marvels participated in the life of his or her town and enjoys certain privileges [...] jesters and fools can transgress social conventions and do things that “normal” human beings cannot afford -Braidotti)
3- genetic turning point in the post-nuclear era --> cybernetic teratology: effects of toxicity and environmental pollution ==> new monsters [--> Tsing]
experience of the world of high-technology
artifacts of visual culture, (TV advertisements) dealing with the tropes of the primitive, technology, horror:
(these artifacts connote دلالت ضمنى long histories of techno-mytho-political dramas)
•Audi spider; where Audi is likened to a preditor, ensnaring, devouring its rivals; Vorsprung durch Tech[...]
(58)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%96.4[...]stic
2- baroque and enlightenment --> began to produce a scientific, wondrous, fantastic, rare, entertaining --(such as: madmen and dwarfs and other marvels participated in the life of his or her town and enjoys certain privileges [...] jesters and fools can transgress social conventions and do things that “normal” human beings cannot afford -Braidotti)
3- genetic turning point in the post-nuclear era --> cybernetic teratology: effects of toxicity and environmental pollution ==> new monsters [--> Tsing]
experience of the world of high-technology
artifacts of visual culture, (TV advertisements) dealing with the tropes of the primitive, technology, horror:
(these artifacts connote دلالت ضمنى long histories of techno-mytho-political dramas)
•Audi spider; where Audi is likened to a preditor, ensnaring, devouring its rivals; Vorsprung durch Technik written in gothic-style jagged, suspended cobwebs {<-- Ridley Scott's alien's technology as dirty; a lair swathed in a thick cobweb-like substance --> *technology as life* <== the dirt and dampness of *dirty technology* suggest an animate, sweating, breathing life-force [~ an aesthetic]} --> horror <== damp dark leaking space containing moulding cocoons of spider --Campbell--> motivation, goals or logic of this life form cannot be recovered within the economy of the human (=/= clean cold untouched technological artefact)
◦***technology covered in its own dirt --implies--> life --implies--> disorganization --implies--> disintegration of borders between ‘us’ (bounded) and ‘them’ (unbounded) --implies--> loss of control
◦ajayeb-e spider // links the world (of primitive + high-technology), its metamorphosis into automobile ==> its multiple and contradictory genealogy; sight of spider --Freud--> induce crisis of neurotic anxiety (arguing that this fear comes from an unconscious association of the spider with the image of the phallic mother and the web --> threatens to engulf us --> mpnstrous feminine, Ridley Scott's alien = technologized embodiment of the phallic mother)
◾ancient activity of weaving [computer emerges out of the history of weaving; the first computers were based on the logic of the loom, quintessence of women's work (Plant, Babbage, Campbell)] --> *contemporary technoculture is an era of insectophilia* (love of insects and arachnids, spiders ants bees worms etc.)<== these insects embody the logic of high-technology which values decenterdness, microprocessing, and swarm intelligence. colonies, swarms, teems ==acts==> *metaphor & epistemology & ontology* to understand decenterdness, rhizomaticity, distribution and microprocessing ==> *insect aesthetic* [#use the term collapse as marketing storytelling, divided entities now mixed with eachother to induce mixed feelings in the audience --> chimera in advertisement]
◽matrix, from the latin ‘mater' = womb, the term matrix possessing the potential [...]
(59)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%96.5[...]rty; a lair swathed in a thick cobweb-like substance --> *technology as life* <== the dirt and dampness of *dirty technology* suggest an animate, sweating, breathing life-force [~ an aesthetic]} --> horror <== damp dark leaking space containing moulding cocoons of spider --Campbell--> motivation, goals or logic of this life form cannot be recovered within the economy of the human (=/= clean cold untouched technological artefact)
◦***technology covered in its own dirt --implies--> life --implies--> disorganization --implies--> disintegration of borders between ‘us’ (bounded) and ‘them’ (unbounded) --implies--> loss of control
◦ajayeb-e spider // links the world (of primitive + high-technology), its metamorphosis into automobile ==> its multiple and contradictory genealogy; sight of spider --Freud--> induce crisis of neurotic anxiety (arguing that this fear comes from an unconscious association of the spider with the image of the phallic mother and the web --> threatens to engulf us --> mpnstrous feminine, Ridley Scott's alien = technologized embodiment of the phallic mother)
◾ancient activity of weaving [computer emerges out of the history of weaving; the first computers were based on the logic of the loom, quintessence of women's work (Plant, Babbage, Campbell)] --> *contemporary technoculture is an era of insectophilia* (love of insects and arachnids, spiders ants bees worms etc.)<== these insects embody the logic of high-technology which values decenterdness, microprocessing, and swarm intelligence. colonies, swarms, teems ==acts==> *metaphor & epistemology & ontology* to understand decenterdness, rhizomaticity, distribution and microprocessing ==> *insect aesthetic* [#use the term collapse as marketing storytelling, divided entities now mixed with eachother to induce mixed feelings in the audience --> chimera in advertisement]
◽matrix, from the latin ‘mater' = womb, the term matrix possessing the potential to nurture & to trap (--> go to Matrix film series)
◽Arachne: a younge woman, was so skilful at weaving that she was rash enough to challenge the goddess Athene to a contest. she was transformed into a spider and was doomed to weave forever
•Nike mutant foot; to convey the feeling that running with these shoes is like running in bare feet (--> chimera?); the mutant foot evokes a worn and labored transition from human to posthuman which leaves behind traces of pain; ‘foot of the future’ contains within it the supplement of its embodied visceral human existence, a potent reminder of the human within the posthuman. Nike mutant foot *suffers from origin horror* (= no secure telos of origin which can link back to a primary source of either technology or organicism) we cannot trace it back to an originary ideal category of existence ==> it horrifies
•Nissan pathfinder; shape-shifting technology, moves between the animal and technical --> *automobile metamorphoses without any trace of its me[...]
(60)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%96.5[...]at results from ontological boundary clashes
mutating into otherness =/= morphing into otherness
(pain of the flow -->) ***mutation is a concept that stops the flow***
(utopian:) technological imaginary portraying a simple and painless ascent into a silicon existence
chimera: (a term biotechnological discourse uses to refer to) the evolution of elements that do not belong together
[in greek mythology, a savage beast part lion part goat part snake =/= natural order]
•(Iron Man's definition of) technology: an instrument which accords the human with a gradual ascend towards increasing civilization, linear progress and power over her or his environment
•(Black Mirror's definition of) technology: paradoxical scene, a primal instinctual force
(my ajayeb =/=) technological primitivism: (aesthetic that is produced by) the ways “primitive” icons are used in discourses of high technology
technological merges into the mythological
ancient merges with the modern
•eXistenZ film 1999, a high-tech-primitive blend of amphibian eggs and synthetic DNA
portrayal of a symbolically resonant ancient life-source + form of a technical life-source
(Campbell suggesting) atavism: how supposedly primitive evolutionary traits which had disappeared generations ago reappear in contemporary human or animal life
-traits of a former time but still exist in the present
*proto-atavism: (exhibiting of) future evolutionary traits in the present ==> collapsing the quality of linear time [~=? my sleep-walking] (=/= human approaching a state of technological perfection through an orderly ascent of increasing complexity and sophistication)
--> technological progress = nonlinear, punctuated, multiple [<-- used in marketing today]
proto-atavism --argument--> that multiple paradigms of life exist on the peripheries of humanist life ==Campbelampbell==> (how) *human life: a cacophony of co-existing interacting states of past present future existences with no recourse to a single reassuring origin* (=/= singular progression)
(like animal rumors in old bestiaries ajayeb in a story-starated world) found telegram videos and internet pic used in my image assemblages --> (found images which make it difficult to trace their lineage) in an image-starated world ==construct==> ambivalent visual representations that do not have a signifier in an external “real” world (Baudrillard's rhetoric simulacrum: an object that is a copy of something which does not “exist”)
==Toffoletti==> potentiality: exceeding the bounds of description
(we are living in an) age of **technosubjectivity**
(Margulis theorizes) the symbolic basis of eukaryotic cells
(Dawkins posits) the existence of selfish genes and the extended phenotype
*system theory: human life subsumed radically into [...]
(61)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%96.7[...]r her or his environment
•(Black Mirror's definition of) technology: paradoxical scene, a primal instinctual force
(my ajayeb =/=) technological primitivism: (aesthetic that is produced by) the ways “primitive” icons are used in discourses of high technology
technological merges into the mythological
ancient merges with the modern
•eXistenZ film 1999, a high-tech-primitive blend of amphibian eggs and synthetic DNA
portrayal of a symbolically resonant ancient life-source + form of a technical life-source
(Campbell suggesting) atavism: how supposedly primitive evolutionary traits which had disappeared generations ago reappear in contemporary human or animal life
-traits of a former time but still exist in the present
*proto-atavism: (exhibiting of) future evolutionary traits in the present ==> collapsing the quality of linear time [~=? my sleep-walking] (=/= human approaching a state of technological perfection through an orderly ascent of increasing complexity and sophistication)
--> technological progress = nonlinear, punctuated, multiple [<-- used in marketing today]
proto-atavism --argument--> that multiple paradigms of life exist on the peripheries of humanist life ==Campbell==> (how) *human life: a cacophony of co-existing interacting states of past present future existences with no recourse to a single reassuring origin* (=/= singular progression)
(like animal rumors in old bestiaries ajayeb in a story-starated world) found telegram videos and internet pic used in my image assemblages --> (found images which make it difficult to trace their lineage) in an image-starated world ==construct==> ambivalent visual representations that do not have a signifier in an external “real” world (Baudrillard's rhetoric simulacrum: an object that is a copy of something which does not “exist”)
==Toffoletti==> potentiality: exceeding the bounds of description
(we are living in an) age of **technosubjectivity**
(Margulis theorizes) the symbolic basis of eukaryotic cells
(Dawkins posits) the existence of selfish genes and the extended phenotype
*system theory: human life subsumed radically into an all-encompassing concept of system, of which the human is merely a psychic system, where the only important unit of analysis is systems (human, cell, society, law)
(Sagan's) metametazoa: a multiple creature afloat in the omnisexuality of bacterial exchange
(Octavia Butler's) xenogenesis: polysexual interspecies reproduction
(Haraway's) differential artifactualism: (~= SF, science fiction) a diffractive interruptive mutative anti-reflective monstrous logic (to a humanist eyes) --> generation of novel forms which need not be imagined in the stodgy bipolar terms of hominids ==make==> ontological room for naturecultures
-mixotricha paradoxa: “a mixed up, paradoxical, micr[...]
(62)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%96.7[...]xuality of bacterial exchange
(Octavia Butler's) xenogenesis: polysexual interspecies reproduction
(Haraway's) differential artifactualism: (~= SF, science fiction) a diffractive interruptive mutative anti-reflective monstrous logic (to a humanist eyes) --> generation of novel forms which need not be imagined in the stodgy bipolar terms of hominids ==make==> ontological room for naturecultures
-mixotricha paradoxa: “a mixed up, paradoxical, microscopic bit of hair [...]they are nested in each other's tissues in a myriad of ways that make words like competition and cooperation, or individual and collective, fall into the trash heap of pallid metaphors and bad ontology”
(Thacker speaks for) extrinsic life: the kinds of life that cannot be contained inside itself (such as: the epidemic) ~ lifelike death ==> depict the strangeness of life 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)
*i[...]
(63)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%96.8[...]oint)
Nietzsche was the first philosopher who --Avital-->
1. to think with his body
2. to put out the call for a supramoral imperative
...................................
we are implicated inscribed disarticulated and reresignifed by technological prosthesis
there is no outside to technology
there is no off switch to technology
wonderological tracks of technology
...................................
how much nature has to change before our descendants cease to be human?
about when in the course of evolution our ancestors became human?
(unanswerable good questions)
if the human is not the one consuming, who is?
animals consume
(numinous agentic status of) dead consumer
human aspects of consumption: learning, decision making, reason, perception, ethics, agency, desire and choice --arise--> *between humans and intelligent machines*
[*]posthuman: a move that seeks to locate being, or aliveness, or meaning in the not-quite-human-as-we-know-it
(humanist) epistemology: how we investigate and describe the world
(humanist) ontology: how we understand what constitutes life and objecthood
==Campbell==> help consumer research:
1. expand the range of temporal reference (look into the future of how consumption will look like)
**assumption of the future: the future will be a post-consumption existence**
2. expand the range of physical reference (extraplanetary consumption: what the ***consumption of place*** means; embryonic consumption sites: store your child's cord blood stem cells)
3. interrogation of the roots of humanism (social sciences)
today:
robotic revolution
biotechnology revolution
*posthuman: ideological account of the future of the human species in annexation with info-bio-technologies =/= * =/= *posthumanism: (speculative philosophy + material reality) critique of the discourse and epistemologies of *humanism:
•belief in progress
•technological mastery over nature,
•separation of human and animal kingdom
•therapeutic approach to human behavior
•secular approach to scientific inquiry
*humanism = epistemology: a way of investigating the world that is consonant with our human intuition--understand--> life as comprising essentially animate or inanimate, self or other, human or nonhuman** [=/= set of diverse beliefs]
horror of surgically implanted biomedical enhancement --> (persistence of the) inviolability of the body as the seat of identity <-- a classic humanist assumption
posthumanism
•speculative philosophy + material reality
•abstract philosophy + empirical science
•ancient + futuristic
•exotic + specialized (telesurgery, amorphous computing) + banal + ubiquit[...]
(64)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%97.5[...]and--> life as comprising essentially animate or inanimate, self or other, human or nonhuman** [=/= set of diverse beliefs]
horror of surgically implanted biomedical enhancement --> (persistence of the) inviolability of the body as the seat of identity <-- a classic humanist assumption
posthumanism
•speculative philosophy + material reality
•abstract philosophy + empirical science
•ancient + futuristic
•exotic + specialized (telesurgery, amorphous computing) + banal + ubiquitous (automobility, eyeglasses)
•
--> apocalyptic era (intelligent machine takeover)
--> ecological ethics (human not the most important form of life on earth)
***attempt to overcome humanness is an age-old human tendency***
what constitutes life
•women --> Schiebinger
•slaves --> Douzinas
•computer viruses --> Parikka
•cellular automata --> Delanda
•bacteria --> Haraway
•swarms -->Thacker
•
*brand = living system* (--> distinguish themselves from environment, exclude from it what is not, feedback communication with environment, self replicate, evolve, ) =/= cultural product
@Femke
(Campbell arguing that) the human and the posthuman are (ways to describe the forces that are) already present in the human condition:
1.
computation of life
mid 19th century weaving technologies ==> logic of computation ==ontology==> “universe = giant computer” : attempting to uncover what life itself is through a better understanding and appreciation of the power and seeming omnipresence of computational logic
•a discourse [~ a way of talking about the world] (and not only a claim that people make)
--> an example of how dominant technologies are not just instruments but models (through which the world is understood)
‘clockwork universe’ was the model for the last four millennia: clockwork-like essence of cosmos + state + body (=/= romanticism, galvanism, mesmerism, quantum mechanics)
}==>
•consumer as computer/computational (consumer as information processor, consumer as automatic subject =/= psychological agent) <== science of cybernetics, automaticity, feedback
•information (a new powerful substance in mid 20th century), “raw data ==> decisions, models, theories”, a specialized value-free term (=/= fact, learning, wisdom, understanding, enlightenment) --> second half of 20th century: information began to assume a deep and proved privileges place (in politics, cultural imaginary), to informationalize consumer objects:
◦jeans as “intelligent denim” --> “vector graphics and pixelation as there expression of your individuality” (Jack & Jones)
◦cream as “pro-retinal A nanosomes and Par-Elasty” (L'Oreal)
•
2.
laborization of life
growing sophistication o[...]
(65)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%97.6[...]ption patterns worth so much that they underwrite my acts of consumption” -Hayles
•*cognition = a product* that emerges between the self and its environment (and does not take place exclusively on the brain) --stages--> cognition as a process
4.
complexification of life
complex (feedback loops, emergence, bifurcation) =/= complicated: accurately analysable system having a large number of component and perform sophisticated tasks
•most of the most valuable products today have virtual components (software, money, etc.) that would be unrecognizable 25 years ago
5.
automation of life
(fundamental legal principle of) ius gentium: all humans are the same in so far as they are rational human beings in possession of free will =/= 21st century neuroscientific research
}--Libet--> “free won't” : the mind exists in a climate which says yes, but it can say no
agency is outsourced to systems that increasingly invisiblize from everyday life (software deciding mortgage, Facebook suggest friend, turning car into a moving computer)
dystopian imaginary of Black Mirror TV series --> these developments are a tyrannical force that undermine an a priori and fundamental humanness
--Campbell--> consumer researcher's results will be powerful counter-balances to the often too blindly utopian and dystopian accounts of the future
...................................
[*]advertising: (ubiquitous and contentious) symptom of organization[= corporate entity and/or common practice]
aesthetic ambassador of the organization
--(a way through which)--> **anyone outside the organization mythologizes an imaginary inside**
(its) media:
•***indirect messages of public relations that are embedded deep in the heart of non-advertising genres***
•bombastic and direct appeal of made-for-cinema advertisement and corporate communication
•r />
how advertising used to be scorned as a practice and profession --> gained responsibility in American culture:
-1 advertising became instrumental in enlisting soldiers during world war I ==> lending it a moral force which served more noble purposes besides commerce
-2 it was elevated through its incorporation into education (first in Harvard University 1924)
-3 it becames adept at referencing styles and commissioning work from the realm of high culture
}--now--> advertising does not just produce culture, but ***culture produces advertising***
(one of the central questions of advertising in contemporary times has been the extent to which) *advertising enframes everything within its discourse and logic*
--Campbell--> ****if advertising is everything, what is it not?**** [@apass] <-- this is a crucial question about advertising and it is part of a larger global crucial devate about the commodification of life and previously i[...]
(66)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%97.8[...]
[*]advertising: (ubiquitous and contentious) symptom of organization[= corporate entity and/or common practice]
aesthetic ambassador of the organization
--(a way through which)--> **anyone outside the organization mythologizes an imaginary inside**
(its) media:
•***indirect messages of public relations that are embedded deep in the heart of non-advertising genres***
•bombastic and direct appeal of made-for-cinema advertisement and corporate communication
•
how advertising used to be scorned as a practice and profession --> gained responsibility in American culture:
-1 advertising became instrumental in enlisting soldiers during world war I ==> lending it a moral force which served more noble purposes besides commerce
-2 it was elevated through its incorporation into education (first in Harvard University 1924)
-3 it becames adept at referencing styles and commissioning work from the realm of high culture
}--now--> advertising does not just produce culture, but ***culture produces advertising***
(one of the central questions of advertising in contemporary times has been the extent to which) *advertising enframes everything within its discourse and logic*
--Campbell--> ****if advertising is everything, what is it not?**** [@apass] <-- this is a crucial question about advertising and it is part of a larger global crucial devate about the commodification of life and previously inalienable aspects thereof
scientific advertising ---> go to Haraway
advertising:
1. fascinates us
2. it works
an average person in the western world is exposed to 3000 advertisements per day
everyday, it transforms me from this world to an imaginary one for a moment
(advertising) offers through a *constant stream of visual cameos* برجسته کارى, *implicit standards* of cleanliness, sociality, family life, health, happiness, and a great many other values ==> affect me
****modern advertising works by appearing not to care if it works**** --> when someone utters the immortal phrase “advertising doesn't affect me" = advertising has achieved its ultimate goal --> *****advertising empowers us to feel distant to it*****
Campbell --> advertising: organizs meaning in the most powerful and generic of senses + a symptom of the organization
1920 - 1930
modern advertising's coming of age (creating compelling signs)
(its signs underwent a qualitative shift in) sophistication
personalized testimonials
*participatory tone of voice* [=/= direct imperative command]
consumer goods embodied values (that had normally been attributed to humans and the natural world) [=/= mere economic entities]
(through the system of advertising: *imagining the product as a benefit sought by the consume[...]
(67)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%97.8[...]*culture produces advertising***
(one of the central questions of advertising in contemporary times has been the extent to which) *advertising enframes everything within its discourse and logic*
--Campbell--> ****if advertising is everything, what is it not?**** [@apass] <-- this is a crucial question about advertising and it is part of a larger global crucial devate about the commodification of life and previously inalienable aspects thereof
scientific advertising ---> go to Haraway
advertising:
1. fascinates us
2. it works
an average person in the western world is exposed to 3000 advertisements per day
everyday, it transforms me from this world to an imaginary one for a moment
(advertising) offers through a *constant stream of visual cameos* برجسته کارى, *implicit standards* of cleanliness, sociality, family life, health, happiness, and a great many other values ==> affect me
****modern advertising works by appearing not to care if it works**** --> when someone utters the immortal phrase “advertising doesn't affect me" = advertising has achieved its ultimate goal --> *****advertising empowers us to feel distant to it*****
Campbell --> advertising: organizs meaning in the most powerful and generic of senses + a symptom of the organization
1920 - 1930
modern advertising's coming of age (creating compelling signs)
(its signs underwent a qualitative shift in) sophistication
personalized testimonials
*participatory tone of voice* [=/= direct imperative command]
consumer goods embodied values (that had normally been attributed to humans and the natural world) [=/= mere economic entities]
(through the system of advertising: *imagining the product as a benefit sought by the consumer* ~ illumination instead of lighting fixtures, prestige instead of automobiles, sex appeal instead of mere soap,,) *products --offer--> mini-solutions to the dilemmas of modernity[= the pace and scale of rationalization, depersonalization and urbanization brought by modern industrial capitalism ==exerted==> هزینه خسارت a toll on the human psyche]
1950 - 1960
(from) public role of sign identification --to--> private and psychological space of one's mind and interior life
rise of *depth men* (--> Mad Men TV series, people in advertising agencies that reportedly used psychological techniques to uncovers the subconscious needs, desires, insecurities, fears of consumers)
*product = unconscious fulfilments, solutions, comforts and fantasies to them*
[Packard's Betty Crocker cake mix and Esso's Tiger in your Tank campaign --> alleged power of small groups of people to organize meaning on a massive and uncontrolled level]
•freezer = a nostalgic site of security in a threatening environment =/= a device for cooli[...]
(68)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%97.8[...]ubconscious needs, desires, insecurities, fears of consumers)
*product = unconscious fulfilments, solutions, comforts and fantasies to them*
[Packard's Betty Crocker cake mix and Esso's Tiger in your Tank campaign --> alleged power of small groups of people to organize meaning on a massive and uncontrolled level]
•freezer = a nostalgic site of security in a threatening environment =/= a device for cooling foodstuffs (*giving of food <--~~> love* + insecurity ==> more food than you can eat)
-more sophisticated motivational research and appeals
****advertising: a form of literacy**** (a new and bewildering code)
sign system of advertising is not static
the generations to come will regard contemporary sign systems as rudimentary and easy to decode
ultra-sophisticated images will appear antiquited and perhaps even humorous (@Goda hating contemporary sign system)
-the way in which advertising today visualizes software, the environment, nanotechnology as seemingly *undeconstructible & transparent* will be staple examples in classroom curricula
(the most obvious and immediate way of conceptualizing) advertising: a system that creates signs with the purpose of communicating meaning =/= Campbell
discipline of marketing --support--> investigation of image consumption
early models of advertising (--> **how we understand the philosophy of what information and communication are**)
•1949 Bell Laboratories --> information: universalized component of any system that communicated =/= “information” as rather poetic and sipritual term (at home in philosophy =/= engineering) --advertising--> hierarchy of effects: cognitive --to--> affective --to--> behavioral [--> informationalize and measure aspects of advertising]
(to understand) *information theory of communication as a reflection of larger scientific and philosophical aims of the time*
***information theory of communication ==>
•providing codified models that predict response
•enframe communication within a logic of relative effectiveness or ineffectiveness
}=/= my lectures
brand memories
brand equity
boundary between advertising and everyday life
[Campbell =/=]
the idea that qualitative advertising research has a managerialist axiology
a priori assumption of “advertising = information communication” (=/= people incorporate advertising so that it functions as a *social glue* within groups)
(vernacular specter of advertising)
spectacular vernacular of social fabric
site of investigation:
1. site of consumption = reception (the field of meaning from a consumer's perspective)
2. site of production = processes involved in making ads (favoured in media studies and ethnographic approaches to advertising)
3[...]
(69)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%97.9[...]transparent* will be staple examples in classroom curricula
(the most obvious and immediate way of conceptualizing) advertising: a system that creates signs with the purpose of communicating meaning =/= Campbell
discipline of marketing --support--> investigation of image consumption
early models of advertising (--> **how we understand the philosophy of what information and communication are**)
•1949 Bell Laboratories --> information: universalized component of any system that communicated =/= “information” as rather poetic and sipritual term (at home in philosophy =/= engineering) --advertising--> hierarchy of effects: cognitive --to--> affective --to--> behavioral [--> informationalize and measure aspects of advertising]
(to understand) *information theory of communication as a reflection of larger scientific and philosophical aims of the time*
***information theory of communication ==>
- providing codified models that predict response
•enframe communication within a logic of relative effectiveness or ineffectiveness
}=/= my lectures
brand memories
brand equity
boundary between advertising and everyday life
[Campbell =/=]
the idea that qualitative advertising research has a managerialist axiology
a priori assumption of “advertising = information communication” (=/= people incorporate advertising so that it functions as a *social glue* within groups)
(vernacular specter of advertising)
spectacular vernacular of social fabric
site of investigation:
1. site of consumption = reception (the field of meaning from a consumer's perspective)
2. site of production = processes involved in making ads (favoured in media studies and ethnographic approaches to advertising)
3. site of the image: analysis of the meaning of the image itself (independent of intention and reception) are the most powerful way to show what images include and exclude (drawing influence primarily from the disciplines of history, philosophy, sociology and linguistics)
how meaning moved from *the world of advertising* --to--> *the world of the consumer* : ways in which advertising is integrated into the life-world of people
****advertising: a powerful translator of the cultural world**** & داور a central arbiter of meaning in consumer worlds (--> this is why advertising concerns me)
Barthes + Saussure + Peirce + Jacobsen --> semiotics can be regarded as one of the most comprehensive studies of sign system ~ advertisement: bundle of signs that formed finely constructed conventions ==> ‘image = text’ (its grammar:)
1. micro-level: tiny units, vectors, colors, forms (within the visual plane)
2. mid-level: human-level characteristics of gender, hairstyle, posture, facial expression, buildi[...]
(70)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%98[...]s of social world (<-- business of semiotic)
Barthes --> (new medium of) photographic advertisement = a codified structure =/= a transparent reflection of the world
-*Barthes reading of Citroen DS car
impossible newness
it appears at first sight as a superlative object صفت عالی
object which appear at first sight as completely finished present to us at once a perfection and an absence of origin, closure and a brilliance, *a transformation of life into matter*, a silence that belongs to the realm of fairy tales
*smoothness is not a property of material, but a social value*
-Christ's robe was seamless, science fiction, made of unbroken metal, phenomenology of assembling, hold together by sole virtue of their wondrous shape ==> the idea of benign nature
}--learn--> (to make) lines of connection: visual convention + religious painting, science fiction film, politics of nature (constructed over the past 2000 years of western culture) [<-- to understand this in your own work #feedback @apass]
-*Haraway
neutral images of (high-tech) science --> stock of Renaissance visual analogues ==> legitimate lineage + origin story (for technical revolutions)
(Barthes > Campbell) **what sign constructions do westerners use to tell the story of how technology comes to be present in the world?**
-*Campbell reading of Simens’ ad “builing blocks” (2005)
Simens products float into space, as naturally and as pure white snowflake falling to the earth
absence of labor ==herald==> a universe of self-organizing invisible agency
“technology = invisible force that is lighter than air, rearranging itself into whatever seems to be needed” (=/= fashioned, melted, hammered , soldered and generally forced into the natural order)
==> the agency that organizes is non-pollutant, non-disruptive, non-energetic
(from) cacophonous --to--> harmonious [<-- technology seeks its home]
sky above, supra-structure =/= [*]infrastructure: structure from below
--Simens--> [*]technology: apotheosized (تکريم) by extending its self-organizing capabilities, lending it a divinity which is universal, inevitable, natural and just (Simens’ ad ==> Iron Man image)
supra-structure --> new / Star Trek
|
infrastructure --> old / planets they visit
the human body: the most depicted object in advertising
--> research tradition:
humans have more synapses for interprting face
depiction of female body
male body
sex in advertising
racial marked body
(boring questions:)
•whether advertising reflects the world or shape it
•how signs reproduce, create, normalize or subvert the often unequal power structures that exist between male and female bodies
--> **despite pote[...]
(71)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%98.1[...] non-pollutant, non-disruptive, non-energetic
(from) cacophonous --to--> harmonious [<-- technology seeks its home]
sky above, supra-structure =/= [*]infrastructure: structure from below
--Simens--> [*]technology: apotheosized (تکريم) by extending its self-organizing capabilities, lending it a divinity which is universal, inevitable, natural and just (Simens’ ad ==> Iron Man image)
supra-structure --> new / Star Trek
|
infrastructure --> old / planets they visit
the human body: the most depicted object in advertising
--> research tradition:
humans have more synapses for interprting face
depiction of female body
male body
sex in advertising
racial marked body
(boring questions:)
•whether advertising reflects the world or shape it
•how signs reproduce, create, normalize or subvert the often unequal power structures that exist between male and female bodies
--> **despite potential ambiguity in images we as visual consumers are always presented with a “preferred reading”** @Pierre, Goda --> “image is controlled by discursive limits” (--Sina--> fable of ‘subtlest ideological weapon of advertising’) --Campbell--> paradox of identity construction: the consuming subject chooses among a limited repertoire of “iterated” or preexisting identities provided by marketing and adertising, steering viewers in preferred directions [<-- a fable]
[*]coopt: advertising pretends to acknowledge a competing discourse or ideology, but only pays lip service to it, ignoring its real radical challenge
the idea of advertising: a system that instils (القا، کم کم تزریق کردن) products and services with cultural and social values that are not intrinsic to them [~ magic]
--> highly visible display of ruling-class interests
*advertising = capitalism + aesthetics*
advertising: the pre-eminent way in which the interest of the powerful minority maintain the docility, alienation, or servitude of the majority (--> Goda's understanding of pop culture)
[*]magic: conjure an object from its immediate material rootedness and animate it with a much more potent energy ==> erase human experience of the monotony of consumption with its transient satisfactions and reinvigorate it anew with fresh promise-claims
for example advertisement for mobile phone = *suggestion* (about a certain design aesthetic + a certain tole in professional life + a certain sexual appeal + a certain social network) =/= *announcement* (about a technical device)
(announcement =/= suggestion: the act of advertising)
}--1--> the idea that advertising's signs = carefully constructed highly selective and distortive ways of seeing [=/= simple reflections of the state of the world] ==(Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Klein, Curtis, Jhally, @apass, Pier[...]
(73)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%98.1[...]ivity
•manipulation of unconscious desire
•environmental degradation
}--2--> the idea that signs actually achieve their aims (through mortise and framing work, cropping, reification, interpellation, cooption, the gaze, face-ism, individuation) --> [Althusser's] interpellation: process by which we are called or hailed into subjecthood through practices imposed onto us from outside interests, subjects are created through material practices (going to church and kneeling down to pray precedes my subjecthood as a spiritual person)
•recruitment advertisement: interpellative genre par excellence ~ through the practice of response we enter into the predefined parameters of relation with the organization {Microsoft's “we want you!” --> 1: act of defining the subject: one who is special, unique, an individual among the masses. 2: collective pronoun: “we” serves to close the subject and the organization within a circuit of common purpose. 3: what is missing: a concrete visualization of working life in the organization, an absence which allows the reader to project his/her own fantasy onto space : ‘infantilize the organization ==> empower the subject’ --represent--> an imaginary relationship =/= real conditions of our existence}
}--✕--> (Campbell) ****images are ontologically cryptic**** : we conceive images to be both agentic & passive, residing in and affecting many spheres simultaneously
•image: visuality, apparatus, institutions, discourse, bodies, figurality, exist within a distinctive socio-legal environment --> **multiple ontologies [Ihde's multistable] move images beyond simple categories of analysis (<-- that is why i am still a visual artist, @Pierre)
***images are extra-organizational entities*** (they are designed by organization but become) *quixotic* and *uncontrollable*
*fable of complex: there is something about the image that is beyond analytic investigation (--Mitchell--> every image theorist seems to find some residue (surplus value) that goes beyond communication, signification, persuassion (there is an extra in images) --> images are complex {
1. they are constantly mutating in meaning and significance
2. they cross aesthetic borders and are not confinable to a particular domain (image = aesthetic + political + social)
3. they act on all domains recursively --impossible--> how the aesthetic life of images affects the political life of images }--Mitchell--> *image as species* (co-evolutionary entities, quasi life-form depend on a host organism) ==>
◦something not fully under human control
◦spread through the host organicism
◦some die some become pandemic
aesthetic --affect--> politic --affect--> aesthetic --affect--> politic
#workshop make an ad for apass
advertising trend
1. information: (from) traditional forms of print & television --to--> intensi[...]
(74)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%98.2[...]
[in 20th century (task of)] advertising: to render the invisible [qualities, such as: complexity, network, information,,,] into compelling visualities (--into--> public imagination)
•(in organizational discourse) complexity: (--articulate-->) unpredictable, multi-layered, decentered, emergent, globalized (world of Homeland TV series, of apass, of ERG's website: technological + adaptable + multi-layered)
*success <== visualize the complexity of their products* [in the case of ERG: student's knowledge and the institution of university]
(Goldman's landscape of Capital -->) corporate advertising:
•visually depicts the phenomenon of globalization
•affect the cultural imaginary
•shape political sensibilities (with respect to life in high-tech globalism)
amorphous phenomena (that require high-stakes visualization):
•counter-terrorism
•climate change
•
[*]advertising: an institution that organizes meaning, a visual sign system (as powerful as other systems that organize meaning: medicine, law, education,,,) [~/= apass]
--> *a form of literacy* = can be learned + lexicon + grammer (that can be fruitfully investigated)
*advertising = capitalism + aesthetic* ==Campbell==> research in advertising one of the most important research priorities in any discipline today (@apass)
...................................
***marketing = the ultimate social practice of postmodernity***
marketing practices
promotional campaigns
consumption culture
postmodernity: a phenomena specific to the cultural history of western europe and north america --impact--> globe
--Lyotard--> incredulity toward *metanarratives: unified idea systems
--Jameson--> consumer society (marked by:)
◦pastiche: an attitude of a certain detachment (on the part of the individual) where all stylistic expressions of parody, nostalgia, and other illustrated feeling lack emotional depth and commitment
◦schizophrenia: disjointedness and discontinuity of the individual's personal identity and experience in life
--Angus--> infinite delay of *modernity: improving human lives by controlling nature
--Wilson--> expression of incoherence of contemporary urban life
postmodernity =/= authority, unity, continuity, purpose, commitment
= “modernity: era of scientific ideology ==> disillusionment, disintegration, anxiety”
--> hedonism
--> tolerance (recognition) of difference
--> metanarrative = story (that people construct to tell themselves) =Foucault= regimes of truth
=/= conformity
examples of modern metanarratives:
•bourgeois (capitalist) ideology
•marxism
}--✕--> *market = new metanarrative in postmodernity*
postmodern condition:
1- [...]
(75)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%98.4[...]atisfaction)
*to find = to form*
the idea of the national body acquires coherence through a systems of belief ==> separate the nation from race
•“requiring those who embody diversity to give their allegiance to its body” (for example a nation can love diversity whilst demanding that Muslim women unveil)
Marxist model of commodity fetishism --Ahmed--> feelings come to reside (magically) in objects [by cutting those objects off from a wider economy of labour and production. it is then as if fear originates with the arrival of others whose bodies become containers of our fear]
(for Ahmed) happiness: a technique of distraction (a cover-up)
--> for her: potency is in the rage
(Ahmed is too fast to celebrate lesbian ‘affect alien’ =/= heterosexual marriage)
good weather --> (showing) safety and wisdom of prediction
the idea of “your unfeeling masks a disbelief”
...................................
interesting =/= appealling --> most satisfying videos
...................................
elite consumption
country house
...................................
dirt
waste
stink
microbes
Campbell on bacteria and market
tropes that bring bacteria into the symbolic realm:
1. cuteness
2. overpopulation
3. lower classes
4. deviant sex
}--channel--> utterances that (indirectly [political discourse of establishment neoliberalism cannot address such things in direct ways]) express fantasies about:
•purity
•gender
•race
•community
•family
•pollution
•class
•disease
•sexual promiscuity (deviancy)
}<--Campbell-- symptoms of a capitalist socio-economic order --> they are found in:
◦explicit rhetoric of anti-establishment politics (the alt-right, anti-immigrant movements)
◦implicit content of the marketing material of globalized and globalizing multinationals
bacteria: symptoms of a capitalist socio-economic order --> repressed fears and fantasies about purity, gender, race, community, pollution, class, sexual promiscuity <-- leveraged by antibacterial brands
from (psychoanalytical concept of) symptom --to--> sinthome
[*]symptom: repressed extrinsic ideology that must be revealed =/= [*]sinthome: a fantasy that does not dissolve when brought to light <== it structures reality intrinsically
a *psychoanalytically informed critical marketing* --> *consumer is made to trace their symptoms* (<-- the perverse effects of emancipatory revelatory critical analysis)
--Campbell--> sinthome presents a tool for analysing *fantasies that focus on the form of their expression, rather than their content*
•in the case of (fantasy takes the form of) b[...]
(76)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%99[...]is then as if fear originates with the arrival of others whose bodies become containers of our fear]
(for Ahmed) happiness: a technique of distraction (a cover-up)
--> for her: potency is in the rage
(Ahmed is too fast to celebrate lesbian ‘affect alien’ =/= heterosexual marriage)
good weather --> (showing) safety and wisdom of prediction
the idea of “your unfeeling masks a disbelief”
...................................
interesting =/= appealling --> most satisfying videos
...................................
elite consumption
country house
...................................
dirt
waste
stink
microbes
Campbell on bacteria and market
tropes that bring bacteria into the symbolic realm:
1. cuteness
2. overpopulation
3. lower classes
4. deviant sex
}--channel--> utterances that (indirectly [political discourse of establishment neoliberalism cannot address such things in direct ways]) express fantasies about:
•purity
•gender
•race
•community
•family
•pollution
•class
•disease
•sexual promiscuity (deviancy)
}<--Campbell-- symptoms of a capitalist socio-economic order --> they are found in:
◦explicit rhetoric of anti-establishment politics (the alt-right, anti-immigrant movements)
◦implicit content of the marketing material of globalized and globalizing multinationals
bacteria: symptoms of a capitalist socio-economic order --> repressed fears and fantasies about purity, gender, race, community, pollution, class, sexual promiscuity <-- leveraged by antibacterial brands
from (psychoanalytical concept of) symptom --to--> sinthome
[*]symptom: repressed extrinsic ideology that must be revealed =/= [*]sinthome: a fantasy that does not dissolve when brought to light <== it structures reality intrinsically
a *psychoanalytically informed critical marketing* --> *consumer is made to trace their symptoms* (<-- the perverse effects of emancipatory revelatory critical analysis)
--Campbell--> sinthome presents a tool for analysing *fantasies that focus on the form of their expression, rather than their content*
•in the case of (fantasy takes the form of) bacteria --reveal--> (a confluence between) *the politics of community & the physiology of (auto)immunity* [--> clean and dirty]
dilemma of modern subject : how to live with the unsettling truths given to us by new sciences
•my mother about fake honey
•bacteriology ==> everything (including our very selves) is terrifyingly coated in bacteria
a moment of marketing in Joyce's Ulysses character Bloom -->
•overwhelmed by the teeming bacteria <--> ingesting a different set of cultured bac[...]
(77)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%99[...]rances that (indirectly [political discourse of establishment neoliberalism cannot address such things in direct ways]) express fantasies about:
•purity
•gender
•race
•community
•family
•pollution
•class
•disease
•sexual promiscuity (deviancy)
}<--Campbell-- symptoms of a capitalist socio-economic order --> they are found in:
◦explicit rhetoric of anti-establishment politics (the alt-right, anti-immigrant movements)
◦implicit content of the marketing material of globalized and globalizing multinationals
bacteria: symptoms of a capitalist socio-economic order --> repressed fears and fantasies about purity, gender, race, community, pollution, class, sexual promiscuity <-- leveraged by antibacterial brands
from (psychoanalytical concept of) symptom --to--> sinthome
[*]symptom: repressed extrinsic ideology that must be revealed =/= [*]sinthome: a fantasy that does not dissolve when brought to light <== it structures reality intrinsically
a *psychoanalytically informed critical marketing* --> *consumer is made to trace their symptoms* (<-- the perverse effects of emancipatory revelatory critical analysis)
--Campbell--> sinthome presents a tool for analysing *fantasies that focus on the form of their expression, rather than their content*
•in the case of (fantasy takes the form of) bacteria --reveal--> (a confluence between) *the politics of community & the physiology of (auto)immunity* [--> clean and dirty]
dilemma of modern subject : how to live with the unsettling truths given to us by new sciences
•my mother about fake honey
•bacteriology ==> everything (including our very selves) is terrifyingly coated in bacteria
a moment of marketing in Joyce's Ulysses character Bloom -->
•overwhelmed by the teeming bacteria <--> ingesting a different set of cultured bacteria: wine, cheese, bread
•the city and its germs envelop and simultaneously individuate him --> ****his subjectivity can only be expressed in terms of the dialectic of alienation and belonging that is at the foundation of our social world****
***living in modernity = being in constant contact with the mass of beings***
<== uncontrollable overwhelming disintegrative forces of otherness (the problem of living in a community in modern metropolis)
<-- *multiplicity of strange strangers through whom the healthy subject finds his or her sense of self*
(@Femke, analysing political arrangments of X) *market society* =/= looking at the way that we come (and invited to come) into contact with X (in Campbell's case: bacteria)
[*]sinthome: why X (symptoms) appear to us as such =/= what X mean
sinthome --> (mode of analysis) aiming to identify ***what fantasies are permitted to be [...]
(78)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%99.1[...]-reveal--> (a confluence between) *the politics of community & the physiology of (auto)immunity* [--> clean and dirty]
dilemma of modern subject : how to live with the unsettling truths given to us by new sciences
•my mother about fake honey
•bacteriology ==> everything (including our very selves) is terrifyingly coated in bacteria
a moment of marketing in Joyce's Ulysses character Bloom -->
•overwhelmed by the teeming bacteria <--> ingesting a different set of cultured bacteria: wine, cheese, bread
•the city and its germs envelop and simultaneously individuate him --> ****his subjectivity can only be expressed in terms of the dialectic of alienation and belonging that is at the foundation of our social world****
***living in modernity = being in constant contact with the mass of beings***
<== uncontrollable overwhelming disintegrative forces of otherness (the problem of living in a community in modern metropolis)
<-- *multiplicity of strange strangers through whom the healthy subject finds his or her sense of self*
(@Femke, analysing political arrangments of X) *market society* =/= looking at the way that we come (and invited to come) into contact with X (in Campbell's case: bacteria)
[*]sinthome: why X (symptoms) appear to us as such =/= what X mean
sinthome --> (mode of analysis) aiming to identify ***what fantasies are permitted to be sustained when the symptom take the form of X*** (in this case bacteria) =/= seeking to find what ideology lies hidden beneath the symptom [=/=! problem of artists]
Campbell mode of analysis (with sinthome) =/= a revelatory mode of critique (where our illusions arre laid bare) [<-- artists’ symptom]
advertisements offer striking evidence of *autoimmune tendecies* in contemporary market society : the body politic misrecognizes its own boundaries and attacks parts of itself
@Femke
(Joyce's Bloom) first thing that we see or feel is not in fact ourselves, but bacteria [---> go to body image] --> (his solution:) avoiding one kind of bacteria by embracing another (<-- psychoanalytically effective ***non-solution***)
(in social sciences [Ereshefsky]) *species pluralism : how various biopolitical forces use segmentation strategies in the organic world to produce competing species’ hierarchies and taxa*
thinkers in social theory --> the entities under investigation are:
•so massive --> Gaya regulatory system of planetary scope
•so dispersed --> climate change
•so ancient --Haraway--> bacterial protist Mixotricha paradoxa (“the paradoxical being with mixed-up hairs”)
•so minute جزئی --> new materials engineered through nanotechnology
•so boundless --Sagan--> metametazoa: human as a multiple afloat in the omnisexuality or bacterial exchange
•so relati[...]
(79)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%99.1[...]odel of life (homo sapiens: a micro-ingredient of an astonishing bacterial soup of prokaryotes, archaea, eukaryotes)
*bacteria: the ground zero life forms* -->! ***nearest we can get imagining the Lacanian Real***
we are more bacteria than human
(global) bacterial biome: para-collective (=/= “merely” biological)
*our ways of reacting to bacteria are as political as they are scientific*
...................................
purity & pollution + their deep-seated link with social order and its transgression --Douglas--> {from the idea of poisonous vapours (miasma [unrelated to cleanliness]) --to-->} discovery of pathogenic organisms بيمارى زا ==> modern concept of bacteria
cleansing rituals before the bacteriological age functioned to ward off spirits and restore social order and control (@Elke, @Isabel, the artist as medium)
discovery of germs ==> radical re-conceptualization of dirt (--> it is difficult to think of dirt except in the context of pathogenicity)
if we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt --Douglas--> we are left with the very old definition of [*]dirt: matter out of place
**when we see dirt --> we see a system**
--Campbell--> when we see bacterial images we are seeing something else
***contamination = a violation of some mythical, symbolic, or political system =/= just a physical problem***
bacteria --> symptom of a disturbed system
symptomatic analysis (=/= feedback)
pioneered by Marxist critics, Althusser
symptomatic analysis of X = to open the possibility of there being unspoken, unacknowledged or disavowed content in X
symptomatic analysis --of--> (content of) antibacterial advertisement --laden--> with libidinal intensity or *visual pleasure* (= an image that is visually intense)
**consumption can be read like dreams** (a text that says more than it consciously expresses) --reveal--> repressed material (disavowed fantasies about: purity, gender, race, family, class, disease, displacement, sublimation, etc.)
◦what fantasy is upheld by presenting repressed material as bacteria (or artwork)?
--> reading against the grain of the text (Jamesonian)
--> advertising images can be read like symptoms of repressed libidinal desire
-i did symptomatic reading of Olearius (but not of ajayeb nameh?)
1- accelerating pace of industrial production
2- population growth
}==> first full flourishing of *mass consumption*
*[*]marketing: a sphere of cultural production where image conventions co-evolve with non-marketing imnages as an intertextual constantly reciprocal environment*
1. cuteness
little monsters
infant-like
with freakishly funny features
playground of b[...]
(81)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%99.3[...]hing of *mass consumption*
*[*]marketing: a sphere of cultural production where image conventions co-evolve with non-marketing imnages as an intertextual constantly reciprocal environment*
1. cuteness
little monsters
infant-like
with freakishly funny features
playground of bacterial frolic
cuteness
a minor aesthetic category (in comparison to its more spectacular counterparts: sublime, beautiful)
(it is minor because it is ambiguous)
•positive affects:
◦desire to protect
◦desire to touch
•negative affects:
◦helplessness
◦pitifulness
◦excessive availability
•secondary relations:
◦resentment at being emotionally manipulated
◦contempt for the weakness of cute --accompany--> desire to:
◾touch
◾clasp
◾dominate
◾destroy
◾
}--> *cute: a site of visual intensity that is both pleasurable & disgusting*
****three objects that are most often rendered cute in consumer aesthetics:
1- women
2- technology
3- children
}<-- (in psychoanalytic terms) inherently dangerous ==> in need of control****
Campbell > why is it useful to see bacteria as cute?
***cuteness as a deep link to violence***
[*]cuteness: aestheticization of powerlessness --> a necessary step in permitting its extinction [to make everybody like unto little children is not such a bad way of disposing of them]
•representing the Other (the enemy) as despicable --> powerful effect
•representing the Other as domesticated + infantalized:
◦demonstrates the sublime Otherness of bacteria
◦we are relieved of guilt <== the bacteria is rendered beneath the threshold of ethical consideration
2. overpopulation
cramming of many life forms into tiny spaces ~= (literally) an uncanny microcosm of the imagined and feared socio-economic order
***new technologies to visualize the world ==produce==> new imaginateis of life itself*** [<-- my research on bestiaries]
microscope (19th century) --> microbial visuality --Latour--> new modes of interacting with and ingesting/consuming the world
bacteriology as a discipline emerged at the same time as the (so-called) transformation “from industrial capitalism --to--> market society”
•overpopulation
•bacterial proliferation
--> a trope in visualizing contemporary bacteria
bacteria live in obscene proximity to each other --> *bacterial intimacy =/= individualizing force of modernity*
the fantasy of there is some sort of “away” which can absorb what we overproduce
removal of excrement (in all its quises) --> demonstrating the urbanites class distinction --> (an apparent) desire to reorga[...]
(82)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%99.3[...]
***new technologies to visualize the world ==produce==> new imaginateis of life itself*** [<-- my research on bestiaries]
microscope (19th century) --> microbial visuality --Latour--> new modes of interacting with and ingesting/consuming the world
bacteriology as a discipline emerged at the same time as the (so-called) transformation “from industrial capitalism --to--> market society”
•overpopulation
•bacterial proliferation
--> a trope in visualizing contemporary bacteria
bacteria live in obscene proximity to each other --> *bacterial intimacy =/= individualizing force of modernity*
the fantasy of there is some sort of “away” which can absorb what we overproduce
removal of excrement (in all its quises) --> demonstrating the urbanites class distinction --> (an apparent) desire to reorganize urban space according to a logic of repugnance مغايرت (--> this is why i am so uncomfortable with “clean” streets)
•the idea that a veritable subterranean system delivering *shit-free cleanliness* ==> citizen's physical, moral, sipritual cleanliness --with--> materila markers of the civilized society: cubicles, toilets, drains, sewers
(Lacan > Morton > Campbell >) the problem of human society : what to do with one's shit
anti-bacterial advertising --> fantasy of awayness
keeping nature at a distance ==Morton==> (act out an imagined preservation -->) dumps on the rest of the world
[sadistic admiration] putting something called nature on a pedestal and admiring it from afar (for the environment) ~= what patriarchy does for the figure of the woman
bacteria adhere to each other and to their environment --> *they make any environment cohere as itself* : without bacteria there is no environment
3. lower classes
overweigth
bad skin
bad teech
criminally deviant
griminess سياهى
slick sheen ليز
dinginess چرکى
slouch اويخته
decay
in advertisement:
bacterium suicide bomber
ear-picking homeless man: the incarnation of bacterial cross-infection
**community <--> infection**
(health of the community is theatened by undesirable members)
*bacteria ==> community can come into full self-expression*
bacteria = disruption of social order ~-=> bacteria stabilizes the social order
***bacterial threat = biological model for a political necessity***
(familiar terrain of) hand: a vast and foreign bacterial colony
in a world of microbial resistance [in which common infections and minor injuries can kill <-- real possibility for 21st century and not a apocalyptic fantasy] --> *antibacterials carve out spaces of near-perfect security*
bacteria:
•over[...]
(83)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%99.4[...]◾exceed us
•pre-date us
}--> concealed by antibacterial discourse
good bacteria exists in the gut: their market-sanctioned place
*good bacteria: fantasy of the efficient worker*
4. deviant sex
bacterial sex
bacteria **propagate in the most ancient way : they have sex by contagion** = endosymbiosis, symbiogenesis --> ‘prolonged symbiotic associations ==> appearance of new organism’ (massive contagion that moves across phyla and lineages across biotic and abiotic spaces ~/= Darwinian natural selection)
1940s --> monomorphism: (in bacteria sex, proposing that) male and female are separate but visually indistinguishable
categories of inside/outside, host/guest, parent/child, original/copy, female/male --> organize civil life =/= bacteria
==> in advertising bacteria propagation appears “deviant” (in non-productive forms) --> antibacterials confer moral righteousness
Karin's germ management ♥
(Karin) “good germ management =/= good parenting”
(Dettol:) “good germ management = good parenting” [when a mother at home protects children from contact with the floor]
(in iran:) contact is contagion
Campbell assuming women tolerate germs more than men --> not in iran
**staging the unbacterial woman**
*body is a closed private property =/= contagion emanates from bodies that are not properly closed or private*
“community = the single biggest source of threat” (our sovereign cleanliness) --> *bacteria as other people* مجاز مرسل metonymically (not just metaphorically)
•degenerate human
•homeless man
•transvestite
•street sweeper
•
(cleanliness is always sovereign)
if ”(deep) ideology =/= (critical) thought” --then--> fantasy =/= ?
‘deviant’ mobilizes deep-seated fears and fantasies ==> images that are visually intense + build exceedingly successful brands
critical analysis can move from thinking about symptoms as indirect expressions of deep ideology (paranoia) --to--> *indirect expressinos of structurating fantasies*
(brands know that) ***fantasy =/= ideology***
•Lacan --> even when patients could articulate their symptoms it didn't seem to dissipate ==> symptom was a constitutive core of their own subjectivity
•Zizek --> ideology: fantasy structuring out social reality itself =/= an illusion masking the real state of things
•Marx, Freud, Zizek --> symptom =/= a thing behind which secret content is hidden
for Marx *the secret is in hte form of commodity itself** (<--but-- commodity as a central symptom of capitalism) --Sina--> in the form of the hair-styles in The Magicians TV series
from symptom (veil) --to--> sinthome (screen)
*sintho[...]
(84)[...notes/clean notes.txt]%99.5[...]rate human
•homeless man
•transvestite
•street sweeper
•
(cleanliness is always sovereign)
if ”(deep) ideology =/= (critical) thought” --then--> fantasy =/= ?
‘deviant’ mobilizes deep-seated fears and fantasies ==> images that are visually intense + build exceedingly successful brands
critical analysis can move from thinking about symptoms as indirect expressions of deep ideology (paranoia) --to--> *indirect expressinos of structurating fantasies*
(brands know that) ***fantasy =/= ideology***
•Lacan --> even when patients could articulate their symptoms it didn't seem to dissipate ==> symptom was a constitutive core of their own subjectivity
•Zizek --> ideology: fantasy structuring out social reality itself =/= an illusion masking the real state of things
•Marx, Freud, Zizek --> symptom =/= a thing behind which secret content is hidden
for Marx *the secret is in hte form of commodity itself** (<--but-- commodity as a central symptom of capitalism) --Sina--> in the form of the hair-styles in The Magicians TV series
from symptom (veil) --to--> sinthome (screen)
*sinthome* is not directly analysable --Campbell--> images of bacteria are symptoms of the Real, not the symbiotic order, because the Real unsymbolizable
sinthomes organize the subject (without them the subject would be obliterated, Zizek)
(psychoanalytic paradigm --> emerging research in marketing:)
•sustainability practices’ fetishistic disavowal of reality can serve to exacerbate ecological catastrophe
•the inherently narcissistic nature of the consumer needs others to suffer in order to derive pleasure from (consumer) objects
•reinvestigation of consumer desire as jouissance --> a perverse pleasure in the “mad destruction” of our bodies and minds
}--> examples of critical marketing pursuing emancipatory unveiling procedures
--✕--> sinthome can offer:
1. an *analytic strategy for feeling out* the contours of symptoms
2. directing us to a new *question we may ask of texts of all kinds* --> ***why do they take the form that they do?*** [=/= what ideology is beneath them --> at the level of the latent contents (meaning) of a symptom] --bacteria-->
◦why do fantasies about community, sex, death, deviance take the form of the bacteria?
◦what is it about bacteria that is so compelling that it provides a structure for this array of phenomena? (<-- we can ask that at art/artists use of biology)
***the problem of bacteria for humans = the problem of living with others***
bacteria --think--> the problem of surviving in large, alienating, cross-infecting, co-dependent populations --> *metonymy between immunity & community*
•مجازمرسل metonymy =/= structural similarity تشابه
==revea[...]
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