Re: [-empyre-] escaping work having your mass and monad too
I am thinking today about the cloud before the field, the cloud of radioactive dust, the cloud of the city's dust rising as the entirety of the plane was shaken like a carpet. Deleuze invokes the cloudedness of the event as the impression gained from being in its field. Which is not the same as its path or its horizon, inflection or limit. And if we are then taken up in this cloudedness... there is, to quote Davin, beyond inconvenience (!) ... substantial ethical and physiological risk. He actually says, it carries. And he is talking about singularities singularly more pleasurable than those I am recalling. Despite the renunciation of subjective autonomy. He points in his last paragraph to what Simon Biggs, I think, called a more dystopian possibility? That dread and fear have been systematised to the extent that even if the renunciation involved falling in love the contemporary subject might be too undersupplied with faith to enter the field, too untrusting, too systematically bullied. Davin ends with a call to teach, train, habituate to trusting - a kind of mission. Mission statement invoking a virtuous life. ... But to open open open to fields which do not first communicate ... their intentions, inflection, their ends, at the limits of capture. I have in mind the idea that the field cannot be expected to communicate, whereas in such a relation as this one, among friends, it is more difficult to get lost and remain a part. And that, in part, a renunciation of communication is what capture by a strong field will - because of its enclouding ( disencoding enchantment) - dispense and is what might be called its reason or sense. Best, Simon Taylor www.squarewhiteworld.com www.brazilcoffee.co.nz ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] escaping work having your mass and monad too
Simon, Aristide, Cara, I apologize for only partly following the conversation this month but your comments inspired me to jump in. I have a friend from graduate school, Patrick Vrooman, who used to talk about acquiescence every time the conversation turned to resistance. And I wonder if part of finding an escapist's strategy that doesn't end up in escapism might be to think in similar terms worry less about what we want to get away from and more about what we want to get into. I think Deleuze's discussion of desire comes in handy here as the means by which consciousness migrates across the material world to create new organs of sensation and modes of experience. If you join up with someone in a deep and committed way, you effectively surrender to them, you depend upon them, and they depend upon you. This kind of thinking is threatening, especially for contemporary subjects, who enjoy their autonomy, who imagine themselves as pure individuals, who are trained to experience their consciousness via decisions about what to buy and what not to buy, etc. And beyond inconvenience, it carries substantial ethical and physiological risks. If we look, for instance, at the link that Cara has provided: Occupy Everything, I think we can get a sense of how these dynamics work. While there are clear expressions of resistance backed by astute critiques, Occupying space is first about being present within that space. It begins with a utopian goal of being. And my experience in successful interventions is that they achieve a level of community and pleasure at the site of practice that suggests things could work out well if the normal order is suspended and control is left to the community. On a daily level, the difference between a livable and an unlivable locality has everything to do with our willingness to give in to each other, whether it means riding a bike without getting smashed by a car or answering the door when someone knocks. On the other hand, we live in a world that has systematically destroyed that trust. Restaurants and food manufacturers want us to trust their products over street vendors, home-cooked meals, and farm foods which we are conditioned to see as dirty. We (and I know this is not a universal, immutable we) trust something with a label or corporate identity before trusting something made by hand. The solution, from the individual perspective, is to run towards those earthy, interpersonal pleasures, to explore them, and to share them. Beyond our personal experience, however, we must also teach, train, cultivate, and habituate virtues of trust and human interaction and dismantle the general feeling of fear and dread that can be crippling. Davin On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 7:30 PM, simon s...@clear.net.nz wrote: Dear empyreans, Two moments: [to talk to Aristide Antonas's post] escaping work or the work of escaping the representation according to which the telos of every field is visibility correlates with the work of resisting. How to encourage escape but by an escapist's strategy that doesn't end up in escapism? What David Foster Wallace calls the liberal education has this good and admirable goal in its sights, by giving the student to gain insight into the chains binding them to ways of thinking and ways of behaving, leading the student to ask questions, which in themselves are nodal points of escape - points all too soon coopted into an optic of resistance, like the field of a mass action. Recuperation of resistance as information. A new barbarism is intriguing. It smacks of a desire for an effort of thought, of critical thought, or archeology - shouldn't that be a geology? as in a crossing of the threshold of slowmo? - with the quick violence of the earth as the upsetter? The point is taken, however, that this cooption of liberatory knowledge to information, that is, representation, and this appropriation of action to the field of visibility, likewise, representation, tank up civilization - but as we know it, uncommonly well. The desperation of facing urgent situations without recourse to action, is it more or less a black hole for the civilian, more or less a barbarism, for the city, than spontaneous unorganised violence due to the urgency of desperate situations? The political space need not immediately become a place enclosed by the three theatrical walls of a living archive accessible by screen imagery, its fourth porous wall, its magic. If it is not an open space any more, we should look for the exits? I must admit, I am attracted rather than repelled by the concatenation of political space, live archive and interweb or net. And I would like to add the note that it might be precisely the violence and the urgency of desperate situations that make the thought think. Less a tank, than a gnawing at the earth, a disturbance in the field, a sudden inrush, a tremour, more than surface, less than depth. An illiberal, illegal,
Re: [-empyre-] escaping work having your mass and monad too
so in 'Pumping' Joel models how the field of petroleum extraction is this huge obscuring thing all over everything, pumping out 'its reasons' and Martin's The Field' is a situation in which he imagines himself / we realize we are// the field === opening/opening/opening-- to ? The Field doesn't know.' Macroeconomics / global warming and quanta effects (my slippage drawing 'while turning on the computer') : all scales. On Mar 14, 2011, at 3:31 PM, simon wrote: ... But to open open open to fields which do not first communicate ... their intentions, inflection, their ends, at the limits of capture. I have in mind the idea that the field cannot be expected to communicate, whereas in such a relation as this one, among friends, it is more difficult to get lost and remain a part. And that, in part, a renunciation of communication is what capture by a strong field will - because of its enclouding ( disencoding enchantment) - dispense and is what might be called its reason or sense. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] escaping work having your mass and monad too
Thinking this into a new formation of practice. Praxis. Discursively and actively--against forgetting. The project I am working on performs operationally in 'information war' 'post-event'. It includes resources such as a school and library. http://occupyeverything.com/category/features/ It is a site of militant research and radical cultural formation. On Mar 12, 2011, at 4:30 PM, simon s...@clear.net.nz wrote: Dear empyreans, Two moments: [to talk to Aristide Antonas's post] escaping work or the work of escaping the representation according to which the telos of every field is visibility correlates with the work of resisting. How to encourage escape but by an escapist's strategy that doesn't end up in escapism? What David Foster Wallace calls the liberal education has this good and admirable goal in its sights, by giving the student to gain insight into the chains binding them to ways of thinking and ways of behaving, leading the student to ask questions, which in themselves are nodal points of escape - points all too soon coopted into an optic of resistance, like the field of a mass action. Recuperation of resistance as information. A new barbarism is intriguing. It smacks of a desire for an effort of thought, of critical thought, or archeology - shouldn't that be a geology? as in a crossing of the threshold of slowmo? - with the quick violence of the earth as the upsetter? The point is taken, however, that this cooption of liberatory knowledge to information, that is, representation, and this appropriation of action to the field of visibility, likewise, representation, tank up civilization - but as we know it, uncommonly well. The desperation of facing urgent situations without recourse to action, is it more or less a black hole for the civilian, more or less a barbarism, for the city, than spontaneous unorganised violence due to the urgency of desperate situations? The political space need not immediately become a place enclosed by the three theatrical walls of a living archive accessible by screen imagery, its fourth porous wall, its magic. If it is not an open space any more, we should look for the exits? I must admit, I am attracted rather than repelled by the concatenation of political space, live archive and interweb or net. And I would like to add the note that it might be precisely the violence and the urgency of desperate situations that make the thought think. Less a tank, than a gnawing at the earth, a disturbance in the field, a sudden inrush, a tremour, more than surface, less than depth. An illiberal, illegal, unauthorised, unorganised and nonhuman violence to the fields of thought and action. Secondly, I have been thrown by recent posts seeking to establish fields of names and negotiate those fields in terms of singular actions, singular movements. To identify them with the singularity of an event or a monad. Whether talking of an historically unfolding field of political action, liberatory or encapturing. Or, in fact, enchanting and magical. If we are with Badiou, then the event itself, in its singularity, has given rise to this open set of subjectivities we know by their names. If however we are with Deleuze, then the individual as a diffuse, clear confused, distinct obscure field is the event and the mass captured by its monadic singularity has escaped representation and cannot in turn comprise representatives of whatever revolution in thought and action has occurred. Except as a branding exercise? Best, Simon Taylor www.squarewhiteworld.com www.brazilcoffee.co.nz ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] escaping work having your mass and monad too
I'm neither 'with' Deleuze or Badiou. I am a feminist. On Mar 12, 2011, at 6:26 PM, Cara Baldwin carabaldwi...@gmail.com wrote: Thinking this into a new formation of practice. Praxis. Discursively and actively--against forgetting. The project I am working on performs operationally in 'information war' 'post-event'. It includes resources such as a school and library. http://occupyeverything.com/category/features/ It is a site of militant research and radical cultural formation. On Mar 12, 2011, at 4:30 PM, simon s...@clear.net.nz wrote: Dear empyreans, Two moments: [to talk to Aristide Antonas's post] escaping work or the work of escaping the representation according to which the telos of every field is visibility correlates with the work of resisting. How to encourage escape but by an escapist's strategy that doesn't end up in escapism? What David Foster Wallace calls the liberal education has this good and admirable goal in its sights, by giving the student to gain insight into the chains binding them to ways of thinking and ways of behaving, leading the student to ask questions, which in themselves are nodal points of escape - points all too soon coopted into an optic of resistance, like the field of a mass action. Recuperation of resistance as information. A new barbarism is intriguing. It smacks of a desire for an effort of thought, of critical thought, or archeology - shouldn't that be a geology? as in a crossing of the threshold of slowmo? - with the quick violence of the earth as the upsetter? The point is taken, however, that this cooption of liberatory knowledge to information, that is, representation, and this appropriation of action to the field of visibility, likewise, representation, tank up civilization - but as we know it, uncommonly well. The desperation of facing urgent situations without recourse to action, is it more or less a black hole for the civilian, more or less a barbarism, for the city, than spontaneous unorganised violence due to the urgency of desperate situations? The political space need not immediately become a place enclosed by the three theatrical walls of a living archive accessible by screen imagery, its fourth porous wall, its magic. If it is not an open space any more, we should look for the exits? I must admit, I am attracted rather than repelled by the concatenation of political space, live archive and interweb or net. And I would like to add the note that it might be precisely the violence and the urgency of desperate situations that make the thought think. Less a tank, than a gnawing at the earth, a disturbance in the field, a sudden inrush, a tremour, more than surface, less than depth. An illiberal, illegal, unauthorised, unorganised and nonhuman violence to the fields of thought and action. Secondly, I have been thrown by recent posts seeking to establish fields of names and negotiate those fields in terms of singular actions, singular movements. To identify them with the singularity of an event or a monad. Whether talking of an historically unfolding field of political action, liberatory or encapturing. Or, in fact, enchanting and magical. If we are with Badiou, then the event itself, in its singularity, has given rise to this open set of subjectivities we know by their names. If however we are with Deleuze, then the individual as a diffuse, clear confused, distinct obscure field is the event and the mass captured by its monadic singularity has escaped representation and cannot in turn comprise representatives of whatever revolution in thought and action has occurred. Except as a branding exercise? Best, Simon Taylor www.squarewhiteworld.com www.brazilcoffee.co.nz ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] escaping work having your mass and monad too
Dear empyreans, Two moments: [to talk to Aristide Antonas's post] escaping work or the work of escaping the representation according to which the telos of every field is visibility correlates with the work of resisting. How to encourage escape but by an escapist's strategy that doesn't end up in escapism? What David Foster Wallace calls the liberal education has this good and admirable goal in its sights, by giving the student to gain insight into the chains binding them to ways of thinking and ways of behaving, leading the student to ask questions, which in themselves are nodal points of escape - points all too soon coopted into an optic of resistance, like the field of a mass action. Recuperation of resistance as information. A new barbarism is intriguing. It smacks of a desire for an effort of thought, of critical thought, or archeology - shouldn't that be a geology? as in a crossing of the threshold of slowmo? - with the quick violence of the earth as the upsetter? The point is taken, however, that this cooption of liberatory knowledge to information, that is, representation, and this appropriation of action to the field of visibility, likewise, representation, tank up civilization - but as we know it, uncommonly well. The desperation of facing urgent situations without recourse to action, is it more or less a black hole for the civilian, more or less a barbarism, for the city, than spontaneous unorganised violence due to the urgency of desperate situations? The political space need not immediately become a place enclosed by the three theatrical walls of a living archive accessible by screen imagery, its fourth porous wall, its magic. If it is not an open space any more, we should look for the exits? I must admit, I am attracted rather than repelled by the concatenation of political space, live archive and interweb or net. And I would like to add the note that it might be precisely the violence and the urgency of desperate situations that make the thought think. Less a tank, than a gnawing at the earth, a disturbance in the field, a sudden inrush, a tremour, more than surface, less than depth. An illiberal, illegal, unauthorised, unorganised and nonhuman violence to the fields of thought and action. Secondly, I have been thrown by recent posts seeking to establish fields of names and negotiate those fields in terms of singular actions, singular movements. To identify them with the singularity of an event or a monad. Whether talking of an historically unfolding field of political action, liberatory or encapturing. Or, in fact, enchanting and magical. If we are with Badiou, then the event itself, in its singularity, has given rise to this open set of subjectivities we know by their names. If however we are with Deleuze, then the individual as a diffuse, clear confused, distinct obscure field is the event and the mass captured by its monadic singularity has escaped representation and cannot in turn comprise representatives of whatever revolution in thought and action has occurred. Except as a branding exercise? Best, Simon Taylor www.squarewhiteworld.com www.brazilcoffee.co.nz ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
