RE: [-empyre-] An Avatar Manifesto/response to Christina

["Gregory Little" <glittle@oberlin.net>]

Christina, in response to your question about Kapital being a force beyond
the user, I am referring to Mandel's "Late Capitalism", as discussed in
Jamesons "PostModernism, or the cultural logic of late Capitalism". A 3rd
stage capitalism, a purer, insidious, nearly ubiquitous form of capitalism
that is a total system or logic, where every position, node of intensity,
political, cultural, or subjective location's survival is conditioned by its
contribution to the perpetuation and survival of the global system of
exchange, is commodified at it's core....."The individual is displaced from
its central location by the (commodity) object, which established priority
and sovereignty, over the subject" (Linker and Kruger 78)."

The system is based on denial, the Althusserian phrase "absent cause", where
nation states no longer play causal or formal roles in the administration of
society, culture, and identity; as culture, economics, and subjectivities
collapse, no one is in charge or accountable.   The absent cause being an
ultimate Darwinian state of the survival and perpetuation of a ubiquitous
state of capitalism, finding its way to the core of everything, permitted to
survive through the creation of denial perpetuated by the mild anesthesia
you cited in your post.

>Christina wrote:
>Gregory, with regard to the difference between the cyborg and the avatar,
>does the term egreore relate to the space of either or both of them? It
>seems that the avatar archetype in Sanskrit involves the pass through, the
>threshold, the liminal; but does it include 'conjoining two different
>elements together'?

In one sense both the cyborg and the avatar are hybrids, co-joining two
conditions, but again, I am emphasizing the real-world definitions; the
cyborg is a hybrid of corporeal conditions, the "human enhanced", dependent
upon a continuum between human and bot, the cyborg remains human--when the
cyborg crosses a threshold and becomes, in Ned Block's terms, a
"philosophical zombie", it is no longer human, and thus no longer a cyborg.
Here being human is defined by subjective consciousness, something extremely
difficult to determine in another being.  Only you would know if you were
(becoming) a zombie, but if you were a zombie, you would have no way of
knowing. only if you were in process, a horrifying proposition...slowly
slipping into a zombie state but I suppose from the POV of consciousness,
the cyborg does exist in a liminal zone of conscious/machine.
The avatar alone may not represent a co-joining, but when taken as a hybrid
construction of consciousness (human) or pure metastasis (Kapital)  on one
plane, and signification into another plane, does represent a condition of
egreore--as long as it, the avatar, remains a delegate for an entity "on the
other side".  I think for the avatar, the hybridity is of two planes of
existence, not "species", if you will, as in the cyborg.  (the cyborg can be
transgenic, which opens interesting questions related to the zombie??) This
again represents a fascinating territory for identity reconstruction....what
you call "recombinant condition, a third or liminal space of
identity"--unique I believe to the avatar, not possible for the cyborg
(except possibly in the case of the ironic political myth of Haraway's
female cyborg")..

>and Christina writes:
>Is there a geneology from the going-down/descent of the avatar in Sanskrit
>to the 'descent' or 'embodiment' into the world by compassionate agents
>(bodhissatvas) in Mahayana Buddhism? ( a comparative religion question)?

got me on that one, my knowledge of Buddhism is spotty, more concentrated in
Hinduism...anyone else want to intervene here??

>It is interesting in this connection to contemplate the sense
>of the commercial space of the net as having its nascence in the arcades

absolutely..and I agree, the disturbing fact is the co-optation

>Let's imagine for a moment that the 'egreore' --creation of a third
>condition from conjoining two elements together, self and avatar, humanity
>and commodity, makes, in the space of the saturated hyperreal, a toxic
>atmosphere. Everybody has to breathe it.  There is no escape. Amnesia
>abounds.  Paranoia is pervasive.  These are the conditions recently
>discussed at Cornell under the rubric of Digital Terror and Ethnic Paranoia
>(see <http:/ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu>).

the horror, yes, I will take a look at the essay at ctheory and comment if
appropriate.
I will post excerpts from the second half of the manifesto tomorrow, where I
propose methods for the construction of potential, to quote Haraway,
"wildcards" in an attempt to redirect the amnesia.
Christina, I really appreciate your words, and am very anxious to pursue the
works that you cite.

More tomorrow...
Gregory

>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>


_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre