From: James Leach <james.le...@abdn.ac.uk>
Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 10:01:41 +0100
To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
On 15 Jul 2010, at 10:47, Simon Biggs wrote:
As I suggested in my earlier post today, which Kriss picked up on, I am
looking at agency and creativity from an autopoietic point of view. I am not
seeking to situate agency in the individual but in the collective and,
specifically, in the in-between. This could be considered a "gathering",
although this suggests a sense of common purpose, individuals recognising
they can enhance their capacity to act, to bring themselves and the world
into being, through collective action. That isn't what I am trying to get
at. Of course, I am wearing my artists hat when I suggest this and am not
really equipped to defend what is possibly an indefensible position.
Nevertheless, I think it is an interesting line of thought.
Yes, this is an interesting line, but the question would become what you could
mean by agency, if it is an emergent property of interactions, and thus
located outside individual actors, other than a kind of 'social force' - one
that is not within any one person's control, authorship, and therefore, not
really easily covered by 'agency' as it is commonly understood.
I think you might be veering towards some notion of the autopoietic as itself
as kind of force, the momentum of which bestows form on those those things and
persons (interactors in your terms I think) that partake of it?
But is there a danger here of mixing a descriptive term with a thing that does
something? What we call autopoeisis is not a force or thing at all, but a way
of describing the way certain elements of relationships condition one another
in an ongoing process that is not 'autopoeisis', but people living human
lives. The 'danger' (well, the line it might take us down) of thinking of 'it'
as 'something' is that we are not too far here from a much older notion of
social emergence - Durkheimian notions of the superorganic, (society is sui
generis, and arises from but then determines social interaction). Society for
Durkheim certainly did have agency.
James
___________________________________
Professor James Leach
Head of Department, Anthropology
School of Social Science
Edward Wright Building,
University of Aberdeen,
Aberdeen AB24 3QY
UK
T: + 44 (0)1224 274354
E: james.le...@abdn.ac.uk
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Research Professor edinburgh college of art
http://www.eca.ac.uk/
Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
http://www.elmcip.net/
Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts
From: James Leach <james.le...@abdn.ac.uk>
Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:02:33 +0100
To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
But Simon, you also are keen to explore the emergent possibility, to
actually
look at what is made visible in emerging digital networked forms that is not
visible in previous ways of working?
What is being gathered? what are the constraints on those gatherings? and
what
is created through them - ie, what changes because of them?
Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number
SC009201
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