Hi I understand your position and take it myself much of the time. It's an effective defensive position it seems against the constant onslaught of corporate garbage. On less defensive days I wonder about this idea of the pure unpolluted or authentic self - it's relationship to colonialist attitudes - because what might be recognized as authentic in one culture may be considered a put-on in another. We have to remember that colonial conquests were done largely to supposedly "save the beasts from themselves" the other's ways are always seen as backward and full of myth while ours seems to get deeper to the real meaning of life. Western Civilization has had a nasty habit of calling the anything foreign to it "culture" and anything taken for granted within it as just "human nature". It's all myth and all culture - unless we want to pretend that the helplessness of a newborn baby is our ideal state. The point is to figure out what that culture produces materially in the world. Like Marx said, "the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it." In this sense, it seems that trying to get below culture in some metaphysical sense only immerses us deeper in ideology - since ideology is exactly habits, beliefs and values that are assumed to be natural - this leads me to the point that statements about the "pure" "authentic" self are the most ideological of all. simply assuming that we've accessed something deeper - metaphysics - doesn't get very far in explaining how we can critically and consciously make an impact on the world without reducing the conversation to colonial perspectives which say my way is pure and authentic, and your way is enculturated myth. The use of words like "authentic" and "pure" are too easily linked to nasty things like eugenics and its far reaching influence on modernist art and design anyway. A new language is necessary I think... Thank you for your response and thoughts! best mark Message: 2 Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 18:04:00 +0200 From: "Andreas Maria Jacobs" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Friction Research Issue #4, 2011 Reclaim the Mind To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed; delsp=yes
Hi Mark nice thoughts indeed. As I am not the author of Saskia's text, I cannot go into that deeper, but for my own involvement as the initiator of this project, I do think it is appropriate and necessary to - although already done over and over again - accentuate the role of the indoctrinating and actively alienating media industries and their ways of subsuming their audiences. As for 'free subjects', yes I have this opinion that 'we' are first and foremost authentic and unimpressed beings, who are influenced by our external cultural language systems and apparently polluted by the immense and carelessly taken psycho-sociological consequences thereof To be able to develop consciousness of 'our being in the world' it is necessary to investigate the underlying mechanisms of how culture spreads from individual perception and expression to broader and more influential and sustainable power structures which in turn influences and manipulates the ways the individual perceives and eventually expresses its cultural 'point of view' It is with that in mind are started this whole project i.e. Friction Research -- w: http://nictoglobe.com w: http://burgerwaanzin.nl w: http://nictoglobe.com/new/agam e: [email protected] e: [email protected] On Sat, June 4, 2011 14:54, mark cooley wrote: > for the pic you'd have to ask Barbara Kruger. > As far as the "one's own mind" idea. That went out the window with the > invention of cultural studies or at least I thought. Not that > everyone has > to buy that dismissal but at least a nod to contemporary criticism > (everyone from Zizek, Lacan, Stuart Hall to Louis Althusser) might be > appropriate. In a nut shell, the enlightenment idea that we belong to > ourselves (as free subjects) or that somehow we have an inner > subjectivity > that is beyond the influence of culture and therefore pure and > untainted, > was overturned pretty effectively I think in 20th century media and > cultural criticism. Of course not everyone is convinced, but I think > that > going back to this idea that we have initially "pure" minds that are > somehow corrupted by media (or whatever other cultural form) is > regressive > and takes us back to the old idea of "nature" vs "nurture". Anyway, > one > point of media criticism is to see how the media acts as ideology and > subjugates viewers - but not in order > to retrieve "our own minds" but to take an active role in detecting > ideological devices and how they work on us and the effects they > have on > the world. The idea that we own ourselves neglects that our every > meaningful interaction with the world is always already part of a > shared > language that we ourselves didn't create. We are collages of external > things taken in and internalized, but we certainly can take an active > role in this process - this doesn't mean that we're being more > authentic > or pure, just that we're being active participants in the making of > us. > Just some thoughts. > mark > > Message: 4 > Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2011 17:40:50 +0200 > From: Andreas Maria Jacobs <[email protected]> > > Hi Marc > > Nice picture! > > Expressing the shizo-state of mind, > scattered and torned to pieces like mine... > > May I use it for Friction Research Issue 4? > > Best > > Andreas Maria Jacobs > > w: http://www.nictoglobe.com > w: http://burgerwaanzin.nl > > On Jun 3, 2011, at 16:58, mark cooley <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > Friction Research Issue #4 >> > 29 May 2011 >> > Essay: >> > Saskia Isabella Maria Korsten >> > "I believe that in order to "reclaim one's mind" one should be able to > critically assess the influence media have on one's perception of the > world." >> >> > What "one's mind" is there to reclaim? > http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l7rmzrFjs71qzuxe3o1_400.jpg_______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
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