WHat a great series of discussions. In regards to Curt's musings on Bakktin, D&G, etc., I'm starting to feel that we are entering an era that problematizes poststructuralism/postmodernism, and I forgot the term that my colleague proposed, but I have been calling it the transmodern moment in which there are elements of Modernism, Postmodernism, and a reemergence of a little humanism. This comes from my thought of the atomization of cutlure in light of mass microproduction, profliferation of social mediae, proliferation of platforms. The singularity, it seems, will not be an effect of convergence, but ubiquity and saturation. Everything, all at wonce, everywhere.
Also, the other thing that has been impressing itself upon me in regards to the current cultural moment is that from work in nerobiology, and cognitive workby Ramachandran, et al, is that the construction of meaning is not striated, but holistic. Our consciousness is embodied, we construct meaning as much in response to the formal nature of our organic existence as the nature of our cultures or means of production. McLuhan got it, but the next step is that the wheel is not an extension of the foot, but is an alternate embodiment of the foot as chosen in convenience by the human organism. Language is also a function of organism and expression of habutis, milieu, and community as well as material. For me, language and matter are intertwined, but causality are synergistic rather than discrete. Perhaps we can discuss the causality of language and matter in regards to large-scale irruptions in historical time spans, but these are largely scalar, as the shifts seem to be small over short periods of time, but relative degrees of acceleration at different times are, of course, evident. How long did it take (and I say this whimsically) for a "doore" to become a "door"? I'd imagine 1-200 years, and in disfferent distributions over diffferent locales. Although some of this may seem (as our colleague Roy Ascott might say) "blue sky" musings, for me, it is as as simple as sitting here with a rock from my Faqther's wartime island of Adak, musing on its structure and qualities, how it feel sin my hand, and how I am trying to figure out how to discuss some commonality of experience of it with you. My apologies if I am not speaking through that many other voices, I have been thinking of some tangents that I have found only a few bits on. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
