was the snake, and the snake was with God and the snake was God.
http://poemsandpoetics.blogspot.com/2010/03/christine-wertheim-infestation-of.html
hmmm
Showing posts with label theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theory. Show all posts
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Sunday, May 31, 2009
A Vampire is not an everyday occurrence
http://www.metamute.org/en/content/uncommon_bestiary
Initially I had a lot of thoughts on this, but now just digesting it. Overall glad there is someone pursuing these topics. Enjoyable, but it strikes me as flawed in this regard: if we can't make the private sector safe for democracy, we likely cannot make democracy safe for the private sector. Lack of safety is the point, but how can you sell a theory where lack of safety is the goal? Are there people interested in that on this continent? Won't the insurance companies squawk when you start to re-occupy the warehouse? You would have to do it capoeira style.
Its ok if you're going to move in lofts and a hookah deli, but..beastliness, vampires, uh oh...i wonder about how the reviewer might approach questions of what aggression for profit would look like as distinct from aggression against it. Not why the aggression, but how.
linked from the blog of Mr. Quarles:
http://jellybeanweirdo.blogspot.com/2009/05/uncommon-bestiary.html
Initially I had a lot of thoughts on this, but now just digesting it. Overall glad there is someone pursuing these topics. Enjoyable, but it strikes me as flawed in this regard: if we can't make the private sector safe for democracy, we likely cannot make democracy safe for the private sector. Lack of safety is the point, but how can you sell a theory where lack of safety is the goal? Are there people interested in that on this continent? Won't the insurance companies squawk when you start to re-occupy the warehouse? You would have to do it capoeira style.
Its ok if you're going to move in lofts and a hookah deli, but..beastliness, vampires, uh oh...i wonder about how the reviewer might approach questions of what aggression for profit would look like as distinct from aggression against it. Not why the aggression, but how.
linked from the blog of Mr. Quarles:
http://jellybeanweirdo.blogspot.com/2009/05/uncommon-bestiary.html
Thursday, February 5, 2009
hermeneutics
Another link from HCP, hermeneutics and 'speculative grammar'
http://henrycorbinproject.blogspot.com/2009/02/corbin-luther-heidegger-thomas-of.html
whew-wipes brow- a lot of names in there, many people I haven't read.
I've often thought speculative grammar, just by itself, can give us ways to 'think around' the constraints that we may perceive to be binding or limiting us, or just because its funny and clever to use them once you see the use in them, slang of the african-american diaspora for example, that one can pick up on by going to poetry slams - even though you would likely remain the epitome of white bread once you try to apply it in a performance context, haha
Never knew there was a term for it, though.
significatio passiva - interesting concept. Attributes of God only have import when they appear in us - correct? Directs attention away from the iconography of roman or orthodox approaches, maybe, toward the subject.
an excerpt:
"that which we truly understand, is never other than that by which we are tried, that which we undergo, which we suffer and toil with in our very being. Hermeneutics does not consist in deliberating upon concepts, it is essentially the unveiling or revelation of that which is happening within us..."
yes.
Then, there is the Modist project of Thomas of Erfurt and his collaborators , which supposedly influenced Heidegger:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/erfurt/#Oth
The heart of the Modist project is the assumption that there is a triadic or parallel relationship between word, concept, and thing. Meaning is based proximately on understanding but ultimately on being. According to Thomas of Erfurt:
Every mode of signifying is from some property of the thing. Concerning the second thing to be noted, that since such notions or modes of signifying are not fictions, it must be that every mode of signifying radically originates from some property of the thing. This is plain thus: since the intellect, in order to signify, imposes the voice under some mode of signifying, it considers the property itself of the thing from which it originally drew the mode of signifying; this is because the intellect, since it is a passive power indeterminate of itself, does not advance to a determinate act unless it is determined from another source. Whence since it imposes the voice in order to signify under the determinate mode of signifying, it is necessarily moved by a determinate property of the thing; therefore some property of a thing, or mode of being of a thing, corresponds to any mode of signifying. (DMS, 2.4; Bursill-Hall: 3)
The connection of all this to Heidegger intrigues me, since he keeps popping into my daily ruminations. The understanding of Being is possible given only an event - this is key in Heidegger. This may mean that good journalism makes an understanding of Being possible.
uh huh, right. :)
But here is the possible connection to the significatio passiva - this is the event of an attribute of God becoming present in an individual. I could take this to mean, among other things, that words and concepts are at the least, not fixed - but some degree of free speech is valued by a rebel to stand opposed to the fixedness - which may in Heidegger's early theological approaches be a way for him to stand apart from the Catholic clergy, who at least in services repeat the same tracts over and over, ad nauseum. Although to me, the attribute communicated and valued in such services - mass for example, is the constancy of God, not a demand on our own behavior. This is the kind of thing taken for granted today but I suppose it could have been quite the bogey at one time, speculative grammar equals heresy, and so on.
Believing in God is a difficulty but I do keep a door open for the unexplained.
http://henrycorbinproject.blogspot.com/2009/02/corbin-luther-heidegger-thomas-of.html
whew-wipes brow- a lot of names in there, many people I haven't read.
I've often thought speculative grammar, just by itself, can give us ways to 'think around' the constraints that we may perceive to be binding or limiting us, or just because its funny and clever to use them once you see the use in them, slang of the african-american diaspora for example, that one can pick up on by going to poetry slams - even though you would likely remain the epitome of white bread once you try to apply it in a performance context, haha
Never knew there was a term for it, though.
significatio passiva - interesting concept. Attributes of God only have import when they appear in us - correct? Directs attention away from the iconography of roman or orthodox approaches, maybe, toward the subject.
an excerpt:
"that which we truly understand, is never other than that by which we are tried, that which we undergo, which we suffer and toil with in our very being. Hermeneutics does not consist in deliberating upon concepts, it is essentially the unveiling or revelation of that which is happening within us..."
yes.
Then, there is the Modist project of Thomas of Erfurt and his collaborators , which supposedly influenced Heidegger:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/erfurt/#Oth
The heart of the Modist project is the assumption that there is a triadic or parallel relationship between word, concept, and thing. Meaning is based proximately on understanding but ultimately on being. According to Thomas of Erfurt:
Every mode of signifying is from some property of the thing. Concerning the second thing to be noted, that since such notions or modes of signifying are not fictions, it must be that every mode of signifying radically originates from some property of the thing. This is plain thus: since the intellect, in order to signify, imposes the voice under some mode of signifying, it considers the property itself of the thing from which it originally drew the mode of signifying; this is because the intellect, since it is a passive power indeterminate of itself, does not advance to a determinate act unless it is determined from another source. Whence since it imposes the voice in order to signify under the determinate mode of signifying, it is necessarily moved by a determinate property of the thing; therefore some property of a thing, or mode of being of a thing, corresponds to any mode of signifying. (DMS, 2.4; Bursill-Hall: 3)
The connection of all this to Heidegger intrigues me, since he keeps popping into my daily ruminations. The understanding of Being is possible given only an event - this is key in Heidegger. This may mean that good journalism makes an understanding of Being possible.
uh huh, right. :)
But here is the possible connection to the significatio passiva - this is the event of an attribute of God becoming present in an individual. I could take this to mean, among other things, that words and concepts are at the least, not fixed - but some degree of free speech is valued by a rebel to stand opposed to the fixedness - which may in Heidegger's early theological approaches be a way for him to stand apart from the Catholic clergy, who at least in services repeat the same tracts over and over, ad nauseum. Although to me, the attribute communicated and valued in such services - mass for example, is the constancy of God, not a demand on our own behavior. This is the kind of thing taken for granted today but I suppose it could have been quite the bogey at one time, speculative grammar equals heresy, and so on.
Believing in God is a difficulty but I do keep a door open for the unexplained.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Zizek pt III
Something I've been troubled about regarding the philosophy of Zizek - how can we be 'imminent' and yet socialist at the same time? In his answer to Levinas, Zizek invokes Spinoza and writes that our presence is not at the expense of the world, but a full acceptance of being part of the world, 'my assertion of the wider reality within which I can only thrive.'
But if we fully assert ourselves then how can we be socialist, when in socialism we agree to cap our efforts for a common good?
I imagine that Spinoza (1632-1677) matures as a writer immediately after the Thirty Years War concludes (1648) and this must be a time when people, recoiling from the war, are hushing up about religious dialogue and concluding that their existence is at the expense of others, hence must be curtailed.
But if we fully assert ourselves then how can we be socialist, when in socialism we agree to cap our efforts for a common good?
I imagine that Spinoza (1632-1677) matures as a writer immediately after the Thirty Years War concludes (1648) and this must be a time when people, recoiling from the war, are hushing up about religious dialogue and concluding that their existence is at the expense of others, hence must be curtailed.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Zone 9 - Critical Regionalism
all out of the Constructivist Moment, by Barrett Watten:
The discourses of the modern and postmodern call for a critical regionalism..p.339
briefly, Zone 8, Detroit..." remains a moment of negativity to the postmodern fantasy built in Los Angeles...(there is) the tradition in postmodern critical theory that has tended to universalize Los Angeles as the site for the postmodern..."
back to zone 9: "Herr's account of a critical regionalism thus would supplant the dissociation of the center/periphery model with a series of interlocking terms that would specify the position within an overarching modernity of specific cultural regions, employing a "methodology" etc..toward a reconciliation of the local and the global. She outlines several practical steps -
*pursue a negative dialectics that addresses cross-regional specificity
*imagine a comparative history/sociology
*scrutinize utopian views of the future
*study the location and interpretation of assemblages
A critical regionalism moves beyond the center/periphery model that distorts the perception of the border as negativity and threat; rather the border becomes an internal limit within an encompassing whole."
**my thoughts**
Critical regionalism - looks like a worthy project. But has anyone done this as far as southern California is concerned? To my knowledge there is only City of Quartz by Mike Davis, but if you add critique of the entertainment industry in now you have dozens of books, Unreality Industry, Amusing Ourselves to Death etc..
"Moving beyond the center/periphery model" because of border disturbance - yes his concern is with places like 8 Mile, or some of those exposed areas of new wilderness - the bushes, the rabbits etc., that exclaim a social failure or fracture. I'm not sure how "internal limit" can be made less threatening, Eminem (Rabbit) movies hardly cover the ground exposed. This connects me back to the point from Zone 8:
Detroit... remains a moment of negativity to the postmodern fantasy built in Los Angeles...(there is) the tradition in postmodern critical theory that has tended to universalize Los Angeles as the site for the postmodern...
In a discussion with a friend, the possibility that the postmodern fantasy simply converts arose. The reason for the conversion is border disturbance, agents or groups that act ambiguously within the decayed space and the "progressive" space, because they harmonize not quite with either one. The postmodern fantasy, therefore, converts from one region to another in order to cover up the disturbance at the border of the previous Fantastic location, to subdue the Other who emerges as an autonomous challenge to the Fantasy.
I'm wondering especially if Mr. Burke or Prof. Wallace would have a thought on that, though as usual comments are open to anyone.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Fascinating essay on Borges
from a scholar and teacher:
http://www.susanamedina.net/modules/articles/article.php?id=28
And, excerpts:
...in a talk called ‘My prose’, Borges referred to the Aleph as the transformation of the scholastic idea of eternity as an instant, into its spatial equivalent: ‘I had read in the theologians that eternity is not the sum of yesterday, today and tomorrow, but an instant, an infinite instant, in which all our yesterdays are assembled as Shakespeare in Macbeth says, all the present and all the incalculable future or futures. I said to myself: if somebody has prodigiously imagined an instant that embraces and enciphers the sum of time, why not do the same with that modest category called space? … Well, I simply applied to space that idea about eternity’...
‘In that unbounded moment, I saw millions of delightful and horrible acts; none amazed me so much as the fac. that all occupied the same point, without superposition or transparency’. Can an instant be gigantic?...
...Carlos Argentino’s rhetoric and vision resemble a cross between the neoclassical and the twentieth century, he sees ‘all the places of the world, seen from every angle’, that is to say, he sees the whole earth from a cubist perspective -in cubism the object is broken up, disarticulated, presented from all its possible angles. ‘Borges’ sees instead an omnitopia of ubiquity, simultaneity, doubling, simulation, a vision that speaks about different formal inflections of space, whilst positing the infinite, rather than the world, as the ultimate spatial cipher.
Specular space, a space that multiplies spaces, a mirror that becomes infinite things, thereby already multiplying the infinite space of the Aleph and generating part of the real by its simulation, is the first thing ‘Borges’ describes as seeing in the Aleph...
my thoughts:
**this is very interesting creatively for me, because I have been reading Borges, and what Ive lately been interested in poetically are moments , and how much can be gained by seeing everything possible in one moment, not from many angles alone, but from many times, many places, many identities. In dreams a face can substitute for a word spoken, and we sometimes are both the subject and the object being acted upon, or acting upon others. This can be psychically troubling because in dreams we are usually helpless, and in conscious life we strive to maintain control. But in creative life the striving to maintain control interferes with inspiration, so our creative work winds up literal or didactic. Even a certain striving for irrationality can become another agency for Control. We end up policing our thoughts before they even get out the gate.
Earlier, I wrote:
white moth in the tall city
..tall city no walls
no walls, all mirrors...
Sometimes our subject can be horrifying - when we look at a surgical chair it may seem just a necessary place to be for us if we need surgery, but it could have been something quite horrifying to someone else, some other time and place.
I believe to enable these "mirrors," for lack of a better term, the somewhat alchemical property of the Aleph, is an act of generosity, plurality..whereas often in letters, or culture generally, we hear a singular voice or point of view coming toward us from one direction - a one-way street. I can listen to Robert Anton Wilson and try to understand that everyone's in their own "reality tunnel", although this presupposes that I need to consider every point of view worth listening to, when I don't. (And you don't either, probably) Although I agree with his point about how we can be trapped in linguistic constructs, for example 'tunneling' might imply boundaries and limits, in the same way plumbing implies pipes, but it does depend on what we're tunneling into, doesn't it?
We can form a collective and all harmonize on similar notes, we can be a big band. Or we can imagine that the Orchestra is Already in the Room, even if there's no one else there. For me this is the essential creative impulse, and we don't have to think any further on it in order to create, because something in the environment itself will tell us to pay attention to it.**
http://www.susanamedina.net/modules/articles/article.php?id=28
And, excerpts:
...in a talk called ‘My prose’, Borges referred to the Aleph as the transformation of the scholastic idea of eternity as an instant, into its spatial equivalent: ‘I had read in the theologians that eternity is not the sum of yesterday, today and tomorrow, but an instant, an infinite instant, in which all our yesterdays are assembled as Shakespeare in Macbeth says, all the present and all the incalculable future or futures. I said to myself: if somebody has prodigiously imagined an instant that embraces and enciphers the sum of time, why not do the same with that modest category called space? … Well, I simply applied to space that idea about eternity’...
‘In that unbounded moment, I saw millions of delightful and horrible acts; none amazed me so much as the fac. that all occupied the same point, without superposition or transparency’. Can an instant be gigantic?...
...Carlos Argentino’s rhetoric and vision resemble a cross between the neoclassical and the twentieth century, he sees ‘all the places of the world, seen from every angle’, that is to say, he sees the whole earth from a cubist perspective -in cubism the object is broken up, disarticulated, presented from all its possible angles. ‘Borges’ sees instead an omnitopia of ubiquity, simultaneity, doubling, simulation, a vision that speaks about different formal inflections of space, whilst positing the infinite, rather than the world, as the ultimate spatial cipher.
Specular space, a space that multiplies spaces, a mirror that becomes infinite things, thereby already multiplying the infinite space of the Aleph and generating part of the real by its simulation, is the first thing ‘Borges’ describes as seeing in the Aleph...
my thoughts:
**this is very interesting creatively for me, because I have been reading Borges, and what Ive lately been interested in poetically are moments , and how much can be gained by seeing everything possible in one moment, not from many angles alone, but from many times, many places, many identities. In dreams a face can substitute for a word spoken, and we sometimes are both the subject and the object being acted upon, or acting upon others. This can be psychically troubling because in dreams we are usually helpless, and in conscious life we strive to maintain control. But in creative life the striving to maintain control interferes with inspiration, so our creative work winds up literal or didactic. Even a certain striving for irrationality can become another agency for Control. We end up policing our thoughts before they even get out the gate.
Earlier, I wrote:
white moth in the tall city
..tall city no walls
no walls, all mirrors...
Sometimes our subject can be horrifying - when we look at a surgical chair it may seem just a necessary place to be for us if we need surgery, but it could have been something quite horrifying to someone else, some other time and place.
I believe to enable these "mirrors," for lack of a better term, the somewhat alchemical property of the Aleph, is an act of generosity, plurality..whereas often in letters, or culture generally, we hear a singular voice or point of view coming toward us from one direction - a one-way street. I can listen to Robert Anton Wilson and try to understand that everyone's in their own "reality tunnel", although this presupposes that I need to consider every point of view worth listening to, when I don't. (And you don't either, probably) Although I agree with his point about how we can be trapped in linguistic constructs, for example 'tunneling' might imply boundaries and limits, in the same way plumbing implies pipes, but it does depend on what we're tunneling into, doesn't it?
We can form a collective and all harmonize on similar notes, we can be a big band. Or we can imagine that the Orchestra is Already in the Room, even if there's no one else there. For me this is the essential creative impulse, and we don't have to think any further on it in order to create, because something in the environment itself will tell us to pay attention to it.**
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Science and Art are not Oppositional
according to Johnathan Gottschall, in his recent article in the Boston Globe. Why can't scientific rigors be applied to literary theory?
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/11/measure_for_measure/?page=full
I agree with what he's saying, much more than I disagree. Reminds me of John Brockman's 3rd Culture. An effort to get creative and technical schools to speak to each other.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/279/5353/992
Brockman also built his theory on the work of C.P. Snow. It's not clear to me Prof. Gottschall's opinion of this trend.
It may sound too demanding to obtain this depth of sophistication in one's critique (isn't a grad program, in any field, rigorous enough?) but I don't see why there can't be schools that emphasize these approaches, in the same way there are schools that have postcolonialist, post-structuralist, etc approaches.
Actually, I have a view as to why, as I mentioned in an email sent today to the Professor, and that is that there is lacking a comprehensive theory-of-technology that could sell administrators on the benefits of adopting the kind of scientific rigor Prof. Gottschall is advocating. Technophiles are still trying to figure this out themselves, duking it out in IP court or having the ongoing Lawrence Lessig v. Lars Ulrich debate (creative commons v. natural rights, or thereabouts) Then, there are the technophobes, who fear technology and the free-thinkin world of literature equally. Maybe a comprehensive approach to technology/science as a boon for literary critique can begin with ideas on how to handle the ideas of those people. But, maybe this is just my ugly 3rd head of populism rearing itself once again.
I'm going to side with Lars Ulrich for today, and mention that I saw this originally mentioned on Ron Silliman's blog
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/
which is linked from my friend, Greg Severance
http://www.santababylonia.net/wordpress/
EDIT: The Professor responds 5/14:
Hi Doug, thanks so much for your response. I'm getting clobbered on the blogs, pretty much, so it's nice to get a largely positive reaction. Your work sounds very interesting.
"A few things that may assist your study - the media theory professor Douglas Kellner of UCLA has mentioned that the world of graduate theory has a bias against certain forms of reason, I think this was in his essay on Rorty, but I can provide you with the link if you are interested."
I think he's right.
Writing in much haste....
JG
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/11/measure_for_measure/?page=full
I agree with what he's saying, much more than I disagree. Reminds me of John Brockman's 3rd Culture. An effort to get creative and technical schools to speak to each other.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/279/5353/992
Brockman also built his theory on the work of C.P. Snow. It's not clear to me Prof. Gottschall's opinion of this trend.
It may sound too demanding to obtain this depth of sophistication in one's critique (isn't a grad program, in any field, rigorous enough?) but I don't see why there can't be schools that emphasize these approaches, in the same way there are schools that have postcolonialist, post-structuralist, etc approaches.
Actually, I have a view as to why, as I mentioned in an email sent today to the Professor, and that is that there is lacking a comprehensive theory-of-technology that could sell administrators on the benefits of adopting the kind of scientific rigor Prof. Gottschall is advocating. Technophiles are still trying to figure this out themselves, duking it out in IP court or having the ongoing Lawrence Lessig v. Lars Ulrich debate (creative commons v. natural rights, or thereabouts) Then, there are the technophobes, who fear technology and the free-thinkin world of literature equally. Maybe a comprehensive approach to technology/science as a boon for literary critique can begin with ideas on how to handle the ideas of those people. But, maybe this is just my ugly 3rd head of populism rearing itself once again.
I'm going to side with Lars Ulrich for today, and mention that I saw this originally mentioned on Ron Silliman's blog
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/
which is linked from my friend, Greg Severance
http://www.santababylonia.net/wordpress/
EDIT: The Professor responds 5/14:
Hi Doug, thanks so much for your response. I'm getting clobbered on the blogs, pretty much, so it's nice to get a largely positive reaction. Your work sounds very interesting.
"A few things that may assist your study - the media theory professor Douglas Kellner of UCLA has mentioned that the world of graduate theory has a bias against certain forms of reason, I think this was in his essay on Rorty, but I can provide you with the link if you are interested."
I think he's right.
Writing in much haste....
JG
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