tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17320907795479683412024-03-05T18:43:24.560+13:00Francisc Nona's Word EpidemicWhy live when you can read? Why die when you can write? Why bother when you can share?xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.comBlogger88125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-91551916391031259342016-01-15T12:15:00.000+13:002016-01-15T12:15:44.333+13:00The mystique of reading<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Reading has a <i>je-ne-sais-quoi</i> about it that always troubles the reasoning minds.</span></h2>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQK50e3Dl9vJlfweF1ZR6TfO_I2wlGGhR2I2ntp2yGUvLXyZ3sAwdKbZNtKNRSn3KuNBOdp6gQxeci1saFzGF5JIQwxbmyXcQIiCEdo2bt3P7z_Mo5WamyYJSPYgqerYJJ5_hjvv5Kr3s/s1600/book.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQK50e3Dl9vJlfweF1ZR6TfO_I2wlGGhR2I2ntp2yGUvLXyZ3sAwdKbZNtKNRSn3KuNBOdp6gQxeci1saFzGF5JIQwxbmyXcQIiCEdo2bt3P7z_Mo5WamyYJSPYgqerYJJ5_hjvv5Kr3s/s400/book.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/m31S5z" target="_blank">Hippies Read Too</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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There is, of course, that insistent
kind of reading, to which I often subscribe, which refuses to read the obvious.
That, in itself, is an act of rebellion. It’s, if you trust me, a way of
asserting a belief in the force of the almighty reader. But try as we might,
strive as we might, the text is there with a reason. And that reason is to
puzzle us. I don’t mean this in the sense of mystery novels, but in another,
more general sense. I mean it in the sense of an encounter. All encounters which
are not re-visitations (re-readings) are, of course, by definition, encounters
with the unknown. Texts are no exception to the rule. Simply put, we never know
what to expect. And that’s precisely what makes texts beautiful, worthy of our
effort, interesting at all. Also – infuriatingly challenging. To someone who
wants to swear that he/she has decoded the cultural means by which texts are
formed and re-formed, i.e. written and read, this reality of the text that
never clarifies its intentions is insufferable. The same applies to someone who
is completely, unequivocally sworn to the idea of reader’s omnipotence. Their
trust in that ability is a little too optimistic, a little too patronising.</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">But let us assume this was correct.
Let us imagine a situation in which the reader, by some miraculous means, manages
to get to the core of the game. Let us imagine that a text has been left with
no place to hide, that we’ve nailed it, so to speak. So?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB">Cui bono?</span></i><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-GB">There’s disappointment in revelation</span></b></h3>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Vil</span><span lang="EN-NZ" style="background: white; color: #545454; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">é</span><span lang="EN-GB">m Flusser said something to a
similar effect about his <i><a href="http://goo.gl/U6Kxra">technical images</a></i>. He made the same
supposition. He was in fact able to give good examples of this class of textual
objects. When one watches tv, Flusser says, one is flabbergasted by the mystery
of the medium. You’re familiar, I suppose, with the children’s puzzlement: how
is it possible to reduce people and buildings to such a small size and,
moreover, put them inside that box where they act as if they were real? It’s a
valid puzzlement, is it not? Most will resolve this shock by suspending their
disbelief. The classical solution of the deserter: flight, don’t fight. Pretend
the danger didn’t exist. Act as if the difficulty has never been posed. It
makes sense. Difficulty, as <a href="http://goo.gl/ppbdC9">Yeats</a> put it,
wears you out. So why bother?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPthsMSwXCjQC2uwD7luMM7usFzcK3O5ajLOA9G3UuJaemBvyfHEc6DvTuKv6ZT6Wy4H0Wm0TwVm-sSeuAy4UwNcdIMwGovmCKVVzChp5D3n0nxb6mnNBIMlzq1KWireyxxwpIAPyt9_Q/s1600/tv+set.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPthsMSwXCjQC2uwD7luMM7usFzcK3O5ajLOA9G3UuJaemBvyfHEc6DvTuKv6ZT6Wy4H0Wm0TwVm-sSeuAy4UwNcdIMwGovmCKVVzChp5D3n0nxb6mnNBIMlzq1KWireyxxwpIAPyt9_Q/s400/tv+set.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/02AE3K" target="_blank">Early Television Museum</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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But – adds Flusser – there’s another
approach to the problem. It’s something akin to the attitude of the hero:
he/she will hold the ground; he/she will fight, will face the difficulty, will
get to the bottom of all this puzzlement. In the case of technical images, this
is possible, if only at the end of some effort. All you need to know is the
technicalities of image production. Once you’ve gained that knowledge you know
that electric impulses replicate the images created in a studio and transport
those replicas into your own tv set. You’ll know, now, that everything you’re
watching is an illusion, that Plato was right, that you can point out with
perfect precision the whole process of creation. No more mystique! You can, if
everything comes to it, replicate the process, because you are enlightened.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB">But the bitter truth is this: enlightenment
is disappointing. As in <a href="http://goo.gl/Nf0ifq">Jonathan Swift’s poem</a>,
once you remove the layers of makeup from a young lady’s face, you’re left with
the horrible truth of her anatomy. And now you have to live with it! Now you
have to be happy with the important discovery you’ve made! Congratulations!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-GB">The fog that protects signs</span></b></h3>
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<span lang="EN-GB">And this is only the materiality of
texts that I’m talking about. I refuse to go into the metaphysical zone (may I
call it that, simply to differentiate it from the material, ‘physical’ constituent:
what with the pen and the paper, the computer keyboard and the printer, the
videotext and the YouTube channel, and so on and so forth), for fear of not
having a proper argument. I believe Flusser’s demonstration to be frightening
enough to curtail any attempt at future arrogance on my part. Yes, I can
exercise my free will, I can do violence to a text by making it mine (even if I
hate the notion of taking-over – of colonising), but I need not be so
outrageously arrogant as to ignore the many roads that lead to the text I’m
reading into.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-GB">The body that reads</span></b></h3>
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<span lang="EN-GB">So let’s face again this assumption
that one can read a text <i>completely</i>.
Let’s face that with the evidence of – I don’t know – irony, double entendre,
jokes, textual traps, hidden meanings, hermeticism. Etc. Etc. Plagues upon the
lives of readers. Let’s do the facing, then let’s go back to the initial idea:
the mystique of reading. And see what happens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUB_vaUCc-d2TP_p1TiBpdxEcc3rzjjy1ZmVYay6MDcy8Vt-OWQ0CuxmzI8jAnUE0882jRi6qeoyyJG6FotP2-RIuQ2uM4ZlDnbFJdXXFxoJX8LaGuYhCIAaar-EXbMiFqPcw_qifVTDg/s1600/wired+brain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUB_vaUCc-d2TP_p1TiBpdxEcc3rzjjy1ZmVYay6MDcy8Vt-OWQ0CuxmzI8jAnUE0882jRi6qeoyyJG6FotP2-RIuQ2uM4ZlDnbFJdXXFxoJX8LaGuYhCIAaar-EXbMiFqPcw_qifVTDg/s400/wired+brain.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/UzBPRU" target="_blank">Kurz Weil AI</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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I would define the mystique of reading
by reference to that tickling sensation, to that tremor of the limbs, to that
quickened heartbeat one experiences when encountering a passage that touches a
nerve. Regarded from this perspective, reading is a seismic business. It causes
real somatic reactions in a reading subject, palpable as all emotions. Put
differently, reading relies on events to prosper. It needs to create those
seismic movements just mentioned.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB">How boring would it be to go on
perusing the surface of a flat desert where there’s no hope for an oasis? Very
boring, indeed detrimental to all forms of reading. If there’s no projection of
a reader’s expectations there’s no pleasure to be gained from a text. The
page-turner argument is a perfect tool from this perspective.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB">In many cases, those sensations generated
by a text are little more than a preamble to something that could be more
important, more complex. But readers often reject the enlightenment that might reside
in the decoding of a passage. They do this for various reasons. ‘We don’t have
enough time’ is one of them. ‘We don’t have enough time to spoil our amazement’
is another one. Since reading marks a gap in the mundaneness of life, we might as
well go with the wind, accept the chance of deserting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB">This escapist theory doesn’t apply
exclusively to literature. The reading of a philosophical text follows the same
pattern. <i>We read in order to see what
happens next</i>. How the argument develops, how the thought is turned into
what it is. Since texts are defined by linear progression, there’s no way of
avoiding this sense of expectation, this hope for what is to come. And as long
as what-is-to-come exists, as long as this present absence titillates us, the
possibility of reading’s mystique is unavoidable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-GB">Dead ends</span></b></h3>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Reading appeals, I believe,
precisely because it is such an interesting concoction of certainty and
uncertainty. On the one hand the letters in front of my eyes. Always there,
bright as daylight, sure as hell, immutable. On the other hand the invisible
meaning. Somewhere else, always somewhere else, never on the page, never
blinding my sight. The former engenders arrogance; the latter – humility. I
mean humility in an almost religious sense. A reader is always a pious reader
insofar as they accept the challenge of not challenging the text beyond the
point of no return.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB">As in Flusser’s technical images,
what would I gain if I managed to subject the text to my impulses? Nothing but
a disappointment, no doubt. I would see the wires that connect the circuits,
the strings that make the text stand together. And then what? Then nothing.
Then a dead-end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Mission accomplished followed by the
despair of boredom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7dcUGq0IXPmYK7o7WHMksxVNT9pbkgUAVeYoJGkFCE3yjj8aJxbMEVUKES-pLRBgpyqL7viAFuXhiRd1p9ot5F1MWeKku6PGE7JrLZflyWcSAQhr5z1dihoXY9LXy3n1CR8PVle9uRCA/s1600/tv+screen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7dcUGq0IXPmYK7o7WHMksxVNT9pbkgUAVeYoJGkFCE3yjj8aJxbMEVUKES-pLRBgpyqL7viAFuXhiRd1p9ot5F1MWeKku6PGE7JrLZflyWcSAQhr5z1dihoXY9LXy3n1CR8PVle9uRCA/s400/tv+screen.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/ekjsOR" target="_blank">Screen Crave</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That’s why the mystique of the text
is so necessary; why it is so necessary that we stop where there’s still hope. Even
if we’re not satisfied. <i>Precisely</i>
because we’re not satisfied. Professional writers know exactly what I mean,
because to them reading is no longer pleasure but something else. Not quite pain
but certainly something else. A professional writer reads in order to rip the
text apart, to see its entrails, to smell its guts, to watch the gore of its
internal functions, and hereby to discover the ‘secrets’ of other writers. If
there is pleasure in this insistence, it will fade the moment this reader asks
the ordinary question, Now what? This question is inevitable in relation to any
finite objects, because once an end has been reached continuation is craved.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB">But what a bliss that reading cannot
produce finite understandings...</span></div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-6786594979916982812015-12-29T23:47:00.000+13:002015-12-30T00:01:30.269+13:00Seven things about procrastination<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Susan Sontag once said, “I read too
much – as an escape from writing.” That’s how reading becomes a god-damned good
excuse, something so addictive it can turn everything into ruin (my urge-to-write
included).</span></h2>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1hIjoNUB58SKV6QkcGbKA6YXCWaQMdAJ7QfEW_zJtmyv7eiGYa1tiAbJCbU15prE4EZHtalWijuvqF7F0dxpJVB0G9hFMfU2KTqw6y5XvuPimmROwVH2k8Bl7JQcj5XDamITWfwPs2k4/s1600/procrastination.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1hIjoNUB58SKV6QkcGbKA6YXCWaQMdAJ7QfEW_zJtmyv7eiGYa1tiAbJCbU15prE4EZHtalWijuvqF7F0dxpJVB0G9hFMfU2KTqw6y5XvuPimmROwVH2k8Bl7JQcj5XDamITWfwPs2k4/s320/procrastination.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/wmIKW9" target="_blank">Work. Progress. Life.</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
1</h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">I don’t want to protest my
innocence. On the contrary. Coz let’s face it, procrastination kills. Worse
than traffic accidents. Putting some creative task aside for later is like
allowing the grim reaper to hack through the best stash of would-be beauties.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Like Sontag, I too read convinced that
reading is the closest thing to writing you can imagine; its best bedfellow.
And also like Sontag, I know I’m wrong. Because reading understood under these
circumstances is not unlike doing dishes when you have a cake to finish for a
better party.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">So yes, I am embarrassed every time
I dare to procrastinate, because when I’m doing it I’m doing it to myself.
There’s no other addressee to my delay and no other victim of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US">2</span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">But here’s another one, from </span><span lang="EN-NZ"><a href="http://the021.blogspot.co.nz/2014/10/something-for-poet-something-for-lover.html#.VoJLnP5FuUk"><span lang="EN-US">Erica Jong</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">“We are so scared of being judged
that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.”</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Now that puts procrastination in a
different light, doesn’t it. The dread that we might be falling short of
whatever anticipations others have of us and our conduct? Everyone who’s ever
been terrified to speak in public or to raise their voice when they knew they
were right – they know what this means. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">But with me there’s yet another aspect
to procrastination that merits discussion. It’s not the fear to be judged. It’s
not the laziness of a good summer’s day. It’s a different fear and a different
comfort. To me, it is the fear of reaching back into that area where everything
becomes a struggle. Because writing is – it’s always been – a struggle to me.
Don’t get me wrong. I do enjoy writing. I do write the hell out of myself and
with an enjoyment that I can only heartily recommend to others. But there’s this
point where I put myself at a risk I hate to revisit. The risk of getting into
a dead end. The risk of reaching the point where I start going in circles upon
circles upon circles, no advancement in sight, no hope for a good outcome.
That’s the thing that gives me the fright. And staying away from it is what I
consider an act of personal comfort.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXVN-HZbB7eEHn9BoDf3dc3tk7EHFDIRL8BquGMlxrnowDNBsLRITtaSOGJZlmimmwZJhzChMck8Shgo8AdbJ_6CsCKO0zxIYUe08WjPyE4gvNer4jVX6zUARJyM3a_ww8cKHVFT5DEkA/s1600/procrastination3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXVN-HZbB7eEHn9BoDf3dc3tk7EHFDIRL8BquGMlxrnowDNBsLRITtaSOGJZlmimmwZJhzChMck8Shgo8AdbJ_6CsCKO0zxIYUe08WjPyE4gvNer4jVX6zUARJyM3a_ww8cKHVFT5DEkA/s400/procrastination3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/q5NuVg" target="_blank">Men's Health</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Often, I resolve this yucky feeling
by giving myself the easy ride of reading.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">I tell myself, whenever I try to
appease this sentiment of guilt, that, at the end of the day, someone who
writes needs to read too. Someone who writes needs to read more than he/she
writes – to be more precise. This promise, alone, provides me with that damned
place where I can hide.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">I’m reading this or this because it <i>must</i> be read. The urge becomes suddenly
clear, it becomes unavoidable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US">3</span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Another reason why procrastination
works is the opposite of the fear I mentioned a little earlier: the certainty
of things that went well earlier. That day all words came out like they were
being milked out of an abundant cow’s udder. That day it was so easy. That day
I was a champion. But with time this certainty too becomes, alas, a pain I’m
left to live with. Because what can I say when, damn if I know why, nothing
seems to coagulate in my brain or under the tips of my fingers hovering over
the keyboard?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US">4</span></h3>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">“What is deferred is not avoided.”
(Thomas More)</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">That would have sounded almost psychoanalytically correct had
More lived in the nineteenth century. The thought of having avoided a task
doesn’t mean the thought of the task has disappeared. That’s why
procrastination is so painful. It comes with this certitude that, no matter
what, there’s no escape: the demon will be back. He’ll have a shower and return
fresh as ever, ready as ever to bite into our resistance to chorological pressures.
So a cycle of postponements is inevitable. It can only be stopped by the act of
doing the damned thing. And although it sounds easy, we all know it’s not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US">5</span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-NZ">The best attempt
at describing procrastination I found in Poe’s story, “The Imp of the Perverse”
(itself an exercise in long procrastination):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-NZ">“We have a task
before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to
make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for
immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to
commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls
are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken today, and yet we put it off until
tomorrow, and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the
word with no comprehension of the principle. Tomorrow arrives, and with it a
more impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety
arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving
for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last hour for
action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us, – of
the definite with the indefinite – of the substance with the shadow. But, if
the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails, – we
struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the
same time, it is the chanticleer – note to the ghost that has so long overawed
us. It flies – it disappears – we are free. The old energy returns. We will
labor now. Alas, it is too late!”</span></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-NZ"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwuOPlsew3uod47GAl1eECCn-Of_3rUa9HIYR0Rph1Lbpk3o7cyiB5my8sS9a88FcQhdVdk83Oh5z9fG5wJud0F8Ngvbc4uy6dtFG5R29jY3P-ftatg1NolRWUeqyUzbdWkQiB9J1QfVA/s1600/procrastination_by_firecaster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwuOPlsew3uod47GAl1eECCn-Of_3rUa9HIYR0Rph1Lbpk3o7cyiB5my8sS9a88FcQhdVdk83Oh5z9fG5wJud0F8Ngvbc4uy6dtFG5R29jY3P-ftatg1NolRWUeqyUzbdWkQiB9J1QfVA/s320/procrastination_by_firecaster.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/bg4qs9" target="_blank">Jane-Beata</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-NZ"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">This perversity that keeps our hands
tied, our voices shut. We crave delay the way we crave a word that must be said
but for which we cannot find the right energy to form an utterance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US">6</span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">But procrastination cannot be all
bad, can it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Perhaps not. Just think of all the
things we do instead of the things we should. They get done! And that’s good.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">What’s more, they’re done with
aplomb. I’m never more intent on doing something than I am when I
procrastinate. All my surrogate actions are performed to perfection. I’m such a
keen and attentive reader when I read in order to postpone writing. I become so
aware of subtleties. The pores of my intellect are wide open to receive the
blessing of a good text. I do – I swear – enjoy my put-off reading more than
the reading done as a task (research, etc.) Somehow, my avoidance makes me
better at performing the alternatives. I would never – never – treat the
alternative with disdain. All guns blazing, I do them like there’s no tomorrow.
That’s why I write so much every time I am supposed to be reading. Funny,
right, how things turn on their own heads. But it’s true. When I need to
research, when it’s urgent, when it’s supposed to happen – like right now – I
embrace procrastination once more, my friend in times of distress, my way of
fleeing responsibility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoN_4uDW_suaoIV84BfqtbKFvK1oWjtV-TG1hHZswxx97qVVOQNiHfpt5ycIBe5csnKyhSF5L5APi84GSc15QUkG1WJdFzKrreJIwc262R3qMJykIka1VlsjrL86BKAmmy7_ed-85sxDQ/s1600/procrastination4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoN_4uDW_suaoIV84BfqtbKFvK1oWjtV-TG1hHZswxx97qVVOQNiHfpt5ycIBe5csnKyhSF5L5APi84GSc15QUkG1WJdFzKrreJIwc262R3qMJykIka1VlsjrL86BKAmmy7_ed-85sxDQ/s400/procrastination4.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/wQ9nEx" target="_blank">The Australian</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
7</h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">When I read instead of writing I
defend myself against a disappointment. (See all of the above for
clarification.) This type of reading is a safeguard against injury. It is a way
of helping me be well and sane. And, no doubt, the act of preserving my soul
thus is a way of doing myself a favor. I spare myself the unpleasant feeling,
usually associated with danger, that I’m on the verge of causing a personal catastrophe.
Delay postpones calamity, and that’s all I need for self-defense.</span></div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-30775814708166111632015-12-15T21:24:00.000+13:002015-12-15T21:24:15.080+13:00Silence doesn’t work<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span lang="EN-GB">I want to go back to a place I
visited </span><span lang="EN-NZ"><a href="http://goo.gl/E5fXUx"><span lang="EN-GB">three posts ago</span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB">. I want to go back to the problem
of frames. But from a slightly different perspective.</span></span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWhs19UhM9lUBswx0fZYROG6CTx0tuLcuODVN3UWkZMlW8AlpDV0a7UWRbutrie-HQRgJXGF6R7sm_xoaLgnkXRQ4t2CIgBA1glTPWjy6hKm6-hG7wmIKSVv1OZwMWcWiWpApmk8XHYdU/s1600/In+silence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWhs19UhM9lUBswx0fZYROG6CTx0tuLcuODVN3UWkZMlW8AlpDV0a7UWRbutrie-HQRgJXGF6R7sm_xoaLgnkXRQ4t2CIgBA1glTPWjy6hKm6-hG7wmIKSVv1OZwMWcWiWpApmk8XHYdU/s400/In+silence.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/3qM65W" target="_blank">Chiharu Shiota</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-NZ"><a href="http://goo.gl/nghc7v"><span lang="EN-US">Beckett</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US">:
“To restore silence is the role of objects.” Objects, I would venture to say
(keeping the necessary distance from terminology, which would, I think, require
me to be more precise), objects, that is to say, objectivity. Or in other
words, everything that’s beyond us, beyond the borders that make us whole.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">The “ghastly business”</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">It’s the outside of us that can
bring us back to that silence of when we didn’t have to make up things, when we
dealt with language naked (both us and it). Silence, then, is what dwells beyond
the frame, what flourishes in the open (see </span><span lang="EN-NZ"><a href="http://goo.gl/2g8c1h"><span lang="EN-US">Giorgio
Agamben</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US">).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">To be able to enjoy that silence we
would have to damn art. We would have to simply eradicate the frame, behave as
if it has never existed. Otherwise, what a cacophony of attempts, what a
hurricane of trials and errors, what a useless, impractical, wretched
condition: in Beckett’s words, “a ghastly business,” or more appropriately,
“senseless, speechless, issueless misery.” To Beckett, the eradication of the
frame takes the form of an obliteration of words. Since writing is what he
cares about, it is writing that he wants to eradicate. He cares about it so
much that he wants to protect it from the noise that comes with utterances. In
order to construct the same emptiness of expression, a painter might want to
write off dabs of colour, a musician might attempt literal silence (à la </span><span lang="EN-NZ"><a href="https://goo.gl/6gdXlf"><span lang="EN-US">John Cage</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US">). Beckett, who writes, writes so as to stop the further progression of
writing. Because progression is, let’s face it, the expansion of noise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">The sounds of the Other</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">But you see how even these instances
of rebellion need to take place somewhere. They need to literally <i>take place</i>. They need, in other words,
to happen within an identifiable territory, within a given frame. That’s why
the frame cannot be ignored. It jumps at you just as you think you’re escaping
it. John Cage’s episode is soundless and we’re fine with that for now; but it
cannot be spaceless as well. His silence must happen on a stage, within the
coordinates of a music show, with the necessary props that make everything look
like a joke, like the jest of music.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzW-7vCbWRRl54ZJK1800xifWqhJurn0mzPJJr9FxhwrvvEBsKx7w-J7euyfK2yp4AIcj3k-t7vCsxhP1ZSZBhCMukSKl00wKt5dwvJZhBla6wdWC4_COutLDYX1AvIvQ7lxmi_S8yAYs/s1600/Loud+speakers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzW-7vCbWRRl54ZJK1800xifWqhJurn0mzPJJr9FxhwrvvEBsKx7w-J7euyfK2yp4AIcj3k-t7vCsxhP1ZSZBhCMukSKl00wKt5dwvJZhBla6wdWC4_COutLDYX1AvIvQ7lxmi_S8yAYs/s400/Loud+speakers.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/STQ9A8" target="_blank">Ausopinion</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">And what’s more, that eradication he
proposes isn’t really eradication. Yes, he eliminates his own sounds, but that
doesn’t impede the sounds of the Other. When the stage is mute, it’s the
off-stage that becomes noisy. And that is due to the very fact that the show
needs that stage. That frame. This is, perhaps, why Cage could not do without
instruments. In order to make a joke about music he needed the frame of music
itself. Otherwise, who would have known what it was that he was jesting about? Without
the frame the best one can get from such a situation is a pathetic candid
camera act, where the participants are fooled because they didn’t know they had
been targeted. The audience needs to recognize the target of the joke, and that
target can only become apparent if the frame is re-instated for the sake of
recognition. Cage instructs his performers to have the instruments on stage in
order to avoid confusion, and that’s important. Precisely for the reasons
mentioned above.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">The soundless tree that hears itself</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Confusion is apparent in a stageless
state, when there’s no way of understanding, when no event has taken place, so
as to draw our attention towards its presence. Confusion is when there are no
instruments on the stage, when there is no stage, when there is no <i>4’33’’</i>, when there is no John Cage. “To
restore silence is the role of objects.” But where there are objects there
cannot be silence, unless there’s something else missing: the questioning
subject, the subject that <i>is</i> by
virtue of questioning the frame. You know the old kindergarten riddle,
attempted by philosophers but never quite given a satisfactory answer other
than the presumption of unperceived existence: If a tree falls in a forest and
no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyiPmErofyVBdX9da1GVk-vdBHmLrNf6rc1beSyGocoLUXRbGvr4uMeuxjuyXej1arf5aiXrav-_vKNCtgNMM8EAz0PPAsgO3HoM-g3zogNikTsiD0VEYHMSF8oibF-Fms4AuxN7Fq9WQ/s1600/Fallen+tree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyiPmErofyVBdX9da1GVk-vdBHmLrNf6rc1beSyGocoLUXRbGvr4uMeuxjuyXej1arf5aiXrav-_vKNCtgNMM8EAz0PPAsgO3HoM-g3zogNikTsiD0VEYHMSF8oibF-Fms4AuxN7Fq9WQ/s400/Fallen+tree.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/abjMjn" target="_blank">Style of Design</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Confusion reigns supreme right here,
since the given question proliferates more, equally confusing, questions. If we
aren’t there, in the forest, while the tree is falling, how can we even know
that it has fallen?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">In their objectivity, objects are,
indeed, frameless. They are, in that case, non-objects, since they cannot be
delimited, separated from silence, outlined. A tree can fall all it wants: the
fall will be significant only to itself. It will, therefore, escape our frame
of understanding and representation. It will leave, in other words, complete
silence in our heads. None other than the confusing silence just mentioned.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Vladimir and Estragon need a stage</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">So to speak of a pure off-stage, of
a frameless world, would mean not to speak of it at all. Because as soon as the
first word is uttered, as soon as I bring up the question of the frame, the
frame emerges from silence and presents itself as a loud statement. A word is
all it takes for the frame to become apparent. Putting on a show where the
stage dissolves into the audience doesn’t erase the stage from the picture; it
only enlarges it. A stage is what we have, no matter how hard we might try to
eliminate everything else. Include the spectator if that’s what you will.
There’s only going to be more of us playing the roles. There will be more
roles, I presume, more possible accidents, but the frame is still the same:
just one, just there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">What I think I’ve been trying to say
here is simple. Imagining an art of non-art is as absurd as thinking that it
would be possible to carry water in a sieve. Yes, it is wonderful to imagine it
possible. Yes, it warrants all the efforts in the world. But at the end of it
all, at the end of all efforts, there’s the frame, waiting, waiting to see what
we make of it. Waiting, that is, being there forever, like the two idiots
waiting for a nonexistent Godot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioZGxMSNJYinqqgtkShAOkjvw1y384_wXbRdg4yZGbeYyjHXIJ7rEhBc3JdDbd4j5LJ-yL6ohaUYCh7E5M2cB_d1k1EiHsb19vjq9rOIu-NvSOZhMXLZeMuOw6hJLWqr0nzAvM_Sy9RIg/s1600/Godot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioZGxMSNJYinqqgtkShAOkjvw1y384_wXbRdg4yZGbeYyjHXIJ7rEhBc3JdDbd4j5LJ-yL6ohaUYCh7E5M2cB_d1k1EiHsb19vjq9rOIu-NvSOZhMXLZeMuOw6hJLWqr0nzAvM_Sy9RIg/s400/Godot.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/9lq1mQ" target="_blank">Alisa Mandel</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So then my conclusion: I can’t see a
way of approaching silence that is not always already situated within a frame.
Recognizable, discernible, delimitable. So then this: in order to make silence
possible we must not take it seriously. We must not take it at all. We must
leave it there, because <i>there </i>is the
definition of silence.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">There</span></i><span lang="EN-US">, you
guessed it, is not <i>here</i>. With all the
implications that may follow from this statement.</span></div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-34275462210104797292015-11-30T19:58:00.000+13:002015-11-30T20:06:44.017+13:00Because writing is such a virtual thing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">We tend to equate the virtual with
things that bear the label of the digital. And as such, we often fall into the
trap that this association sets for us.</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj2DV5q7YX5XatqWCahk4aUQyJSTZ8gfDIl5eT7KWKiweQmbdscekJ8eip3saCiWSzOS39WRuZu2dZ-TxnDI3a9cJo0YVmJUI2NM_qMvGxza1zEnAHihHUQQSRrskEjLSmap6kQOpuXV4/s1600/mary_and_max_image_wallpaper_for_desktop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj2DV5q7YX5XatqWCahk4aUQyJSTZ8gfDIl5eT7KWKiweQmbdscekJ8eip3saCiWSzOS39WRuZu2dZ-TxnDI3a9cJo0YVmJUI2NM_qMvGxza1zEnAHihHUQQSRrskEjLSmap6kQOpuXV4/s400/mary_and_max_image_wallpaper_for_desktop.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/1FptNy" target="_blank">Bioskop24</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Let’s take a look at a few things. What
exactly are the criticisms formulated against social networks, of all things?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>That they’re solipsistic to the
point of turning us antisocial</li>
<li>That they’re privatizing the essence
of public speech and, therefore, are likely to harbor elements dangerous to
society (the list never changes: extremists, pedophiles, terrorists, etc.,
etc., etc.)</li>
<li>That they are undermining a presumed
righteous core of the public soul with their guerilla tactics</li>
<li>That they’ve put public valor under
a gigantic question mark, throwing us all into regrettable immoral mire, making
us a tribe of selfish cowards</li>
<li>That they spread misinformation,
second-grade truths, often falsity</li>
<li>That, because of the above, they’re
terroristic to a high degree</li>
<li>That they have no cause, no real
cause, and that, consequently, they enjoy ranting and running about like an
empire of headless chickens</li>
<li>That they’re so goddamn anonymous
they obfuscate all attempts at creating a ‘decent’ (yes, the word gets
mentioned pretty often!) discussion based on the acknowledgment of the enemy</li>
<li>That, because of them, enemies are no
longer what they used to be</li>
</ul>
I like to think of the above as a list
of phobias.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Rumors are widely spread that social
networks act subversively, in the shadows of good-and-healthy, i.e. acceptable,
interaction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUIlaujolDNLmuGDMKJ4mG196XuTBZLEQUa8fAekZ2FnEdu9CAoWmvHdv0FymN8bRolxDmXMuoD4UBEAnLB8TWpAodgNsD_FbleV5ko6ifF1ZIpTIp4bz4YLUzkDWnGLfIvCarOEXXNXk/s1600/Mary+and+Max_4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUIlaujolDNLmuGDMKJ4mG196XuTBZLEQUa8fAekZ2FnEdu9CAoWmvHdv0FymN8bRolxDmXMuoD4UBEAnLB8TWpAodgNsD_FbleV5ko6ifF1ZIpTIp4bz4YLUzkDWnGLfIvCarOEXXNXk/s400/Mary+and+Max_4.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/SptHMh" target="_blank">Cinematic Catharsis</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But this (this terror, this argument
of fear) is not about social networks. Or not exactly about their inherent
iconoclasm. This is about writing at large.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">The ill sentiments caused by social
networks must indeed be due to the ill sentiments engendered by writing at
large.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Social networks, and all things
online for that matter, have flourished out of writing’s virtual nature. And that’s
a truth we must not overlook.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Avoiding direct gaze</span></b></h3>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Simply put, writing makes it
possible to avoid the face-to-face. <i>Verba
volant, scripta manent</i> – this is the dictum that articulates the power of
script over speech. But at the same time, it is an argument for an act that
takes place in solitude, far from the madding crowd, in one’s closet, in one’s
own work space.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">As Alain Badiou has put it <a href="http://goo.gl/LJBjRz">recently</a>, “thought resides in the solitude of labor.”
As such, a thought always poses a threat, in the way the private sphere has
been posing threats against the public domain ever since the two categories
started being discussed together. What happens in the privacy of an individual life
risks escaping control, and therefore becomes undesirable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">That’s our writing, right there.
Solipsistic, relying on a separation from public life, the process of writing
is as dubious as the process of thinking out of control. Publication is,
therefore, the sanction of ideology given to writing. In order for writing to
be validated, it needs to appear; it needs to come about. Appearing in print is
the most public of forms taken by writing. Of course, writing appears in many
other forms. Writing, for instance, appears when a social subject of no particular
distinction <i>becomes</i> a writer; when
he/she has produced a text that hasn’t been read yet. We’re talking
pre-publication. We’re talking a state that’s more akin to thought production: devoid
of public value, unacknowledged, “residing in the solitude of labor.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Fictions we enjoy</span></b></h3>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Written words are nothing but that:
words. They are not truths. Truth transgresses the printed page. We have
invested writing with this strange attribute which has become a kind of
obligation: to produce truth, to deal in irrefutability, to describe things as
they are. But it’s always been too much to think of writing in these terms.
Written manipulation, propaganda, ideological scriptures, the belief in logos –
these are no guarantors of writing’s ability to produce truths. On the
contrary, they show how weak writing truly is, since it needs the suspension of
our disbelief in order to operate at all. Only if we buy into the fictionality
of written discourses can writing work as a persuasive tool.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-MmEuf0FVOHGzAVZqC63LZLE_Y4inlwWNEnZ_jZqxuhB5lQ_fj5YA71QCzu5M74POC8VGW-zJyrPCZoaOQx8LJLSvdmCn8erV4vWvmerqRn72Ohdst0MH_3aLAoyAqxAVqGJt0bhhWVk/s1600/Mary+and+Max_2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-MmEuf0FVOHGzAVZqC63LZLE_Y4inlwWNEnZ_jZqxuhB5lQ_fj5YA71QCzu5M74POC8VGW-zJyrPCZoaOQx8LJLSvdmCn8erV4vWvmerqRn72Ohdst0MH_3aLAoyAqxAVqGJt0bhhWVk/s400/Mary+and+Max_2.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/SptHMh" target="_blank">Cinematic Catharsis</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Not to mention that persuasion
itself is not production of truth but production of assent. If I’m good enough
at manipulating rhetorical devices, I can persuade you of anything. Even of an
untruth.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">If this sounds like
prestidigitation, it is. Magicians do precisely that: they <i>make</i> beliefs. They persuade you, against your better judgment, that
a coin can be fished out of one’s ear or that rabbits can inhabit peacefully the
insides of a top hat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">But we know that all of the above is
untrue. We know, yet we indulge. We know that writing gives birth to fictions,
yet we take these fictions at face value.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Since we know with certitude that
writing produces deceits, we know, at the same time, that the pleasure we get
from it is a guilty pleasure. From Plato onwards, writing has been reprimanded many
times for this departure from truth. And so, to trust writing is to trust something
that is fundamentally flawed. The direct consequence of this is that we cannot
swear allegiance to writing unless we reinforce it with the armor of ideology,
which is about believing in spite of <i>the
otherwise</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Afraid and alone</span></b></h3>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Writing <i>had</i> to withdraw into the writer’s solitude, since, like all forms
of prestidigitation, it must rely on a secret, on a truth untold and unsayable.
Public writing (if such is ever allowed to exist) must be avoided precisely
because of this sanction of the public sphere, where standards of objectivity
demand full display.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">What we do witness publicly is not writing
but its offspring, reading. The act of reading is the public negotiation of the
written discourse. It’s where we all end up as soon as we’ve been spotted by an
audience, be it as small as it may be – the audience of one, if you like.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Writing is, for this reason,
suitable mostly for introverts or for those afflicted by speech impediments. For
those who, in the able words of <i><a href="https://youtu.be/x2rQzv8OWEY">Rammstein</a></i>, are disposed towards declaring:
“wir haben Angst und sind allein” (We are afraid and alone).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjU_9eRjx5d_Hr45Q_lS96gQw9ujXnzixebylSO-S5chb7kOPB3_0ubrkLZFKz7UWp7dPVJjo0kfEg2hPJMDvLOBCgTLWDvyADSZNFp2Fslb96JZSAWvSWHpTkQYzBjH7dI9RyLJCV1oY/s1600/mary-and-max1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjU_9eRjx5d_Hr45Q_lS96gQw9ujXnzixebylSO-S5chb7kOPB3_0ubrkLZFKz7UWp7dPVJjo0kfEg2hPJMDvLOBCgTLWDvyADSZNFp2Fslb96JZSAWvSWHpTkQYzBjH7dI9RyLJCV1oY/s400/mary-and-max1.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/1ErxX5" target="_blank">Bergen Filmklubb</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I’ll leave it to the suspicious to return
to the beginning of this post and draw the lines between writing and social
networks, then. I hope they’re clearer now. If they only listened to <a href="http://goo.gl/xVMFjR">Myra Breckinridge</a>, the job would be so much
easier: “The novel being dead, there is no point to writing made-up stories.”
If we know writing to be what it is, is it still fun to indulge in its
abilities?</div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-45114901081400936842015-11-16T21:47:00.000+13:002015-11-16T22:11:05.605+13:00In defense of bad reading<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">I have a problem with the customary
reproaches leveled against those who, it is said, don’t read seriously and
in-depthly (apologies for the adverb but I couldn’t resist). Deep
reading. Such an interesting concept! One that makes me think of diving rather than
desk-bound perusal. But that’s just me.</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizp0qAhUrSuF63o8iuutNshOij_aIHJ7-Tie3lqXlQJy2xIQ8F17x1_iRwrvC70jNLw74_ZmOi1YBmlcrA-9HyJn6IAQz_Bk23lIrKz2BM0OD-6RbaHcgJIFoqURwg_VZ4ZwP4WdZu0JU/s1600/Reading+at+the+beach.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizp0qAhUrSuF63o8iuutNshOij_aIHJ7-Tie3lqXlQJy2xIQ8F17x1_iRwrvC70jNLw74_ZmOi1YBmlcrA-9HyJn6IAQz_Bk23lIrKz2BM0OD-6RbaHcgJIFoqURwg_VZ4ZwP4WdZu0JU/s400/Reading+at+the+beach.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="https://goo.gl/yV4MlB" target="_blank">Contently</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We want reading to be deep. That’s
not all. We want <i>all </i>reading to be
deep. All of it, page after page, book after book. We want our minds busy in an
almost professional manner. Like academics, if you get my drift. Because
academics – well, they know how to read <i>well</i>.
Their reading is perfectly tuned. It can spot an intention, the hint of a
meaning, no matter how small. The reading of an academic is able to tell you,
on the spot, what the author truly wanted to say. You see how this kind of reading
is x-ray-like. It can pierce through a book, it can see beyond the visible.
Reading of this kind blooms like a flower that’s taking itself very, very
seriously.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">But there’s something to be said
here, before we go mad with passion. A question. How many
people do read a book with all these good intentions? Academics, students,
scholars. Ok, all ticked. But who else?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Behind this question stands,
obviously, the generalized concern I’ve noticed (and I’m sure I’m not the only
one) with the perils of new technologies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Hands-free reading</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">For a long time we complained, if I
remember correctly, that not enough was being read. That books were waiting in
vain to be picked up from their shelves by individuals too interested in
watching tv or playing video games, or simply being couch-potatoes that fried
slowly in the oil of their own apathy. Then something happened. (In the way
technology comes about, it always seems as thought it has appeared out of the
blue.) Tablets and smart phones came about, cloud storage and online databases,
and now there’s more reading taking place than ever in the history of humanity.
Are we satisfied, though? No. We’ve reformulated another complaint. Those who
were not reading before are now reading incorrectly, inappropriately,
irreverently even.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Pr7ITRTcV8T0ykdFTVmJkltQuOXGU2hxX5S554bFZ0mfKyFWPbxrhPdtmU6eALw6rM8WZp6c3YixG61jXXjvsxWdxvDcRf1FO3SFCXLOsIsKksxGiRB-mEQgak23R20dZM6ZyhP5HH8/s1600/Reading+like+an+academic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Pr7ITRTcV8T0ykdFTVmJkltQuOXGU2hxX5S554bFZ0mfKyFWPbxrhPdtmU6eALw6rM8WZp6c3YixG61jXXjvsxWdxvDcRf1FO3SFCXLOsIsKksxGiRB-mEQgak23R20dZM6ZyhP5HH8/s400/Reading+like+an+academic.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/rFdHcL" target="_blank">Academic Sciences</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">The problem with this new complaint
is primarily a strategic one. It belongs in the infrastructure of learning. How
is one who wasn’t reading <i>at all </i></span><span lang="EN-NZ">supposed to have learnt, by his/her own accord, to read like a pro?
How? As we have agreed before, they’ve never had the tools to be Readers.
Never. They never liked it, they never had that special chemistry within their
souls, they never did what was necessary. Then why are we complaining about
them? I’ll leave this question here (no need for an answer) because I’ve got
another one at the ready. Haven’t we somehow forgotten that most readers read
for a kind of pleasure that’s more akin to movie-watching and videogame-playing
than to any highbrow objective? Take a look around. There are more readers at
the beach, in a train or bus, on a bench in a park, in bathtubs and on toilet
seats – than in the world’s libraries. Note: there’s nothing wrong with reading
like that. What I mean to say is this: most readers do it because they want to
relax. Reading like a pro is painful. It requires a pen or pencil in one hand,
a library in the other (to find concordances, to draw parallels, to note down
peculiarities of style and intertextual similarities). That’s why reading like
a pro is usually limited to the pro.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-NZ">The reader who seeks relaxation wants their hands free of any
prosthetics. Hands-free reading is for fun. It is for giggling when a funny
passage comes about, for the heartbeats to accelerate when suspense kicks in,
for pallor to settle on one’s face when he/she comes across a horror scene.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">One way of reading</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-NZ">The complaint against new readers comes from a minority group: the
careful readers, the practitioners of close reading, the examiners for whom
reading is not skimming but perusal, not browsing but inspection. This minority
group forgets an essential aspect of the story they tell: they’re <i>trained</i> to read this way. They’ve spent
hours and hours educating themselves, turning their attention from the easy
bits or complicating the same to the point where they’re turned into something
unrecognizable. These readers deal well with difficult texts because <i>they</i>’ve made those texts difficult.
Self-flagellation is the favourite technique of the readers with busy hands.
They don’t accept ease because, for some reason, ease comports the risk of
stultification. It’s like looking at a horse that’s gone through expensive
dressage and not seeing that the same animal is equally capable of pulling a
cart.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-NZ"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3dpj8FdQD8oadhnIx5uosd_DXQM2J9wos0dD3NAukWsdwrEcgBsGuwGPZDTcTQ4txOVvVv1SuuT5tLrmLsaMm-yxTFD32qX58skhnynJluPGU6BPuvVY8ov8RoLDaM9HrGgFxIRdRKjA/s1600/Reading+in+a+train+station.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3dpj8FdQD8oadhnIx5uosd_DXQM2J9wos0dD3NAukWsdwrEcgBsGuwGPZDTcTQ4txOVvVv1SuuT5tLrmLsaMm-yxTFD32qX58skhnynJluPGU6BPuvVY8ov8RoLDaM9HrGgFxIRdRKjA/s400/Reading+in+a+train+station.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/PTGhQo" target="_blank">PsyBlog</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
With reading, though, the problem is that its high horses are taken
for granted. There are rites of passage throughout school, various forms of
taming and training, all meant to educate the reader, to make them sensitive to
the finely tuned and the highly pitched. But what should happen with those who
haven’t (for one reason or another) acquired the techniques that guarantee
their acquisition of greatness? Those who have fallen through the cracks and
yet still want to read a book the best they can? The best they can!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-NZ">This is where my problem lies. In applying that one-size-fits-all
adage that says, ‘a book can be read in a million ways.’ If that’s the case (and
it must be!) then hands-free reading is also a form of reading. So let’s accept
it. I don’t care that it doesn’t add value to the ontology of reading. I don’t
care that it leaves the reader speechless at the end, incapable of articulating
a thought, of formulating a cogent analysis. It’s a form or reading and that’s
that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">A perversity</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-NZ">For those who want to reach depths, there’s room enough to develop
their own passion. That’s because their reading is also <i>one</i> form of reading. It’s not the absolute form, it’s not the only
one. The democracy of intellectual matters contains, like the democracy of
politics, strong binary opposites: high and low, poor and rich, adventurous and
timid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-NZ">What goes unacknowledged in this story is a simple fact of personal
obligation: I must not impose my pleasure upon another subject. That would
amount to tyranny. To perversity. I can draw attention to the fact that other
options are likely to exist – that goes without saying. I can, if I am smarter,
better equipped, luckier, I can point out the richness of the world of reading.
But I must not talk about reading in terms of preferences. <i>De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum</i>. I must not pull my nose
in disgust when I hear another’s preferences. My likes cannot be another’s, unless
by accident. If I belong in a community of interpreters (as Stanley Fish likes
to put it), that belonging is the result of pure chance. It’s not unlike being
born in a particular language.</span></div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-70493013293014372152015-11-02T22:15:00.000+13:002015-11-02T22:15:03.402+13:00The question of the frame is always wrong<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">We learn
that the most terrible of things, the stuff likely to return in nightmares, might
very well be this: to keep your eyes on the frame, only to realize (after the
act, after the pleasure) that what had mattered all the way had happened outside
the frame. To spend hours with your eyes fixated on the stage only to learn
that the show was somewhere else; that what you watched was only a detour, a
joke, an inexistent show. Painful, isn’t it? Downright embarrassing, one might say.
But still.</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoMMftmNYE6f07yIvIvBAIy2OdxfkA_j8VixX84fG5Uet7cEvTLWbSciZZAaKXjPHGuIw9HsdE_Ercjl9WK6v6M02jDdXVSgI0MNm3upTrWaOairllPIavSs24HTGu4foiPrI04EcxcZk/s1600/Empty+stage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoMMftmNYE6f07yIvIvBAIy2OdxfkA_j8VixX84fG5Uet7cEvTLWbSciZZAaKXjPHGuIw9HsdE_Ercjl9WK6v6M02jDdXVSgI0MNm3upTrWaOairllPIavSs24HTGu4foiPrI04EcxcZk/s400/Empty+stage.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/QANU8z" target="_blank">Hippo Wallpapers</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The question
we formulate as soon as we become aware of the risk is: how to avoid all this?
How to stop this embarrassment from happening? But the question itself is
greatly misguiding. At the end of the day, all there is for us to see is the
frame. The work of art is presented to us on that stage, through those actions.
There’s nothing else but the stage. It’s what we’ve paid for, so it’s what
we’re getting.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Don’t kill the messenger!</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
To watch, to
read, to contemplate – these things need to be considered <i>as if</i>. Always as if. As if there were a show on stage that could be
taken literally. (All writers want, ultimately, to be taken literally –
otherwise why would they write? Why would they invest so much effort into the
writing of letters?). As if there were such a show but knowing all the way (sensing!)
that there’s never been any literal thing to behold. This is exactly like
keeping your eyes within the frame but seeing only what's beyond it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Every
piece of text sends us away from itself, into the nebulous uncertainty of
meaning. But the movement-out happens via the frame. In order to go beyond you
need to start from being within.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We know too
well that meaning is not on the page but somewhere else. It might be in us,
readers. It might be in the encyclopedia of the world: in this world which, like
a vast encyclopedia, contains everything that has ever been possible to write,
everything that has ever carried a meaning.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The page is only a messenger. Then
every time we have an account to settle with the page we must, at least,
remember that the messenger must not be killed. The same goes for the stage,
another materialization of the page. Or the painting surface, or the block of
marble. There’s no meaning in them at all. Meaning occurs when a well-intended
human individual starts filling them with his/her intentions.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A dormant stage,
let’s say before the beginning of a play, is nothing but a wooden structure
which might indicate a place where dramatic pieces are staged every now and
then, but that would be all. The stage-in-itself can only have a repeatable
meaning, one that is carried on from one play to the next and never changes.
Change occurs only when an individual play is being acted out, when the frame
is filled, when it becomes significant to look at the interior of the frame and
ignore the rest.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The art of
the stage is (no need to remind anyone) an art of illusions. Creative
prestidigitation. But the success of these deceptions depends on the ability of
the stage to channel attention, to make itself the object of some mystical adoration. Like an ideology, a stage makes us believe, although we
know that what takes place on it isn’t true. In this case, looking outside of
the stage is not recommended, unless we want to spoil the show.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>The frame is a territory of forgetting</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This means,
simply, that the frame cannot be ignored. That it’s impossible to behave as
though it did not matter. Because it matters greatly. The frame is where the
spectacle of the work of art is set out to unfold. A work of art in itself can
be called a work of art precisely because it can be delimited. Art is <i>not
</i>existence, <i>not </i>disinterested existence. It is precisely the opposite of that,
the counter-argument placed against the argument of what can <i>be</i> without <i>signifying</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikL76QOa6ZLzzowugN_gJI3ldpLHSIzQNGxbQ4-Jp1Dl4LZVsLAD3YFK-TE3AA6cdzU7u2AHz-L6-TT-5rvz82RyWhQO_03Kdy_hz3B7SrGOO3lqzYr5QPyDo9Q6VWFmpLQsx9_HpT6i0/s1600/Stage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikL76QOa6ZLzzowugN_gJI3ldpLHSIzQNGxbQ4-Jp1Dl4LZVsLAD3YFK-TE3AA6cdzU7u2AHz-L6-TT-5rvz82RyWhQO_03Kdy_hz3B7SrGOO3lqzYr5QPyDo9Q6VWFmpLQsx9_HpT6i0/s400/Stage.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/MDhGom" target="_blank">USC Institute for Creative Technologies</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Insofar as existence is without meaning, looking
outside the frame of art is looking into the non-signifying immensity of
existence. Not a very encouraging perspective for us, dwellers in signification,
since reading outside the frame means reading outside of meaning. The only
outcome of such reading-outside-the-frame must, therefore, be
non-signification. The absurd, perhaps, although there’s still meaning in
there. (The absurd is the meaning of non-meaning, but the non-signifiable
transgresses even this minimalist meaning, insofar as it cannot even be
postulated as potential.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Writing,
then, makes meaning. It draws a frame because the intensity of framelessness is
not conceivable to the subject who has learnt to speak, who has learnt to use
language in order to produce. In order to produce anything. There’s no way one
could forget (as in the Christic <i>kenosis</i>)
the presence of language, which is the most obvious production line of sense.
The frame of language (which creates a territory within the world) is always
there, with us. And this frame produces further frames. Every employment of
language cuts through the world, takes a slice out of it and models a territory
that is supposed to stand alone. Alone, as well as independent from the world.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>There’s something artistic in being us</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
With this,
we may turn the discussion towards a different sphere, where we might be able
to touch on the issue of alterity. Here’s the gist of it. To be able to see
outside the frame I need to be not-I. Insofar as <i>I</i> is a subject whose fundamental attribute is the capacity of
articulating his/her own individuality, it is not an <i>I </i>that this problem needs to be formulated as, but a <i>you</i>: an externality. I am a <i>you</i> if I am capable of seeing myself
from outside. And if I am, if I can have that insight that only the Other can
have (because the Other belongs in the realm of objectivity, where things are
said to be things-in-themselves) I can only address myself in the second
person. Through this conversation between the <i>I</i> that’s not yet formulated and the he/she/it of pure objectivity,
I can rise towards myself as an Other that can be addressed, that must be
addressed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgakmYau5YRG2P7jmunxVUQlvci1F22VMcRFLWXAuifvOR3UlHhqslr0HfkUecg1ykOWAr0Xv1XqVVokkiAsq6bhx6Xi-mU8JiywJ4rK0xJEG37Bm7gjXWWcUcWaGf9bd6FtEq3dvxfVXY/s1600/Backstage.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgakmYau5YRG2P7jmunxVUQlvci1F22VMcRFLWXAuifvOR3UlHhqslr0HfkUecg1ykOWAr0Xv1XqVVokkiAsq6bhx6Xi-mU8JiywJ4rK0xJEG37Bm7gjXWWcUcWaGf9bd6FtEq3dvxfVXY/s400/Backstage.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/TDSFth" target="_blank">Backstage</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So when I’m
talking about externality and about frame, the model I am emulating is the one
I have learnt from addressing my own frameness. If I address myself as a <i>you</i> I know instinctively that outside of
this conversation, beyond the limits of this logos with myself, there is an
objective expanse that includes the frame, that includes the self, that
swallows up the <i>I</i>. From here, from
this realisation, I can extrapolate so as to understand the art that surrounds
me: the artistic nature of being-human. The world can only be experienced
aesthetically, as a representation, as a ‘best guess’; and everything starts
from here.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Then (to
return to the question formulated in the beginning) why is it so terrible to
look inside the frame when the show is somewhere else? Why is it embarrassing
to look askance, when the show is <i>always</i>
somewhere else? The problem is wrongly put, since there’s no way out for us,
only a concentration towards the interior, an intensification of our artistic
nature.</div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-17119775683301581182015-09-22T23:55:00.000+12:002015-09-22T23:55:38.264+12:00How SEO transforms writing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Every time we write we write <i>to </i>someone. This is true whether that
someone is somebody else or just us in a later instantiation, when, with a different
intention and a different demeanor, we return upon the text to revise it, to
read it again – like strangers. This presence of the other that reads has been
made even more obvious in the digital age. Now, there’s no more writing for oneself,
if there ever was one.</span></h2>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWgQLitqda7nsxW02j8WoMP5au7S0JHSgyYWW43sX491CxkKaihLzOzRQh_l7v5u-hoBU7Sr6Ej7UEINucpZ7XLD-YiYpYVGEnTuwxGLRor1z0Th0ezwXg9gd8NKkqmAkePl5AznxflZw/s1600/thumbs-up.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWgQLitqda7nsxW02j8WoMP5au7S0JHSgyYWW43sX491CxkKaihLzOzRQh_l7v5u-hoBU7Sr6Ej7UEINucpZ7XLD-YiYpYVGEnTuwxGLRor1z0Th0ezwXg9gd8NKkqmAkePl5AznxflZw/s400/thumbs-up.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/lUZmRz" target="_blank">The Platypus Directive</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Let’s look at it this way. Even when
the privacy settings on your social media platforms are turned to ‘Private,’ we
must not overlook the fact that ‘privacy’ is highly deceiving. We should have
learned this lesson already. Remember ‘Like’ that doesn’t mean ‘enjoy’? ‘Friend’
that doesn’t mean ‘pal’? ‘Tweet’ that involves no bird? They’re all part of the
patois of the day and we kind of understand where everything really stands in
the picture. We only <i>pretend</i> to use
the word ‘friend’ in its original meaning. We play the game of arbitrariness
rather well. We pay it back to the source.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Your text is read by an algorithm</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">But this is only semantics. What I
mean to say about digital writing is that when you write on your blog, on
Facebook, on Twitter, on reddit, on any other digital platform, you cannot save
yourself from the gaze of the other. The other is there all the time. Considering
what I said earlier, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. All’s old and boringly
familiar. But what’s new is that the other doesn’t come about as an actual
reader, a person you might be able to identify in a crowd. The primary reader
of your text is an algorithm. It is the machine that does the crunching of
numbers, the perusing of texts, and, of course, the ascertaining of meaning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">This awakens the contemporary writer
to an interesting reality. Not only are they writing to produce content, they
also write to produce audience. In other words, they become entrepreneurs who
pitch their product to a market. But this pitching is made to please first and
foremost the algorithms that run the show.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYdNBzvH2iSJ-O9696pJm_0PfjD_FlNVZ5spD2f6CjMXhrzGSPID6ZZ6l0_xV-6vegaRuEm-a36j4pp-4VE5cE1KHRi9SF_aHYuIoYSnsePT-vZ98uFk62sAPPUIMLDyToqN2tN2y2B9I/s1600/Robot+reading.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYdNBzvH2iSJ-O9696pJm_0PfjD_FlNVZ5spD2f6CjMXhrzGSPID6ZZ6l0_xV-6vegaRuEm-a36j4pp-4VE5cE1KHRi9SF_aHYuIoYSnsePT-vZ98uFk62sAPPUIMLDyToqN2tN2y2B9I/s400/Robot+reading.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/dI3IO0" target="_blank">Lisa Kurt</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It is commonly said among SEO
specialists that the value of your text doesn’t matter if you’re invisible. Indeed,
in the logic of the digital universe, one makes sense only insofar as one is
reachable. But reachability is established through algorithms running in the
background. They decide what is and what isn’t interesting, what is and what
isn’t professional. Google has gone so far as to regulate language. Poorly
written texts, which, let’s face it, have been bothering us big time, are kept
at bay by Google algorithms that comb through content in search for mistakes.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you’re in a one-mistake-and-you’re-out situation.
It takes a little more than just a missed comma for Google to give you the
boot.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Conform or remain invisible</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">But grammar isn’t everything in this
game. When it comes to correctness, algorithms are far more sensitive than the
occasional grumpy grammarian stomping their feet at the sight of a disagreement
between a noun and a verb. Since they are logico-mathematical entities that
function on the premise that the input is always valid (i.e. within
predetermined parameters), it becomes understandable why an algorithm reacts bitterly
when it encounters weird or unacceptable formulations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">At the end of the day, in order for
mathematics to work we need to renounce the idea that the distinction between
natural objects is relevant. 1+1=2. But what is the first 1 and what is the
second 1? What do they designate in the real world? And what does the final result
mean, if anything? 1+1 may very well be one apple and one orange, but who
cares? We dismiss the very possibility of this distinction to matter. On the
other hand, and also because of how mathematics works, we can’t perform an
operation such as<b> </b></span><b>҉ </b>+ 1, simply
because<b> ҉ </b>doesn’t belong in the class of calculable elements designated by
mathematics. It is not a number. So unless we give it a numerical value, it
cannot play this game.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
By association, we can think of the <b> ҉ </b>in the above proposition as the equivalent
of a sentence that doesn’t match the patterns written into the software. (I’m
not going to go into what can be done to accommodate eccentricities. Rules that
break rules exist everywhere, and so do algorithms that allow for abnormal
propositions.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">But the point? The point is this: algorithms
(and I’m talking about the ones designed to control textual matters) shape the outlook
of content. The writer who is a user of such algorithms will find, sooner or
later, that he/she must conform to the algorithm if they want to cross the
threshold drawn by these invisible robots between writing and display.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Because display is what matters. Not
the display of letters on a screen, but the display of content made accessible
to the other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">SEO and clairvoyance</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Algorithms don’t just automate
assent (by pointing out to forthcoming audiences the worthiness of a given
text). They also anticipate the writer’s next move. Since conforming to the
algorithm is the only way about, the algorithm, through its prescriptive
properties, makes the appearance of a text foreseeable. Once you get your head
around </span><span lang="EN-NZ"><a href="http://goo.gl/s0E649"><span lang="EN-US">SEO</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US"> matters you understand why a URL looks the way
it looks, why some keywords appear insistently throughout the text, why titles
have to be this long and this many, why some parts have to be highlighted, why
links matter, and why there is a need for social media visibility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjDnwSc2Tl3xn08b49Cs8vdLJJpszWHsRWbekBfq_X62xCXUnyTLxptvTDVGdFiqb7ExgebbqGzk40vljSi_TBQeftiwl9nsmzvHpSrekXVbapCYX8xPP6tHsxqZHtzAAH65Y-n_Pq2pQ/s1600/SEO.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjDnwSc2Tl3xn08b49Cs8vdLJJpszWHsRWbekBfq_X62xCXUnyTLxptvTDVGdFiqb7ExgebbqGzk40vljSi_TBQeftiwl9nsmzvHpSrekXVbapCYX8xPP6tHsxqZHtzAAH65Y-n_Pq2pQ/s400/SEO.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/W9nPOk" target="_blank">Tactix Marketing</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Search engines search the internet
for content. They do so by mining information present in the </span><span lang="EN-NZ"><a href="http://goo.gl/bpw1MU"><span lang="EN-US">HTML</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US">
script. HTML, whose role is to order the chaos of the digital world, precedes
content. It is there before the text. And this is another way of putting the
question of precedence.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Let’s be frank, SEO is all about
pleasing the search engine, which establishes worthiness via authority. It’s
precisely the notion of authority that’s the most intriguing, because consensus
is the function of a statistical result.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Content optimized for the search
engine is exactly what its name indicates: an effort to answer the pressure exercised
by the search engine, i.e. by software designed to crunch the numbers no matter
what. So that a groundbreaking piece of epistemology, the best novel of this
generation, the most illuminating analysis, the best solution to a million
problems, amounts to very little if the search engine doesn’t perceive it to be
worth pitching. In other words, it will remain invisible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">The viral aspect of content</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">In order for all of the above to
become detectable, visibility has to grow exponentially. And with this statement
we slide into the territory of viral content. Spreading about depends on
factors external to content, but which writers can stimulate by including in
their content elements likely to cause contagion. The first and foremost of
these factors, maybe the only one that truly counts, is none other than out
good old friend, the algorithm. Because it’s the algorithm that discovers the
text in the first place. Growth of popularity depends on how other users share
content. While there seems to be agency here (when I choose what to post online
I am communicating a personal decision), the expression of this agency is made
through a piece of software.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3duqZEE4P0Yp5G9TuMoqmyai_PipHKgQQ_3jc4_enqlGefhyphenhyphenjDFWVdRe_A2Fw6onZqnISES9jeAU10aHW6r033HpkJ3_DEVR4uN_JhmsoWNEZTFxl9Egcq09KTemKqS2_e2PmINAgNX8/s1600/Like.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="355" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3duqZEE4P0Yp5G9TuMoqmyai_PipHKgQQ_3jc4_enqlGefhyphenhyphenjDFWVdRe_A2Fw6onZqnISES9jeAU10aHW6r033HpkJ3_DEVR4uN_JhmsoWNEZTFxl9Egcq09KTemKqS2_e2PmINAgNX8/s400/Like.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/adTVAJ" target="_blank">Forbes</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It’s the <i>Like</i> button I’m talking about here. It makes apparent one
fundamental thing about software: that when we use it we don’t bring our free
will to light. On the contrary, we admit to our conformity to the algorithm.
When we choose anything, we help the software bring its function to fruition.
We are an element in the system, a cogwheel in the apparatus, an operative
factor in the code.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Then there’s the even more mundane realization
that only the already-popular becomes more popular. That’s because the
algorithm takes shortcuts. Once a piece of content is deemed worthy of
interest, a search engine will push that piece up in its ranking system. That’s
what happens when we come across certain results when we search for a keyword:
why some results come first, while others trail behind, in pages so distant
they’re the guarantee of total failure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">With all this in sight, it’s clear,
I hope, that the writer who cares about the fate of their content will have to
bend to the new rules. Make sure to repeat a keyword but not too many times.
Make sure to leave snares for the search engine, to catch the spiders that crawl
the web. Make sure to check your text for mistakes. Make sure to send
reminders, to share, to encourage interaction with your content, to catch the eye
of those who can boost your traffic. We all do that. We all do SEO, whether
professionally or just out of instinct. Not because of a suddenly awakened
entrepreneurial spirit in us, but because the algorithm demands it. It does.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">So write well!</span></div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-8219246980103861732015-09-16T00:21:00.000+12:002015-09-16T00:27:38.513+12:00Algorithms, traces, and solitary work<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Digital <a href="http://goo.gl/sCtWLJ" target="_blank">algorithms</a>
and <a href="http://goo.gl/lnPXFW" target="_blank">software</a> raise fundamental questions about writing. And so it should be,
since most things don’t look the same when you turn to the logic of digits. For
a start, the environment in which inscription takes place is no longer that of a
trace immediately noticeable.</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO3UfvcuDDRwuNfWhwcth4abQ9dIs_wNmkXYYvIxm-k9c5Jzw38be0XXJI5pv4lp0xjBnnqxc3pL6LKaXiJ3yrXs4clxBJFmrlWBMbAQSGYHnm1AnZTwFY9f59EBzVkLvX7ulKvtqYuyU/s1600/twilightwriter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO3UfvcuDDRwuNfWhwcth4abQ9dIs_wNmkXYYvIxm-k9c5Jzw38be0XXJI5pv4lp0xjBnnqxc3pL6LKaXiJ3yrXs4clxBJFmrlWBMbAQSGYHnm1AnZTwFY9f59EBzVkLvX7ulKvtqYuyU/s400/twilightwriter.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/5nkP5b" target="_blank">The Renegade Writer</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A text written
using the keyboard of a computer appears to a viewer as an inscription already finished.
That’s because the erasures that come with versions and drafts are no longer perceivable,
the way they were in environments dominated by the work of pen and paper. Pencil
corrections, and even those made by typewriters, stay on paper; they travel
along with the text. Visually, they are inextricably part of it. Their presence
is proof of the text’s evolution.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>The archaeological gesture of tracing</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This is not
to say that digital writing dismisses the possibility of tracing. It’s only
that traces are not immediately visible in digital composition. They don’t stay
on the screen as such, not like the marginalia on a page pre-occupied by what
is considered to be ‘the primary text.’ If they do stay somewhere, this
somewhere is a place where the material traces, in order to be seen, must be
dug out, unearthed in a gesture that is archaeological in nature.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Archaeology <i>is</i> about digging-in-order-to-find. It <i>is</i> about dealing with the underground
and with the undergrowth. And as such, one would be tempted to say that even the
tracing of analogue texts (marks on paper) is subjected to the processes of unearthing.
Which is very true. But also incomplete. Because analogue writing shows the
signs of a draft without requiring an effort of visualisation. This is why a digital
text always appears as completed, even when it is work-in-progress. On the
computer screen, all signs look definitive. They look as if they had no past
and no future. To put it differently, an analogue text is diachronic (it flows,
it progresses along a continuum that is permanently discernible), while a
digital one is synchronic. Its stasis is caused by the absence of versions,
insofar as versioning doesn’t take place on the screen. More precisely, the
surface of writing is moved somewhere else. It is not the screen that plays the
role of this surface but the electronic apparatus that registers the
impressions of one’s fingers and of one’s intentions. And that apparatus
remains, in most cases, unseen.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>A form of writing that is always elsewhere</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Metadata,
which is precisely an assortment of traces left by a digital text, brings about
the very possibility of this gaze that sees into a text’s past. But the tracing
of digital signs requires a technological apparatus of its own. The reading of
code is not the same thing as the reading of a short story or of a shopping
list. Code exists beyond the surface. Code is brought to the screen only if the
writer/reader is directly implicated in the writing/reading of a line of code. But
otherwise writing and reading take place under the surface of composition. What
I mean here is writing that is other than code-writing. The simple (in digital
terms) composition of a short text on a computer screen requires the work of software,
which comes prior to the compositional act. From the keyboard that transforms mechanical,
electrical, and digital processes into letters to the word processor that
enables the transformation of keystrokes into images on a screen, the technical
aspects of composition remain largely unnoticed and unacknowledged, but not
unimportant because of that.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWDiU58X6zwn4jn8c-oR-ieH-3l6w3uDSiMXOo9b8Xl-ROcck7iwCcNyCSGLQEqd0xY6pgY4cWbD_L9-Ujrp1-cGpVcfsbgdi3qQEihWd16drDj6w6-duAaqbQmiKMCOgxqGFBldKtRsw/s1600/broken-pencil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWDiU58X6zwn4jn8c-oR-ieH-3l6w3uDSiMXOo9b8Xl-ROcck7iwCcNyCSGLQEqd0xY6pgY4cWbD_L9-Ujrp1-cGpVcfsbgdi3qQEihWd16drDj6w6-duAaqbQmiKMCOgxqGFBldKtRsw/s400/broken-pencil.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/n3lUSv" target="_blank">Penn State</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As with all
technologies, the functioning of a writing apparatus becomes apparent when it
ceases to work as programmed. The business-as-usual standard does not provide a
model for the acknowledgment of technological processes. But what’s truly important
is that business-as-usual presupposes a subject who thinks he/she is working
alone.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A subject
who works alone is a subject who doesn’t need the presence of external factors
to tell them how the work needs to be carried on. This, though, can only happen
when the technology on which the subject is reliant functions without
interruptions, i.e. when the subject forgets that there’s technology around, <i>believing</i> they worked alone, without actually
doing so.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>There’s an ideology behind something that
works</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Well-functioning
technologies are, for this reason, of the ideological order. Only an ideology
without hiccups can persuade a subject of its absence, so as to work efficiently
beyond (or under) the surface, unseen, unnoticed, unacknowledged. It’s
important for an ideology to remain invisible and thus to persuade by means of
its apparent absence. The subject of ideology is a subject convinced that they
are not ideology-driven; that they are free.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The same
goes with technologies in general, and the digital ones in particular. In our
case, it is crucial that code stay in a territory that’s largely
unacknowledged, or where access is permitted only to specialists. (Code-writers
are the technocrats of the digital age.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It is
interesting to note that, precisely because technology (as the Other) presents
itself as non-present, the subject goes about doing business-as-usual as though
they were working alone. They don’t share the tasks of writing with anybody
else. They dwell, for this reason, in a symbolic time and space that are anachronistic
when regarded from the perspective of, say, Foucault’s theory of the author as
a function rather than a real person. Prior to Foucault, authors did not cross
the threshold of individuality. They performed their tasks unhindered by any acknowledgments
of the Other. Foucault brought external factors into the picture. He brought
the Other to the centre of writing. After him, the apparatus can no longer be
thought of as something <i>to do things with</i>.
It is something that contains the very act of doing, and the doing subject at
the same time. A writer writes within an apparatus of which he/she is a
cogwheel of sorts. Not that writers are less special, but they are special in a
different way: a way that acknowledges the multiplicity that characterizes
their very work.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Anyway, the
conclusion is that it’s kind of impossible now to think of a writer as someone
who can work alone.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Function is found in dysfunction</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But writing-as-if-technology-did-not-exist
is an illusion. We all know how important apparatuses of writing are in the
process of composition. Let’s think no further than the moments when we seek a
power plug for our laptops, or the simple gesture of pressing the power button
on the writing machine before anything else can happen. These simple gestures
are often forgotten, and their role in the generation of text is ignored. That’s
for two reasons.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
1. As
mentioned above, technology works best when it doesn’t seem to work. This apparent
not-working obliterates technology, and thus propels it towards well-working.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
2. We forget
the simple gestures of digital writing because we are already accustomed to the
logic of the other technology that predetermines writing: the technology of pen
and paper.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiETTMG8fGkuzNLG2rMruWfNEFoCTCRtxokCqp2eDeQoqTGAnilUgLcAok-u3KR_sYoUD1HQzwMW-8GmBWk7hcX62jxLszNMwSyN85YW93RHD_193MQMiVf6EUTgfRElzO_tqs1WwZqNP4/s1600/broken+typewriter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiETTMG8fGkuzNLG2rMruWfNEFoCTCRtxokCqp2eDeQoqTGAnilUgLcAok-u3KR_sYoUD1HQzwMW-8GmBWk7hcX62jxLszNMwSyN85YW93RHD_193MQMiVf6EUTgfRElzO_tqs1WwZqNP4/s400/broken+typewriter.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/TdavUM" target="_blank">Nation States</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The work
done by means of pen and paper is only slightly different. It’s only different
in that it employs analogue technology. But that only means one thing: that it
is not technology-free. The fundamental similarity is that, like digital
technologies, pen-and-paper involves <i>techn</i><i>é</i>, which
is at the same time craft and trick. The trick of the pen and paper is that they
obliterate their dependence upon one another and, more importantly, of the
writing subject on both of them at the same time. Once again, in order to gauge
the depth of this illusion all one needs to envisage is an interruption of
business-as-usual. A pen that’s run out of ink or a pencil whose tip is broken
are rendered un-operational exactly like a laptop whose battery has run flat. Dysfunction
lays bare the ideological foundations of function. All it takes is for a piece
of technology to cease working as expected in order for it to become fundamental.
If it cannot facilitate, it impedes. And impediment is outside the scope of the
good functioning of ideological reassurance. That is why a good algorithm is an
algorithm that yields symmetrical results. Once this condition is fulfilled,
the user is likely to give in to the argument of efficiency, and so the algorithm
is likely to be left to work alone.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-15258237865895475422015-09-07T23:29:00.000+12:002015-09-07T23:30:56.536+12:00Databases and a "poetics of record retrieval”<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Soft cinema
is Lev Manovich’s baby. The concept is relatively simple. A mass of data is
collected into a database: photography, video, written texts, a voice reader
that transforms the written text into audio, and other tiny digital artefacts.
The data thus amassed is played out by means of a series of algorithms that
make a number of selections and then narrativise the sequences (i.e. put them
into a continuum). If there are more complex descriptions of this process,
there must be specialists out there (Manovich himself is one) who can better
explain the above. Suffice it to say here that ‘soft’ in ‘soft cinema’ means ‘played
by a software.’</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="375" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4hn-AUJ2NnY" width="500"></iframe>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So when
we’re talking soft cinema we’re talking archives; and when we’re talking
archives we’re talking a lot of data. In order for an archive to be functional
it has to be massive. It has to be inaccessible otherwise than through enforced
selection. In other words, an archive is justified by an incapacity, which is a
negative attribute translated into loss of agency. It is only because of the
vastness of an archive that we can speak of selectivity of the type proposed by
soft cinema. And that’s the major point about the algorithmicity of this
process, or of any other process that requires coded intervention, machine
involvement.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Of other algorithms, yet again</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As mentioned
<a href="http://goo.gl/LPZdP4">last week</a> and pointed out a bit earlier, in
order for an algorithm to be needed, an inability of the human subject must be made
apparent. Mathematics as a whole was created when humans realized, relatively late
in their history, that they needed more than ten fingers to calculate things from
their immediate universe. This realisation of the embarrassing impotence of our
being caused the need for reliable formulae: formulae that could yield the same
results every time they were put to work.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The ‘+’ sign
will always operate addition; we can bet our lives on it. But that happens not
because the world is prone to such additions, but because an agreement was
reached at some point by inventive human beings that parts of the world can be
classed together so as to separate say cows from horses, stones from sticks,
and so on. That this logic fails us can be proven by the classic anti-<a href="https://goo.gl/h6AFVi">Boolean</a> anecdote: if I count the cows on a
field I can conclude that I have a group of say ten cows altogether. And that’s
fine. That satisfies my need to know how many. But the result will not be able
to tell me how many black cows there are in the group or how many of the total
are healthy, how many are pregnant, indeed how many are male and how many
female. Of course, all these classifications/clarifications are possible too.
But in order to reach their own results they need to be calculated by means of
different operators or by different criteria of selection. And even then,
further complications are possible. Of all the black cows, how many are of this
breed and how many of that? Of this breed, how many have been raised in the
town of X and how many in the town of Y? And so on, and so forth. In other
words, the simple addition of all visible animals on a field yields very little
information that is truly useful to a curious, practically-minded individual such
as the man/woman who roams the earth.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>The softness of soft cinema</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Once again,
as in the case of <a href="http://goo.gl/fHfHPH">Google Earth</a>, in order for
the algorithm to work (even the simple additional function can provide a
satisfactory result here) a certain type of selection needs to be made
possible. It’s precisely here that Lev Manovich’s soft cinema becomes
significant, and where it becomes, in fact, a variant of the Google Earth
algorithms. And just as in the case of the addition operator that was made
necessary because it was impossible to tell how many cows there were in the
field without adding them one by one, soft cinema is said to have been made
necessary by the immense amount of data existent in the world.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbfomp02qwEz_sDnex7APJ3zQLbAW4RlvmKW5iPXEc2LO6Af3Hibn5e6bodQnOviEpP-CckwLyTft3_hJU86qcFJ1BEp9tUJ0MAG16KTXpT4X1XT3QnHxcHIPqZBQxJcKKieMkbzU2L6A/s1600/Manovich+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbfomp02qwEz_sDnex7APJ3zQLbAW4RlvmKW5iPXEc2LO6Af3Hibn5e6bodQnOviEpP-CckwLyTft3_hJU86qcFJ1BEp9tUJ0MAG16KTXpT4X1XT3QnHxcHIPqZBQxJcKKieMkbzU2L6A/s400/Manovich+1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/g5C9fs" target="_blank">softcinema.net</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A lot of
Manovich’s material is collected from personal archives. But it wouldn’t be
hard to see how the principle can be applied to the whole sea of ungraspable <a href="http://goo.gl/1KnU19">zettabytes</a> of information produced and consumed
by means of the internet.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So there’s
something new-mediatic in the air, and surely enough, Lev Manovich has the
right words to talk about it. He describes his project as an attempt at drawing
a portrait of modern subjectivity, at a time when the work of things like
Google appears to offer a pertinent model for the functioning of humans.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“If for
Freud and Proust modern subjectivity was organized around a narrative – the
search to identify that singular, private and unique childhood experience which
has identified the identity of the adult – subjectivity in the information
society may function more like a search engine. In <i>Texas </i>[one of the films released on the <a href="http://goo.gl/ZO9KbN" target="_blank"><i>Soft Cinema</i> DVD</a>] this search engine endlessly mines through a
database that contains personal experiences, brand images, and fragments of
publicly shared knowledge.”</blockquote>
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The
algorithm that selects elements from the database and returns them as a special
kind of visual output is a perfect illustration of Vilém Flusser’s <a href="http://goo.gl/yBvptQ">technical image</a>, which is no longer a
representation of the world but a representation of a representational machine.
In the case of ‘database art’ in general and soft cinema in particular, what is
being represented is the database itself.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The
database, a collection of pre-existent data, presents itself to the subject as something
that should have been apparent all the way: as an aesthetic experience. But
what is important in this case, as opposed to just any kind of handling of
archive files, is the presence of an automaton, of a digital algorithm. And as
a result of this presence of an invisible operator, the films made by the
software look very little like our traditional understanding of cinema. The
narrative aspect, which is very much present in Lev Manovich’s films, is not
determined by story segments but by segments of information selected according
to their affiliation to a given filter. A traditional story is put together by
linking episodes that contain in them potential for action. The assemblage of
soft cinema, on the contrary, works in a way that resembles, according to
Manovich, the assembly line in a factory.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“A factory
produces identical objects that are coming from the assembly line at regular
intervals. Similarly, a film projector spits out images, all the same size, all
moving at the same speed. As a result, the flickering irregularity of the
moving image toys of the nineteenth century is replaced by the standardization
and uniformity typical of all industrial products.”</blockquote>
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Or of all
technical images, to return, yet again, to Vilém Flusser.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Factory vs software</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What
Manovich is trying to say is that his model is not so different from the way
traditional cinema works. And yet, his films do look odd. And that’s because
there’s a difference between the assembly line in a factory and the assemblage
of a soft cinema product. That difference lies, once again, in selection. The
assembly line does not select its material; it assembles what has already been
separated, individualised, and decided upon. The software, on the other hand,
does precisely the pre-production work. It does the selection by tapping into
the pool of data existent in the databases the algorithms have access to. The
algorithms select and put together information that is contained in the
so-called metadata: the data about the data present in the archive.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH2bCWGN0yN8_uvVEIMoMtsrY5odc0FOZNdefUo4mIRT46_aRC89bk46AdKhPanj3EiuIwmuk_MsMnsaO6ctvavB6TDQFD_dolffX9Yw53MyH7B6qmuZ1GntejtBrt4dl4rLQnLi8WYPo/s1600/Manovich+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH2bCWGN0yN8_uvVEIMoMtsrY5odc0FOZNdefUo4mIRT46_aRC89bk46AdKhPanj3EiuIwmuk_MsMnsaO6ctvavB6TDQFD_dolffX9Yw53MyH7B6qmuZ1GntejtBrt4dl4rLQnLi8WYPo/s400/Manovich+2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/3i6Onq" target="_blank">manovich.net</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In one case,
the algorithm is made to select images from places Lev Manovich has never
visited as an adult. That’s a filter, right there. Many more such filters are
at work in soft cinema, all based on what Manovich suggests are the whims (if
one can use the word to describe an automaton) of an algorithm or other:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The clips
that the software selects to play one after another are always connected on
some dimension – geographical location, type of movement in the shot, type of
location, and so on – but the dimension can change randomly from sequence to
sequence.”</blockquote>
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Through this
element of randomness, the soft-cinematic experience is expected to counteract
the one acquired through watching traditional films. But what kind of randomness
is this? Randomness sounds strange in a system that is controlled by a formula.
The algorithm cannot simply work against itself (against its principles of
selection and operation, against its filters). So a different filter will have
to be implemented: the one that asks the machine to put aside everything that
is not contained in the filters (also known as ‘the uncategorized’). And so,
the remainders prove to be anything but non-entities. They exist in a category
of their own: the un-filtered, the un-categorized. And it’s from that class
that they can be selected; yet selected not at random but via pre-set
operations.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That’s why a
soft film looks like pre-production: because it <i>is</i> pre-production. It is the collection of data that precedes the
montage. The montage that one witnesses in a soft cinema artefact is very
crude; it does not reach as far as a final cinematic product. Its operations
stop precisely at the level where the collected images are about to turn into a
film.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What this is
likely to point out is, again, the pre-eminence of the algorithm. The fact that
the final product isn’t our traditional film but a series of images that change
seemingly at random is proof that the algorithm can work alone; that it can
surprise the subject; that it can provide a kind of experience where the
machine does the work while the human being sits and watches.</div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-81774776173952061942015-09-02T23:16:00.000+12:002015-09-02T23:20:40.630+12:00Algorithms: A timid elucidation via Google Earth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Simply put, algorithms are logico-mathematical automatons.
They depend first and foremost on a function that remains unaltered (pre-set by
the one who conceives the code, otherwise known as ‘the writer’). Apart from
the function, an algorithm is endowed with a number of variables, which are selected
from a pool of possibilities established in the writing phase and to which said
function will be applied. These will provide the input, i.e. that which is
going to be processed. And of course, to each input its own output – an entity
that is anticipated and yet never completely known.</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What is interesting about algorithms and functions in
general is this ambiguity that characterizes them: the fact that the outcome is
at the same time known and unknown. It is known insofar as the outcome is
always already contained in the code: it is set by the code, limited by it,
determined by it. Be the results as wild and as unexpected as they may be, they
would not be possible if the code hadn’t provided the conditions of possibility
for them. But at the same time they cannot be known in advance. At the end of
the day, an algorithm is created precisely in order to deal with outcomes that
cannot be foreseen. If they could be fully known in advance what sense would it
make to come up with an algorithm in the first place?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b>A simple illustration</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m thinking of a funnel now. A funnel is ‘coded’ (one might
find the word ill-used here, but let’s think about it with a modicum of lenience)
to let a liquid pass through it on its way to another location. The location
doesn’t matter yet. What matters about it is that the liquid poured through the
funnel will have to reach this destination, this location. Now, the width of
the funnel’s neck will determine the amount of liquid that can pass through. No
matter how hard one strives, one will never be able to pour more than the ‘code'
of the funnel’s neck allows. One can pour less, of course, but that just proves
the point: freedom, in a code, is limited to a lesser input. One can’t do more
than the code allows.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUCBfRsXMClP-_vDj-_TzNH-dAt7XHQQ2jrJWryolcuh-bQ3pRHNGfGL04KTs_M6yhwyr8QJhXOHEcdJs5NyyLvn_Rwa2vjLRiDc22KXm1AFQmLfwqN3DDLStIAkDy5Fagn8UoKholBmc/s1600/Funnel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUCBfRsXMClP-_vDj-_TzNH-dAt7XHQQ2jrJWryolcuh-bQ3pRHNGfGL04KTs_M6yhwyr8QJhXOHEcdJs5NyyLvn_Rwa2vjLRiDc22KXm1AFQmLfwqN3DDLStIAkDy5Fagn8UoKholBmc/s320/Funnel.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/T1jozy" target="_blank">Superb Wallpapers</a> </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, not all algorithms are this simple. In fact, most
of them are not. One can imagine possible complications even in the case of the
funnel model. Twist the path of the funnel’s neck and you have more time
required for the liquid to pass through. I don’t know why anybody would do this
but it’s a possibility, a variation of the algorithm. Place a sieve somewhere
along the way and the same liquid will reach its destination in an altered
state (filtered, cleaned of impurities, thinned out etc.) Vary the thickness of
the liquid and you’ll have varied times. And so on, and so forth.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Complications are endless. But it becomes clear from this
example, I hope, that algorithmic realities are dependent on the code or
function of the given situation. If such is the case, it would be easy to
extrapolate the logic of algorithms to situations that are not mathematical in
nature. Let’s say writing, since we’re always at it. The writing of a short
story has its own algorithmic determinants. Length is one. Length provides the
essential difference between a short story and, say – a novel, or a novella, or
a trilogy; so that a short-story writer will never go beyond a certain word
limit without the risk of moving into a different territory: the territory of
lengthier genres. Content is another piece of code that matters in the case of
a short story. Content differentiates a short story from a scientific treatise,
from an almanac, from a shopping list. The crossing of species is possible, of
course, but it does not prove the algorithm wrong; on the contrary, it confirms
its strength. Then shape too matters: it separates a short story from a
dramatic piece, from a film script, from a poem. We can go deeper and deeper,
in search for other determinants, equally important: genre, audience, language,
loyalty to a certain tradition, allegiance to a certain ideology.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many other things aside, what is very important in an
algorithm is its departure from the subject. Although they are written and
employed by humans, their outcomes can’t be changed by the user in ways that
are not always already existent in the code. The amount of liquid passing
through a funnel (thickness, viscosity, velocity and other things considered)
will never be changed by human volition. The genre limitations that determine
the shape and length of a short story cannot be transgressed by an individual
writer without his/her transgression degenerating into something else,
something un-short-story-like.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3>
<b>What on earth...</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In digital environments, algorithms are far more complex
than a funnel or a short story. And yet, they serve similar functions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
See Google Earth.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To get there, let’s bring into the matter <a href="http://goo.gl/vGvZ2o">Clement Valla</a>. Collector and curator of digital
artefacts, Valla gathers, among other things, <a href="http://goo.gl/Te4Umh">Google
Earth images</a>. He sometimes calls these things ‘postcards.’ What he is
interested in are images that appear to contradict our understanding of what
planet Earth looks like, or should look like. His ‘postcards’ depict
shrivelled, bent, twisted-and-turned features of Earth surfaces. Contemplating
his collection is like contemplating a bunch of Dali paintings, in which
materiality is destabilized: clocks melt, figures take new shapes,
constructions are deconstructed, structures are destructured. A glitch is immediately
assumed as a likely cause for all these mutilations: a disorder of the code, an
ailment of the scripted function. A human being could not have produced such
fantastic distortions; so all must be in the algorithm.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx2gH1KRSz6-eckQhyLRLdGSr-dPz3EgtDdDL58b5vt8JFw9jwfr1eidOU1RoJldGN-XayNP_5nlQ_hJg8J88TBwiD2T6528tDp68WoYA8AmP_VwaZYBP_8a-5jTCQ7sDinw6dGnW9iak/s1600/Dali.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx2gH1KRSz6-eckQhyLRLdGSr-dPz3EgtDdDL58b5vt8JFw9jwfr1eidOU1RoJldGN-XayNP_5nlQ_hJg8J88TBwiD2T6528tDp68WoYA8AmP_VwaZYBP_8a-5jTCQ7sDinw6dGnW9iak/s400/Dali.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sourced: <a href="http://goo.gl/zdhZBL" target="_blank">Jace D</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7odkppHUSuanSdJHey9SSuOnFEljA30VQsFfudta8FH65EGekebgXgZzvLwfjFwbNRBgXYUkvp9JM7X8Z_o1M2ohfbmPWSP1G6p06_pd6T5v45fT3FxYHoz-2btJpkStjstTo9QbigpY/s1600/Valla.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7odkppHUSuanSdJHey9SSuOnFEljA30VQsFfudta8FH65EGekebgXgZzvLwfjFwbNRBgXYUkvp9JM7X8Z_o1M2ohfbmPWSP1G6p06_pd6T5v45fT3FxYHoz-2btJpkStjstTo9QbigpY/s400/Valla.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/FqNTbc" target="_blank">Clement Valla</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The assumption is right. But only partially. Yes, these
distorted images are the result of the algorithms playing behind Google
interfaces. But, as Valla puts it, they’re not mistakes. They are not the result
of a sick algorithm. On the contrary.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“[T]hese images are not glitches. They are the absolute
logical result of the system. They are an edge condition – an anomaly within
the system, a nonstandard, an outlier, even, but not an error. These jarring
moments expose how Google Earth works, focusing our attention on the software.
They are seams which reveal a new model of seeing and of representing our world
– as dynamic, ever-changing data from a myriad of different sources – endlessly
combined, constantly updated, creating a seamless situation.”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As explained by Valla, what Google’s texture-mapping
algorithm has managed to do is fundamentally alter our ways of seeing and
interpreting surfaces through photographic representations. Snapshots, i.e.
distinct images separated from other similar images by means of the very frame
that encloses them, are no longer the working principle here. While the Google
algorithm does make use of previously created snapshots, it assembles them in
ways that obliterate the seams (i.e. the frames). As a consequence, what we see
on a Google Earth map is a continuous, fluent representation of a space that is
in itself continuous and fluent, only misconstrued by the snapshot model. In
fact, Google’s algorithm not only fixes a technical problem familiar to
cartography (the conception of a map that is continuous, seamless) but also a
representational problem: the mental effort required to understand that behind
discrete segments of time and space taken with a photographic camera exists a world
that is essentially continuous.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b>Back to the old chestnut of representation</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, insofar as the apparent glitches are concerned, and which
make the world look so different from ‘reality,’ one must keep in mind that Google
operates in a relatively new territory, where the digital archive reigns
supreme.<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The images produced by Google Earth are quite unlike a
photograph that bears an indexical relationship to a given space at a given
time. Rather, they are hybrid images, a patchwork of two-dimensional
photographic data and three-dimensional topographic data extracted from a slew
of sources, data-mined, pre-processed, blended and merged in real-time. Google
Earth is essentially a database disguised as a photographic representation.”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Note that this doesn’t make Google Earth algorithms more
accurate representations of the world. On the contrary. As Valla points out,
there’s no night in the world conceived by Google Earth. And that should
suffice to make the point clear. What’s more, selectivity (which implies
obliteration and exclusion) is very much at work in Google Earth, just as it is
in any man-handled representational systems. The algorithms choose their data
according to the code that stands at their foundation. Of the numerous images
uploaded to be processed through the code, only those are selected which comply
with the criteria specified in the algorithm’s script. Just as a writer selects
what he/she wants to write (and the success of their art depends precisely on
this principle of selectivity), Google Earth too does away with what’s at odds
with its algorithms. And just as in the case of the writer, here too the
conclusion is disappointing; as disappointing as any conclusion drawn about any
form of representation:<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“In these anomalies we understand there are competing
inputs, competing data sources and discrepancy in the data. The world is not so
fluid after all.”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If this sounds familiar it’s because we’ve always devised
the wrong mechanisms for the interpretation of the world; wrong not as in
mistaken, but wrong as in impotent. What digital algorithms of the Google Earth
type reveal is a process that starts off with a human badge on it only to lose
advantage on the way towards the outcome. Since the algorithm does the work (even
the anomalies collected by Valla are the product of a machine-run program), it looks
as though we’ve won a battle in the war of objectivity. But that’s wrong to say.
Wrong yet again. Algorithms, automated as they may be, are still the product of
human minds. But what beautiful things they can create.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4MSaGoXXoScEuHiqcsvwkUf7VZjxqitwWKvRg-dzGcgNsylXiaOB-xGSixvJ1Y3ZZI1xbO0FK04mB6I41fKswZi1PdcHiGolQswpt9HNkpzFoKNhnvAwqCyTlVaSe8-tFN1t_re45gik/s1600/Valla+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4MSaGoXXoScEuHiqcsvwkUf7VZjxqitwWKvRg-dzGcgNsylXiaOB-xGSixvJ1Y3ZZI1xbO0FK04mB6I41fKswZi1PdcHiGolQswpt9HNkpzFoKNhnvAwqCyTlVaSe8-tFN1t_re45gik/s400/Valla+2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/FqNTbc" target="_blank">Clement Valla</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-24999045468139810742015-08-25T17:33:00.000+12:002015-08-25T17:41:08.764+12:00Of technical images, with Vilém Flusser<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">In essence, technical images represent the end of writing, in at
least two senses. They are its polar opposites; and they put an end to the
domination of writing as such. This is, in essence, Flusser's theory. To better
understand it, one needs to see what’s specific to each of the two forms of
expression/notation. And that’s where I’m going now.</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCaVnn0wWpqorb3jLyOghRidwHetxA-tIUxGTUzbAgwRjMqC3KYjkJbXTRWs1zA1E8YnRdGbpQNd3WQOJfwclz6KwZ5GuKz-vJCkQzf9riHWF8FUCiV0Te_giUhl3sCLYO0f674-_I2EA/s1600/algorithm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCaVnn0wWpqorb3jLyOghRidwHetxA-tIUxGTUzbAgwRjMqC3KYjkJbXTRWs1zA1E8YnRdGbpQNd3WQOJfwclz6KwZ5GuKz-vJCkQzf9riHWF8FUCiV0Te_giUhl3sCLYO0f674-_I2EA/s400/algorithm.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/xgyWNa" target="_blank">Miguel Frias</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">I've already discussed, <a href="http://goo.gl/MaIQBZ">last week</a>
and to a lesser extent <a href="http://goo.gl/MViLO5">the week before</a>, that
to Flusser writing is historical in the sense of its generating historical
consciousness by means of linearity. With writing, the World (that terrible chaos
that presents itself as our constant embarrassment) is returned to us ordered. But
ordered in a special way. Ordered like the files and ranks of an army, like the
wires between two telegraph poles, like the trajectory of an arrow about to hit
its target. In other words, like the lines of a written text. Although I placed
them first, the metaphors preceding this last sentence are <i>the results</i> of writing, not its models. Writing allows us to see
the straightness of all these trajectories because, with writing, we have
become accustomed to the paradigm of the line. Understanding, reasoning, logic,
historical consciousness, etc. etc. – all these are manifestations of
straightness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">The least we can say about this way of ordering is that it has transformed
the World as well as our understanding of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">But writing is not exempt from the tests of dialectics. Its rise to
dominance implies some kind of fall as well. The fall may not be fully visible
now, when we’re at the very beginning of a major transformation. It may never
turn out to be a complete, deep, catastrophic fall. But we can’t turn a blind
eye to the fact that writing is taking new forms, and that, more than anything
else, it is losing ground. Of course, letting go of writing is not an easy
task. Writing has been (and still is) one of our closest companions. We have
built civilizations based on it. We have glorified and tortured, eradicated and
constructed, invited and enforced – with writing on the topmast.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Apparatuses of
transformation</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">But if letting go must happen, in the name of what can we be said to
be letting go of writing? Flusser proposes technical images. Technical images,
unlike writing, are not linear. The page of a book reads from top left corner
to bottom right; or from top right to bottom left; horizontally or vertically. No
matter which script is used, the principle is the same: we go about it in a
straight line.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">This, however, doesn’t apply to images. Images are meant to be taken
as a whole. There is no linear reading of a photograph. One doesn’t start from
the top left corner and proceeds to arrive at the bottom right corner.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Unlike writing, which is concerned with lines, images are concerned
with surfaces. And this is a fundamental difference. But a difference that’s not
so striking if we think that, in fact, representation has been making use of
images for a long time. Since way before the emergence of writing, to be more
precise. The caves of Lascaux are there to prove it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">So the question arises: what’s so special about technical images?
What sets them apart from other visual artefacts?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Flusser focuses on one type of image: <a href="http://goo.gl/UBG3bf" target="_blank">photography</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9YagvFSRt3EiTVnCpEaucUAfxY4aBR5kLhVDE6gi0IlH4s_QlGbMVtFPJAsveevFTJAubZSv-CpG2D-b7coOxoAb0x-SOS4agj1ZprRZlzwli4PBlUn0Ku2JNZ8jWAaEEXtFVQkYl1nw/s1600/photography.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9YagvFSRt3EiTVnCpEaucUAfxY4aBR5kLhVDE6gi0IlH4s_QlGbMVtFPJAsveevFTJAubZSv-CpG2D-b7coOxoAb0x-SOS4agj1ZprRZlzwli4PBlUn0Ku2JNZ8jWAaEEXtFVQkYl1nw/s400/photography.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/BEkk7b" target="_blank">Lilip Studio</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Now, of course, the immediate thought crossing one’s mind in relation
to photography must be something about its indexical value. Indexicality means that
a photograph points at an actual object in a way similar to how the index
finger does it; and it does so more prominently than, say, painting. A photographer
takes a picture <i>of </i>something. Something
that exists exactly the way it appears in the picture that’s been taken. Painting,
which is also a representation <i>of </i>something,
transforms the object. The work of the artist is apparent in every brushstroke,
in every conscious use of perspective, of shadows, of composition in general. Of
course, a photographer (and a filmmaker more so!) can do all this him/herself, and
with relative ease. So this is not where the fundamental difference between
painting and photography lies. To Flusser, the actual difference resides in the
fact that the camera is a coded apparatus. Realistic as it may seem (a snippet
of reality, as the cliché goes), a photograph is the result of the operations
inherent in the camera. Images taken by a photographer will be dependent on the
mechanical (and more recently, digital) processes made possible by the camera
they’re using.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">One may argue that something similar happens in the case of
painting; that painting, like photography, requires certain material
preconditions in order to exist. Yes, but painting preserves the human factor. Errors
in painting are completely due to the artist’s application of the material
preconditions. Too much colour here, mistaken application of shadows there,
there’s a plethora of possibilities where a painter can go wrong. In photography
(where the human remains relevant, no doubt), a large proportion of the
possible errors are due to the range of operations built into the camera, and
over which the user has no control. An experienced photographer will be able to
apply the right apertures to the right photographic situations; but they will
not be able to overcome the fact that the camera has only this many types of aperture.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">So here’s the fundamental rupture. When we use a photographic camera
it is not the apparatus becoming an extension of us (which is the classic
understanding of technology at large) but us becoming an extension of it. When we
press the button of a camera we enable the coded possibilities built into the
apparatus to come to fruition. We serve the camera. We help it come to the realization
of its potential, of the specific possibilities extant in its code. And that doesn’t
quite happen in the case of painting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">With algorithms we jump
into post-humanity</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">With this in mind it’s becoming easier, I think, to see how the
latest optical technologies (analogue or digital) are forms of this general subjection
to an apparatus. I don’t mean this in a dystopian sense, as the robot that takes
over; but rather in the sense of a development whereby the human has vacated its
own creation, like a <i>Deus Otiosus</i>
that will only return, if ever, in order to punish the independence given to
his creation. (Remember the biblical story of the fall?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Algorithms are a crucial illustration of all of the above; an example
Flusser did not have the chance to discuss (he died in 1991, so all of the 21<sup>st</sup>-century
technologies we’re using nowadays were unknown to him; although he had a fairly
good understanding of how an algorithm works).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Digital algorithms take the coding of the camera to a whole new
level. They don’t even need our hand to press their buttons. There’s no button
for algorithms. The functions of a button are, once again, scripted into the
code. And so, apart from the initial turning-on, an algorithm needs no further human
input. An algorithm is built to work in its own terms, after its own script, automated
to process information (data) by applying <i>ad
infinitum</i> the functions written in its code.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEW0ABsLf_RR8MDHayf7X6ojhyiGFBYz6_U_MJ7ztGjxGd_jEZtS5ki4g_S_2_nlddtB16PXUs3WDN0F-Tjjhmf-aPw_1KC9D2Hs9Lf8fV2wfp0q8Hp48vJFnno0KzBmpNIYYJlx95ehc/s1600/algorithm+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEW0ABsLf_RR8MDHayf7X6ojhyiGFBYz6_U_MJ7ztGjxGd_jEZtS5ki4g_S_2_nlddtB16PXUs3WDN0F-Tjjhmf-aPw_1KC9D2Hs9Lf8fV2wfp0q8Hp48vJFnno0KzBmpNIYYJlx95ehc/s400/algorithm+%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/rTg5Xk" target="_blank">Dark Government</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">The difference between the code of a camera and the code of an algorithm
is simple: while with the former we used the apparatus ignoring (not noticing)
the code but hoping to be able to control the results, with the latter we are
fully aware of the code but no longer in control of the results. What’s more,
we are also fully aware that there’s nothing we can do in order to stop the
algorithm. Nothing but the ultimate solutions: shutting it down.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">So mechanical cameras and digital codes have this thing in common:
the repositioning of the human element. The human is no longer at the center of
production of artefacts but at the periphery. That’s why ‘post-humanism’ is
such a catchphrase nowadays.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">The post-human is – due to no simple coincidence – also a <i>post-writing</i>. Of course, writing hasn’t
been completely eliminated from the picture (my pun!). We are still deeply
immersed in the linearity that’s been guiding our consciousness for thousands
of years. Binary code, which stands at the foundation of the digital world, is
itself arranged according to the logic of the line. Not only is it written in
lines that start in the top left corner and advance towards the bottom right
corner; it is also constructed in accordance to a linear causality between code
and operation: code is <i>teleologically</i>
written, so as to lead to a result visible in a computer operation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Flusser has pointed out the fact that no definite separation from
linear writing is possible as long as we keep thinking and organizing ourselves
according to the principles of linearity. I’m not even sure that we should be aiming
towards a complete annihilation. That kind of radicalism would verge
dangerously on suicide. But major changes are taking place. Of course they can’t
be sudden and complete. But they are here, they are questioning the grounds of
writing. Two examples of these changes, in which the algorithm reigns supreme, are
Google Earth and soft cinema. I’ll discuss them next week. So we’ll see.</div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-88572367243540640442015-08-18T15:28:00.000+12:002015-08-18T15:35:21.638+12:00A brief history of writing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://goo.gl/LWno2I" target="_blank">Last week</a> I touched quickly,
insufficiently, on the issue of algorithmic reality. And that brought to my
mind Vilém Flusser’s concern with <i>technical
images</i>. And so I thought I must say a few things about that now. But before
algorithms can come to the foreground I need to say a few things about writing à
la Flusser. In what follows I’ll be citing especially “Letters of the Alphabet,”
an essay in the collection <i><a href="http://goo.gl/TJt5PX" target="_blank">Does Writing Have a Future?</a></i></span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6BqIxKsjLwqwg3PKmSBSVGDeGTAuGzrdo1skUl5lT3EF2D6ihhuQG4bsY0PM8Jt-8D8Fp3ZhEwsttieKI2JybD7r75IRxV6X7-AUH5uooVa1c9qJ0FiE1Xjt0vZyLJCCsvDSCxqor0o4/s1600/Flusser.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6BqIxKsjLwqwg3PKmSBSVGDeGTAuGzrdo1skUl5lT3EF2D6ihhuQG4bsY0PM8Jt-8D8Fp3ZhEwsttieKI2JybD7r75IRxV6X7-AUH5uooVa1c9qJ0FiE1Xjt0vZyLJCCsvDSCxqor0o4/s400/Flusser.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="https://goo.gl/zL782e" target="_blank">Te Ipu Pakore: The Broken Vessel</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Vilém Flusser’s theories of writing
have a strong historical grounding. He proposed that writing makes history. That,
on the one hand, it is a practice with a background, with a beginning (Sumerian
tablets, Egyptian papyri, Roman wax tablets and stone inscriptions, and so on
and so forth). On the other hand, thought, writing makes History. It was only
after the invention of writing that historical consciousness was made possible.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">The lines that put an end to a babble</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">The possibility to arrange events in
a linear manner, to speak of them as ordered, is the by-product of writing
itself. None of this was possible before writing, when, says Flusser, the world
existed in a state of mythical consciousness; when language itself was not yet
settled, not yet set in stone (or in whatever).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">“It is possible to claim that people
of that time babbled.”</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Because of the absence of writing,
pre-literate cultures could not have spoken the way we do, because they had not
yet gone down writing’s path.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">With writing things became different
in the world and in language. With writing we start to see events through the
lens of their inclination towards linear ordering. One after another, events
partake in a curious pageant that leaves traces on surfaces, i.e. creates a
history of the event’s presence and its advancement towards the next event. With
writing, we can imagine what has caused an event and what is likely to be inferred
from it. That’s because we can see the before and the after of the event in a linear
arrangement. And once we can see that we can’t see otherwise: events <i>must</i> have causes and <i>must</i> produce effects. Writing has made
it possible to speak of origins and of projections into the future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Logic itself is the result of
writing, says Flusser. Logic, as a form of syllogistic bargaining with data based
on causes and effects, on premises and conclusions, on inferences and injunctions,
with the intention of arriving at a truth with a chronology of its own, is a
derivative, again, of writing, and of its ability to put things into straight
lines.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">A simple formula</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">The success of writing appears to
have been due to the simplicity of its formula. Once the world is presented in
straight lines, it becomes easier to re-present. The simplification that came
with the creation of specialized signs (letters able to synthetize the world
through simple combinations) turned the human mind away from pictographic
representations, which, realistic as they may have been, were time-consuming
and sedentary. The Lascaux paintings are still in Lascaux because the caves
could not be transported anywhere else; and so, in order to have access to the signs
represented there, one had to be <i>there</i>,
in Lascaux.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW183Lqhlw5aIOA2WEnEEvjZVNvCg7h3rygvB4UUMVrEOJjl-rZdMmg2vFVQK0DBRbKG6cPqy1wDIGibZwTW6vUYuFrEnoqFYS0tKeyJThb_6BD5qO8bzDrLOr6kkzttAUhwwAwbjNRPc/s1600/Lascaux.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW183Lqhlw5aIOA2WEnEEvjZVNvCg7h3rygvB4UUMVrEOJjl-rZdMmg2vFVQK0DBRbKG6cPqy1wDIGibZwTW6vUYuFrEnoqFYS0tKeyJThb_6BD5qO8bzDrLOr6kkzttAUhwwAwbjNRPc/s400/Lascaux.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/Xv0tUi" target="_blank">Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I can imagine elitism catching roots
right there, in the darkness of those caves. Those who could not afford the
privilege of seeing the murals were left outside of knowledge, outside of humanhood,
forced to gang up with other prehistoric ignoramuses. Deep inside the caves, those
paintings were guarded from the outside world by their very remoteness and, by
being guarded, they were also preserved.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Writing did not eliminate
preservation from the scheme. Hence its success. Since the ability to eternalize
an event through pictographic signs was a privilege of representation per se,
writing could not ignore it. So it too advanced the promise of eternity. But on
top of that, communication by means of these specialized signs presented this
huge advantage of being movable. The human animal turns now its attention to
lighter surfaces, easier to transport: tree bark, shells, animal hides. Things found
in nature (simple, sympathetic to inscription, at hand) are now turned into
support for writing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">The personalization of representation</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">The story goes on, but there’s no time
here to go into details. The point, as Flusser formulated it, is this: before
writing, the connection with the world was not completely severed. Of course,
the animal painted on a cave wall is not the animal itself but a representation
of it: a reminder that such things exist out there, beyond the threshold of the
cave. The representation, though, has full referential power: it does refer to
an actual animal out there, it <i>is</i> an
image of <i>that</i> animal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Writing ruins this certainty. Writing
intervenes between image and human being to unsettle their marriage. Letters
are representations not of the world but of images of the world, images akin to
the Lascaux paintings. This is apparent in the formal resemblance between Western
letters and their referents:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">“In the fifteen hundred years since
their invention, their original form has changed repeatedly, and yet it remains
recognizable: the two horns of the Semitic steer (Hebrew: <i>aleph</i>) in the <i>A</i>, the two domes
of the Semitic house (Hebrew: <i>beth</i>)
in the <i>B</i>, the hump of the Semitic
camel (Hebrew: <i>gimul</i>) in the <i>C</i>. Letters are pictures of a cultural
scene as it was perceived by those who invented the alphabet in the second millennium
B.C. on the eastern Mediterranean.”</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">This original resemblance has been
forgotten, but it must be taken into consideration when we think of how the
letters of the alphabet (or of other writing systems) have been allowed to act
as representations of representations; of how they were welcomed at the
representational games.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWVgHOe1bDLuLkwZVD0-hs28oozYl0QHGR_grdmSVP3ZdJ-sT1BfBpi52C9HaeQltTi82u4matJv-TcEWZsY4KEjVlv-KEpDCAOh-5VMoXSTpNYVjyaBvm6wJUHDXX9PJAkJfMMqBP0uU/s1600/alephbet.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWVgHOe1bDLuLkwZVD0-hs28oozYl0QHGR_grdmSVP3ZdJ-sT1BfBpi52C9HaeQltTi82u4matJv-TcEWZsY4KEjVlv-KEpDCAOh-5VMoXSTpNYVjyaBvm6wJUHDXX9PJAkJfMMqBP0uU/s400/alephbet.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/cVAJR2" target="_blank">Women of Faith</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And so, with the emergence of
writing, the world took a step back in its relationship to the human element. Now,
in order to make the cave painting accessible to others, a writer refers to
that representation in an abstract way. He/she does not explain <i>the world</i> to their readers. What they
explain is the <i>representation</i> they
have of that world. So writing becomes not only a way of objectifying the world
but also of personalizing representation, making it the product of the whim of
a writer or other. Precisely because a written text can circulate, it can be
present where the reality it refers to is not. A writer can describe in writing
a bull or a wild horse, and the reader has to take his words for granted. In essence,
there’s no way of ascertaining the truth of an utterance when the referent is
absent. That’s how rhetoric became necessary: a way of persuading an audience devoid
of direct access to the object. That’s how logic turned up: as a way of proving
the truth of the world by means of permutations of thoughts and by establishing
a diagrammatic proof-building methodology. Both rhetoric and logic deal with
abstractions, with their problems as well as their solutions.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">No turning back for language</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">And hence the essential perversion
of the relationship between language and writing:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">“Something in the spoken language
itself calls out to be fixed in place – and in fact, not so much in the
memories of speakers and hearers, or in records or tapes, but rather in the writing
itself. Spoken language seems to rush toward writing almost on its own, to
become a written language and so to achieve its full maturity. After the
invention of writing, spoken language appears to be a preparation for a written
language, to teach people how to speak properly in the first place.”</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">This progression mentioned by
Flusser is due, of course, to the several stages of evolution that language has
undertaken ever since the invention of writing. As writing turned to be
language’s technical way of materialization (its own technology), the invention
of inscription, once acknowledged, could never be dis-acknowledged. And so language
started takin shapes dictated not by its internal forces but by the forces of
its technological apparatus (writing).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">“Today we have hardly any access to
preliterate speech. Even in nurseries and among illiterates, writing has
permeated the language.”</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">So the schism is total. The specialized
signs of writing have taken over the realm of representation. But this victory
lasted only this many centuries. Flusser finds photography to be the great
rupture in the history of writing, the way towards a different form of formulating
the world. With cameras and their encoded capabilities, the door was opened to
what Flusser called <i>technical images</i>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Of them (algorithms et al), next
week, if the gods of writing are so inclined as to give us a chance.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-3153302623869274222015-08-10T22:23:00.000+12:002015-08-14T07:47:06.785+12:00Being caught reddit-handed, or the pleasures of policing for free<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">I got in trouble at the weekend when
I set up a reddit account (my first one ever) and, having had a rather cursory
reading through the rules of the group (or subreddit) I had joined, I was
kicked out. I had, it seems, gravely violated the rule no-links-to-your-personal-blog-are-allowed-on-this-subreddit.
Mind you, the link was inside a post that was the equivalent of half a Microsoft
Word page, but what does that matter? Out I went. First infringement, red card.
Harsh policy (zero tolerance); excellent policy-implementation.</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeyunQJy3O2M8XvtXkxC3XfKYwpEijsSAObp3qS6Q9EQe-nQWD44g_8y7jSgxmRJmPEwsbngVd-jMunsetPOptWvaLHSyrTu4U1-ea2JdRIGzPt0RlezTe-hpDh_nKh2xiWCF0JheSFG8/s1600/Red-handed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeyunQJy3O2M8XvtXkxC3XfKYwpEijsSAObp3qS6Q9EQe-nQWD44g_8y7jSgxmRJmPEwsbngVd-jMunsetPOptWvaLHSyrTu4U1-ea2JdRIGzPt0RlezTe-hpDh_nKh2xiWCF0JheSFG8/s400/Red-handed.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/vlQ6kw" target="_blank">Fear and Loathing in Bioethics</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The episode has left me thinking. Not
about dis-affiliation from groups but about this idea of being spotted,
of being handcuffed (metaphorically speaking), of being caught red-handed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">So I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">d like to start by noticing this language of apprehension and its potential
for rhyme. Reddit, red-handed. Just for fun. (Couldn</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">t help it.) Also couldn</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">t help thinking about the way reddit
is organized, as a means of dissemination and dismissal at the same time. But I
need to be well understood: by reddit I mean pretty much all of social media,
and with it pretty much everything that takes place online.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Nobody has asked for it</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Now allow me a few words about the <i>avatar</i> that </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US">caught</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US"> me. I checked his/her/their history
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">–</span><span lang="EN-US"> as one does in such circumstances, I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">m sure. They haven</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">t posted anything original in one
year. Ever since their last post they</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">ve been engaged in replies, more or
else, but also in the territorial and emblazoning (to them) actions of policing
the space in search for intruders. Now that</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s an interesting aspect, because nobody has given them a sheriff</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s badge for doing so. Nobody gives any such badge to any such vigilante
on the internet. And I mean <i>nobody</i>,
because the actual work, the real work of fending and defending, of blocking
and dismissing, is done not by human beings but by algorithms. What human
beings can do is alert those algorithms when they come across incriminating
practices such as (I had to find out) my own. And that</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s exactly where the issue finds its grounding. In the fact that
individuals offer their time and resources to serve algorithms. Take it as a
dystopian panic if you will, although I don</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">t mean it that way. And so the deeper question that imposes itself is
this: isn</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">t this loyalty to the algorithm somehow
a manifestation of the loyalty to another kind of abstractions? To the
abstractions represented by ideologies?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Algorithm, the latest materialization of control<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">All ideologies need materializations.
They cannot dwell in the abstract because they</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">re supposed to address concrete social items: human beings. Yes, this
itemization that we</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">re subjected to comes hand in hand
with the externalization of our concerns. Stuffed with the dictates we are exposed
to like some docile teddy bears, we take pleasure in controlling others, in
exercising this weird, dehumanizing (<i>algorithmizing</i>)
power: the ability to find the right places where others do wrong by a given
system.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">The vigilante who caught me
reddit-handed had a concern larger and seemingly more important than the actual
reason he had presumably joined reddit for. He was there to discuss books. That</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s what the group was for, that</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s what the group was asking for. The
rules were clear (I found out after reading them closely): you don</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">t post unless your posts are related to book discussions. It</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s with this kind of adamantine restrictiveness that the issue of
participation was imposed on the members. And yet, the individual who </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US">caught</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US"> me (I want to insist on this word
because I want, in essence, to insist on the process of being criminalized </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">–</span><span lang="EN-US"> which is precisely what rule-breaking leads to) did not post a reply to
my contribution. No, they chose to </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US">report</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US"> me (another word of the same resonance). <i>Content</i> was not important. What mattered was that a forbidden object was present in a forbidden place. I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">m not trying to defend myself
because I know that would sound pathetic; and it wouldn</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">t even be the purpose of this very post. But here</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s the issue: twenty lines of text mattered less than one link half a line
in length. All the rest was discussion of a book! What</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s more, it was a reply to a question posted by somebody else.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">But let</span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span></b><b><span lang="EN-US">s move on<o:p></o:p></span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">A few weeks ago I wrote about the
phenomenon of <a href="http://goo.gl/KA8FZX" target="_blank">synopticism</a>: the inversion of the panoptic gaze to the point
where we</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">re no longer dealing with a figure
of authority watching over and <i>super</i>-vising
the subjects but rather with the situation where subjects watch around
themselves in order to police the space of their social interaction as if they
were law enforcers. Policemen without a payroll. That</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s precisely what Foucault pointed out throughout his career: the
disciplining of the individuals to the point where they become guarantors
of the discourse</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s functioning. There are many other
illustrations of the phenomenon. Think of all the white supremacist movements
and their urge to protect a presumed universality by clearing it of a presumed
non-white threat.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3XVz3XYoLpU8o4mW6QpDrZl08nctElOEfRQthtxaNypsoZpt2QaVfJlRoHtFY3x3yPAluq-HiFVW467tSUbfbj-PzkcX4tH0L5bh56nmkwOMeH6jGJd7HztK17GGfODVpGt-tqU0oayA/s1600/Django+Unchained+scene.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3XVz3XYoLpU8o4mW6QpDrZl08nctElOEfRQthtxaNypsoZpt2QaVfJlRoHtFY3x3yPAluq-HiFVW467tSUbfbj-PzkcX4tH0L5bh56nmkwOMeH6jGJd7HztK17GGfODVpGt-tqU0oayA/s400/Django+Unchained+scene.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From <i>Django Unchained.</i> Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/Vozkfv" target="_blank">giphy</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Think of the neighbor who peers into your own bedroom. Think
of the entitlement to install surveillance cameras on one</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s own property.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">This last example is a really
interesting one, and possibly closer to the online vigilance I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">m trying to bring up in this post. In essence, a camera set up on one</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s property will <i>not</i> annul a
theft. It is not the camera that deters a thief from breaking and entering but
the fear of being caught on it. Not only that, but the camera is not a security
object per se. It does not hinder access. Like even the loudest alarm ever, it is not a
blocking device. If a thief did not know that a camera existed he or she would
just move on undeterred; the theft would go as planned. At least an alarm
system draws attention to its own presence when it goes off. Not a camera, though.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Then what</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s the point? What does the person who installed the camera gain from
having installed it? Peace of mind? I doubt it. We, the outsiders, are not the
only ones who know that a camera is completely incompetent against a break-in.
The owner knows it too. So the camera doesn</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">t demarcate for them a worry-free territory. What it does demarcate,
though, is a space of policing. If the camera catches the intruder the owner
can use the image to refer the intruder to the legal discourse. The owner,
therefore, has little to gain for themselves but a lot to gain for the
discourse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Unpaid work makes the world go round</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">This is the externalization of
concern I was talking about. The state of being-concerned does not serve the
individual. He/she remains on duty but without being remunerated for it. They
give away an important asset (their <i>generosity</i>)
in order to fulfill the purposes of power.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">m familiar with the term </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US">leave without pay.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US"> It is very carefully pointed out whenever an individual transgresses
certain rules concerning not-engagement in the workplace. But I haven</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">t heard any instance of </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US">being on duty without pay</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US"> (voluntary work excluded), although a lot of what happens in terms of
this policing of the social sphere by unemployed individuals points precisely
in that direction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5nO2wo9RMCBLlChkAcEnn-6EZ9lRmHjbFMb2cxqlwZZgBkbhqfrm5onwKYRap1wEKJH1INlf0Aw-1n0ZE7N1CvzJOw5afKL02mWC9llpNq2uyWYAoLD2jVYcL8OmcnaUqRdxpwfq9yAA/s1600/No+payment.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5nO2wo9RMCBLlChkAcEnn-6EZ9lRmHjbFMb2cxqlwZZgBkbhqfrm5onwKYRap1wEKJH1INlf0Aw-1n0ZE7N1CvzJOw5afKL02mWC9llpNq2uyWYAoLD2jVYcL8OmcnaUqRdxpwfq9yAA/s400/No+payment.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/QQz4kd" target="_blank">Huffington Post</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US">Pay</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">’</span><span lang="EN-US"> needs to be regarded not
necessarily as monetary remuneration. These days, when visibility has become a
currency in itself, social capital needs to be understood in terms of the
benefit drawn from <i>having been involved</i>.
In what? In anything. Anything, that is, that has significance to the discourse
of visibility.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">And so back to my <i>poliziotto</i>. I mean
not to him-him but to what he represents. To recapitulate, what have we here? Someone in the service of an
algorithm. Someone acting for the benefit of a site that</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s not his own, from which he gains very little, possibly nothing. Someone
who</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s settled into a regulated territory
and has inhaled all the fumes of the site, in such a great quantity that now they</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">re high on the idea of duty. Which is not even an idea anymore, but
rather an internalized practice. And that, without going into any other
details, is characteristic of the disciplined society we</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span lang="EN-US">re inhabiting. Nothing new in itself. Nothing outrageously unknown. Just
another instantiation of an age-old propensity towards self-subjection,
something Foucault spent entire books talking about. And talking, and talking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-76644684471798333062015-08-03T23:19:00.000+12:002015-08-03T23:19:24.558+12:00Some texts reject me, so I write them<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">The most inspiring texts to me are
not the ones that keep me immersed in them but the ones that refuse me, the
ones that send me away.</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM6DPXnsvHkQcJOrPebNvFB4bH7cz0JzR8W8H01mv72uElmrOVWynSqwUlQXZ2id8zXKrIW2DI4D7uGIBxFVumAc3EpYjAvE-ui_aXGsdpjdIuWQrgHeoJi6V6QMAHdRwp1L5lGzbPaYc/s1600/Rejection.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM6DPXnsvHkQcJOrPebNvFB4bH7cz0JzR8W8H01mv72uElmrOVWynSqwUlQXZ2id8zXKrIW2DI4D7uGIBxFVumAc3EpYjAvE-ui_aXGsdpjdIuWQrgHeoJi6V6QMAHdRwp1L5lGzbPaYc/s400/Rejection.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/UKUmA0" target="_blank">Search Engine Land</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It happens this way: I read and I
read and there’s nothing out of ordinary about my reading. I peruse with the
mind to the text, open to its charisma, expecting the pleasures, watching for
clues. But the mind that reads this way is that of a stranger. What I mean to
say is ridiculously simple, beyond obvious: that through this type of reading I
remind myself that I am not the author but only a reader. A stranger, indeed:
someone who comes from without and whose likelihood to settle within is minimal.
But some texts are more than that. Some texts fill me with that curious sentiment
that I am the one who’s written them; that my reading of them right now is the
reading of some draft I am in the process of editing. In these situations, I can’t
stop thinking beside the actual text, ignoring it as it were, heading towards a
conclusion that’s not the text’s but mine.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Drafting</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">A draft, always a draft. Which means,
in essence, that I perceive incompleteness, imperfection, room-for-improvement.
I have this knack for visualizing alternatives. When I read these texts I feel
the urge to imagine how I would write them otherwise. Not better, not worse. Just
differently.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">A draft requires careful reading,
i.e. the placing of care into the text. It requires me to care enough about the
text to attempt to imagine it different. And so what happens next is this: I
can no longer read. That’s because the urge is now in me, the urge of
inspiration (I might call it that, for once).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">I can imagine a point where there’s
no more room for perusal, where continuing to read is a dangerous business.
Dangerous because it can cause confusion. If I am not careful enough at this
point, if I don’t pay sufficient attention, I risk unconscious plagiarism –
which is the worst form of all, because it takes away the pleasure that comes
with the stealing of something truly valuable. I know this because I’m familiar
with those moments when one can remember with embarrassing accuracy a
paragraph, a sentence, a phrase, but not their origin. When that happens I feel
utterly incapacitated. My mind wants to find that place where everything
happened first, and that desire is so strong that I can no longer concentrate. And
so a frantic search starts, one that often leads nowhere but to exhaustion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">It’s much easier to plagiarize, I
think, when you know exactly what you’re plagiarizing. It’s much harder to do
it when you just happen stupidly upon a fragment you didn’t even know was in
your head.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Drifting</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">So in those moments I can no longer
read. I need to put the text aside and start my own text. I need to write
because something in the original text tells me with the urgency of
catastrophes that if I miss this opportunity I miss everything. And ‘everything’
is an incredibly ample concept sometimes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">My own texts are very often caused
by texts I’ve been reading, and whose reading must be interrupted. Those texts,
in their splendor, send me away. Away to the computer, away to the piece of
paper and the pen. But also away from their substance (the texts’ substance).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmh6yFsdC0nGcKiAyuOS-n6BFMYW57X8SajKJhYeLWGKZCJ1NDlRkTFQAmky04CHe8eDZTgiuuDb9wvASNofzOBbdwFiJmOPpe5Sr1z6jIUV4FBcy5y0Ayf2sGdddpno8Ys5HLUgxByB8/s1600/Reading.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmh6yFsdC0nGcKiAyuOS-n6BFMYW57X8SajKJhYeLWGKZCJ1NDlRkTFQAmky04CHe8eDZTgiuuDb9wvASNofzOBbdwFiJmOPpe5Sr1z6jIUV4FBcy5y0Ayf2sGdddpno8Ys5HLUgxByB8/s400/Reading.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/glcxxU" target="_blank">Red State</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
When I have to stop reading because I
need to write there is no way back. I can no longer see the original text. Its presence
panics me. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. Not anymore. I turn my
back to it. I obliterate it. The fact that it exists disappoints me. And this
is the very same text that caused inspiration in the first place.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Incredible, the ways of writing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Textual determinism</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">It’s in moments like these that I
see the agency that resides in texts, their ability to stir me into action. Not
the authors. They don’t awaken me to the same awareness. I very rarely feel the
need to praise an author for an affect brought up by their text. Authors are
not interesting. Not in themselves. An author must be an author of something.
Of a text. So the text is more imperative, more interesting. It’s what exists, what
needs to be dealt with. It’s what possesses the capacity to determine my
actions. <i>Textual determinism</i> – I might
call it that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">With other texts, which are more
silent, less reproachful than the ones that make me write, I have a different
kind of relationship. With them I don’t. I don’t start anything, I don’t change
anything, I don’t make an effort. When I read these texts I make notes on the
margins. Sometimes. At other times I make no notes at all. Not even mental
notes. These texts don’t ask for anything. And because of their silence I
remain silent too. What I want to say is that I forget these silent texts. I forget
them even while I’m in the process of reading them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">But the texts that speak to me are
incredibly empowering. The very nerve to get away from them is evidence to this
empowerment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">A case study</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Speaking of notes. I do the
following when I take notes at lectures, conferences, public speeches. (I used
to do it when I was a student and I’m still doing it. Every time). I start the
way everybody starts. I write down the words I hear. I give the speaker my time
and space and reincarnate their words onto the page, my page. At this point I
am fully occupied by the speaker’s speech. To put it differently, I follow
their text. I pay tribute to their gesture, and with it I confirm their authority
over the text, over the clarity of that text. I would not dare thinking of
altering anything. Like a good journalist who obeys the rules of his profession
and protects his sources, I strive for exactitude. Everything for a faithful rendition.
Everything for loyalty. But then, all of a sudden, something happens. Suddenly,
the speech I am listening to ceases to be clear. It becomes blurred. It fades
slowly, until it reaches inaudibility. And then, I cannot hear it at all. Why?
Because at that point I am already being forced to generate my own text.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">What I think happens at that point
is simple, albeit brutal. I snatch the original idea. I literally steal it, the
way thieves sneak into the houses of the unaware to dispossess them of
valuables. And once that idea is in my possession I run away with it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">It’s the grab, the seizing of the
opportunity to write, that estranges me from the speech that keeps going on in
the room, unheard by me but still alive to others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeL3ADo2b7uw7Y1RMyGScOPq73O9khQqA69514n6asaIql3FLcJtG0loDS5PMBTqqOb4HAq9FBsO-KMKUWA2ytL1hP4t8RB40yMvsNutcmbR0jzb1viKSJ5y6Hv4NGiV_0Q4iyy-fol84/s1600/Reading+and+books.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeL3ADo2b7uw7Y1RMyGScOPq73O9khQqA69514n6asaIql3FLcJtG0loDS5PMBTqqOb4HAq9FBsO-KMKUWA2ytL1hP4t8RB40yMvsNutcmbR0jzb1viKSJ5y6Hv4NGiV_0Q4iyy-fol84/s400/Reading+and+books.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/BVqu6G" target="_blank">Hearts and Minds</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And then I write. First, things
directly related to the speech. Then gradually relevance fades. It too goes
away. And so the original text gives in, and in its place comes my own text, my
own speech. I end up, of course, writing things completely unrelated to the
original situation. But it’s now, after having encountered and then immediately
divorced the original text, that I find the right energy to write. As if the
echo of the original text were contaminating me.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">What do you know, this too might be
some kind of disease.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-50340039042261730782015-07-27T22:53:00.001+12:002015-07-28T00:03:47.808+12:00A carnival of gaffes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://goo.gl/QbWuSF">But</a> let’s look
at this hunt for errors from a more technical perspective. Or a more
technological one, to put it otherwise. Or just from another perspective, pure and simple.</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p><br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The example of the book reviews of <a href="http://goo.gl/QbWuSF">last week</a> doesn't make for an isolated phenomenon. Take a
look at YouTube. It’s packed full of vigilant watchers who see mistakes in films
and take great pleasure in sharing their findings. Best Fails. Greatest
Mistakes. Funny Goofs. These are the titles that entertain the generation of
faults: our generation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="338" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4RnVz7ECat0" width="450"></iframe>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="text-align: left;">Little they seem when regarded in isolation. But greatly they weigh when put together.One sees them and one criticizes. Or on the
contrary, one sees them and one revels in the rise of all marginal genres,
of which <em>the fail</em> is one of the most popular. The question remains at the centre of all this: What’s it with the hiccup, with
the glitch, with the malfunction? What makes them so appealing, so exciting?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p><br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Possible answer: Maybe the lure of the power
that’s crushing under its own weight. Or maybe something more technical, more, how should I put it, of our time.</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<b>The
age of the non-expert</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We need to see that things are changing around us, and in many regards. Formerly accepted methods, in knowledge as well
as in technologies, have been falling short of their grandiose promises. They
can no longer provide recipes to go by. They can no longer provide recipes,
full stop. The world isn’t working the way it used to. Top to bottom is not the
right trajectory anymore. Hierarchies (which are the very essence of
traditional power, based on dissemination from above, on weighing down on the
subaltern and on legalizing the utterance of the few against the argument of the many)
are obsolete now.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Yes, this constant hunt for errors is the
result of the new reality in which the non-specialist rules. It is the result of
Web 2.0. The consumer turned into producer, the user turned into a manufacturer
– these things have helped immensely the trend.<br />
When the video cassette, and
then the DVD player, were invented, they were praised primarily for one
quality: the user's ability to go back and forth, a magical act permitted by the
rewind and the fast-forward functions. That aspect has been immensely improved
and further facilitated by Web 2.0, with its YouTube offspring and all the adaptations that ensued from it, which allows
anyone with an internet connection to play with video or music files to their
heart’s content. Add to that things like Netflix, or Igloo, and the picture becomes
sharper. Access to mistakes is one of the many possibilities opened up by this
unrestrained access to everything.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<b>The more,
the better</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-NZ">The issue is related, of course, to the general trend taking place
in the online universe, where creativity has taken a sharp turn from creation
to curation. Like all artists who take pride in their work, YouTubers find
their own reserves of pride in the mashups they produce. Keeping things
together is more important than pointing them out in isolation from each other.
That's why the great hunt for mistakes is one that takes place in an ecosystem
of its own, with cases upon cases making up the little universe of
failures-on-record.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-NZ"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG1sqS_ECM3mTxoww6qG8CJenNDTYggtx6hPCthm18uoU3faIzNRZ6TzQsBljtSrmlHbi_ydcUMNVtl5G0gIgFcgDQFkYvCc5WTF01jCwPJiVZuQgCknxpohxZ4Zz2oypo_nXadtWmoFU/s1600/jokes+at+tv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG1sqS_ECM3mTxoww6qG8CJenNDTYggtx6hPCthm18uoU3faIzNRZ6TzQsBljtSrmlHbi_ydcUMNVtl5G0gIgFcgDQFkYvCc5WTF01jCwPJiVZuQgCknxpohxZ4Zz2oypo_nXadtWmoFU/s400/jokes+at+tv.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/URwjrG" target="_blank">Warren Fyfe</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This seems, indeed, to be the case: the issue of recording, of
having things on record, preserved (curated) in an effort to make a case for
something. We seem to have learned rather well the techniques of argumentation
taught to us as early as primary school: if you want to be credible you need to
amass proof. The more, the better. Accumulation shows us the way, and this
feels uncannily familiar. We must have seen it in another form, somewhere else. Maybe in the utilitarian logic based
on the argument of quantity?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Errors can provide this reassurance of large numbers when they
come about invasion-style. And by the looks of it they do seem to take up quite
a lot of space; a lot of the generous space offered by the Empire of Data.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Going viral means growing
fast</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-NZ">But there seems to be something else behind this abundance of failures,
behind this carnival of gaffes.</span></div>
Logic of nature: when abundance becomes apparent it generates
movements of its own, interests that tip the ecosystem towards particular
phenomena, to the detriment of others. Translated into human language, this
theorem finds its materialization in the logic of profits. As long as the hunt
for errors remains a local issue, it raises an eyebrow or two but nothing more.
When the tendency becomes visible, though, when it goes viral, it calls for
action. In that case, producing a piece of art riddled with errors makes
perfect sense. Satisfying the pleasure of the hunters brings home the need to
be in the limelight. In other words, there’s a lot to be gained from being
talked about online. Good or bad, it matters not when the accountants start counting
hits and data traffic. The most important thing now is to be seen, to be
watched, to be shared, to be watched again, and to be shared and shared and
shared <i>ad infinitum</i>. Value is nothing. Presence is all.</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-34712683607102842732015-07-20T23:44:00.000+12:002015-07-20T23:44:11.917+12:00The fault in our stars (a narrative paraphrase)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">There’s a pleasure we seem to take in looking
for gaffes, for slip-ups. And that’s what I want to think about this week.</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxDiraDgMiNuXmhADE3EdkmebpITyGO8N3qWgf12zgLbTNoUxvXM8y9qId296ghN4nnDXHPfl_LrqNZj0bQaBF1Y4bNJy1ZxV63U4AWLnrtrmdnAwdfWCWkHJlDRy5kelYjjMHqvHgcZI/s1600/woman_laughing_with_a_book_in_hand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxDiraDgMiNuXmhADE3EdkmebpITyGO8N3qWgf12zgLbTNoUxvXM8y9qId296ghN4nnDXHPfl_LrqNZj0bQaBF1Y4bNJy1ZxV63U4AWLnrtrmdnAwdfWCWkHJlDRy5kelYjjMHqvHgcZI/s400/woman_laughing_with_a_book_in_hand.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/Mjk8ho" target="_blank">Why to Read</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
When I started posting my book reviews on <a href="http://goo.gl/Rd4nOX">Zero to One</a> I also started searching the net
for others’ impressions on the same books. I simply want to know where I’m
sitting compared to others. Something reviewers in general do, I’m told. It
gives me/them a good feeling to know. Or so it should. What I’ve noticed, among
other things, is that most book reviewers (and not just the anonymous bloggers
that inhabit the vast expanses of the online desert, but also the ones who
write for big papers and enjoy big audiences) take much pride in making known
their dislikes. Especially their dislikes. And I don’t want to be trivial. I’m
not accusing any of these reviewers of vanity. I’m only taking note of this
trend.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Texts
need space to breathe </b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There’s something essential that needs to be said,
especially about prose writing: novels, essays, that kind of stuff. Not
everything a writer says must be perfect! A lot <i>could</i> but not everything <i>must</i>,
not everything <i>can</i>. I don’t know how
many readers expect every given line to be the equivalent of a Mona Lisa to be
put in a gilded frame and sent off to the nearest Louvre. But there seems to be
quite a few of them out there who’re asking precisely for this.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Things, however, don’t work that way. They’ve
never worked that way. Texts need breathing spaces. There are passages with a role
as simple as their name suggests: they’re made to facilitate passage. That’s
all they need to provide. Not explosive metaphors, not kerosene-like imagery to
fire up one’s mind. If a book is good enough it will have plenty of those throughout
its pages. But books, mind you, are not continuous displays of brilliance. Fueled
on good ideas, which come <i>always</i> at
intervals, books in general are made up of fits and starts. The reader has to
be shaken out of their state of habituation with the text; they need to
encounter surprise; they need to find gems strewn between parts made of base
metal. There’s a good part here, another good part there, but most of what’s
read is made to carry the plot, to fill the pipes that traverse a text.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Kernels
and satellites, two elements of any narrative</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="https://goo.gl/NIy9al">Seymour Chatman</a>
has put together a whole theory of narrative structures, which is predicated
precisely on this play with joints and juxtapositions. According to this
theory, stories are made out of narrative blocks that follow upon each other.
Within these blocks there are two crucial components, something that Chatman
names, translating to a certain extent from Barthes, <i>kernels</i> and <i>satellites</i>. The
terms should be pretty self-explanatory: kernels are cores, nubs, hearts,
essences, while satellites are adjuncts, appendages, accessories. Think of
kernels as the main actors in a film and of satellites as the supporting actors
and the extras. The former make the limelight; they carry the message of the film’s
narrative, they get the awards and the applause. The later are not so swell but
they’re the mass that enable the protagonists to shine. In spite of their uncompromising
differences, none of the two is possible without the other. In order to be the
lead role one needs minor characters to wander around and fill the screen. At the
same time, without the alpha character the minor ones have no reason to be.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
When Chatman describes his theory in <i><a href="https://goo.gl/gjnDgV">Story and
Discourse</a></i>, he makes it as clear as possible that the structure of a
narrative requires a skeleton (a scaffolding, a framework, a pretext; something
like the hardware of a computer) and the flesh that comes upon it (matter that makes
the connections, a tissue, a context; a software, if you like).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Kernels are narrative moments that give rise
to cruxes in the direction taken by events. They are nodes or hinges in the structure,
branching points which force a movement into one or two (or more) possible
paths. Achilles can give up his girl or refuse; Huck Finn can remain at home or
set off down the river; Lambert Strether can advise Chad to remain in Paris or
to return; Miss Emily can pay the taxes or send the collector packing; and so
on. Kernels cannot be deleted without destroying the narrative logic. In the
classical narrative text, proper interpretation of events at any given point is
a function of the ability to follow these ongoing selections, to see later
kernels as consequences of earlier.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="253" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wmHe6D_uUKM" width="450"></iframe>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
To Chatman, kernels are some kind of signposts.
They signal where the story could have become something else. They are also nubs
where the story turns out to be hanging on mere threads. It’s with kernels that
one becomes aware of structure as such. Satellites, however, are
context-dependent; they are peripheral elements, the role of which is to cover
the kernels, to make them invisible so as to create the illusion narratives are
famous for.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“A minor plot event – a satellite – is not
crucial in this sense. It can be deleted without disturbing the logic of the
plot, though its omission will, of course, impoverish the narrative
aesthetically. Satellites entail no choice, but are solely the workings-out of
the choices made by the kernels. They necessarily imply the existence of
kernels, but not vice versa. Their function is that of filling in, elaborating,
completing the kernel; they form the flesh on the skeleton.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
To put it otherwise, in Twitter-like terms, strictly
speaking a novel’s plot can be shorthanded into <a href="http://goo.gl/eGT0PG">one
sentence</a> fairly easily. The essence doesn’t take much space. What happens
beyond it is what comes as a surplus to the framework on which the novel is
built. All that meat covering those bones is there to make the transition
between the skeleton’s parts possible. Without the connecting tissue, the
kernels would remain isolated, visible, ugly.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Navigating
with satellites</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I’m going to exaggerate here, but truth is we
need to take these things (the fits and starts of stories) as what they are, so
as not to demand a shining armor from something that’s meant to be rags.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
With poetry yes, things are different. From
poetry we have the right to expect perfection, because poetry is precisely the
quest for faultlessness. In a poem, every line and every word must be taken
seriously. The distinction between kernels and satellites is irrelevant in most
of the poetic genres (with the unsurprising exception of the so-called
narrative poetry, whose very title says it all). A poem is a kernel in itself. It
can be read in isolation, even when the reader is aware of the poet’s oeuvre
and where they can make the necessary connections between different poems,
between different themes.<o:p></o:p></div>
But the point of this post was to bring about
the issue of the guilty pleasures we experience when we come across imperfections.
The danger of exercising this pleasure is easy to identify: if one moans about
the parts that aren’t that essential (which, unfortunately, happens very often –
or at least in a lot of the cases I’ve seen so far) one risks missing the
point. The point, i.e. the kernel. Outside the point one navigates with the
satellites; one looks at the secondary; one looks at what could be taken out without
affecting the structure.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-44203952985425561372015-07-13T22:39:00.000+12:002015-07-13T22:45:13.955+12:00Of classics, after all<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">In a short
essay from 1981 (“Why Read the Classics?”), Italo Calvino says this about
books: “If I read the <i>Odyssey</i> I read
Homer’s text, but I cannot forget all that the adventures of Ulysses have come
to mean in the course of the centuries, and I cannot help wondering if these
meanings were implicit in the text, or whether they are incrustations or
distortions or explanations.”</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk7X6etzNqD9Dlk7iJfqiRtKbt3r4Ml8hmAQ2Pb-UM3gibcVLp3atrh3ht-qcBh0QmB1Sg0TT8Vf5AhsKxcOJotN5OgIbYutoxLf09viHwXlH9Y7qXHPc36wllYF9Wk1bfwTtVdy6LAEM/s1600/Classics1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk7X6etzNqD9Dlk7iJfqiRtKbt3r4Ml8hmAQ2Pb-UM3gibcVLp3atrh3ht-qcBh0QmB1Sg0TT8Vf5AhsKxcOJotN5OgIbYutoxLf09viHwXlH9Y7qXHPc36wllYF9Wk1bfwTtVdy6LAEM/s400/Classics1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/ClxDO3" target="_blank">University of Oxford</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Calvino
clarifies a couple of things. 1. That the classics are classics not because
they’re fixed but because they’re mutable. 2. That a classic text is not only
what it <i>is</i> but also (or mostly) what
it <i>has been made to be</i>. The latter
being due to the fact that a classic is read by many generations. But the fact
of their readability across time is caused by being always young and restless.
Which goes back under clarification no. 1, as above.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
This is just
to re-articulate the point in the quote.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Alterations</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Since some
of these classics require translations (having been written in a different language
or in a time too distant to sustain comprehensibility), let’s briefly bring up
translations. There are translations contemporary to the reader, as opposed to
translations contemporary to the translator.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Consider the
former (the latter will be made clear by contrast). Insofar as they don’t fall
for the archaic fallacy according to which a text must sound the way it sounded
to its original readers, these texts arrive at the meeting with us vested in
the garb of novelty. They’re fresh and crispy, just off the production line,
and aimed at a public that speaks the patois. These texts use the exact allusions
that make a contemporary tick. Example: Seamus Heaney’s translation of <i>Beowulf</i> isn’t impossible to read; it isn’t
made difficult by impenetrable allusions. And that’s precisely because he made
the poem sound intelligible to late-twentieth century readers.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“So. The
Spear-Danes in days gone by<br />
And the
kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.<br />
We have
heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Classics in
the language of us – is what Heaney’s <i>Beowulf</i>
is in the first place. Not that we don’t need explanations every now and then.
Far from it. With the passing of time, the world itself has changed and understanding
the basics of fifth-century chieftainship or the dynamics of a narrative that
mixes fact and fiction rather liberally is not, as they say, as easy as pie.
But those explanations aren’t directions; they are illuminations. And what’s
more, they don’t try to make the translator sound intelligent. They simply ease
the reader’s way into a text that’s bound to be difficult.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Or do I
wrongly understand the role of a translator?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Substitutes</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But the classics
pose yet another aspect: that the readers change their gears too, with or
without a translator’s help. The transference of resonances depends, to a
certain extent, on the idiosyncrasies of biological ages. Let’s call them
generations, for lack of a better word. One of the most apparent distinctions
is that between a text read in one’s youth and the same text read at maturity.
The constant: the reader; he/she is the same. The variables: a) reading the
text once in one’s tender years and once in the years of mature undertakings;
b) reading the text once only, when one is young and presumably un-formed, wet
behind the ears; c) reading the text once only, but at the age when wines are
better sipped than drunk in quaffs. As we move through these categories we get
to understand texts in different ways. The battle between generations may very
well be just this: a disagreement over readings, an impossibility to sign a
pact over the meanings of a text.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVVaLFyYhll77obMUJ2c5_cj7iU943p93xTOmz2z2TwMN8tZffph3XICJTRtfaP87o8ohyiNbJiDpPDGmuz79XkvN0rDV8t9Q66CDqtRGeadbT6QWfQp526MG-yVWSuBctVUt8k14HPeg/s1600/Classics3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVVaLFyYhll77obMUJ2c5_cj7iU943p93xTOmz2z2TwMN8tZffph3XICJTRtfaP87o8ohyiNbJiDpPDGmuz79XkvN0rDV8t9Q66CDqtRGeadbT6QWfQp526MG-yVWSuBctVUt8k14HPeg/s400/Classics3.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/dvlXEm" target="_blank">Deviant Art</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Let me quote
some more from Calvino:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“In fact,
reading in youth can be rather unfruitful, due to impatience, distraction,
inexperience with the product’s ‘instructions for use,’ and inexperience in
life itself. Books read then can be (possibly at one and the same time)
formative, in the sense that they give a form to future experiences, providing
models, terms of comparison, schemes for classification, scales of value,
exemplars of beauty – all things that continue to operate even if a book read
in one’s youth is almost or totally forgotten. If we reread the book at a
mature age, we are likely to rediscover these constants, which by this time are
part of our inner mechanisms, but whose origins we have long forgotten. A literary
work can succeed in making us forget it as such, but it leaves its seed in us.”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It’s the wetness-behind-ears
thing. How to get over it, how not to consider it inexperience that needs to be
corrected, stupidity that requires to be schooled.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Educating
the young in how a text <i>must</i> be read is
like a joke that needs to be explained. If you didn’t get the point in the first
place, you should be left to figure it out for yourself, and through this
figuring out discover the pleasure that was there to be had in the first
instance. Explain to someone how to read the joke and you’ve destroyed
everything. The classics are, I think, in a similar situation. Let them be
encountered at first hand, approached with the uncertainty and the scorn that
come with the inevitable, irrefutable distance in time, in mores, in
consciousnesses.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Don’t provide
introductions, don’t go on with footnotes, don’t turn yourself into an academic
reader unless you’re forced by the circumstances of your profession! These
things kill a text. And to whose benefit? We peek into the indexes and
appendices of books not because we’re stupid; it’s because the one who rendered
them anew has made it necessary for us to do so. The mere presence of such apparatuses
of understanding draws the readers towards them because the readers believe too
much in the power of the printed text. Simple logic: why would an appendix be there
if it didn’t mean to be considered?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Translators/editors
of this kind try to educate us by placing inside the text clues of their own capabilities.
They depart catastrophically from the text, by making us dependent on their skills
rather than curious about the text’s qualifications. We read the translator’s
curriculum vitae instead of perusing the actual text. We’re given crutches when
nothing’s wrong with us, when we can navigate easily the seas that we have
never sailed before.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Forgetting well</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
What one
should get from Calvino’s words, therefore, is this realization that a classic
text isn’t, as many are tempted to think, a guaranteed memory but precisely the
opposite. A classic text is one that forces us to forget. To forget its
letters, its words, its semantic juxtapositions. To remember it, however, by
means that resemble the intricacies of DNA: a memory that stays in the depths
of remembering.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjO5R_mOHIvdL-891V1_E_mVatVdoM_GMs9dp_RIfGreZrODXnGDyYOvmb4zZNYnDKKSBNSecqQMAuT7Z7hjiA-wCGcP6sU38Nb36PNoE-NmgEQdQ7iMB-wDw0jw9UpS67SYgyBNAQH3I/s1600/Classics2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjO5R_mOHIvdL-891V1_E_mVatVdoM_GMs9dp_RIfGreZrODXnGDyYOvmb4zZNYnDKKSBNSecqQMAuT7Z7hjiA-wCGcP6sU38Nb36PNoE-NmgEQdQ7iMB-wDw0jw9UpS67SYgyBNAQH3I/s400/Classics2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/L0H0vu" target="_blank">Synonym</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
A classic
text is, therefore, anti-educational.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I grew up at
a time and in a place where rote-learning was the only acceptable way. What I did
learn from that was how to hate the texts I was supposed to love. Yes, I’ve
learned those things. Yes, I still recite them when I find it relevant, because
they’ve been fixed between my synapses and refuse, by some chemical miracles
that take place in my brain, to let go of me. But that doesn’t mean I have
enjoyed them the way they (my teachers) thought I was going to enjoy the incident
of the encounter. This, in fact, was the central problem: that the meeting with
those texts was not at all an encounter. It had been prepared, premeditated, pre-designed,
or as they say about old DVDs they sell in DVD stores, pre-loved.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Calvino
again:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The classics are books that exert a peculiar influence, both when they refuse
to be eradicated from the mind and when they conceal themselves in the folds of
memory, camouflaging themselves as the collective or individual unconscious.”</blockquote>
It’s <i>the influence</i> that matters: an influence
that <i>matters</i>. Not just any dictation
will make one a good writer, a good reader. Calligraphy classes make you a good
calligrapher, but not a good novelist. Rote-learning of a text makes you a good
reciter but not a good reader. I’m on Calvino’s side even when he speaks of
books that “refuse to be eradicated from the mind.” Provided we’re talking
about something that’s been acquired, not given by force (as it were), like a
gift pushed into our pockets while we’re screaming that no, we don’t want it.</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-12041326794536753462015-07-06T21:13:00.000+12:002015-07-06T21:20:56.207+12:00“These are my fancies…”<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">It’s probably worth noting that the history of
the essay started with an affirmation of doubt. The words belong, of course, to
Michel de Montaigne: “These are my fancies, in which I make no
attempt to convey information about things, only about myself. I may have some
objective knowledge one day, or may perhaps have had it the past when I
happened to light on passages that explained things. But I have forgotten it
all; for though I am a man of some reading, I am one who retains nothing.”</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigHxbAyEidwSQlW3fWmd2KEtfjARZVqA__krIS-vqRekhUza1H_m7g5ljPB-brLebPofa6DtnhE06M9cG7dfM8Ja11sqtgEd0tc_p7Lw6G8F1LUMAN7uY6rVHDYk-LFecRAw2qMKJNl5s/s1600/Fiction.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigHxbAyEidwSQlW3fWmd2KEtfjARZVqA__krIS-vqRekhUza1H_m7g5ljPB-brLebPofa6DtnhE06M9cG7dfM8Ja11sqtgEd0tc_p7Lw6G8F1LUMAN7uY6rVHDYk-LFecRAw2qMKJNl5s/s400/Fiction.jpg" width="355" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/W0wMX8" target="_blank">www.gibbons.de</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
First and foremost, the essay writer is not
someone engaged in a gesture of enlightenment. Montaigne doesn’t lay any claim
at clarifying the world. If there is anything to be clarified in an essay, that
is (must be) the writing self. Since the writing self is the one that really
struggles, it is also the only one that matters. Outside of his immediate
perimeter, the world lies wide and frightening; or, as Pascal would put it, less
than a century after Montaigne, with a similar honesty and a comparable panic,
“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And so, in any truly honest undertaking of writing
only the autobiographical gesture really means anything: the self writing about
itself; the self writing itself down.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I may have some objective knowledge one day.” What
do I see here? Doubt! But more importantly, I see an assertion about writing as
accumulation. After having amassed pages upon pages of exercises in
self-assessment and self-exposure, I <i>might</i>
be able to arrive at a conclusive point; one that is truly a point of
departure: an introduction, a foreword, a preface.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It's not an myth that forewords are
written after the actual texts have been finished. That <i>pre</i>faces are really <i>post</i>faces.
That in order to introduce something you need to have perused it first and to
have become familiarized with it. Intimately familiarized, reading it like a
writer, writing it like a reader.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Weapons
of mass destruction</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Montaigne didn’t acknowledge (not here!) the
tricks that one can perform by means of writing. For instance, the messing-up
of time, the reordering of events so as to serve a text’s purpose. Take
rhetoric. Any apparatus of persuasion is a distorter of reality. Rhetoric deals
in things that audiences are unlikely to take for granted. It turns up in
places where the world is disappointing or where an audience refuses to believe
that the world is possible that way.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Nobody will preach to the converted. There’s no
point in dealing in tautology. It’s where there’s doubt, where there’s
hesitation, that the orator needs to step in. Even where they create a problem
that didn’t exist before, the orators (see politicians, as I can’t think up a
better example!) conjure up that problem as objectionable in the first place:
something likely to be regarded with a squint of reservation, with a
pull-your-glasses-to-the-base-of-your-nose kind of suspicion.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The orator steps into the battle of persuasion armed
with weapons of mass destruction. The mass, in its solid disbelief, is fiercely
attacked, pushed into a corner, forced to agree with the orator’s dexterity.
Not with the natural order of things (if such can be discerned), but with the
orator’s talent for milking the cow of mass credulity. In essence, a person
skilled in rhetoric takes the audience for a ride and messes up with their
mind. Best examples: the sophistic theses of the Achilles-and-the-tortoise
type, which negate the obvious in order to dwell in an outrageous probability,
in a contemptible <i>let’s pretend</i>. It’s
precisely because the argument can work mathematically and not ontologically (that
Achilles, swift as he might be, will always be a slave to infinite division of
time and space) that a sophism of this kind is accepted. And with it, an act or
oratory ticks the box of its persuasive agenda.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Abandon
hope. I’m only a prestidigitator</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
An essay (a trial) is indeed nothing but an
attempt. And endeavor, a best-shot, a bid. I bet you what you will that I can
convey the text I’m offering you in such a way as to dispel your suspicion and
win you on my side of the argument (if there is one) or draw you into my own
fiction.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDma26OJPF6Rbh4Y-Fkbap_R_xg4sDEzvOdRZPkvsGJJCwGstBpy8bsX4mt32oeFMsLC30NdOf5bx3uLDgbMb7JUMK7dEtwniqII-MN_pPCARfx1HggpO5K7lDCnR62xNbNN4hthbcbMc/s1600/Prestidigitation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDma26OJPF6Rbh4Y-Fkbap_R_xg4sDEzvOdRZPkvsGJJCwGstBpy8bsX4mt32oeFMsLC30NdOf5bx3uLDgbMb7JUMK7dEtwniqII-MN_pPCARfx1HggpO5K7lDCnR62xNbNN4hthbcbMc/s400/Prestidigitation.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/kPqzLe" target="_blank">www.boloji.com</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“These are my fancies…”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
You’re welcome to enjoy them but don’t make the
mistake of taking them for the kind of truth they’re not. No objectivity is
guaranteed. How could it be? As Montaignes says in the beginning of this essay <i>On Books</i>, “Let the man who is in search
of knowledge fish for it where it lies; there is nothing that I lay less claim
to.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Knowledge is not with the writer (of an essay,
of a novel, of a scientific treatise, of a policy), simply because knowledge
means storage. In order to know you need to have stocks of information at your
disposal. You need to be endowed with memory. But the writer is not a
memorizer. Whatever he/she knows from previous experience is put under the
harsh sign of doubt. Whatever he/she knows is permanently reevaluated. Hence
the drive towards fiction. The writer is someone whose time is limited to a
present that doesn’t want to change, a present that resembles a CD track stuck
on repeat, a <i>Groundhog Day </i>without an
exit visa.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Clarice Lispector reached precisely this insight
in <i><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Á</span></i><i>gua Viva</i>:<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I am this very second forever in the now.”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Even if I speak of an action that took place in
the past or will take place in the future, it is still a present action for me;
I put it to you, my reader, in the present tense, which is not the grammatical
present tense but the present tense of the narration. Past or future, they’re
all the same to me, since everything I give a damn about is the fact that I’m
addressing them <i>now</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>Hic et
nunc</i>, a writer’s slogan.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>A radical
present</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Here and now, I am faced with this problem: How
to put it? How to formulate my utterance? How to make everything sound clear to
me in the first place? The writer is under this constant pressure of the
present that demands proficiency and efficiency. This is why “there is nothing
I lay less claim to” when it comes to the truth expected from my text.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The truth of truths is that the reader doesn’t
expect to see the writer’s present. They don’t want to. Witnessing a writer’s
struggle is uninteresting to them; it is repugnant to them. They throw up at
the thought of a writer weeping and sniffing about the effort they’ve put into
this text or that. Like the user of a pair of shoes who couldn’t care less
about the workers who produced those shoes, the only thing the reader wants is
to try on this text, to see if it tastes nice, if it suits them, if it’s worth
investing in.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And the writer knows. The writer knows because
the writer is a reader too. Lispector knew it:<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I don’t want something already made but
something still being torturously made.”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Montaigne, especially, knew it:<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I can offer nothing certain except to recount
the extent of my knowledge at the present moment. No attention should be paid
to the matter, only to the shape that I give it.”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Montaigne doesn’t only lay bare his present,
risking the reader’s contempt; he also points out the importance of form. Since
things have been clarified about substance (none of it matters, because none of
it is available in the writer’s store), we need not fool ourselves. Everything
has already been said. “I have no doubt that I often speak of things which are
better treated by the masters of the craft, and with more truth.” So let’s get
off our high horses and admit that the thing we’re looking for while reading (the
thing we know our readers are looking for while reading our texts) is the form
– every writer’s present tense.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEwlZ5roJwJ_6AyXPv0jNG2j7bV1T3aQ7WcP43HHE_-CQPLX2wI3eBHEURUXFAGXiJR0Y7oteNZR9D21Co64a0TxjplhFtZvJkSTaJKSC3kokR9__nP9SRBjZsOVHEkj7qSQ_KgVrtDnU/s1600/Clock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEwlZ5roJwJ_6AyXPv0jNG2j7bV1T3aQ7WcP43HHE_-CQPLX2wI3eBHEURUXFAGXiJR0Y7oteNZR9D21Co64a0TxjplhFtZvJkSTaJKSC3kokR9__nP9SRBjZsOVHEkj7qSQ_KgVrtDnU/s400/Clock.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/1Xofi2" target="_blank">Daily News</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Shape, glorious shape, our only ticket to the Broadway
show of immortality.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
In order to be universal you need to be
personal. Not in some narcissistic sense of exacerbated self-worth but in the
sense of an honest self-estimation. Let’s face it. Writing doesn’t make us
reinvent the wheel. It only allows us to use the same wheel on a different <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>cart.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-87377951876268292122015-06-29T23:57:00.002+12:002015-07-02T13:59:45.401+12:00Flaubert and a metaphor for reading<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">There is a sense
of exploration in every gesture of reading. That’s because the author is there too,
refusing to leave it all to the reader’s caprice, purposefully confusing things
so as to provoke the instinct of discovery. But the readers aren’t all that
brave, all that willing to expose themselves to the unknown. Note the customary
reaction to new forms of writing, new genres, new authorial quips. They’re to
be taken as the true measure of a reader’s resistance to novelty. Newness is
accepted only if it has enough doses of familiarity in it. If it doesn’t, then
most readers will wait for the dregs to settle and for taste to do its work of
persuasion; only then will they embrace the once-novel, now anything but new
but at least palatable, tasty.</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Xvoi8pQNopfSJh46n2kLCMsK8nFdho9eMAEumkI_gYOYnwEjRJKV4ehHMehvG1l3thg_bwsKRDybMRV-3PylsaNevNtyLOOtefNfMgklBDF41iNaGWZ9jz6ZdybMrbGB5vhDM0M2gcc/s1600/Explorer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Xvoi8pQNopfSJh46n2kLCMsK8nFdho9eMAEumkI_gYOYnwEjRJKV4ehHMehvG1l3thg_bwsKRDybMRV-3PylsaNevNtyLOOtefNfMgklBDF41iNaGWZ9jz6ZdybMrbGB5vhDM0M2gcc/s400/Explorer.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/iOV5U3" target="_blank">Look and Learn</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
If I were to
stick with the metaphor of exploration, I’d say the reader goes about reading with
a machete in one hand, cutting through a jungle forever unknown to them, but in
the other hand carrying a map, which helps them to go about in search of
something that's already been there – not in the text but in the reader’s mind.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<b>The great anticipation</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Gadamer said
once that we read seeking a meaning we've already sent forth, and which we're
playing with like a cat with its mouse, postponing the fatal thrust. In our
case: taking delight in prolongation, in procrastinating the obvious (the
meaning we know it's there). We tease the text because we want to maximize the
pleasure it is capable of producing. We want to make sure that the trip has
been worth taking, that we haven’t travelled all the way to the end of a text
for nothing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But there's
a trick to this inductive/deductive method that concerns reading. In the
process, our assumptions nibble at our reserves of patience, weakening them as pages
upon pages get turned. There are moments when the pressure of getting there,
the anticipation of the moment of bliss, has consequences over our
physiological selves. Our heartbeats accelerate, our pupils widen, our hands
shake. No, I am not fantasizing. Most readers would be hard at ease to deny
these bodily transformations; the somatics of reading demand that we progress
through pages with our bodies wired to high-voltage apparatuses that translate words
into anticipation and anticipation into pleasure. I’ll say only one word and I’ll
refrain from going into details about it: <i>orgasm</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Reading is,
generally speaking, a way of satisfying an anticipation. The moment when we
meet face to face with the meaning is all that matters. Suspense is caused
precisely by this expectation, by this curiosity to see what’s on the verso. The
curiosity to see if the next page is bringing us any closer to what we know is
there, in the book, in the text.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<b>The great satisfaction</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
A lot of
writers aim towards satisfying this anticipation. Most of them do it
unknowingly. Many see where they need to go in order to achieve the right effect.
Few actually get there. Flaubert achieved it in <i>Madame Bovary</i>. The famous cab scene. There, the reader is trapped
in their own anticipation. They take the bite (the promise of witnessing an
erotic scene) and follow the cab, in fact following Flaubert. The characters (Léon and
Emma) don't really matter. They are invisible and will stay invisible
throughout. Only every now and then a hand appears (arousal!), pieces of paper fall
out it (loss of self-control!), the cab goes on and on (yes, the act is what
we're imagining: detailed, conspicuous, delicious, illicit). The urban
landscape pops in too (not as a prop but as a container). What really is to be
enjoyed there is the author's art. Flaubert teasing us. Flaubert wagging the
carrot under our flared nostrils. All we do is partake in the game,
anticipating his understanding of our anticipation, buying it from Monsieur Gustav Flaubert, the merchant specialized in products for readers' compulsions.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I like the
sound of all those streets that mark the progression of the love-bearing cab. They
create rhythm but more importantly, they create connections between sites, i.e.
between texts:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“The cab was
seen as Saint-Pol, at Lescure, at Mont Gargan, at La Rouge-Mare and Place du
Gaillardbois; in the Rue Maladrerie, Rue Dinanderie, before Saint-Romain,
Saint-Vivien, Saint-Maclou, Saint-Nicaise – in front of the Customs, at the ‘Vieille
Tour,’ the ‘Trois Pipes,’ and the Monumental Cemetery.”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The vehicle
(a moving object) links these places otherwise lost in the sole logic of urban
development. It puts these sites in a new context: an amorous context, a context
of textures and striations.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And the
reader goes on, their eyes following the lines of the perambulatory text in the
same way in which the inhabitants of Rouen follow the passing of the cab up and
down the streets. Their eyes are amazed. They are engaged, curious, suspicious,
scandalized, nosy, offended, apprehensive, desiring, flabbergasted, tolerant, contemplative,
expectant, eager, impatient, excited, puzzled, concerned, intrusive,
interested, analytical, investigative, rational, lucid, realistic, shrewd,
prudent, wise. In other words, they are everything that a reader can be. They
know what’s going on – of course they know, those citizens of Rouen, even
though Flaubert tries to suggest otherwise. He does it for the sake of irony,
of course, one of the many things he’s so good at:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“And on the harbor,
in the midst of the drays and casks, and in the streets, at the corners, the
good folk opened large wonderstricken eyes at this sight, so extraordinary in
the provinces, a cab with drawn blinds, and which kept on coming into view,
shut more closely than a tomb, and tossing about like a vessel.”</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“The good
folk,” the swift-eyed good folk of all provinces, stop their daily routines like
a bunch of readers lined up to encounter the text that’s just arrived in town,
freshly out of the writer’s hand, strolling the avenues of a book. I take this
scene as a glorious metaphor for readership.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ7Xb9FUTWetuyeFuv4K2itKQvpZAF7K97IJ_TZQuML_XRjxBndcmX4k2ASU1gl-q3gOdBt3Tiv_vT5a0r-3e891ZyYI_dBYniiDG3PPby5KNjla9KdGZGiZCsNeJxBl79QpS1Jn6ZDFg/s1600/Flaubert.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ7Xb9FUTWetuyeFuv4K2itKQvpZAF7K97IJ_TZQuML_XRjxBndcmX4k2ASU1gl-q3gOdBt3Tiv_vT5a0r-3e891ZyYI_dBYniiDG3PPby5KNjla9KdGZGiZCsNeJxBl79QpS1Jn6ZDFg/s400/Flaubert.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/VYhXrL" target="_blank">Lecturas Sumergidas</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-90964539444339926582015-06-22T22:26:00.000+12:002015-06-22T22:30:03.680+12:00The pleasure we take in surveillance<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">We have grown to love the veneer of surveillance. Who would
have thought! Technology has finally caught up with the discontent of scrutiny,
with the Big-Brother scare, so now we're doing it in our own terms: over and
over again, watching and liking it so much; partaking in an orgy of clandestine
looks.</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
We install surveillance cameras on our properties. We
record, we pile up raw data, we generate footage. And we love it. It gives us
power, we say. It gives us piece of mind. It gives us the oomph to deal with
our other daily routines. But wait. That's exactly how state-sponsored
surveillance motivates its curiosity. Power. Reassurance. Vigor. This, though,
is not a state-sponsored craze. It's not a paranoid state of mind. We aren't
doing it because we're afraid. We're doing it because we like it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF-EoP6n2OUKNF4Qv-BRMlo78neEDwpGqXI35_qjqGEqF6Yb7hlqGRraCve3aierKSXOlWWWmEoKYTZ1qhT5lkUvoQgEQcEgZniHuwM6OJVuXd-SNB5Bu7ZowoR52yGtkD94SwGzRzhWI/s1600/surveillance+camera.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF-EoP6n2OUKNF4Qv-BRMlo78neEDwpGqXI35_qjqGEqF6Yb7hlqGRraCve3aierKSXOlWWWmEoKYTZ1qhT5lkUvoQgEQcEgZniHuwM6OJVuXd-SNB5Bu7ZowoR52yGtkD94SwGzRzhWI/s400/surveillance+camera.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/2TXF4q" target="_blank">Makezine</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Reply to sender</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
What a wonderful tool something like <a href="https://goo.gl/QN315s">HubSpot Sidekick</a> is, for instance! How
smoothly it satisfies our scopophilia! With it, nobody can throw us the usual
excuse, “I'm sorry, I haven't seen your email,“ and expect us to believe. The same
concept used in Wikipedia or Google Docs, which allows collaborative work and
the use of a text's history to search through versions, is employed here to
track emails. Sidekick manages metadata and shows exactly how many times a
given email has been opened, at what times, by whom. That gave me, the other
day, enough information to know when a student of mine circumvented the truth
by giving me the usual lie: “I haven't seen your email until right now. Can I
have an extension?” Sidekick showed me, click by click, access by access, how
many times she had, in fact, seen my email: twice from a personal computer, and
twice from a mobile device, at exactly the times when she said she was unaware
of my message.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Gatcha!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I wonder if this is likely to become an interjection<i> du jour</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Imagine, also, the urgency of replying. Once you've opened
that email you cannot postpone your answer unless you are prepared to admit
that you were lazy, or scared, or unsure as to how to formulate. I believe new
waves of sincerity are currently coming our way, and we stand no chance in
trying to avoid them. Or else we'll have to invent new techniques of deception.
We need to devise new fictions around ourselves, motivated purely by the need
to escape the pressure of being constantly under a magnifying glass.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>The look of the many</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Let's say it again: the perpetrators of this constant
surveillance are us. No longer the state. Not the state as an active performer
of this game of peeking, peering and eavesdropping. As <a href="http://goo.gl/uHEOj0">Thomas Mathiesen</a> (1997) has pointed out, we're
no longer in the era of the Panopticon. We are now under the more widely
accepted version of the Synopticon: the looking done by everybody.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
With the good old <a href="https://goo.gl/3jvcle">Panopticon</a>
the game was relatively simple. There was always someone at the centre (a
figure of authority), who did the visual checking, undisturbed, safe and
majestic in his authority. The referee in a game of soccer, the priest in the
church, the teacher at the lectern, the prison guard in the “inspection house.”
If anything, <a href="https://goo.gl/c6AEvO">Bentham</a> wanted a scheme where
the authority over everything funneled down a central siphon. It worked for a
while (a pretty long while), as long as power followed the model of the
singular chief. But all this is soooo twentieth-century now. Soooo dependent on
computers run from centralized server rooms, where data was collected to the
point of saturation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibXhiKVfkmvFAwlKfyGHGDKpyETTVNk6EeiufMpihNIZD495D3S3RBvyKwHeB6WICzDDUvTo8G4cTfLFJLLcCZs7uOm1KYEFDg1KH2HpfbxWjdS44fhSVFTyaUSMVwqP-tm_dPoPa7lAc/s1600/PanopticMarina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibXhiKVfkmvFAwlKfyGHGDKpyETTVNk6EeiufMpihNIZD495D3S3RBvyKwHeB6WICzDDUvTo8G4cTfLFJLLcCZs7uOm1KYEFDg1KH2HpfbxWjdS44fhSVFTyaUSMVwqP-tm_dPoPa7lAc/s400/PanopticMarina.jpg" width="346" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/9JV0vw" target="_blank">Misha Rabinovich</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Synopticon is no longer about the singular bully. The
Synopticon is multiple and complex. The poor little bastard who used to watch
over everything is an object of scorn. What can he see, really? How much can he
be aware of? How far can his vision penetrate? He's become a local joke. What
do we need a teacher for when YouTube can teach us the heaven and earth? What
do we need a teacher for when we can learn so much from Beyoncé and Dr. Phil?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Power to the
perverts!</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The look has been reverted from the one to the many. The
one is no longer the viewer but the viewed, and that's because he/she is a
sight worth seeing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
We now love the flow of data, its refusal to stay put, its
mocking of the server room. We now scorn stasis. Synopticon is a thing of the
cloud: never stable, airy, globular, fluid, global, adaptable, liquid.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Our synopticist pleasures, once limited to the reach of a
telethon or the eavesdropping pleasures embodied in a radio show, are now
everywhere: from crowd sourcing to wiki-writing, from blogs to Twitter, from
Facebook to reality tv. Show me something airing these days, show me something
that's gone viral: it will certainly have one form of synoptic aspect to it.
The Bachelor, the Kardashians, American Idol, Britain's Got Talent. They're all
about individuals being placed under a magnifying glass, to be seen, to be
gazed at, to be visually gulped down. They're all about us taking good pleasure
in watching. But us not as individuals – us as collectives. The multitudes of
voyeuristic monsters.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Perverts from all countries unite!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The union of visual depravity is here!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Power to the debauchee!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I can think up a million slogans of this type. They would
all describe perfectly well the state of affairs in the kingdom of collective
voyeurism.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
With this synoptic vision we are at the same time
participants in the surveillance game and targets of the same. We partake in
the pleasure of watching others knowing full well that we too are being
watched, and not by state apparatuses, but by individuals like us. We live
under the threat of showing up on Facebook or YouTube against our will, simply
because we just happened to be where the camera was. But the camera is
everywhere. It is not one camera but infinities of cameras. So many of them, we
no longer have time to prepare for the show, to put makeup on, to comb our hair<i> </i><i>à la mode</i>. So many, it becomes impossible to oppose them on the
premise of individuality. Even if I have the possibility to sue the person who
recorded me, I am completely impotent insofar as the mechanisms of spreading
and sharing are concerned. Once the content has been mirrored, it is virtually
unstoppable.<b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiymcAUkcO2hwEtQYsO7G2PHncCE-GUM-49b56FqITr7t1ZDYFn1xKbbbaegD-KiComcvpLIxxNbf3kEzTy0nlo75ETEQ4PkJBva5FJDpw1eQAx64Y1rPQQggK62zR2WKx5jNBcnWcAi_4/s1600/Keyhole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiymcAUkcO2hwEtQYsO7G2PHncCE-GUM-49b56FqITr7t1ZDYFn1xKbbbaegD-KiComcvpLIxxNbf3kEzTy0nlo75ETEQ4PkJBva5FJDpw1eQAx64Y1rPQQggK62zR2WKx5jNBcnWcAi_4/s400/Keyhole.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/JYtJy1" target="_blank">Blouin</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
What a <a href="https://goo.gl/krzMa3">Sartrean situation</a>
we are in! Peeping at a keyhole and being startled by the creaking of the floor
behind us: watching others while, at the same time, knowing that we are
ourselves being watched. What complicated mechanisms of subjectivation, of
self-formation, what technologies of the self we are employing, what rituals of
disclosure and concealment!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But then the hope. Don't forget the hope! Writing on a blog
(like this one or like any other) is writing in the hope of being noticed. We
write ourselves into this synopticist madness, this flirting with glory, this
brush with eternity. What concealment? To hell with concealment! Let the
multitudes come. Let them see us! Let them stare!</div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-81271270568412971892015-06-15T23:59:00.000+12:002015-06-16T00:41:35.390+12:00Enclaves for self-defense<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">In Mario Vargas Llosa's latest novel, <i><a href="http://goo.gl/M5cLB7" target="_blank">The Discreet Hero</a> </i>(2013), a character has the revelation that the things of the world are spatial in their essence. But
spatial in a special way. Disgusted by filth, the mass media and the cheap
spectacles of publicity, he has surrounded himself with objects of perennial
worth: art books, novels, music. He’s built for himself some pretty solid
walls.</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Don Rigoberto finds in this hoarder’s instinct a necessary reassurance and
a rather bourgeois piece of mind.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"That was when he’d had the idea of saving spaces, the
idea that civilization was not, had never been a movement, a general state of
things, an environment that would embrace all of society, but rather was
composed of tiny citadels raised throughout time and space, which resisted the
ongoing assault of the instinctive, violent, obtuse, ugly, destructive, bestial
force that dominated the world [...]"</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What’s interesting here is not the idealisation of civilization
as such but rather its enclavisation, its capacity to lock itself up in a
closet of self-sufficiency. In other words, what we’ve got here is civilization’s
ability to become a space, a territory. Or to be more precise: a series of
spaces, a series of territories. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha_Sk4Ww12UTzzfIjmjGkCGGGuhcDs5Bt5xm55WkFx66-vj9DSOE7tpac8c7aOJWxfpm2ai0ki9PadSs-Fc9OyjC3qcAmh2D1IBJeNGEhBl4_NmGniN3j6JIWOB1jajTC_gfoxo82OesE/s1600/Enclosure.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha_Sk4Ww12UTzzfIjmjGkCGGGuhcDs5Bt5xm55WkFx66-vj9DSOE7tpac8c7aOJWxfpm2ai0ki9PadSs-Fc9OyjC3qcAmh2D1IBJeNGEhBl4_NmGniN3j6JIWOB1jajTC_gfoxo82OesE/s400/Enclosure.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Corral, i.e. enclaves. Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/QYgiOm" target="_blank">Terrierman</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b><br /></b></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b>Keeping viruses out</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Vargas Llosa posits the works of human civilization as
fortresses built to gain good defense against threats. Security before
everything else! In Abraham Maslow’s famous <a href="https://goo.gl/EDXOES">pyramid
of human needs</a>, security is right there, at the bottom, after physiological
needs, two of the most wide-spread wants: ones that are at the same time the
most desired and also the most lacking.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One is tempted to say that all is good when all is safe. But
there’s another sense of the threat that makes a lot of sense in the wider
scheme of things. This one indicates that the idea of threat is appealing
because it offers the best justification for creation. And I mean the creation
of everything: from an antidote to a virus to a dam to impede future shortage
of electricity; electricity, itself created to impede our lack of light and
heat. The creation of everything: from poetry, which keeps returning us to a
state where we dread being but where we love to see others performing well, to
photography, which keeps us from falling into some fictional dark ages devoid
of images and perhaps of imagination. This urge to produce has been equivalent
to our need to make things safe for ourselves.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What will happen if we ask this simple question: why is
literature necessary? The great majority will say: because without it we would
be uglier, worse, more wicked, less moral. You see how the affirmation of the
art of writing, among all this, starts from a negation: least we become this;
least we become that. Least we return to that state. Least we grow horns and
hooves. Least we end up mocking Creation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The enclaves we construct to <i>safeguard</i> (this word, which has never gotten into proper use
because it’s been hijacked by ideologies from its very beginnings) the world –
these enclaves are, in fact, vaccines meant to put our fears to rest.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b>Prisoners of
literature</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is perhaps due to these enclaves that keep us safe (enclosures,
corrals, confinements, detentions, gaols) that literature, for instance, rests
on such an abundance of entrapments.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Trapped in a gesture (Sisyphus and perpetual motion, Atlas
and perpetual stasis, Ulysses and perpetual transition); trapped in storytelling
(Boccaccio’s <i>Decameron</i>, Chaucer’s <i>Tales</i>, <i>The One Thousand and One Nights</i>), trapped, of course, in a place
(all the utopias where humanity fares better but is never allowed to live to
tell the tale); trapped in admirations (Kobo Abe’s <i>Woman in the Dunes</i>¸ Yasunari Kawabata’s <i>The House of the Sleeping Beauties</i>, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s <i>Memories of My Melancholy Whores</i>); trapped
in desires for something better, something more (<i>Madame Bovary</i>, <i>Anna Karenina</i>)
trapped in exercises of imagination (<i>Le
Petit Prince</i>,<i> Alice in Wonderland</i>,<i> Sherlock Holmes</i>, <i>Hercule Poirot</i>).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCGqKAUPLqHO1t5b6d4bk1gpwWLWuFqrk4WVAUzmHEaylrhjtHf0Dx3hRqU6iI2St3pFa10IGLnri9X73ktYq-KV2MJtX0b31HlsvxCEQIbG_04fdjKC1EG-k3ljV0vKKK00nwXLJMPeU/s1600/Atlas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCGqKAUPLqHO1t5b6d4bk1gpwWLWuFqrk4WVAUzmHEaylrhjtHf0Dx3hRqU6iI2St3pFa10IGLnri9X73ktYq-KV2MJtX0b31HlsvxCEQIbG_04fdjKC1EG-k3ljV0vKKK00nwXLJMPeU/s640/Atlas.jpg" width="404" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Atlas. Source: <a href="https://goo.gl/qqd53k" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
To clarify. By this entrapment I don’t mean impossibility to
move forth and back; not like what’s happened to an insect caught forever in
the perfection of a teardrop of amber. At the end of the day, Ulysses reaches
Ithaca; Boccaccio’s storytellers return to their places of origin. The enclaves
are not permanent in the strict sense of the word; and it is not permanence
that matters, anyway. The entrapment, however, is a precondition of everything.
The will to escape, the acknowledgment of the force that keeps things at a standstill,
the desire to exchange the current space, with all its certitudes and “lacks of
shadows” (Wallace Stevens), for a space that hasn’t been conceived of yet, not
even as a wild dream – this is what stands at the foundation of progression, of
movement, of the universal sway. In order to set out on their journeys, the
heroes of fairy tales must experience enclosure as a point of pressure, as an
original point that can no longer contain them, that expels them like a decayed
tooth. The kind of decayed tooth that Ovid, for instance, turned into; Ovid, who
made Rome incapable of putting up with him and sent him off to the shores of
that distant Pontus Euxinus where he was entrapped for as long as it took for
the city to considered him cured. The expulsion and the entrapment that ensued were
the preconditions of his <i>Tristia </i>and
his <i>Epistulae ex Ponto</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b>Perfections and the
intertext</b></h3>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because the threats are great, the defense also needs to be
close to perfection. Hence the need for round novels, the need for systemic
philosophy, the need for poems that read in one breath. Hence the requirement
for authors with oeuvre, who can be recognized ten pages into their latest
book. Hence the factor of elimination, applicable when the next volume is unlike
the benchmark. Hence, indeed, the need for benchmarks at all, for standards
that stay unchanged for as close as possible to forever.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipZzJqGzJFF8_J-HF9nE8DTgq-njtY1GA_hoBQsTNjrCmePFAByOawJ6OoRG4ph8A6sko9aPVqvpO0evsUdzKRmYnYqS-Yk5m31IN7Qor0A3pTfy6DzNqPWHwlPlpvZ69jP97hyphenhyphenrGo6rc/s1600/Escher.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipZzJqGzJFF8_J-HF9nE8DTgq-njtY1GA_hoBQsTNjrCmePFAByOawJ6OoRG4ph8A6sko9aPVqvpO0evsUdzKRmYnYqS-Yk5m31IN7Qor0A3pTfy6DzNqPWHwlPlpvZ69jP97hyphenhyphenrGo6rc/s400/Escher.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Escher's neverending buildings, a form of intertextuality. Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/OPPxlA" target="_blank">Crystalinks</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The enclaves require isolationist politics; they need to be
so perfect in themselves that they cannot possibly communicate beyond their
borders. This is why it takes serious effort to understand intertextuality, and
why, for instance, the rise of electronic literature is regarded (still) with
so much scorn. Because in intertextuality the limits are negated in the name of
a text that grows outside its own limits, outside its own enclave, and which, more
importantly, grows in ways impossible to predict. With the intertext there
seems to be no more entrapment. The growth comes, then, from somewhere else,
from an internal tension, from a need to expand: a need that is organic, a need
that every text has, since texts don’t grow in isolation, by themselves and for
themselves. Digital writing reaches out to similar new limits (or rather to the
lack thereof). For one thing, hypertext is a concrete materialization of the
principle of intertextuality. A link expands the text, makes it part of Borges’
universal library – it becomes that library itself. And because of this, the
digital universe, a multidimensional conglomerate of texts and codes and circuits,
feels so much more at home in the notion of the Sublime. The space of the
digital, like the space of the intertextual, is an enormous space, a space of
non-limits, grandiose, overwhelming, disempowering. Therefore, frightening. </div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-12396029367808359762015-06-08T23:45:00.000+12:002015-06-08T23:45:25.745+12:00The space(ness) of writing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Writing-as-space
is a lucky metaphor; but one that makes apparent the combinatoric nature of
inscriptions. It brings about the notion of site, but site as
self-contradiction (not as conscious construction but as the result of luck).</span></h2>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
To quote
Foucault again, to create a network with him, in the sense that he must have
had in mind when he talked about the nature of modern space:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The space
in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the erosion of our
lives, our time and our history occurs, the space that claws and gnaws at us,
is also, a heterogeneous space. In other words, we do not live in a kind of
void, inside of which we could place individuals and things. We do not live
inside a void that could be colored with diverse shades of light, we live
inside a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one
another and absolutely not superimposable on one another.”</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
My question
now is: can I see writing behind this definition of space? Is writing “the
space in which we live”?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
In all
appearance, yes: writing is the space in which we live. If this was not
apparent after the invention of the press, it has categorically become apparent
after the growth of the digital sphere. The digital sphere, itself a space: a
space not because it has geographical coordinates but precisely because it is
virtual. The virtual nature of the digital is nothing but a technological
restatement of the virtual nature of writing tout court.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b>Of zeros and ones</b></h3>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
In this
space that is vastly virtual (and therefore real), writing is primarily a means
of creating connections and mixing complexities. Here, in the digital universe,
writing appears as a juxtaposition of digits. I am not so much interested in
the digits (the famous downgrading of letters in relation to numbers) as I am
in the juxtaposition that articulates them. The series of 0’s and 1’s that make
up the structure of digital texts is capable of creating meaning out of the
very operation of mixing and matching.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wCQSIub_g7M" width="500"></iframe>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
These 0’s and 1’s, in their glorious simplicity,
are suspect companions. Taken separately, they represent the exact opposite of
each other. 0 means closed, while 1 means open. With 1, a circuit becomes
active; with 0, it becomes inactive (it is said to be either on or off). When
seen at their most fundamental, these 0’s and 1’s are, really, instances of
life and death. The putting of them together embodies, in one of the many
possible ways, Foucault’s assertion concerning heterotopic structures: the fact
that they are such that their elements “are irreducible to one another and
absolutely not superimposable on one another.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It is only
through the combinatoric function of the digital discourse that 0 and 1 are
brought into a state of coexistence. This is what brings about the scandal of
meaning, a scandal that governs any semantic instance. See Ferdinand de
Saussure’s signs, which are purely arbitrary creations, unlikely bedfellows,
just like digits forced to stay together. See the algebraic signs that stand
for addition and subtraction (+ and –). See the logical operators that enable
the establishment of truth (true and false, yes and no). All of the above are
matters of language, and most importantly, matters of writable language.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The binary
code used by computers allocates a sequence of bits to every function or
operation possible in the computer’s refined and complicated brain. A bit is in
itself defined as an either/or situation. A bit (short for ‘binary digit’) is
precisely the articulation of this proximity of 0 and 1. Based on this primary
distinction between the two values, a magical juxtaposition ensues, one that
makes many things possible. One that makes everything possible. Everything that
can be worked out by the digital brain.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b>Counter-site</b></h3>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Writing is,
as shown at least by the case of 0’s and 1’s, a space of arbitrariness, where
meaning occurs at the conjunction between basic bits (of information, of logic,
of computation, of truth). Things that are put together are corralled into
signification by force. It is the force of arbitrariness, or of entropy, that
makes it possible for writing to turn up at all.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But writing
isn’t just a meeting space. It is a site that contradicts its own siteness. It
is, in Foucault’s words, a “counter-site.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Let’s try to
explain.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The logic of
space is similar to the logic of signification, at least in the Saussurean
sense, which doesn’t allow for simultaneity. A sign is a sign insofar as it can
be told apart from another sign. (Let’s leave it at denotation and ignore
connotation, for the sake of the argument.) In other words, signification
tolerates juxtaposition but doesn’t do well with overlapping: signs can stand
side by side but not one above the other. The same applies to a space, in the
traditional, Leibnizian sense, of “that which results from places taken together”
(a precursor to Foucault’s definition of space as connectivity). In order to
have space, the world needs places; the network needs nods; planet Earth needs
continents linked together by masses of water (or maybe vice-versa, if we were
to look for an aquatic reason to geography). But most importantly, in order to
have space the world needs places distinguishable from each other.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
overlapping of masses of earth can only lead to geological scandal: to
earthquakes and all the catastrophes that come with it. Note, though, that even
when it takes place, the overlap is not permanent; at some point, the two
masses will return to their initial position, and the earth will go back to its
original lack of ambiguity. The overlapping of written signs can only lead to
semantic scandal: homography. If two words are spelled identically and yet mean
a different thing, they can only mean what they mean depending on context.
Without the context (the putting of texts together), there would be either
gobbledygook or perplexity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Language
does its best to avoid this state of bafflement. But writing is not bound by
the same constraint. On the contrary, writing is precisely the intoxication of
language. Writing is the place where language is mocked, where it is made to mean.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b>The negation of space, the negation of
writing</b></h3>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
In this
process of creation of meaning writing acts out the function of heterotopias,
defined by Foucault as</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“[sites]
that have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites,
but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invent the set of relations
that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect.”</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Heterotopias
negate the right of places to be what they have been designated to be. They
negate the geological right of two masses of earth to staying beside each
other, never over one another. They negate spatiality in the sense of calling
into question its relation to distinctiveness, to uniqueness. Hence the example
I mentioned last week, of the church, which is not one but many spaces. It is
not completely public, nor completely private, but a part-public-part-private
conglomerate.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="375" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qFcxzoPbJis" width="500"></iframe>
</div>
<br />
But isn’t
that what writing is as well?</div>
Writing is
language, in the sense that it would not be possible if it hadn’t always
already been inherent in the code of language itself. But at the same time, it
is also non-language, in the sense that writing transforms language, so as to
render it representable as a series of signs, as a bit string. The 0 and 1 of
digital writing is present here again. Life and death, on and off, present and
absent, open and closed, writing and language: it’s here again, there again.
But it is in writing that this ambiguous distinction/confusion is made possible. It is
only writing that relativizes the solidity of language, its apparent non-ambiguity, in order to make itself apparent.</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-37646711269265227172015-06-01T23:20:00.001+12:002015-06-01T23:25:40.267+12:00Writing 'as if'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Michel Foucault indicated that “our epoch is
one in which space takes for us the form of relations among sites.” The
relationality of our world, which encompasses everything from globalization to
network theories, offers me a way of thinking about writing as a site. So that’s
what I’m concerning myself with this week.</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Writing is a distributive business. It is the
art of putting together disparate elements. The words of a vocabulary, the
rules of a grammatical system, the ideology of a culture, all these things are
assembled by means of writing. The assemblage is synchronic, i.e. it works in a
right-here-right-now fashion. It amasses elements in an apparatus that
transgresses the immediate inconsistencies of its components. At the same time,
the assemblage makes apparent order in the seemingly chaotic structure of the world.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Writing
is a heterotopic site</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
For the above reasons, one could say that the
assemblage we call writing presents some of the features of what Foucault termed <i>heterotopia. </i>A heterotopic entity is a
structure, an arrangement of parts, but one that does not homogenize smooth
similarities. On the contrary, heterotopias bring together unlikely bedfellows:
aspects of life, of ideology, of discourse, that don’t belong in the same class
or don’t answer the same exigencies of classification.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Foucault was very specific. He pointed out
concrete instantiations of the heterotopic phenomenon: places that don’t seem
to serve any of the sharply divided functions normally associated with the role
of a site. What characterizes a heterotopia is the fact that it doesn’t exist
exclusively in the public realm,nor exclusively in the private sphere. It
features in both, and yet in none of them<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Time for an example. A church. It is a place
that’s not completely public, since certain restrictions are imposed onto whom
can attend services or pay a tourist’s visit. But the church is not completely
private either, because circulation of visitors, worshipers, and other participants
in the service is not restricted <i>in
principle</i>. Anybody can walk into a church and see what’s taking place there,
even if they are not of the specific religion that is being served right there,
right then.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGj8nZVO_RSqLrw9sJzLcnomiyURD4k-ONYGxg50bQ6J3TlI0rFHRDwzCSswcBx4yaT-OR8NN0FhEOXTF2WiTWjxigM_IthDxZYAY7-RWqCBLZvmuD-h3dROTAVhfGGU1CgzU_LCpJ8uY/s1600/A+christian+Orthodox+priest+entering+church.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGj8nZVO_RSqLrw9sJzLcnomiyURD4k-ONYGxg50bQ6J3TlI0rFHRDwzCSswcBx4yaT-OR8NN0FhEOXTF2WiTWjxigM_IthDxZYAY7-RWqCBLZvmuD-h3dROTAVhfGGU1CgzU_LCpJ8uY/s400/A+christian+Orthodox+priest+entering+church.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/F6VrDk" target="_blank">Prestige</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In order to be accepted as a visitor of a church,
one will have to fulfill certain functions, perform certain rituals, execute
certain gestures that commit one to the site as such. Taking your hat off or
crossing yourself at the threshold determines your affiliation to the place;
not to the religion in all its complexity and ideology, but to the specific
site in which you are observed at this particular moment.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>The
way we pretend</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But I would like to notice that my affiliation
depends on a whim. At the end of the day, I could fake those gestures only in
order to <i>seem</i> as though I were a
member or an acceptable visitor. Drawing a cross on my chest (an act of writing
in its simplest form of inscription) is a task for the completion of which I
don’t have to be a Christian. But once I’ve done it, I have fulfilled the
conditions of acceptance that will allow me access to this particular site: the
church I want to visit today. My religious beliefs notwithstanding, I have
entirely satisfied the site’s ideology, as well as its ability to work as an
assemblage (i.e. its ability to contain me, the unbeliever, or me, the one
whose interest is purely touristic).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
This is where I want to place my understanding
of the gestures we make when we write. As <i>techné</i>,
or craft, writing does require this faking of gestures, this apparent
affiliation, this game of resemblances and illusions. As in the case of the
church, writing too is prone to invite simulations.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Let’s put it this way: we write<i> as if</i>. We write as if we were
intimately accustomed to the craft of writing; as if writing had revealed
itself to us in all its complexity; as if it had shown us the full range of its
technical and ideological possibilities.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But, in fact, this absolute knowledge is
impossible. It is impossible because it depends on temporary coordinates that
are not stable. Writing changes along with the material conditions that make it
possible. It also changes along with the ideological edifices and mentalities
that inform its necessities. So writing is very much a modern site (a la
Foucault’s definition), because of this liminality of its condition. As <a href="http://goo.gl/p6SktL" target="_blank">Lieven de Cauter</a>, who has made it his mission to expand on Foucault’s incomplete
theory of heterotopias, concedes:<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“A stay in a liminal space or a liminoid space
is, by consequence, mostly temporary. Some people, however, dwell in
heterotopias: priests, gurus and wandering philosophers, actors, artists,
bohemians, musicians, athletes, entertainers and even architects and urban
designers…”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
References to writing are absent here, but that
doesn’t stop me from imagining the writer as a dweller in a limbo. At the end of
the day, a writer does operate in this gray area where connections are made,
where ideologies and materialities are brought together to coexist within the
limits of one text, of one oeuvre.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkCo17LmQlC3yPLEHTNSkwSc7c7QLJUFL373gm69IkOZxn1wBTPwq1raxB4qI91nOONjqw2H5IA8hYaPmKJe4a67uT8bfZ4coApOiCXkGQLHPRh7vmBBrSMqAgRzCGh529MQwU9hdtDFQ/s1600/Pencil+writing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkCo17LmQlC3yPLEHTNSkwSc7c7QLJUFL373gm69IkOZxn1wBTPwq1raxB4qI91nOONjqw2H5IA8hYaPmKJe4a67uT8bfZ4coApOiCXkGQLHPRh7vmBBrSMqAgRzCGh529MQwU9hdtDFQ/s400/Pencil+writing.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/FEu58E" target="_blank">COE online</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Like the elements that enter in the composition
of Foucault’s heterotopias, these ideologies and materialities that make up
writing are only partially drawn into the scheme of the written document. They do
not cease to exist in their original place. They only <i>temporarily</i> inhabit this site, this page, this text. And that is a
fact that highlights the heteropia-like condition of writing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Playing
with impermanence</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
A writer’s stay in the limbo is said to be
temporary, and that’s for the reasons already mentioned above: it’s not because
they can’t hold their ground, but precisely because they <i>can</i>. A writer who is capable of managing the instability of the
ground that stands beneath their feet is one that will dwell happily in temporariness.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The temporary aspect of the problem of writing
is also given by the fact that writing deals with newness, with perverse forms
of originality that constantly erode the ground, constantly contribute,
destructively, to the redefinition of that ground. A poet, as Robert Pinsky put
it somewhere, is a person whose work <i>must</i>
be placed against the grain of poetry. A poet creates things that do not exist,
things for which there is no definition yet. Otherwise we wouldn’t call them a
poet, a creator, a maker of things.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It’s this absence of things that defines
Foucault’s heterotopias: the fact that this presence-together made possible by
a poem, or by any text for that matter, is writing’s fundamental function. The
text is a hub of sorts. By means of a centripetal force that brings disparities
to a common denominator, it creates a new topos, one that is neither here nor
there. This topos, which might be referred to as <i>the site of writing</i>, is the point of convergence, the place where
poetry materializes.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="253" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Vq1t5jaWvTg" width="450"></iframe>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
So a poet can be said to only <i>simulate</i> their own presence; to fake
their compliance with the rules and conventions of the business of poetry, insofar
as what we define as ‘poetry’ is a set of artifacts and operations already
assimilated, already agreed upon (and therefore rendered useless). Writing
against these agreed-upon facts, the poet creates meaning in the same way in
which an intruding church-goer crosses themselves in spite of their ‘improper’
belief.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<i>(to be continued)</i><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-48737914881244722502015-05-25T21:47:00.000+12:002015-05-25T21:54:05.235+12:00Writing to create confusion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">I would like to
know if there is a fundamental need for plagiarism in us, since the crime of misappropriation
is so wide-spread that it appears to be much more than an epistemological
shortcut.</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
When speaking
of theory (in its original sense, I presume, which is that of <i>looking at</i>, of <i>speculating</i>), Baudrillard proposed something scandalous. Forget
about reference, he says; forget about the need to cite a textual
primordiality.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU4oixwYKM8hP0tjERbP4sS2jh7Iguf9A7PAEOeDwNNwtwyRSbT8stMu3kQT3LZ7SLMnsAWRI1wP7mByG_QLoMfqF_IhR3CRcWW07sEudmDKr8qyKkCOCdqDzSEaxwuAbPMK3n3rpFz7I/s1600/Languages.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU4oixwYKM8hP0tjERbP4sS2jh7Iguf9A7PAEOeDwNNwtwyRSbT8stMu3kQT3LZ7SLMnsAWRI1wP7mByG_QLoMfqF_IhR3CRcWW07sEudmDKr8qyKkCOCdqDzSEaxwuAbPMK3n3rpFz7I/s400/Languages.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/bRxTjO" target="_blank">EDL</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Because it's false, he suggests, to think that theory (call philosophy,
call it writing) reflects reality. It does not. It is not some original,
presumably clear, unambiguous, precedent that I have to discover at the moment
of theorising/writing. What I really have to find is the incontestable rupture
generated within reality itself when I take up the task of philosophy or that
of writing. Since both writing and philosophy are engaged in this game of
signification (which, because it's a game, cannot be said to be stable), it makes
sense to imagine that what really happens in both cases is a form of struggle:
the effort to put the mysterious and forever-impenetrable Real into
prefabricated moulds that are irrelevant to it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Circling about to find mere nonsense</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
What we say about
reality is not <i>about reality</i>. It is <i>about us</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Writing is
not the writing down of reality but the writing down of writing itself, through
its essentially simple (and therefore repeatable) affordances.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It's in
things that transcend writing (as well as in things that transcend theory) that
the referent should be sought for, since it's there that we should be able to
locate the Real itself. But such an enterprise would be ridiculous, because
there would be no access granted to us in places where signification has no
access. The same with philosophy: who can get where thought is incapable to
penetrate?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
What we are
in search for at the moment of our attempted access is a referent impossible to
locate.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Therefore we
are doomed to go round and round, in repetitive circles, saying things again
and again; plagiarising, to be more specific. We plagiarise our impotence and
the impotence of those who tried before and reached the same verdict.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp264de6qQ0YL7TeTNNz08ndVuBvzer4FJTOL5CdQgOoLHfWdKbCAG8BLHxP-_kiwS7lhDM67ikJ6gv8jYV4AlnAJ5S6Gw_J5Bw9vKTrfW6ToDA3Rv9WewOdXxGRede-R-McUHOiFEQkM/s1600/Snow+circle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp264de6qQ0YL7TeTNNz08ndVuBvzer4FJTOL5CdQgOoLHfWdKbCAG8BLHxP-_kiwS7lhDM67ikJ6gv8jYV4AlnAJ5S6Gw_J5Bw9vKTrfW6ToDA3Rv9WewOdXxGRede-R-McUHOiFEQkM/s400/Snow+circle.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sonja Hinrichsen, "Snow Circles." Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/rxVlUe" target="_blank">Ufunk</a> </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
certitude of this lack of reference forces us to look for meaning in what has
already been said; because what has already been said has the advantage of
having proven the existence of a (fabricated but apparently sufficient)
reference.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>Where there’s plagiarism there’s apparent certitude</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Significance
operates through tautology, because in order to signify one needs to establish
a fundamental stability of the sign. One cannot speak of a valid sign unless
one agrees that the given sign will have the same meaning when encountered
again. This is where Michel Butor finds the resemblance between writing and
nomadism: when a nomad finds a place with good water, he/she signposts it,
leaves a mark on the ground, even if that sign is a mental calculation of
coordinates. This signpost of the nomad is the mark on a page: a letter. This
is why writing depends on a wandering hand, on a nomadic organ.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And so the
origins of writing might be found at this curious moment when the nomad
calculated his/her chances of finding good water based on the probability of
coming this way again, in a foreseeable future.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Baidrillard,
however, wants a system based on first encounters, when there were no certitudes,
no signposts, no letters, no already-founds. And what’s more important, he
doesn't want to go any further than this ontological search for the improbable
referent. It's not the reference that needs to be sought after, but precisely
this struggle to find it: the days and days of walking under a torrid sun, not
knowing where the next source of fresh water may be. Not knowing if there is
any water to be found in the foreseeable future. Not knowing if the nomad will
live to reach it and to re-enact the pleasure of quenching their thirst.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
This type of
search, Baudrillard says, and rightfully so, is catastrophic to signification.
It can only lead to nonsense, because it has originated from nonsense.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
If we were
to be honest about our significatory enterprises we would admit that there is,
indeed, a permanent lack of reference at the bottom of everything. And because
of this, every time we think we have acquired meaning, we discover that we have
been taken by surprise. What we are surprised by is not our ability to make
meaning but the fact that the world seems to fit into the categories we have
created for it. But the world only <i>seems</i> to fit into those categories.
It never does. It never did, it never will.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<b>The only surplus that matters</b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
When we
signify, we appear to be taking something from the real and filter it through
our well-crafted, seemingly efficient systems of signification. But that's not
exactly what we are taking. If we started thinking along these lines, we would
in fact develop the conviction that the world is indeed accessible, that it is
preordained to fit into our categories; as if the categories existed before the
world; as if we existed before existence.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
If we do
take something from the world, that can only be the confusion that the world
itself yields to us. Confusion, i.e. lack of respect for categories. If we do
think in these terms, then we should not be surprised to discover that our duty
should be to preserve that confusion. To preserve it and, as Baudrillard suggests,
to magnify it; to make the world even more impossible to penetrate.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"The
absolute rule is to give back more than you were given. Never less, always
more. The absolute rule of thought is to give back the world as it was given to
us - unintelligible. And if possible, to render it a little more
unintelligible."</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Of course,
Baudrillard circumvents here the crucial problem: the fact that this
making-more-unintelligible can only be achieved by means of a certified system
of intelligibility: language. That's why he doesn't want to desert philosophy.
That's why I don't want to desert writing.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2NgCA4h2okG1vIPg7CJtLTEUPNs9QDXZCmIw1oyn5EvvaAonSWLSSZT0enA6sjb-2SNHFbZHP3FdIOl6a-ApHDkD-jEmHgzcufMmV830Ck2GQdARJWJXa1x2IvUxF6zluUCzNC8VqHmk/s1600/Wlaking+in+cirlces.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2NgCA4h2okG1vIPg7CJtLTEUPNs9QDXZCmIw1oyn5EvvaAonSWLSSZT0enA6sjb-2SNHFbZHP3FdIOl6a-ApHDkD-jEmHgzcufMmV830Ck2GQdARJWJXa1x2IvUxF6zluUCzNC8VqHmk/s400/Wlaking+in+cirlces.jpg" width="393" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">SourceL <a href="http://goo.gl/reKzMZ" target="_blank">Choose Your Metaphor</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But the
major point to be brought to bear here is that we need to do things as if we were
provoking these catastrophes of meaning. Since language cannot be avoided, we
are doomed to get stuck in repetitions, in restatements of often identical traces.
But turning against the outcomes of language (this syntax of representation
that resides in words and sounds) makes room for the awareness of the real
referent: the reality that exists beyond signs. This is a catastrophe in the
midst of which repetition is itself a form of sabotage. Here, plagiarism is not
a statement of weakness but one of strength. Here, repetition is a way of
mocking the gullibility of the wrong belief that a sign can reach a state of self-satisfaction
where it can be declared unique.</div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1732090779547968341.post-49547083556716629852015-05-18T23:56:00.001+12:002015-05-19T00:02:56.607+12:00The felony of reading<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">To plagiarize,
we are told, is to a commit a crime. It is, perhaps, to be some kind of Ted
Bundy or the Unabomber, carefully planning a hit, ready to work out a life of fame at
the expense of their unsuspecting victims.</span></h2>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKwiN3G8dkVkkEcvTM2P0thF2k4pZM5gVfNZNvhl1INjS5UR5YRPHTrZORLqidADWSEIT_uK398jTIt7WW8vw4gbkU_H9zdPhxxism6NPj-Dl8hos6hbSnBuK_wDrINU7_WR4EOfCfzAk/s1600/Stop+thief.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKwiN3G8dkVkkEcvTM2P0thF2k4pZM5gVfNZNvhl1INjS5UR5YRPHTrZORLqidADWSEIT_uK398jTIt7WW8vw4gbkU_H9zdPhxxism6NPj-Dl8hos6hbSnBuK_wDrINU7_WR4EOfCfzAk/s400/Stop+thief.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/pFZB5t" target="_blank">Condé Nast</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Corry
Doctorow has things to say about copyright and plagiarism from the point of
view of someone who’s seen things made and done at the legislative level. And what
he’s seen is, by all appearance, the criminalization of users (readers, watchers,
listeners etc.) by the corporate universe.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“At root,
DRM [Digital Rights Management] are technologies that treat the owner of a
computer of other device as an attacker, someone against whom the system must
be armored. Like the electrical meter on the side of your house, a DRM is a
technology that you possess, but you are never supposed to be able to manipulate
or modify.”</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
A lot can be
said about the new forms of control put in place to supposedly protect us, the
users, from being prosecuted. (Lucky us! To be so efficiently shielded against
ourselves!) I don’t want to go into the details of how a DRM functions, how it
purports to make bits of information uncopyable, how it acts as the antibody of
a system that’s weak in the face of the scandalous multitude, us.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
What I want
to retain from the above is this: like in any criminal law, the purpose of copyright
laws is to make the essential assumption that every user (every citizen) is a
potential criminal. Like all laws, the laws of copyright run on suspicion. Yes,
you need to be always on guard, always prepared to spot the intruder, always
ready to cry: Catch the thief! Catch the thief!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b>Psychopathic executives, paranoid
legislators</b></h3>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It is
precisely this suspicion that the enforcers strive to quieten. It makes sense,
doesn’t it, to board up the windows when you know that someone is coming for
you. It makes sense to disrupt the crime that’s about to be committed. But we might
have a problem with this takenforgrantedness. We might have a problem with it,
because reacting against something that’s about to be committed means reacting
against something that hasn’t been done: something that, in essence, doesn’t exist
as such; a virtuality, a fiction.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
In this, I see
obvious signs of paranoia: the projection of a constant, largely imagined, fear,
founded on an imagined threat, on the basis of a never-attainable solution.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
In a radio
program I was listening to the other day, the hosts were citing a fairly recent
research project claiming that more and more individuals showing psychopathic traits
are being welcomed as managers or CEOs of corporate structures. The conclusion
was easy to imagine. Of course, they said, of course. What would you expect
when the entire environment designed to uphold accomplishment is based on the
easy principle of success without scruples?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The same
goes, I think, with the paranoid mentality of legislators: since the only way
to pass laws is by manufacturing the promise of success against virtual crimes,
of course all we are going to end up with is an environment of suspicion. Everybody’s
going to look over their shoulders: have I been trespassed against? Has my
property been under threat?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Psychopathic
executives, paranoid legislators: are we all well up in the attic? Can we function
properly? Can we be said to embrace normality at all?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
In this
normality, the user is a villain. Yes, the user, who materializes the product’s
function. The citizen, through whom the legal system is brought to light. It is
the user that brings about the threat, the possibility of a crime to be
committed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b>Prosecute your readers!</b></h3>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
To keep
within my area of interest, I’d have to say that the reader of a book is, virtually
and therefore undoubtedly, a likely criminal. Reading the work of another is,
in essence, a form of home invasion. No matter how we twist the facts and force
the meanings, the reader performs their actions without the author knowing who
they are; without the author even knowing that they are defacing the text
(mocking the original, bringing about a meaning possibly never intended). Since
this is how things work, every author would be entitled to file a complaint
against every single one of their readers for plagiarism and slander. For
plagiarism because, at the end of the day, the reader is using <i>precisely</i> the words created by the writer,
without changing a bit. For slander because the reader makes a false allegation
against the writer: the allegation of incorrectness.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
In theory,
every writer should be entitled to call for prosecution. But then there’s this
little reality of their complete dependence on the criminal. Because without
the user, without the perpetrator, who would be there to acknowledge the work?<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA51qlWmdc24ZeenCnchQySct8J1To59xKYGjZXaOrA0364Fh9tOc1EuHIH1CdN6_C27IrUjy6k2tbVEhSWLgoAw14XuMMiqT_pd7TNvQcrvMgNrJQd52EnoFnLs4g1K7sY_uLrEstMG8/s1600/plagiarist.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA51qlWmdc24ZeenCnchQySct8J1To59xKYGjZXaOrA0364Fh9tOc1EuHIH1CdN6_C27IrUjy6k2tbVEhSWLgoAw14XuMMiqT_pd7TNvQcrvMgNrJQd52EnoFnLs4g1K7sY_uLrEstMG8/s400/plagiarist.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://goo.gl/Px9we3" target="_blank">Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This paranoid
return upon a threat that’s never fully materialized (no single prosecution
will ever take away the suspicion) makes, therefore, sense only in the abstract.
It is a speculation we’re talking about here: an apparatus of repression
speculating in order to justify the presence of its laws. Write as you like, do
as you please; at the end of the day you, the author, are the one losing:
either at the hand of the reader (who will never be stopped from reading, i.e. trespassing),
or at the hand of the legislator (who will take away your individuality to
place it under an abstract complexity called copyright). It’s “the electric reader
at the side of your house” that matters: a text that we own but cannot alter. Hence
the important idea that even self-plagiarism is a crime.</div>
</div>
xxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084449542289434572noreply@blogger.com0