Re: [-empyre-] Matrixial Encounters

[Eduardo Navas <eduardo@navasse.net>]

Hi, 

Intense exchange.

I want to comment on the contention with Capital that has been prevalent
throughout the discussion.  While, yes, there are currently many forms of
resistance out there following notions of ruptures, "interventions"
"problematizations" within the paradigms of Foucault or Debord and any other
theorist that is relevant to issues of global politics, the one thing that
they all share is that they are not able to work together like Capital does.
While Capital is extremely different from place to place, it is extremely
prevalent in its purpose--it is homogeneous.  Nothing is more different yet
consistent today than Capital.  This is the strength behind globalization.
Capital knows to do one thing: expand. It does not care for any cultural
issue that any resistance movement can claim.  Yet, differences within
movements separates them from each other and often leads them to weak
positions.

The bottom line is that since Marxism fell to the wayside there has not been
any other cultural paradigm that can claim a strong position against
Capital.  All we have, even today, are ruptures, interventions,
problematizations, go down the line with more trendy terms.  People only
function with small moments of resistance.  In the end, what is the real
purpose in resisting and is there a vision for a new type of culture?
Today, people are not willing to take a harder stance and instead stick to
short term interventions.  The politics of the artworld since conceptualism
have turned into an extreme form of conventionalized institutional critique,
and new media circles, thanks to their dependency on institutions, are not
too far behind this situation--if not already in it.  That it is not brought
up is another issue, because those in such circles can always focus on the
new possibilities of communication...  Much easier to suspend politics by
focusing on the constant development of technology.

This is the reason why I was wondering about Aliette's take on Wark's book.
I personally hate to discuss a book when there is no decent summary put
forward by those who bring it up.  It often leads to abstract soundbites
around the actual content, and is always easy to misunderstand what the book
may actually be about. Or people during discussion can perform incredible
sleights of hands.

I am not going to describe the book in detail here, but I will say that as
many on the list know, it proposes hackers as a new type of class resisting
yet another class: the vector class (a global form of the bourgeois adept to
information).  The book has been proposed as a reproposition of Marxism and
has been praised by many.  I, however, admit to be a bit skeptical because
the book fails to deal with a major problem with class--its hierarchy.  The
book essentializes hackers as being a type of universal class, following
Marx's position on the proletariat.  In reality Hackers are extremely
diverse individuals (whose class ranges form country to country) who may not
actually be interested in politics; some of them have very practical reasons
behind their doodling, some like it because they are really curious, and
others... Well, other simply like the power.  But others are interested in
research following the paradigms of scientific investigations, and others
simply want to make money in the long run, via the gift economy or any other
means of legitimization.  So to claim the term "hacker" as a name for a type
of "cultural producer" is already running into murky waters.  The book is
short-cited in this sense.  It starts with abstractions and is never really
able to contest the very limitations that Marxism ran into post 1968 for
that matter in a practical way.  There is no hint as to how such notions can
move beyond the  manifesto--something that Debord (who Wark claims inspired
the book) is able to do very eloquently by showing how his culture was
enslaved by spectacular time.

So where to look?  I would say Benjamin.  He knew better than to speculate,
even though he heavily relied on Marx for his critical position, he
certainly knew better than to predict.  He stuck to analyzing to then
develop real pockets of resistance.  The result as we all know is an essay
that is so overcited that we may want to hate it, yet it is still vert
relevant today even today.  But resistance is not enough.  There needs to be
actual strategies for the long term for real change.

This is the real border we need to cross.  Where to or with what
methodology? who knows, but certainly we need to move forward past
interventions and most importantly past comfortable notions of resistance.

E.


On 4/11/05 12:33 PM, "Kate Southworth" <katesouthworth@gloriousninth.com>
wrote:

> As has been clearly articulated in these discussions, there are some
> practitioners who have developed certain forms of tactical responses to
> aspects of contemporary capitalism.   The potential for other forms of
> transgressive artworking to co-emerge has also been clearly articulated.
> This potential co-emergent borderspace, fragile though it undoubtedly is, is
> what interests me most.
> 
> If we are to co-locate potential spaces of ethical and transgressive
> aesthetics then perhaps we need to take risks in our encounters with each
> other, and perhaps to understand subjectivity as encounter. A shared
> encounter, not between two people who know each other, but where as Griselda
> Pollock suggests the ?I and the non-I encounter each other and exist without
> attempting to destroy or master, to assimilate or incorporate¹.
> 
> Within this space there is co-becoming, co-begetting, co-generation,
> co-connection, co-transformation, co-interpretation, co-knowledge.
> 
> Within this space there is a responsibility for others, and for ourselves.
> If we deny what we know (what we see, what we feel in our hearts, stomachs,
> limbs but can't articulate, what we can analyse and theorise), if we turn
> away, then we hurt ourselves.  It is a space within which we put others
> before ourselves.
> 
> Is there a place for a matrixial aesthetics and ethics in new media art?
> 
> Kate
> 
> Ref.Griselda Pollock (1993), preface to ?Matrix ­ Borderline¹ Catalogue to
> Exhibition of Work by Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger at Museum of Modern Art,
> Oxford) 
> 
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