Disjuncture and Difference in the global Culture
By Arjun appadurai
This article begins by asking, “Does globalization mean that local cultures are becoming more homogeneous?
I think that globalization has actually made people more nationalistic because they are searching to define themselves and their culture against the global economy.
I agree that we have to let go of these definitions that are based on opposites, and therefore always create an edge or limit with clear boundaries. We don’t exist in a culture or world with clear boundaries anymore. If “space-time compression” means that we can actually “be” in more than one place at the same time, Internet, travel, networks, blogs, then there are many different associations that define our identity. We are no longer “global/local,” “north/south,” or “black/white.” Instead Arjun Appadurai suggests we must look and think in terms of flows or “scapes” that move through the globe carrying capital, information, images, people, ideas, and technologies.
By changing the terms of reference, or the language we use, we are able to open up a new dimension for looking at our understanding of identity and difference.
He suggests that these “scapes” can be categorized into ethnoscape, mediascape, technoscape, finascape and ideoscape. These “scapes” seem to dynamically organize and move themselves with in a framework of the individual (actor). This could mean that our identity is constructed based on what we do, what we think, where we live and more that actually existing in a constant state of flux.
Issues of deterritorialization in relation to money, commodities, film and people begin to construct a fractured reality. The problem with this new feature of global “scapes” is when two “scapes” fight for power or dominant ideologies. This then creates a disjuncture, evident in nation-state relations. Examples include Quebec separatism, bush invading Iraq, and national and international boarders.
Globalization is not the same as homogenization however it uses a variety of instruments of homogenization. These instruments include armaments, advertising techniques, language, clothing style etc, which are repackaged as national sovereignty, free enterprise, fundamentalism etc. This fight between sameness and difference between these global “flows” and uncertain forms or boundaries of the “scapes” creates a really uncertain placement for individuals and countries. Arjun Appadurai is saying that this is a result of the global cultural process.
Is this is good state to be in? We have acknowledged that globalization does not me homogenization, but does this fluctuating state of the unknown “scapes” with their uncertainties and disjunctures provide us with a stable framework to identify ourselves with? Or will we live in a perpetual state of conflict?
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Jordy: Notes and Responses: Rorty
Globalization, the politics of identity and social hope
Richard Rorty
- Does not think that “revival of long –repressed hatreds embedded in ethnic, religious and national identities” is surprising
- Does not see that terms like “politics of identity” point to anything interesting or different
- Does not think that the fragility of universal conceptions or postmodern skepticism plays a role….
- Loss of faith in universal notions and cosmopolitan…
Concludes:
- Things couldn’t get much better than they are right now!
- We will never have a classless global society!
o When ideal stood… there was little interest in the minority or marginal cultures
o If a global monoculture was prospect, than it was worth the loss of cultural inheritances
2 scenarios:
1. Marxist proletariat followed by the loss of entrepreneurialism
2. Peace and technology would progress to virtually unlimited economic prosperity
Fear: United States is a danger of developing an over class to the misery of everyone else
- The middle class of the US and Brazil have more in common then with the poor of their own country
- Concerned with the loss of the two egalitarian utopias, therefore concerned about globalization
- Appropriate intellectual background to political deliberation is historical narrative
Past:
- Philosophers formulated their taxonomies of social phenomena, and designed the conceptual tools they need to criticize existing institutions, by referring to a story about what happened and what we might reasonably hope could happen in the future
Present:
- Taking starting point from psychoanalysis, language, “identity”, and “self” and “subject”
- Turn away from narration and utopia dreams towards philosophy seems to gesture of despair… IMPOSSIBILITY
Central Question: those about the relations between rich and poor
Globalization: the economic situation of the citizens of a nation-state has passed beyond the control of the laws of that state.
“…The absence of the global polity means that the super-rich can operate without any thought of any interests saves their own...”
US was a world leader for its egalitarian roles… it has lost that role….
The role of United Nations... In the past several decades we have seen the United Nations falter on many occasions. Its relevance has been questioned for in terms of having any control of what is occurring on a global scale. I think that the relevancy of such an institution is symptomatic of its failing state. However, I think the United Nations needs to be reformed, repackaged, and restructured.
I think the majority of its problems stem from its oppressive structure that allows a few select states be in control over a larger group of smaller countries. I do not think that countries should have “veto power”. The role of the oppressive countries in the United Nations is a reflection of what is occurring in a broader global context.
A global authority is necessary in this complex and high-speed political world. However there are some hard questions to ask about the extent of such an authority. What authority should it have? To what extent should there authority be? Who should be in charge? How much power should each country have? Should it only be countries? Many corporation have more land / wealth / workers than some smaller countries… should they have a role in a global authority?
Should global authorities only be a political agenda? Should the other scapes have a global authority? Do we need regulating zones for media, technologies, cultures, and ideas?
What about moral questions? When would a global authority have a right to intervene? Does it have a right to intervene? What role does a global body have? Is it even possible for it to keep relevance in this high speed and complex world?
Identity:
- No such thing as “intrinsic” or “essential” attributes
- Preservation of cultural identity
o Native tribes
o Oppressed groups
o “Politics of identity”
o Distinct from the struggle of rich against poor
- Become aware of humiliations (i.e. colonialism)
- Counteract by having a voice
- Reveal blind spots:
o Correctable: attention called to the harm we have been doing without noticing that we are doing it.
o Open to pluralism: individual variation
Blind spots?
It is funny how we can create blind spots towards certain ideas, actions, or beliefs. It is possible to act in a horrendously immoral and insensitive way without even knowing what you are doing. One of the most striking examples would be exposed with the Holocaust. Hannah Arendt has done amazing work in showing how banal evil can be with her text called Eichmann in Jerusalem. In the text, she demonstrates how the bureaucratic actions of one man caused the death of millions of innocent people, while he felt no remorse or acknowledgment of his actions.
These blind spots occur on everyday scale as well. How often do you turn away from a homeless person? Or disregard a famine that is occurring half a world away? How much responsibility to you feel for those occurrences? How much should you feel for these occurrences?
I understand blind spots from my experience of schoolyard bullying. When a child is unfairly bullied or picked on and the classmates, teachers, parents ignore the bullying, it is a prime example of blind spots. We are ignoring that an unfair action is happening to an innocent person, which could be stopped. What is requires is the acknowledgment of all parties of what is occurring. We do not necessarily need consensus, but the issue needs to be addressed. If we as a society still let children were bullied how can be ever address larger issues of abuse? I feel that any possible chance for an egalitarian society exists in the school yard and by educating others…
Richard Rorty
- Does not think that “revival of long –repressed hatreds embedded in ethnic, religious and national identities” is surprising
- Does not see that terms like “politics of identity” point to anything interesting or different
- Does not think that the fragility of universal conceptions or postmodern skepticism plays a role….
- Loss of faith in universal notions and cosmopolitan…
Concludes:
- Things couldn’t get much better than they are right now!
- We will never have a classless global society!
o When ideal stood… there was little interest in the minority or marginal cultures
o If a global monoculture was prospect, than it was worth the loss of cultural inheritances
2 scenarios:
1. Marxist proletariat followed by the loss of entrepreneurialism
2. Peace and technology would progress to virtually unlimited economic prosperity
Fear: United States is a danger of developing an over class to the misery of everyone else
- The middle class of the US and Brazil have more in common then with the poor of their own country
- Concerned with the loss of the two egalitarian utopias, therefore concerned about globalization
- Appropriate intellectual background to political deliberation is historical narrative
Past:
- Philosophers formulated their taxonomies of social phenomena, and designed the conceptual tools they need to criticize existing institutions, by referring to a story about what happened and what we might reasonably hope could happen in the future
Present:
- Taking starting point from psychoanalysis, language, “identity”, and “self” and “subject”
- Turn away from narration and utopia dreams towards philosophy seems to gesture of despair… IMPOSSIBILITY
Central Question: those about the relations between rich and poor
Globalization: the economic situation of the citizens of a nation-state has passed beyond the control of the laws of that state.
“…The absence of the global polity means that the super-rich can operate without any thought of any interests saves their own...”
US was a world leader for its egalitarian roles… it has lost that role….
The role of United Nations... In the past several decades we have seen the United Nations falter on many occasions. Its relevance has been questioned for in terms of having any control of what is occurring on a global scale. I think that the relevancy of such an institution is symptomatic of its failing state. However, I think the United Nations needs to be reformed, repackaged, and restructured.
I think the majority of its problems stem from its oppressive structure that allows a few select states be in control over a larger group of smaller countries. I do not think that countries should have “veto power”. The role of the oppressive countries in the United Nations is a reflection of what is occurring in a broader global context.
A global authority is necessary in this complex and high-speed political world. However there are some hard questions to ask about the extent of such an authority. What authority should it have? To what extent should there authority be? Who should be in charge? How much power should each country have? Should it only be countries? Many corporation have more land / wealth / workers than some smaller countries… should they have a role in a global authority?
Should global authorities only be a political agenda? Should the other scapes have a global authority? Do we need regulating zones for media, technologies, cultures, and ideas?
What about moral questions? When would a global authority have a right to intervene? Does it have a right to intervene? What role does a global body have? Is it even possible for it to keep relevance in this high speed and complex world?
Identity:
- No such thing as “intrinsic” or “essential” attributes
- Preservation of cultural identity
o Native tribes
o Oppressed groups
o “Politics of identity”
o Distinct from the struggle of rich against poor
- Become aware of humiliations (i.e. colonialism)
- Counteract by having a voice
- Reveal blind spots:
o Correctable: attention called to the harm we have been doing without noticing that we are doing it.
o Open to pluralism: individual variation
Blind spots?
It is funny how we can create blind spots towards certain ideas, actions, or beliefs. It is possible to act in a horrendously immoral and insensitive way without even knowing what you are doing. One of the most striking examples would be exposed with the Holocaust. Hannah Arendt has done amazing work in showing how banal evil can be with her text called Eichmann in Jerusalem. In the text, she demonstrates how the bureaucratic actions of one man caused the death of millions of innocent people, while he felt no remorse or acknowledgment of his actions.
These blind spots occur on everyday scale as well. How often do you turn away from a homeless person? Or disregard a famine that is occurring half a world away? How much responsibility to you feel for those occurrences? How much should you feel for these occurrences?
I understand blind spots from my experience of schoolyard bullying. When a child is unfairly bullied or picked on and the classmates, teachers, parents ignore the bullying, it is a prime example of blind spots. We are ignoring that an unfair action is happening to an innocent person, which could be stopped. What is requires is the acknowledgment of all parties of what is occurring. We do not necessarily need consensus, but the issue needs to be addressed. If we as a society still let children were bullied how can be ever address larger issues of abuse? I feel that any possible chance for an egalitarian society exists in the school yard and by educating others…
Jordy: Notes and Responses: Disjuncture
Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy
Arjun Appadurai
Does the globalization mean that local cultures are becoming more homogeneous? NO
Is it really possible to become homogeneous? By the other cultures coming into contact with one another does that necessarily entail copying and assimilation? Is it a negative thing that cultural influences are flowing across boundaries? Is this a new phenomenon or just an old story that has a new technological and high-speed twist?
It is true that when cultures meet / combine / interact / engage that there is a potential for abuse and oppression. You don’t have to look any farther than the Native Americans encounter with the Europeans for a classic example and there are examples of colonialism still occurring in various parts of the world. However, I do not think that I necessarily result in homogenization. It would be very hard to argue that Native Americans are some how homogenized into European culture. Obviously, there culture has been transformable / obliterated / oppressed, but they still resiliently hold their own identity and culture. I think greater challenged for Native American culture in Winnipeg is not only the holding onto their identities, but also determining their place in a larger global context. The question that remains is how to place yourself in a larger context of media and cultural belief? How do you change opinion? Do you go with the flow and risk losing identity and control? Or do taking part and using media to counteract and exist in the context retain cultural identity?
Disjuncture? It is these disjuncture and differences that so often drive us apart, which are what is required in a global context. What causes some disjuncture to be negatively received? What was the disjuncture between in Rwanda? Why was that disjuncture explosive and violent? What is the difference between that type of disjuncture and one that can peacefully coexist? If these disjuncture exist within these “scapes” how can they be used to make our differences a good thing, rather what drives us apart?
Contradicts:
- Globalization,
- Postmodernism
- Post colonialism
- Oppositions “global/local” and “north/South”
Suggestion:
- Flows / scapes of information, technology, images, people, ideas, capital…
- Mutation of flows
- Relationships are antagonistic and distant
- Pass through national boundaries
- Greater possibilities of colonies centres, and nations to states (favors globalize)
Other question: Who is losing out in the globalization?
Problem with global interactions is the tension b/w cultural homogenization and heterogenization
i.e. Homogenization: Americanization… Contradiction to argument: indigenization
- Music, housing, science and terrorism
New economy is understood as complex, overlapping, disjunctive order…
Cannot be understood in terms of old periphery or push pull migratory models
Exploring disjuncture: five dimensions:
1. Mediascape
2. Ethnoscapes
3. Technospaces
4. Finanscapes
5. Ideoscapes
Scapes:
- Perspective constructs
- Different actors
- Historical, linguistically and political
*** Individual actor is the least locus of the perspective set of landscapes
- “Imagined” worlds
- Multiple worlds
- Contest and subvert
- Characterize international capital as they do fashion styles…
“Global flows occur in and through the growing disjuncture (disconnected, separated, incoherence) between ethnoscapes, technospaces, finanscapes, mediascape, and ideoscapes’
“The sheer speed, scale and volume of each of the flows is now so great that the disjuncture have become central to the politics of global culture”
“Deterritorialization” i.e laboring classes into wealthy areas;
My visit to Princeton: It was an odd experience when you visit one of the most prestigious and elite schools in North America. It is renown to be for the rich and the future rich. What amazed me was the realization that a mostly Mexican labor force supported the entire school campus. There was a stark contrast of the mostly Caucasian students and the mostly Mexican workers. Thus, it seems that the barriers of distance, wealth, and culture had collapsed into an odd world of inequalities.
Invented Homelands:
What does it mean to from a place? Do you have to be born there? Is it a question of genealogy? Inheritance? How do you determine where you are from and when does it become part of a group? How do you take ownership of place?
For instance, when will I feel that I am from Canada? When will my Canadian citizenship become my predominant culture identity and not my cultural heritage? Or is the reverse the underlying condition? Maybe Canada’s identity crisis is a demonstration of what the global culture is becoming. Such as an ethnoscapes in which you can live in one place, but identify with multiple places and cultures. Perhaps Canada’s identity is a mixed, varied, unsure, and plural state?
The role of the nation state in the disjunctive global economy of culture:
Nations in search of states:
- Imagined groups which seek to create states of their own or carve pieces out of existing states i.e. Quebec
States in search of communities:
- Museumizing and representing all groups as uniform through out the world
*** states and nations are at each others throats (imaginative and roaming nationhoods)
Primordia have become globalize;
- Locality has been turned into staging ground for identity
- Localities stay connected by sophisticated technologies
- Become a global force slipping b/w the cracks of borders..
i.e. Palestinian and Israel conflict
Uncertain / fluid interplay b/w production and consumption
- Fetishism of the commodity
o Production fetishism
o Fetishism of the consumer
Production fetishism:
- Illusion created by contemporary transnational production loci, which masks translocal capital…
- Free trade zones as the model
- Not masking social relations, but production relations
- The locality (factory, site of production, nation state) becomes a fetish which disguises the globally dispersed forces that actually drive the production processes
Consumerism fetish:
- Consumer has been transformed (through commodity flows , mediascape) into sign
- “ These images of agency are increasingly distortions f a world of merchandising so subtle that the consumer is consistently helped to believe that he or she is an actor, where in fact they are at best a chooser”
“the globalization is not the same as its homogenization, but globalization involves the use of a variety of instruments of homogenizations (armaments, advertising techniques, language hegemonies, clothing styles…). Which are absorbed into local political and cultural economies, only to be repatriated as heterogeneous dialogues of national sovereignty, free enterprise, fundamentalism, in which the state plays an increasingly delicate role”
i.e Chinese revolt
Thus, triumphantly universal and resiliently particular
Arjun Appadurai
Does the globalization mean that local cultures are becoming more homogeneous? NO
Is it really possible to become homogeneous? By the other cultures coming into contact with one another does that necessarily entail copying and assimilation? Is it a negative thing that cultural influences are flowing across boundaries? Is this a new phenomenon or just an old story that has a new technological and high-speed twist?
It is true that when cultures meet / combine / interact / engage that there is a potential for abuse and oppression. You don’t have to look any farther than the Native Americans encounter with the Europeans for a classic example and there are examples of colonialism still occurring in various parts of the world. However, I do not think that I necessarily result in homogenization. It would be very hard to argue that Native Americans are some how homogenized into European culture. Obviously, there culture has been transformable / obliterated / oppressed, but they still resiliently hold their own identity and culture. I think greater challenged for Native American culture in Winnipeg is not only the holding onto their identities, but also determining their place in a larger global context. The question that remains is how to place yourself in a larger context of media and cultural belief? How do you change opinion? Do you go with the flow and risk losing identity and control? Or do taking part and using media to counteract and exist in the context retain cultural identity?
Disjuncture? It is these disjuncture and differences that so often drive us apart, which are what is required in a global context. What causes some disjuncture to be negatively received? What was the disjuncture between in Rwanda? Why was that disjuncture explosive and violent? What is the difference between that type of disjuncture and one that can peacefully coexist? If these disjuncture exist within these “scapes” how can they be used to make our differences a good thing, rather what drives us apart?
Contradicts:
- Globalization,
- Postmodernism
- Post colonialism
- Oppositions “global/local” and “north/South”
Suggestion:
- Flows / scapes of information, technology, images, people, ideas, capital…
- Mutation of flows
- Relationships are antagonistic and distant
- Pass through national boundaries
- Greater possibilities of colonies centres, and nations to states (favors globalize)
Other question: Who is losing out in the globalization?
Problem with global interactions is the tension b/w cultural homogenization and heterogenization
i.e. Homogenization: Americanization… Contradiction to argument: indigenization
- Music, housing, science and terrorism
New economy is understood as complex, overlapping, disjunctive order…
Cannot be understood in terms of old periphery or push pull migratory models
Exploring disjuncture: five dimensions:
1. Mediascape
2. Ethnoscapes
3. Technospaces
4. Finanscapes
5. Ideoscapes
Scapes:
- Perspective constructs
- Different actors
- Historical, linguistically and political
*** Individual actor is the least locus of the perspective set of landscapes
- “Imagined” worlds
- Multiple worlds
- Contest and subvert
- Characterize international capital as they do fashion styles…
“Global flows occur in and through the growing disjuncture (disconnected, separated, incoherence) between ethnoscapes, technospaces, finanscapes, mediascape, and ideoscapes’
“The sheer speed, scale and volume of each of the flows is now so great that the disjuncture have become central to the politics of global culture”
“Deterritorialization” i.e laboring classes into wealthy areas;
My visit to Princeton: It was an odd experience when you visit one of the most prestigious and elite schools in North America. It is renown to be for the rich and the future rich. What amazed me was the realization that a mostly Mexican labor force supported the entire school campus. There was a stark contrast of the mostly Caucasian students and the mostly Mexican workers. Thus, it seems that the barriers of distance, wealth, and culture had collapsed into an odd world of inequalities.
Invented Homelands:
What does it mean to from a place? Do you have to be born there? Is it a question of genealogy? Inheritance? How do you determine where you are from and when does it become part of a group? How do you take ownership of place?
For instance, when will I feel that I am from Canada? When will my Canadian citizenship become my predominant culture identity and not my cultural heritage? Or is the reverse the underlying condition? Maybe Canada’s identity crisis is a demonstration of what the global culture is becoming. Such as an ethnoscapes in which you can live in one place, but identify with multiple places and cultures. Perhaps Canada’s identity is a mixed, varied, unsure, and plural state?
The role of the nation state in the disjunctive global economy of culture:
Nations in search of states:
- Imagined groups which seek to create states of their own or carve pieces out of existing states i.e. Quebec
States in search of communities:
- Museumizing and representing all groups as uniform through out the world
*** states and nations are at each others throats (imaginative and roaming nationhoods)
Primordia have become globalize;
- Locality has been turned into staging ground for identity
- Localities stay connected by sophisticated technologies
- Become a global force slipping b/w the cracks of borders..
i.e. Palestinian and Israel conflict
Uncertain / fluid interplay b/w production and consumption
- Fetishism of the commodity
o Production fetishism
o Fetishism of the consumer
Production fetishism:
- Illusion created by contemporary transnational production loci, which masks translocal capital…
- Free trade zones as the model
- Not masking social relations, but production relations
- The locality (factory, site of production, nation state) becomes a fetish which disguises the globally dispersed forces that actually drive the production processes
Consumerism fetish:
- Consumer has been transformed (through commodity flows , mediascape) into sign
- “ These images of agency are increasingly distortions f a world of merchandising so subtle that the consumer is consistently helped to believe that he or she is an actor, where in fact they are at best a chooser”
“the globalization is not the same as its homogenization, but globalization involves the use of a variety of instruments of homogenizations (armaments, advertising techniques, language hegemonies, clothing styles…). Which are absorbed into local political and cultural economies, only to be repatriated as heterogeneous dialogues of national sovereignty, free enterprise, fundamentalism, in which the state plays an increasingly delicate role”
i.e Chinese revolt
Thus, triumphantly universal and resiliently particular
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Bizar question of the Global Political spectrum
Artist David Cerny created a sculpture of Saddam Hussein before the sentencing of the trial. Taking inspiration from Damien Hurst's pickled tiger shark. This work was banned as public work for its prevocacy and obscenity. Read the article at the url below.
This asks questions about the effect of global politics, also a question about communication in public space. Something like this could be banned in physical space, but becomes common place in the constructed space of the internet.
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/75583
Canadian Artist Penny Cousineau-Levine
Regarding identity
After years of examining Canadian art photography, she went back to the critics, including Northrop Frye, John Ralston Saul and Linda Hutcheon, and found that the themes they identified in Canadian literature and political life— of disconnection, of looking out to another world — are also present in the work of many Canadian artists working with the camera.
In the book, she noted such preoccupations as the entrapment of animals, the inability of individuals to feel at home, recurring images of windows, “symbolic codes,” parallel “zones of reality,” and especially, “a fascination with the phenomenon of death that goes far beyond that of any other group.”
http://ctr.concordia.ca/2003-04/sept_25/08-cousineau/index.shtmlMaya The Politics of Identity
Globalization: The Politics of Identity and Social Hope
Richard Rorty
Does globalization and homogenization really begin to effect our identity? Do we feel lost in a a sea of brand names?
After world war II there were hopes of constructing a classless society. It is a utopian idealistic dream that everyone is equal, but that has not been realized. I was watching the news and they were saying that the gap between rich and poor is the largest it has ever been in the last 30 years.
Regarding globalization and its central question about the relationship between the rich and the poor. The problem now is that there is a global over class making all the economic decisions independent of government. There is not apparent solution. He suggested that Government would not do anything about it either because it would be “economically inefficient.”
Does individualization mean defining who we are based on deciding what we are not? If everyone was the same and equal, then I am sure that we would still find a way to judge one another. This reminds me of a similar question raised in art and architecture about determining what is good. It is difficult to decide what is ultimately good, instead there are just varying degrees of comparison over which is better than the other. Post modernism seemed to recognize the individual and an individuals thoughts; acknowledging that these thoughts don’t need to belong to a general ideology.
The theories of Marx’s as well as Hobbes’ and Locke’s based their analysis, critique and proposed solutions from the historical narrative. It is interesting to see that this referential system really depends on our cultures collective memory and places limitation of any possible solution within the framework of our collective history. Even though I think this grounds our culture and makes it easier for the collective to understand it suggests “history is doomed to repeat itself,” simple because things are based upon what we already know.
The alternative suggested take their starting points from philosophy of language, psychoanalysis or from traditional philosophical questions of identity, difference, self, subject, truth and reason. Rorty suggests that by using these reference points we are degrading our historical narrative and any possibility of progress. I disagree. By allowing for new reference points we are possibly able to rewrite our historical narrative and open up new possibilities for interpretation free of historical association.
These statements about “identity and difference” help to support my questions and reasoning behind our ability to self defines who we are.
Nietzche-Heidegger-Derrida criticism that there is no natural or intrinsic attribute to anything. “There is nothing vital to the self-identity of a being, independent of the descriptions we give of it.”
2. There is a question regarding the “preservation of cultural identity.”
If we are able to create a new framework or point of reference, or as Foucault says linguistic communication, identity issues regarding marginalized societies can be reframed within new boundaries.
There is less to be said about Identity and Difference. In order to address identity and difference you need to look at and reveal the flaws in the communication, economic or social framework that we work with in to construct our environments.
Richard Rorty
Does globalization and homogenization really begin to effect our identity? Do we feel lost in a a sea of brand names?
After world war II there were hopes of constructing a classless society. It is a utopian idealistic dream that everyone is equal, but that has not been realized. I was watching the news and they were saying that the gap between rich and poor is the largest it has ever been in the last 30 years.
Regarding globalization and its central question about the relationship between the rich and the poor. The problem now is that there is a global over class making all the economic decisions independent of government. There is not apparent solution. He suggested that Government would not do anything about it either because it would be “economically inefficient.”
Does individualization mean defining who we are based on deciding what we are not? If everyone was the same and equal, then I am sure that we would still find a way to judge one another. This reminds me of a similar question raised in art and architecture about determining what is good. It is difficult to decide what is ultimately good, instead there are just varying degrees of comparison over which is better than the other. Post modernism seemed to recognize the individual and an individuals thoughts; acknowledging that these thoughts don’t need to belong to a general ideology.
The theories of Marx’s as well as Hobbes’ and Locke’s based their analysis, critique and proposed solutions from the historical narrative. It is interesting to see that this referential system really depends on our cultures collective memory and places limitation of any possible solution within the framework of our collective history. Even though I think this grounds our culture and makes it easier for the collective to understand it suggests “history is doomed to repeat itself,” simple because things are based upon what we already know.
The alternative suggested take their starting points from philosophy of language, psychoanalysis or from traditional philosophical questions of identity, difference, self, subject, truth and reason. Rorty suggests that by using these reference points we are degrading our historical narrative and any possibility of progress. I disagree. By allowing for new reference points we are possibly able to rewrite our historical narrative and open up new possibilities for interpretation free of historical association.
These statements about “identity and difference” help to support my questions and reasoning behind our ability to self defines who we are.
Nietzche-Heidegger-Derrida criticism that there is no natural or intrinsic attribute to anything. “There is nothing vital to the self-identity of a being, independent of the descriptions we give of it.”
2. There is a question regarding the “preservation of cultural identity.”
If we are able to create a new framework or point of reference, or as Foucault says linguistic communication, identity issues regarding marginalized societies can be reframed within new boundaries.
There is less to be said about Identity and Difference. In order to address identity and difference you need to look at and reveal the flaws in the communication, economic or social framework that we work with in to construct our environments.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Gorretti: Lecture Notes and Thoughts
Encoding Decoding:
Forms and levels of communication.
- Is communication instinctual or is it learned? Is there such thing as primal communication?
Language and emotion – do you need to understand the emotion that is encoded in the language in order to decode the message?
Are we differentiating between body language and verbal language? What kind of language are we addressing if there are in fact categories of language?
There is a complexity to communication including:
Senses
Perceptions
Time
How does this apply to architecture?
All of our intentions must be encoded into the work… typically this is constructed into the work. It is manifested/staged through ritual and landscape perceptions. THIS IS THE NORM – why?
Cook, eisenmen – all wrote for years before building. They were building their “language” so people could decode their architecture.
If there is something called primal communication than…
We have to access the cultured memory, when we do that the fashioning is no longer important
Our human scale is more important than our cultural fabrication. Therefore there is no difference between US born (modern) child than Ethiopia born (villager) child because the greater issue is that we’re of the human culture.
Hot and cold media:
Hot media is something that doesn’t leave anything to the imagination and cold media is engaging.
Mediation and intermediary:
Intermediary – is complete transparency – medium is non existent
Mediation –
CNN packaging their news broadcast (their production) – this package is the recoding of the message (i.e. war on Iraq)
Flow and stoppage is integral to each other – they act as edges to each other.
Ecstasy of Communication:
Society is changing from cash owed to cash flow
In the past it was about owning a car but in contemporary time its more important how you drive the car.
Comment:
The ownership is placed on the skill over the mechanism – the virtual gamer, google, wikipedia – it’s about owning the machine through the skill.
Idea:
Time based architecture -?????
Surface/boundary
Private/public
Wedding ring –
Ring is nothing but the ceremony surrounding the ring is by far more significant (event overriding object)
Obect is the value
historical value is more important that then object (double check)
pure event
rings are everywhere – potentiality of ring is letent in the world
but the right given to you from a friend is more valuable
value constructed
If we want to create value (in arch) you have to activate eventful eventful engagement.
screen and mirror – its about how we engage it that determines which on eit is
what is obscenity in architecture? what is obscenity?
jerry springer, jackass, howard stern and reality shows questions what is public and what is private? – the more secretive the more successful
amsterdam – drunkeness and prostitution are public which drops the value
economic theory – when scarity is present then value goes up and vis versa
public ownership – does it exist?
its not what you own that determines if its public or private, its how you claim certain things.
its situational logic not transendental logic –
public space – “non private space” does “true” public space exist – did they ever exist?
malls are NOT public they are private – my opinion
Jae – does ownership matter?
MTA – performers are not allowed to set up shop in the tunnels - they have to audition and get a permit to do so – as well as street vendors. all these actions take place in the public realm therefore does this governing rule take away the “public”? elaborate
true sense of private is disconnection
Over Exposed City:
Boundary and surface becomes machine – the mechanism. It is the active negotiator of private/public
Surface is the first contact point between two agencies.
Arabic embassy (France)
Interior façade is composed out of camera lenses – opens and closes with the sun path. These lenses become the negotiator.
Boundary = a means of control (i.e. room) – LOOS – room vs. round (the room condition)
Obscenity – trivialize the subject in order to (de-value)?
Airport objective – maintain the flow
Lag time? – Time that exists between flights – the architecture that we build for airports supports lag time
Water, rail, road – real life interception
Air – the virtual
Maya: where are we going?
In the Place of the Public:
Notion of travel becomes very twisted
Hockey game
You know more about the hockey game if you watch it on TV than if you were in the arena. – Because of views, replays etc.
Therefore you’re more there than the people that have been there.
The Internet becomes a tool for this idea – you’re more there than those who have been there.
Is a depression in the classical sense? Distance (old) modern (contemporary)
The notion of here and there may have been invalidated. Its about why and how we’re here or there.
Experience in rapid secession – compare to slow movement (not to be discussed in black or white)
Slow movement – you get the “whole” experience/adventure
Forms and levels of communication.
- Is communication instinctual or is it learned? Is there such thing as primal communication?
Language and emotion – do you need to understand the emotion that is encoded in the language in order to decode the message?
Are we differentiating between body language and verbal language? What kind of language are we addressing if there are in fact categories of language?
There is a complexity to communication including:
Senses
Perceptions
Time
How does this apply to architecture?
All of our intentions must be encoded into the work… typically this is constructed into the work. It is manifested/staged through ritual and landscape perceptions. THIS IS THE NORM – why?
Cook, eisenmen – all wrote for years before building. They were building their “language” so people could decode their architecture.
If there is something called primal communication than…
We have to access the cultured memory, when we do that the fashioning is no longer important
Our human scale is more important than our cultural fabrication. Therefore there is no difference between US born (modern) child than Ethiopia born (villager) child because the greater issue is that we’re of the human culture.
Hot and cold media:
Hot media is something that doesn’t leave anything to the imagination and cold media is engaging.
Mediation and intermediary:
Intermediary – is complete transparency – medium is non existent
Mediation –
CNN packaging their news broadcast (their production) – this package is the recoding of the message (i.e. war on Iraq)
Flow and stoppage is integral to each other – they act as edges to each other.
Ecstasy of Communication:
Society is changing from cash owed to cash flow
In the past it was about owning a car but in contemporary time its more important how you drive the car.
Comment:
The ownership is placed on the skill over the mechanism – the virtual gamer, google, wikipedia – it’s about owning the machine through the skill.
Idea:
Time based architecture -?????
Surface/boundary
Private/public
Wedding ring –
Ring is nothing but the ceremony surrounding the ring is by far more significant (event overriding object)
Obect is the value
historical value is more important that then object (double check)
pure event
rings are everywhere – potentiality of ring is letent in the world
but the right given to you from a friend is more valuable
value constructed
If we want to create value (in arch) you have to activate eventful eventful engagement.
screen and mirror – its about how we engage it that determines which on eit is
what is obscenity in architecture? what is obscenity?
jerry springer, jackass, howard stern and reality shows questions what is public and what is private? – the more secretive the more successful
amsterdam – drunkeness and prostitution are public which drops the value
economic theory – when scarity is present then value goes up and vis versa
public ownership – does it exist?
its not what you own that determines if its public or private, its how you claim certain things.
its situational logic not transendental logic –
public space – “non private space” does “true” public space exist – did they ever exist?
malls are NOT public they are private – my opinion
Jae – does ownership matter?
MTA – performers are not allowed to set up shop in the tunnels - they have to audition and get a permit to do so – as well as street vendors. all these actions take place in the public realm therefore does this governing rule take away the “public”? elaborate
true sense of private is disconnection
Over Exposed City:
Boundary and surface becomes machine – the mechanism. It is the active negotiator of private/public
Surface is the first contact point between two agencies.
Arabic embassy (France)
Interior façade is composed out of camera lenses – opens and closes with the sun path. These lenses become the negotiator.
Boundary = a means of control (i.e. room) – LOOS – room vs. round (the room condition)
Obscenity – trivialize the subject in order to (de-value)?
Airport objective – maintain the flow
Lag time? – Time that exists between flights – the architecture that we build for airports supports lag time
Water, rail, road – real life interception
Air – the virtual
Maya: where are we going?
In the Place of the Public:
Notion of travel becomes very twisted
Hockey game
You know more about the hockey game if you watch it on TV than if you were in the arena. – Because of views, replays etc.
Therefore you’re more there than the people that have been there.
The Internet becomes a tool for this idea – you’re more there than those who have been there.
Is a depression in the classical sense? Distance (old) modern (contemporary)
The notion of here and there may have been invalidated. Its about why and how we’re here or there.
Experience in rapid secession – compare to slow movement (not to be discussed in black or white)
Slow movement – you get the “whole” experience/adventure
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Jordy: observations of a travellor
“The space created by capital perpetually re-creates its own underworld, its own space of underdevelopment and immobility, and its own wasteland. “
If we consider the articles perceptions and observations of air travel to be true, then what are the implications for the design of cities? In the article she observes that the space allocated to the airport becomes a wasteland because of the noise pollution from aircraft and its distancing from urban centres without appropriate commuting opportunities. How might these conditions be resolved? What are the potential resolutions to this problem?
Boston is resolving some of its transportation issues by burying it under ground. Freeways in LA build huge sound barrier walls integrate them into the city. What are the future conditions of air travel going to be? Is the mitigation or resolution for this problem going to be resolved through technological means or is it going to require the redesigning of cities as space become even more crucial to burgeoning populations? Can we imagine a future of cities built with massive sound deflection panels over communities?
Jordy: Notes: Observations of a traveller
In the place of the Public Observation of a traveler
Martha Rosler
1. Car
2. Buses
3. Airplanes
Interested in:
- The ephemera and experience of air travel (different in time, space, self organization)
- Movement of bodies across distances
- Effacement of the experience by constructs designed to empty the actual experience of its content makes it the carrier of another sort of experience entirely
Air travel and its associated spaces, structures, and experiences compared with the subject of virtual reality…
- The relations of production, mapping political economy onto the physical, produce space.
- Cyber space is part of the collective imagery of late capitalism
- The history of flight is not separate from the history if history of information management
An embryonic start toward virtual reality was the flight stimulator.
- Relationship b/w video games / flight simulation
- Air traffic controllers
Railroad:
- You are at the will of the train schedule
- Perceptual experience of the world passes by while you are stationary
Flight:
- Experience of flight not capitalized by business
- Speed has no meaning in the sky
- Illusions provided
- Passengers lose dignity
- View form plane is dreamlike
- Flying says there’s no journey… only trajectory
• Denial = speed and elevation, safety,
• Absurdity of its social space (le Corbusier designed houses based on air travel)
• Connection to cell phones (Plugged in) = telephone slavery
How different is this condition (cell phones) from the social offender how must wear an electronic bracelet?
Airport:
- multi dimensional, multi functional system whose overriding concern is operational
- no situated in the downtowns (therefore facades are not as important)
- architecturally considered to be a large hangar or shed (functionality)
- human docility, homogeneity, replaceability, transistoriness.
- Money and crown are prim movers
- Surveillance is the second practice
- Wholw system relies oninformation (plane arrivals…etc)
- Microscopic scanning of personal items
Martha Rosler
1. Car
2. Buses
3. Airplanes
Interested in:
- The ephemera and experience of air travel (different in time, space, self organization)
- Movement of bodies across distances
- Effacement of the experience by constructs designed to empty the actual experience of its content makes it the carrier of another sort of experience entirely
Air travel and its associated spaces, structures, and experiences compared with the subject of virtual reality…
- The relations of production, mapping political economy onto the physical, produce space.
- Cyber space is part of the collective imagery of late capitalism
- The history of flight is not separate from the history if history of information management
An embryonic start toward virtual reality was the flight stimulator.
- Relationship b/w video games / flight simulation
- Air traffic controllers
Railroad:
- You are at the will of the train schedule
- Perceptual experience of the world passes by while you are stationary
Flight:
- Experience of flight not capitalized by business
- Speed has no meaning in the sky
- Illusions provided
- Passengers lose dignity
- View form plane is dreamlike
- Flying says there’s no journey… only trajectory
• Denial = speed and elevation, safety,
• Absurdity of its social space (le Corbusier designed houses based on air travel)
• Connection to cell phones (Plugged in) = telephone slavery
How different is this condition (cell phones) from the social offender how must wear an electronic bracelet?
Airport:
- multi dimensional, multi functional system whose overriding concern is operational
- no situated in the downtowns (therefore facades are not as important)
- architecturally considered to be a large hangar or shed (functionality)
- human docility, homogeneity, replaceability, transistoriness.
- Money and crown are prim movers
- Surveillance is the second practice
- Wholw system relies oninformation (plane arrivals…etc)
- Microscopic scanning of personal items
Jordy: Overexposed City Notes
The Over-exposed City:
- Cities and companies having introversion of cities (i.e. Berlin wall)
State’s gateway = airport (city walls)
- Buildings are no longer built according to traditional technical constraints, but to minimize risk (sterile = arrival, non-sterile = departing)
- Designed for safety and precautions
- Intense control and high surveillance experimentation
- Comparison b/w prisons and airports (incarceration)
Access to the city
- Not at gates
- Electronic audience equipment (somebody taking part in a discussion or conversion in permanent transit)
- Breaks in consistency no longer occur in physical space, but in space-time… b/c of the industrial and advanced technology… restructured through interruptions.
- … This causes urban decline
Transformation of enclosures:
- Development of enclosures (fence to screen)
- Boundary surface is continuously transformed
- Recent transformation = interface
Does the urban metropolis have a façade?
“Go into the city”? We are no longer in front of the city, but inside of it!
What is Winnipeg’s façade? I would argue that its you do not perceive Winnipeg to be a city. Rather, its metropolis roots of a collection of independent entities still maintain itself. For instance, if you are visiting the city you do not say that you are going to the city instead you would identify yourself with a particular segment or area.
Metropolis:
- It no longer corresponds to the old divisions of city and control
- “Intramural/extramural” weakened by telecommunications
- Paradoxical phenomenon in which the opacity of construction material sin being virtually eliminated. (i.e. curtain walls)
The interface and transparency seem to be part of the urban condition. With such densities it seems appropriate to remove the claustrophobia. Furthermore, the immaterial of transparency is a perfect reflection of our time, in which we no longer value permanence. The material itself could be anything and does not carry any loaded meanings.
MY Studio: The image is of a screen installation project in a city. The screen functions to electronically capture the movement of the personal passing by and then replay back. In sense it is creating an electronic shadow of the person’s movement. The important implications of the project is its demonstrating how the urban construction is dissolving into an immaterial and electronic interface. The screen isn’t projecting any of the past ideas of permanence, value or materiality. Rather it is portraying movement, immateriality, no depth and instantaneous consumption of the subject matter.
Screen Interface:
- Computers, screens, teleconference
- Depth of field a representation
- Differences b/w positions blur (results in confusion)
- Devoid of limits (electronic ether)
- Describe in instant temporality in diffusion
- Constructed space in new electronic topology
- Solid pace no longer exists
- Near and far disappear
Overexposed image demonstrates one example of how the meaning of the title may be read. The overexposed image has its subject blurred and unclear. There is no clear distinction of what the subject matter is b/c everything becomes the inextricably linked without any way of making clear boundaries.
The title of the article could also be read as a criticism suggesting that we are over-exposed to many of these urban conditions. The current state is of over saturation.
For instance, like a trip to Universal Studios, in which everything is meant to bring you pleasure and to stimulate.
Technological Space-Time:
- No longer night and day (open shutters and TV)
- Chronological and historical time succeeded by a time that instantaneously exposes itself.
- Urban form is no longer demarcated with a line that says here of there, but it synonymous with the programming of a time “schedule”
Oppositions occur b/w the city’s resident occur only in time:
1. Historical time spans identified with monuments
2. Technological time spans have no relationship to calendar of active nor to collective memory
“… Contributing to the creation of a permanent present whose intense pace knows no tomorrow. The latter type of time is destroying the rhythms of a society which has become more and more debased.”
“Every surface is an interface b/w 2 milieus in which a placed in constant with one another”
- Constant surface
- The surface becomes an osmotic membrane
- A thickness without thickness
Camera: “the camera ahs become our best inspector”
Effraction:
Diffraction:
“The overexposure attracts our attraction inasmuch as it portrays the image of a world without antipodes. Without hidden sides. A world in which opacity is not longer a momentary interlude”
- Cities and companies having introversion of cities (i.e. Berlin wall)
State’s gateway = airport (city walls)
- Buildings are no longer built according to traditional technical constraints, but to minimize risk (sterile = arrival, non-sterile = departing)
- Designed for safety and precautions
- Intense control and high surveillance experimentation
- Comparison b/w prisons and airports (incarceration)
Access to the city
- Not at gates
- Electronic audience equipment (somebody taking part in a discussion or conversion in permanent transit)
- Breaks in consistency no longer occur in physical space, but in space-time… b/c of the industrial and advanced technology… restructured through interruptions.
- … This causes urban decline
Transformation of enclosures:
- Development of enclosures (fence to screen)
- Boundary surface is continuously transformed
- Recent transformation = interface
Does the urban metropolis have a façade?
“Go into the city”? We are no longer in front of the city, but inside of it!
What is Winnipeg’s façade? I would argue that its you do not perceive Winnipeg to be a city. Rather, its metropolis roots of a collection of independent entities still maintain itself. For instance, if you are visiting the city you do not say that you are going to the city instead you would identify yourself with a particular segment or area.
Metropolis:
- It no longer corresponds to the old divisions of city and control
- “Intramural/extramural” weakened by telecommunications
- Paradoxical phenomenon in which the opacity of construction material sin being virtually eliminated. (i.e. curtain walls)
The interface and transparency seem to be part of the urban condition. With such densities it seems appropriate to remove the claustrophobia. Furthermore, the immaterial of transparency is a perfect reflection of our time, in which we no longer value permanence. The material itself could be anything and does not carry any loaded meanings.
MY Studio: The image is of a screen installation project in a city. The screen functions to electronically capture the movement of the personal passing by and then replay back. In sense it is creating an electronic shadow of the person’s movement. The important implications of the project is its demonstrating how the urban construction is dissolving into an immaterial and electronic interface. The screen isn’t projecting any of the past ideas of permanence, value or materiality. Rather it is portraying movement, immateriality, no depth and instantaneous consumption of the subject matter.
Screen Interface:
- Computers, screens, teleconference
- Depth of field a representation
- Differences b/w positions blur (results in confusion)
- Devoid of limits (electronic ether)
- Describe in instant temporality in diffusion
- Constructed space in new electronic topology
- Solid pace no longer exists
- Near and far disappear
Overexposed image demonstrates one example of how the meaning of the title may be read. The overexposed image has its subject blurred and unclear. There is no clear distinction of what the subject matter is b/c everything becomes the inextricably linked without any way of making clear boundaries.
The title of the article could also be read as a criticism suggesting that we are over-exposed to many of these urban conditions. The current state is of over saturation.
For instance, like a trip to Universal Studios, in which everything is meant to bring you pleasure and to stimulate.
Technological Space-Time:
- No longer night and day (open shutters and TV)
- Chronological and historical time succeeded by a time that instantaneously exposes itself.
- Urban form is no longer demarcated with a line that says here of there, but it synonymous with the programming of a time “schedule”
Oppositions occur b/w the city’s resident occur only in time:
1. Historical time spans identified with monuments
2. Technological time spans have no relationship to calendar of active nor to collective memory
“… Contributing to the creation of a permanent present whose intense pace knows no tomorrow. The latter type of time is destroying the rhythms of a society which has become more and more debased.”
“Every surface is an interface b/w 2 milieus in which a placed in constant with one another”
- Constant surface
- The surface becomes an osmotic membrane
- A thickness without thickness
Camera: “the camera ahs become our best inspector”
Effraction:
Diffraction:
“The overexposure attracts our attraction inasmuch as it portrays the image of a world without antipodes. Without hidden sides. A world in which opacity is not longer a momentary interlude”
Gorretti: Pleasure of the Text
Pleas·ure n
1. a feeling of happiness, delight, or satisfaction
2. gratification of the senses, especially sexual gratification
3. recreation, relaxation, or amusement, especially as distinct from work or everyday routine
4. a source of happiness, joy, or satisfaction
5. somebody’s desire, wish, or preference (formal or literary)
v
1. vt to give somebody pleasure, especially through sensual or sexual stimulation or gratification
2. vi to derive satisfaction or happiness from something (archaic)
Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
My pleasures are:
1. hearing dirt being sucked in by a vacuum (sound)
2. emptying the lint trap of a dryer
3. finding split ends
4. finding pants that fit
5. cutting nails
6. picking at scabs
7. clean socks
8. warm weather
9. finding money
10. exact change
Bliss n
1. perfect untroubled happiness
2. a state of spiritual joy
Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
My Bliss:
1. getting the last of something
2. watching people trip
3. loud sex
4. scaring people
5. playing tricks
6. free porn
7. teasing
7. getting away with something wrong
8. stealing
9. doing better than others
10. cleaning my ears
1. a feeling of happiness, delight, or satisfaction
2. gratification of the senses, especially sexual gratification
3. recreation, relaxation, or amusement, especially as distinct from work or everyday routine
4. a source of happiness, joy, or satisfaction
5. somebody’s desire, wish, or preference (formal or literary)
v
1. vt to give somebody pleasure, especially through sensual or sexual stimulation or gratification
2. vi to derive satisfaction or happiness from something (archaic)
Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
My pleasures are:
1. hearing dirt being sucked in by a vacuum (sound)
2. emptying the lint trap of a dryer
3. finding split ends
4. finding pants that fit
5. cutting nails
6. picking at scabs
7. clean socks
8. warm weather
9. finding money
10. exact change
Bliss n
1. perfect untroubled happiness
2. a state of spiritual joy
Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
My Bliss:
1. getting the last of something
2. watching people trip
3. loud sex
4. scaring people
5. playing tricks
6. free porn
7. teasing
7. getting away with something wrong
8. stealing
9. doing better than others
10. cleaning my ears
Gorretti: Pleasure of the Text
Emotion, bliss, wisdom, pleasure, do these sensations exist independently or are they simply synonyms of each other? In the Pleasure of the Text they are all determined to exist as their own entity however that is not to say that they do not act as seams of edges for one another. How then do we distinguish the seams and edges and furthermore, how do we begin to label them?
jordy: pleasure of text
Pleasure of text:
The pleasure of text is sanctioned Babel.
Terminology: margin indecision: the distinction will not be the source of absolute classification, the paradigm will falter, and the meaning will be precarious revocable, reversible, the discourse incomplete.
Does writing in pleasure guarantee – guarantee me, the writer – my reader’s pleasure? Not at all, I must seek out this reader with out knowing where he is.
Neurosis: every writer’s motto: mad I cannot be, sane I do not deign to be, neurotic I am. (Page 5)
… The text you write must prove to me that it desires me…
Language is redistributed
- Achieved by cutting
- Two edges created
1. Obedient and conformist
2. Mobile, blank, Death of language is glimpsed… (page 5)
Duplicity: two edges
“ The subversive edge may seem privileged be/c it is the edge of violence: but I is not violence which affects pleasure wants is the site of a loss, the seam, the cut, the deflation, the dissolve which seizes the subject in the midst of bliss. Culture thus recurs as an edge: in no matter what form” (page 7)
The edge is the clearest in form of materiality…?
“Everything is attacked, dismantled: ideological structures, intellectual solidarities, the propriety of idioms, and the sacred armature of syntax : the text no linger has the sentence for its model… a gush of words , ribbon of infra-language.”
Flaubert: a way of cutting, of perforating discourse without rendering it meaningless.
… There is no longer anything, but language.
Status of discourse: narrative is dismantled yet the story is till readable:
- Controlled discontinuities
- Faked conformities
- Indirect destructions
Oedipus
Pleasure of performance: the feat is sustaining the mimesis of language (language imitating itself)… so radically ambiguous that the text never succumbs to the bad conscience of parody.
Is not the most erotic portion of the body where the garment gapes?
- No “erogenous zone”
- Intermittence which is erotic (skin flashing b/w 2 articles of clothing)
- It is the flashing itself which seduces
- Appearance as disappearance
“The pleasure of text is not the pleasure if the corporeal striptease or the narrative suspense. In these cases there is no tear or edges; a gradual unveiling.”(page 10)
“We do not read everything with the same intensity of reading: a rhythm is established, a casual, unconcerned with the integrity of the text”
Skip boring… get to the good parts (always articulations… whatever further reveals the riddle, the revelation of the fate)
Like someone hastily ripping off a strippers clothing in the same order.
The writer cannot choose what will not be read… yet is the very rhythm of what is read and what is not read that creates the pleasure of the great narratives.
What is not enjoyed in a narrative is not directly its content or even structure, but its abrasions. (page 11)
I read on
I skip
I look up
I dig in again
Pleasure of text: what is it for me? Cannot be associated good or bad pleasure… it is subjective. It cannot be too much this… to little that.
The text that comes from culture and does not break with it
There is not behind the text, someone active (the writer) and out front someone passive (the reader) there is not a subject and an object.
Text: the certain body (i.e. anatomy, biology, psychology… etc)
The pleasure of text is that moment when my body pursues its own ideas – for my body does not have the same ideas I do.
A text of pleasure cannot be anything but short…
Pleasure can very well take form of a drift:
- Drifting occurs whenever I do not respect the whole
Nihilism
Doctrine
The pleasure of text is sanctioned Babel.
Terminology: margin indecision: the distinction will not be the source of absolute classification, the paradigm will falter, and the meaning will be precarious revocable, reversible, the discourse incomplete.
Does writing in pleasure guarantee – guarantee me, the writer – my reader’s pleasure? Not at all, I must seek out this reader with out knowing where he is.
Neurosis: every writer’s motto: mad I cannot be, sane I do not deign to be, neurotic I am. (Page 5)
… The text you write must prove to me that it desires me…
Language is redistributed
- Achieved by cutting
- Two edges created
1. Obedient and conformist
2. Mobile, blank, Death of language is glimpsed… (page 5)
Duplicity: two edges
“ The subversive edge may seem privileged be/c it is the edge of violence: but I is not violence which affects pleasure wants is the site of a loss, the seam, the cut, the deflation, the dissolve which seizes the subject in the midst of bliss. Culture thus recurs as an edge: in no matter what form” (page 7)
The edge is the clearest in form of materiality…?
“Everything is attacked, dismantled: ideological structures, intellectual solidarities, the propriety of idioms, and the sacred armature of syntax : the text no linger has the sentence for its model… a gush of words , ribbon of infra-language.”
Flaubert: a way of cutting, of perforating discourse without rendering it meaningless.
… There is no longer anything, but language.
Status of discourse: narrative is dismantled yet the story is till readable:
- Controlled discontinuities
- Faked conformities
- Indirect destructions
Oedipus
Pleasure of performance: the feat is sustaining the mimesis of language (language imitating itself)… so radically ambiguous that the text never succumbs to the bad conscience of parody.
Is not the most erotic portion of the body where the garment gapes?
- No “erogenous zone”
- Intermittence which is erotic (skin flashing b/w 2 articles of clothing)
- It is the flashing itself which seduces
- Appearance as disappearance
“The pleasure of text is not the pleasure if the corporeal striptease or the narrative suspense. In these cases there is no tear or edges; a gradual unveiling.”(page 10)
“We do not read everything with the same intensity of reading: a rhythm is established, a casual, unconcerned with the integrity of the text”
Skip boring… get to the good parts (always articulations… whatever further reveals the riddle, the revelation of the fate)
Like someone hastily ripping off a strippers clothing in the same order.
The writer cannot choose what will not be read… yet is the very rhythm of what is read and what is not read that creates the pleasure of the great narratives.
What is not enjoyed in a narrative is not directly its content or even structure, but its abrasions. (page 11)
I read on
I skip
I look up
I dig in again
Pleasure of text: what is it for me? Cannot be associated good or bad pleasure… it is subjective. It cannot be too much this… to little that.
The text that comes from culture and does not break with it
There is not behind the text, someone active (the writer) and out front someone passive (the reader) there is not a subject and an object.
Text: the certain body (i.e. anatomy, biology, psychology… etc)
The pleasure of text is that moment when my body pursues its own ideas – for my body does not have the same ideas I do.
A text of pleasure cannot be anything but short…
Pleasure can very well take form of a drift:
- Drifting occurs whenever I do not respect the whole
Nihilism
Doctrine
Gorretti: In the Place of the Public: Observations of a Traveler
Air transportation doesn't give us a satisfying journey because they are not proper spaces.
They are:
themed spaces
consumption spaces,
passing through spaces
There is no sense of space (wayfinding, everything needs a sign or directions) and there is no time.
Reaction:
When flights are running late, how do we "make up time in the air?" Is there such a thing? Is air travel the only place wherein we can manipulate time? I suppose time does not hold real value in air travel because time itself is in constant flux (i.e. time change). How does time change affect perception of time? Does it?
Airport surroundings are wastelands because they are not used and they are far removed from the city core.
airport vs. train station
airports are NOT made for meeting and gathering (location)
train stations (penn station and grand station) have meeting spaces but are also cenrtally located.
Reaction:
I don't agree with Rosler's take on airport spaces. I would argue that there is a space that can be considered a space for gathering. For most airports this would be the baggage claim. Although this might not be deemed a proper gathering space people do, despite how short the time may be. Is there really a need for this space in airports anyway?
The Nuances of Air Travel:
It is the only means of transportation wherein you see the fully spectrum of social classes. There are mulitudes of emotion that transpire in airports. You see anger, frustration, sadness, happiness, anticipation, nervousness, anxiety, boredom, confusion, wonder etc. No where else can you find such an array of emotions. Therefore although Rosler argues airports lack the sense of gathering it holds a much more interesting aspect. Can we say that the airport is a space designed for all emotion?
They are:
themed spaces
consumption spaces,
passing through spaces
There is no sense of space (wayfinding, everything needs a sign or directions) and there is no time.
Reaction:
When flights are running late, how do we "make up time in the air?" Is there such a thing? Is air travel the only place wherein we can manipulate time? I suppose time does not hold real value in air travel because time itself is in constant flux (i.e. time change). How does time change affect perception of time? Does it?
Airport surroundings are wastelands because they are not used and they are far removed from the city core.
airport vs. train station
airports are NOT made for meeting and gathering (location)
train stations (penn station and grand station) have meeting spaces but are also cenrtally located.
Reaction:
I don't agree with Rosler's take on airport spaces. I would argue that there is a space that can be considered a space for gathering. For most airports this would be the baggage claim. Although this might not be deemed a proper gathering space people do, despite how short the time may be. Is there really a need for this space in airports anyway?
The Nuances of Air Travel:
It is the only means of transportation wherein you see the fully spectrum of social classes. There are mulitudes of emotion that transpire in airports. You see anger, frustration, sadness, happiness, anticipation, nervousness, anxiety, boredom, confusion, wonder etc. No where else can you find such an array of emotions. Therefore although Rosler argues airports lack the sense of gathering it holds a much more interesting aspect. Can we say that the airport is a space designed for all emotion?
Maya notes from feb 26 meeting
Permanence is no longer important? Is that true? Home is where your heart is? Do we actually establish our roots and have a connection to any particular place? This could be the reason for high divorce. We still value permanence, but we no longer strive for it. Considering resale value as the determinant for purchasing property or products, our investments are non-permanent and our money is constantly being traded on an invisible market for the next best thing.
Replacing culture verse repairing culture. We are more apt to through something out then keep it and repair it.
Time costs money. Who makes things any more, we place value in our gifts by the price of the product not the time that it took for someone to make it.
We are in a non-permanent culture. Extended warranties, the laptop backing up information. Where are the storage spaces in the ultra modern home? We are expected to move from place to place and it is easier to throw something out then to keep it. What happens to the memories that we embed in our products when they get lost or thrown out?
Digital verses analog technology has allowed us to frivolously take pictures of things that we don't actually consider valuable or prescious, unlike our parents or grandparents generation that purchased and kept things that were built to last and retain their value.
Urban form is no longer designated by a line of demarcation between here and there, but has become synonymous with the programming of a “time schedule.”
With the advent of instantaneous communications.. arrival supplement depart: everything arrives with out necessarily departing.
Note: Black berry phenomena. We can do everything via the phone or the internet. We can be in many places at once, in meetings over IP phones. We may never have to leave the house. I don’t think that we will be able to work from home. We are social beings and need to be with other people. That is why computer communities have popped up over the internet (my space, msn chat, chat line, online communities).
Replacing culture verse repairing culture. We are more apt to through something out then keep it and repair it.
Time costs money. Who makes things any more, we place value in our gifts by the price of the product not the time that it took for someone to make it.
We are in a non-permanent culture. Extended warranties, the laptop backing up information. Where are the storage spaces in the ultra modern home? We are expected to move from place to place and it is easier to throw something out then to keep it. What happens to the memories that we embed in our products when they get lost or thrown out?
Digital verses analog technology has allowed us to frivolously take pictures of things that we don't actually consider valuable or prescious, unlike our parents or grandparents generation that purchased and kept things that were built to last and retain their value.
Urban form is no longer designated by a line of demarcation between here and there, but has become synonymous with the programming of a “time schedule.”
With the advent of instantaneous communications.. arrival supplement depart: everything arrives with out necessarily departing.
Note: Black berry phenomena. We can do everything via the phone or the internet. We can be in many places at once, in meetings over IP phones. We may never have to leave the house. I don’t think that we will be able to work from home. We are social beings and need to be with other people. That is why computer communities have popped up over the internet (my space, msn chat, chat line, online communities).
Monday, February 26, 2007
The secret life of Cory Kennedy
Instant celebrity.
A photogenic teenager becomes an Internet celebrity and international style phenomenon before she's even 16. What's a mother to do?
Maya reading week 6
Paul Virilio's Over exposed City
Question of going into the city verses going to the city. I really liked how this question alludes to our invisible and physical boundaries.
You know you are in a city when there is a distinct aspect, you know you have crossed the boundary not when you potentially see iconic images that we use to define the city. Even though you are in the city, you may not believe you are actually there. The relationship between the image and your actual experience are different. Seeing the city skyline, or seeing a very defined boundary such as New York Manhattan when you establish that you are in the city because you have gone over one of the bridges and are on the island. The other problem associated with not knowing if you are in the city, is because the sprawl of surrounding communities have no defining characteristic. The suburbs of New York look similar to the suburbs of LA and similarly the suburbs of Winnipeg look similar to any suburbs of other Canadian cities. I use to live in Airdrie which is out side of the city of Calgary. We use to drive into the “City” each day to drop my Mom off down town and for me to go to school. I always remember seeing the city limit sign that apparently defines where the city is, but looking around all you see are fields, houses. I actually only feel that I know where the city is when I see the sky line as I approach downtown. That is where the city is, even though the physical boundary, or imaginary boundary on the map is located elsewhere.
Ephemeral, fortress that is keeping things internalized, verses our post modern time that does not want to fit into one category or another. Things now push the boundaries and do not follow the rules. Our boundaries are no longer physical, like the wall you see between the Mexico and American border. Instead these boundaries are "immaterial." Since they exist as momentary and instantaneous expressions (549).
I think that this makes it difficult for our global culture to communicate and determine which resources belong to who. If the boundaries are constantly being redefined, we exist in a suspended state of unknowing. If we are all in this state, it is easy to understand how our "cultural reference points" are disappearing.
I particularly liked the comment that our actual "physical structures" are becoming introverted, as they contain all the technology needed to connect you to where ever you want to go. Why is it in this environment we feel safe? Is it the anonymity, control, or illusionistic freedom we have over this technology? I think that although the Internet is opening up communication, it is also threatening the boundaries that we use to establish national and cultural identity. If we, like our cities, are just made up of individual pockets of beliefs, what then do we refer to as our common belief system? What unifies us as a nation, or as a city? Cities that do not clearly define themselves are physical places with place less identity.
Gorretti: Homebodies on Vacation Revisited
During my trip to California I came across a strange tourist destination. Off of the number 10 highway east in the small town of Cabazon sat a gas station, a McDonald's and 2 life-sized dinosaurs; a tyrannosaurus Rex and a brontosaurus to be exact. Although I have not travelled to very many exotic locations I would consider myself to be a seasoned traveller, one that prides myself in the fact I NEVER cecum to the typical tourist attractions. However, when I saw these dinosaurs I had to take a picture along side them. Why I had to see these sculptures in person rather than out of a car window and why I had to take a picture with me them, I'm not sure but I do know it was something I truly felt compelled to do. In all honesty there was a great sense of satisfaction when I stopped and photographed the dinosaurs. I felt as if I was capturing something important, something that was useful and precious but looking back at the photos now I do not get those same sensations. The only thing I get is the faint recollection of the excitement I had when I had first taken the photos. Perhaps that is what its all about. Maybe photos simply allow us to hold on not only to the visual memory, but the emotions that are attached to the events.
Maya Reading week 6
picture taken flying over Pheonix 
In the Place of the Public: Observations of a Traveler by Martha Rosler
This article deals with issues of transportation and the time/space it creates. Martha Rosier compares the form of air transportation to rail way travel. Flight simulations have lead to computer games and simulated environments in cyberspace. Do we have to physically experience the space for it to be real? Is it enough to experience the space through vision alone? This links back to our cultures desire to multi task and be in more than one place at the same time. We expect things instantaneously.
The use of flying instruments has changed the way we view our environment and our relationship to the environment has changed. We become more removed from the environment and by entertaining a simulated environment we begin to loose touch with reality and are unable determine the fake from the real. Why is it that we are reassured by technology that it is ok for our bodies to travel at such high speeds? Perhaps it is because looking out the window of the plane everything is at a smaller scale that we assume that because the structure is made of steel and industrial materials we will be safe. Consumerist and capitalistic ventures help to reinforce this feeling by associating any failures in flight travel to be associated with terrorism and not with malfunctions or human error.
The article also talks about the type of space created in airport environments. The airport actually lacks actual space or time. When you are neither here nor there, the airport fills in this time gap by posing as public spaces that appear to be like a shopping mall. They look at space as either spaces of consumption or spaces of disorder.
The effect that airports have of the surrounding environment is negative. Unlike trains that can go right into the centre and create public space, the plane is on the outskirts of the city and creates a zone of destruction, which devalues the surrounding land in its direct flight path.
As well the space created inside of the air terminal does not allow for intuitive navigation of people. It always seems as if we are just walking down a series of hallways always searching for signs to direct us.
My big question regarding this article is what is it that she proposes we do? Our culture is interested in the immediate response and is not as interested in the journey as in the destination. If we had a better train system would we really have better public space? I ma not sure, with the competing internet communities and the speed in which information is received, I think that the new public space has no physical space at all.
In the Place of the Public: Observations of a Traveler by Martha Rosler
This article deals with issues of transportation and the time/space it creates. Martha Rosier compares the form of air transportation to rail way travel. Flight simulations have lead to computer games and simulated environments in cyberspace. Do we have to physically experience the space for it to be real? Is it enough to experience the space through vision alone? This links back to our cultures desire to multi task and be in more than one place at the same time. We expect things instantaneously.
The use of flying instruments has changed the way we view our environment and our relationship to the environment has changed. We become more removed from the environment and by entertaining a simulated environment we begin to loose touch with reality and are unable determine the fake from the real. Why is it that we are reassured by technology that it is ok for our bodies to travel at such high speeds? Perhaps it is because looking out the window of the plane everything is at a smaller scale that we assume that because the structure is made of steel and industrial materials we will be safe. Consumerist and capitalistic ventures help to reinforce this feeling by associating any failures in flight travel to be associated with terrorism and not with malfunctions or human error.
The article also talks about the type of space created in airport environments. The airport actually lacks actual space or time. When you are neither here nor there, the airport fills in this time gap by posing as public spaces that appear to be like a shopping mall. They look at space as either spaces of consumption or spaces of disorder.
The effect that airports have of the surrounding environment is negative. Unlike trains that can go right into the centre and create public space, the plane is on the outskirts of the city and creates a zone of destruction, which devalues the surrounding land in its direct flight path.
As well the space created inside of the air terminal does not allow for intuitive navigation of people. It always seems as if we are just walking down a series of hallways always searching for signs to direct us.
My big question regarding this article is what is it that she proposes we do? Our culture is interested in the immediate response and is not as interested in the journey as in the destination. If we had a better train system would we really have better public space? I ma not sure, with the competing internet communities and the speed in which information is received, I think that the new public space has no physical space at all.
Maya Theory group discussion notes from feb 25
Discussion on the narritive the media creates about war. Belief systems are being reinforced by tv programs like "24" that propagate a political view on war.
Assigning values in war. You can bomb this area, but not this area because there is fewer casualties. There are absolutes, the absolute is that killing is wrong, there is no cost benefit analysis that will justify this act.
Watching Bombing on Baghdad. War has become a next tv mini series drama. It is set up like a movie that we watch so that it does not appear to be real. Instead it becomes a special that is quickly forgotten about after the show is over. This refers back to the comment that once a narrative has been broadcast it becomes history and we no longer feel effected by it.
9-11 the footage played of the towers going down and people jumping out of the building. There was a certain amount of pleasure watching reality TV, this sense or infatuation with real time events and needing to understand them through a visual means, has actually desensitized us to the consequences of the event.
Assigning values in war. You can bomb this area, but not this area because there is fewer casualties. There are absolutes, the absolute is that killing is wrong, there is no cost benefit analysis that will justify this act.
Watching Bombing on Baghdad. War has become a next tv mini series drama. It is set up like a movie that we watch so that it does not appear to be real. Instead it becomes a special that is quickly forgotten about after the show is over. This refers back to the comment that once a narrative has been broadcast it becomes history and we no longer feel effected by it.
9-11 the footage played of the towers going down and people jumping out of the building. There was a certain amount of pleasure watching reality TV, this sense or infatuation with real time events and needing to understand them through a visual means, has actually desensitized us to the consequences of the event.
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