Re: [-empyre-] performativity and the 'new'

[marcus bastos <bastos.marcus@gmail.com>]

Dear Brigid,

Austin´s idea of the performative was certainly related to speech (cf.
his concept of "speech acts"). But this notion can be amplified, as
you already stated. Deleuze and Rancière argued in that direction,
mostly because they were interested in questioning dicotomic
oppositions such as signifiant / signifié (ooops... I don´t remember
what are the English terms ;p),  speech / writerly, and so on.

I had an interesting off-list conversation with Giselle, about how
Orson Welles´s "War of the Worlds", wich she mentioned on this month´s
percursor´s thread, could be a good example of how non-digital
languages can be executable -- and it is interesting to remember of
Austin´s "speech acts" in this context where a good example of
analogical performativity is taken from radio, that is from oral
language.

During the transmission of "War of the Worlds", people believed that
the aliens were actually arriving, and lots of them runned away in
panic, not aware of the fictional nature of that radio transmission.
So, it could be said that Welles´s transmission actually executed
something, the same way you said that the signature operates as
written form that executes an action.

I guess one interesting aspect of this debate would be questioning how
different languages have different levels of performativity, since it
appears, from the examples we all had exchanged, that oral language is
more "executable" than written language, as well as digital language
seems to be more "executable" than both.
On 10/15/05, Brigid Mc Leer <mcleer.bridge@virgin.net> wrote:
> hi
>
> it's funny that you mention Austin's 'performative' Marcus, as that is
> what I was thinking about in response to giselle's comment about
> executable code too. I did wonder however if the performative is more a
> matter of speech than writing? but that then led me to think of the
> practice of signing something, and how the signature operates as a
> written form that, in effect, alters the value or worth of a document,
> not only authenticating it in some circumstances, but also ascribing it
> with a different 'identity' in terms of cultural value.
> Of course I think what you're saying giselle about code providing a
> more literal affective condition is true and i guess it's also true
> that ultimately this agency of the written might come to reorganise
> radically the relationship that we have between humans and machines -
> but isn't there a step between the writing of the line of code and the
> action it produces - not being a programmer i'm not totally clear about
> how this works, but isn't there some action of 'reading' that the
> computer does, to translate this code into a particular pattern of
> on/off, or 0/1? Is there something too to be explored in that step,
> about digital writing/reading?
>
> I also wanted to pick up on this idea of the 'new' - it seems obvious
> to me that a 'new' technology will bring with it new practices and
> forms - wedge shaped writing stylus' produced straight edged cuneform
> scripts and later cursive scripts could not have developed without the
> development of a different form of (softer) writing technology (Rod
> Mengham's 'The Descent of Language' is interesting in regard to all
> this stuff) - but equally, this current technology is also being
> experienced through us - live bodies, historical and experiential - so
> surely it is inevitable that many 'older' forms and practices will be
> threaded through and adapted in this new digital context. Perhaps that
> is an obvious thing to say, but i think our own role should not be
> discounted in all of this.
>
> One of the parallels drawn with the digital and earlier practices that
> always attracts me is the links made between digital space/media and
> medieval cultures. The medieval manuscript page is not only visually
> (because spatially orientated, rather than line based) similar to much
> textual-visual work produced in digital media, but it is also, more
> interestingly, conceptually resonant as this medieval 'page' was
> considered much more a live and inhabited space, multi-authored, and
> kind of performative too in a way - in much the same way that a 'page'
> in cyberspace will operate. Then there is the idea that webspace is
> similar to medieval conceptions in space in terms of how it provides a
> kind of invested 'faith-filled' (?) unreal space (margaret wertheim
> writes very accessibly about this). Reading also Mary Carruthers'
> writing about medieval mnemonic systems i can't help but relate much of
> that to the digital because of the emphasis on 'places' as sites from
> which thoughts or memories are recalled. I think Steve MacCaffery has
> done quite a bit of research into this relation between medieval
> constructs and visual poetries (prior to and including the digital).
> I like this throw back to a pre-renaissance context because it does
> figure the digital as actually very much a rupture with a long
> established and increasingly hegemonic tradition. Of course the 20thc
> was full of moves to upset this tradition but the digital seems to be
> the technical 'embodiment' of many of those attempts to dislodge us
> from Cartesian, rational, visual-centred, individualism that is the
> legacy of renaissance thought.
>
> B
>
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