Re: [-empyre-] The Hyper-Modern Condition

Brett Stalbaum <stalbaum@ucsd.edu> · Thu, 30 Mar 2006 14:48:30 -0800

Fantastic and enlightening essay re Lyotard - a great primer - thanks Eric.
I have a question. You say:
"When Naomi Klein wrote "From symbols to substance" she was dead-wrong, 
 symbols is the only substance that is left for our social reality, 
which has scaled up so far beyond the face to face that any physical 
action only becomes socially meaningful in as far as it is 
technologically / symbolically mediated."
To me, the later part of this argument may actually support Klein's 
position! Yes, given, symbols do mediate the real. (And this is where I 
think we should pursue the social through exploring the novel 
manifestations that can be made to emerge at the points where the 
virtual and the real co-generate... but this is not my question...) So, 
how could we simultaneously hold that "symbols [are] the only substance 
that is left" and still hold that "physical action" continues to exist? 
Is the physical action somehow totally effaced by the awful taint of 
being symbolically mediated? It is social when a database plays a role 
in physically distributing the food I eventually acquire, or other 
aspects of material wealth and how it is distributed, or who with and 
how I communicate, etc? Yet we hold that symbols remain the only social 
reality?
I think that symbols enter holistically into the material and the social 
(and have for a long time... a case I make here 
http://www.paintersflat.net/database_interpret.html... different 
topic...). Here, I'll hold that symbols don't efface the social or the 
physical, it is just that we don't understand fully how they mediate 
these yet. It is possible that as we understand how this works or more 
interestingly might be made to work (the role of artists, imho), that 
our postmodern state (the early phase where we are excessively thrown by 
rapid change - remember it took modernism a long time to incorporate 
around the material realities of the industrial revolution) might become 
the N-state, whatever that is or might be. Just as "Modernism" 
eventually crystallized epistemologically as culture incorporated the 
social consequences of the motor, maybe we are on the verge of socially 
incorporating high-speed computation and digital computation, 
post-silicone, into something even more theoretically coherent than the 
first wave of postmodern thought which grappled with the consequent 
social changes... Just a thought.
I'm sure of one thing. This conversation may play out over many years, 
certainly not by the end of March 2006;-)
Eric Kluitenberg wrote:

Dear empyre list members,
It was my strict intention to enter the debate on the lingering  legacy 
of modernism much earlier in the month. However, a flue has  rendered me 
rather unable to work on anything intellectually  demanding for the last 
two to three weeks, and even now I am  struggling with the last cold 
symptoms. Apparently, a lot of people  here locally (Amsterdam) have 
been taken down by this flue and have  similar experience with intensity 
and length of this viral  contamination....
I have followed some of the discussion on the list, though not all,  and 
it seems there is a highly lively debate. However, I did not find  the 
particular perspective introduced here that I originally  suggested to 
Christina as a possible contribution to the discussion.  So, what I want 
to do right now is to provide you with some basic  notes on the topic I 
suggested. These notes follow below, plus  further references. Although 
not much time is left for the current  discussion, and my own time is 
severely under pressure after having  lost a good two weeks of 
productive time, I welcome comments,  criticism or remarks.
---------------------------------
The Hyper-Modern Condition
Cursory notes on the persisting legacy of modernism

Walter Benjamin seems to have said that there has never been an era  
that has not felt itself 'excessively modern'.
Almost thirty years after Jean-François Lyotard published his  'rapport 
sur le savoir', "La condition postmoderne", the experience  of modernity 
seems far from over. Lyotard himself observed that there  is something 
that links the technosciences, the avantgardes and  advanced capitalism 
together that defines this unique experience of  the modern, and that 
'thing' is a shared affinity with infinity  ("affinité avec l'infinité").
The technosciences exhibit the infinite ability of knowing (acquiring  
knowledge), the avantgardes exhibit the infinity of 'plastic  invention' 
(the infinity of possible modes of representation), and  advanced 
capitalism exhibits the infinite ability to realise. Thus,  in Lyotard's 
formula the modern program can be summed up as "seeing  all, knowing 
all, realising all". The horizon of modernity is that of  all that is 
possible, and Lyotard reminds us, horizons recede into  infinity as we 
move forward....
Now the problem of infinity vis-à-vis representation is, of course,  
that infinity itself is qua hypothesis unrepresentable, and can only  be 
established, 'shown to exist', negatively, via an inverted sign, a  sign 
that is a non-sign, a sign that points beyond itself through its  
negative (non-representational) form to hint at something  
unrepresentable. In this case it is easy to see that something  without 
an end (something infinite) can never have a specific form -  in the 
Kantian formula; can never be synthesised into unique form in  space and 
time.
This specific understanding of the 'modern condition' of Lyotard,  quite 
inescapably drives him into the direction of the aesthetics of  the 
sublime, which he adopts from Kant's Kritik der Urteillskraft,  but 
modifies substantially to integrate the avant-garde's use of  negative 
signs to show that the unrepresentable exists. At some point  (in his 
essay "la philosophie et la peinture à l'ere de leur  expérimentation" 
of 1979 - the same year as his Postmodern Condition)  he even states 
that it is the highest aim of (avantgarde) art today  to show that the 
unrepresentable exists, and even that it is the only  task worthy of a 
practice with a century of heroic 'experimentation'.
So, to make a mild understatement, it is clear that this is not a  
side-issue in his work. In fact the figure of the unrepresentable is  at 
work in the Postmodern Condition as well. Here Lyotard states the  
incommensurability of language games, because a shared scale of  
measurement (of judgements) is absent these language games are  
untranslatable into one another. Conflicting judgements, especially  
epistemological and moral judgements, can therefore only be  'resolved' 
by applying 'terror' to one or more of these conflicting  language games 
if they are to reach a common ground of consensus.  Consensus then is 
terror and therefore fundamentally suspect.
In "Le Differend" Lyotard develops this point in great detail and  shows 
that even in the most gruesome case, the holocaust denial,  conflicting 
judgements between incommensurable language games can  never be resolved 
without the application of terror. It is this point  more than anything 
else that locked Lyotard in a bitter dispute with  Habermas in the 80s, 
which became widely known as the modernism /  post-modernism debate. 
Today we see the lingering of these positions  in the different stances 
that are taken on the debates of  multiculturalism  versus integration, 
and the continental European  debate on a "Leitkultur". Here the 
ambiguities of moral judgements  between universalisms versus 
inextinguishable difference collide head  to head in some of the most 
virulent and controversial socio- political debates and the policies 
that are based on the positions  taken within those debates on 
immigration, integration, and  segregation, in Europe but also elsewhere.
Now, going back to Lyotard's aesthetic theory (as I tried to show in  
some broad brush strokes intimately linked with his "post-modern"  
political theory), what puzzles me is that he coined the term "post- 
modern" for a particular condition he observed in the technosciences,  
society and culture. What this term suggests is something 'beyond'  
modernism'. While, especially in his aesthetic theory, and the use of  
the motives of the sublime, the unrepresentable, the negative sign,  the 
negative dialectics of the image, he is using 'classically'  modern 
concepts to discuss tendencies in contemporary arts and culture.
Furthermore, knowing that it was Lyotard's primary profession to be  an 
aesthetician, rather than a philosopher of science or a political  
philosopher, and also knowing that he did indeed write some  magnificent 
texts on contemporary artists of his time and made many  invaluable 
contributions to art-theoretical discourse also in main- stream visual 
arts magazines, the use of these modern (modernist)  concepts is in no 
way out of naiveté, or a lack of understanding of  the contemporary 
context of art-theoretical and aesthetic discourse.
Thus the figure of the unrepresentable and the aesthetic reflection  on 
that what is qua hypothesis impossible to give shape or form  should be 
considered at the heart of Lyotard's philosophy and through  his 
phenomenal influence on the modernity / post-modernity debate  should 
also be considered one of the core themes of this debate per se.
That make sit all the more problematic that while the suggestion of a  
move beyond modernism / modernity / the modern experience is made, a  
curiously modern set of concepts and analytic strategies is employed  to 
make this point. In fact the kind of program that Lyotard  postulates 
for 'la peinture' in the age of its experimentation is not  post-modern, 
but hyper-modern.
To stretch language a bit further here and use some Baudrillardian  
terms in a tongue-in-cheeks way, you could say that this discourse is  
not hyper-real at all, but instead 'really hyper-modern'.....

Why is this a problem?
OK - so if this argument I made would hold on closer and critical  
scrutiny I could maintain that I have shown that Lyotard's thought is  
no no way beyond the modern, but is instead hyper-modern. This would  
leave most of the debate on what is customarily understood as post- 
modern in philosophy / political science / cultural theory in tact.  It 
also does not affect the furious debate on universalism versus  
inextinguishable difference, and it seems but a technical point - of  
interest for Lyotard adepts like myself, but rather less interesting  
for the rest of humanity....
But here is only where the trouble starts. Lyotard presents a  
magnificent framework that allows us to link up avant-garde art  
production, the techno-sciences and advanced capitalism in one  analytic 
framework - that of a shared affinity with infinity. And the  
unrepresentable links up the debate in epistemology on the unknowable  
in an all too perfect way with the negative dialectics of the avant- 
garde and the incommensurability of language games. The second point  
Lyotard summed up in an interview in a theme issue of the German art  
magazine Kunstforum International as "The incommensurable is the  
unrepresentable" and thus his political and aesthetic theories are  
firmly interlocked in an ultimately condensed and clear formula -  
brilliant!
The problem arises from Lyotard's strict rejection of technological  
mediation. In 1985 he produced, together with Thierry Chaput a rather  
infamous exhibition at the centre Pompidou called Les Immatériaux,  
which tried to investigate the meaning of the fact of the 'new  
materials'. Rather than being strictly didactic exhibition it  presented 
scenario's and situations that attempted to heighten the  sensitivity of 
the audience for the things that were changing because  of the fact of 
the new materials - materials that in a contradictory  way were no 
longer materials for a project - thus the term  'immaterials'. Here 
Lyotard connects his exploration of the  technosciences, the avantgardes 
and advanced capitalism with the  development of new materials en 
mediation techniques. The show seems  ultimately positioned to question 
the difficulties and contradictions  these new materials and mediation 
techniques bring about, but also  their transformatory social potential, 
in a way their emancipatory  potential.
Lyotard goes at great length to show that ever more complex  
technological arrangements place themselves in-between man and the  
reality that she/he tries to transform or work upon. We increasingly  
loose contact with the materials, and increasingly interact via  
'immaterials' that have placed themselves between man and (social /  
physical / material) reality. The decisive step is the moment when  
digital data were introduced, data without an analogy to their  origin. 
"It is as if a filter has been placed between us and the  things, a 
screen of numbers", Lyotard writes in the text on the  concept of the 
show in the catalogue.
Once digital data start to circulate in electronic networks they  
dissolve every connection with the reality they seek or are supposed  to 
represent. Any source-information is translated into a universal  code 
(without analogy to its origin) and is subject to the  possibility of 
endless circulation and complete malleability.  However, what is crucial 
to understand about digital data (digital  notation) is that its 
notation scheme is essentially finite and  completely articulated. In 
it, Lyotard states in a later interview  about the show, "everything 
becomes a message - even the silence,  which strictly speaking does not 
tell anything, but generates meaning".
Already in an earlier essay that examines the advance of photography  
and its influence on the artistic practice of painting Lyotard  
critiques the "complete determinacy" of the technological medium.  This 
is brought to its logical conclusion in the digital notation  scheme and 
its application to electronic technologies (that operate  in real-time). 
This complete determinacy leaves no space for the  indeterminate, which 
is stamped out as a possibility of  representation, but also can no 
longer be negatively represented  within this notation scheme as 
everything within that scheme is a  message, he maintains, Digital 
mediation then precludes the  possibility of showing the unrepresentable 
to exist.
Art that relies on digital mediation then falls essentially short of  
the highest task that Lyotard has ascribed to art today, and equally  as 
carrier of social discourse and debate digital mediation precludes  the 
possibility to demonstrate the incommensurability of language  games 
because it is itself a finite language game, defined by  immutable 
rules: A matrix of perfect articulation.
If you would follow Lyotard's position that language games are  
incommensurable and subject to terror if one is to imprint a shared  
final position in a conflict of judgement between such  incommensurable 
language games, then the universalist discourse of  classical modernism 
must be understood to be essentially flawed.  Habermas' position of 
communicative transparency must then for  instance be understood as 
nothing else than the imposition of a view  of dominant culture on to a 
less powerful culture through the  application of terror (physical 
and/or cultural force). Personally I  would reluctantly follow the 
argument and adhere to that position of  Lyotard.
The emancipatory potential of digital mediation should then,  following 
the same arguments outlined above, be considered nihil. The  finity and 
complete articulation of the digital scheme precludes the  possibility 
of the incommensurable difference between language games  to emerge 
within that system of digital mediation, because the system  itself is 
already predicated on a specific, finite and fully  articulated language 
game. The use of digital media thus would not  allow for any kind of 
bridging of cultural differences and/or divides  but simply erase 
cultural difference within the finite and fully  articulated scheme of 
digital notation.
Out with the system of digital mediation and more broadly  technological 
mediation, which has been rejected by Lyotard because  of its complete 
determinacy, also goes the possibility of  intervention into the domain 
of technological mediation. However,  most of social interaction today 
is carried by technological  mediation, from print media to electronic 
mass media to internet, e- mail, discussion fora, blogs, mailing lists 
(like empyre), mobile  phones, sms, 3rd and 4th generation wireless 
media, wifi networks,  open source and free software systems and much 
much more. All of  these simply serve the establishment of a dominant 
cultural code that  extinguishes the very possibility of difference to 
enter the social  arena, to manifest itself or to be invertedly 
demonstrated by  negative signs that point to the infinity of possible 
language  games / modes of representation / the infinity of plastic 
invention.
Lyotard's discourse thus becomes hermetic and locks itself in a dead- 
end street. Indeed in some of his latest writings he is utterly  
dystopian and considers 'the system' to have become all-encompassing  
(as afar as the social process goes) and without an external point of  
critique since everything, the social in its entirety is fully  captured 
and completely immersed in 'the system' (technoscientific  rationality 
and the infinite ability of advanced capitalism to  realise). And this 
position is obviously completely unproductive if  one still has any hope 
for social, cultural and political progress of  whatever kind....

Being excessively hyper-modern and how to go beyond the hyper-modern  
condition...
What is amazingly striking about Lyotard's critique is that it  
pinpoints some of the most painful fallacies of modernist discourse  and 
the social and political systems they give rise to, yet that the  very 
same arguments lead Lyotard in classically modern trap. The  critique of 
modernity comes from within (this is a bit like  Tourainne), but it 
leads to a hermetic position that cannot escape  the system from which 
it was produced, and still suggest a necessary  outcome of 'historical' 
development, not an end of history, nor an  'incomplete project', but 
rather a final endpoint of the modernist  project, and all-encompassing 
system that no longer has any external  reference point from which a 
fundamental or systemic critique could  be successfully raised, since 
any critique is already subsumed in the  system.
This leads to a dangerous fatalistic position: The only  transformation 
of this all-encompassing system is its complete  destruction by an 
incommensurable form of otherness. In more mundane  terms, a clash of 
civilisations, the destruction of the west by  what...?? The orient? The 
Islamic world? (whatever that may be...).  By the 'global south'?
Digital / technological mediation in any case according to this  formula 
would not be a possibility for starting some kind of  dialogue, since it 
merely means the application of terror to any form  of otherness not 
already subsumed in the cultural system that  produced these technologies.
One way out might be to reject Lyotard's position on the  
incommensurability of language game and to re-approach the incomplete  
project of finding a communicative meta-level at which conflicting  
judgements between different language games can be resolved in terms  of 
'universal' human needs, concerns, and aspirations. But I must say  that 
I just cannot see how such a universalist discourse would ever  work, 
even if it is developed from a fundamental understanding of  respect for 
the initial difference of these conflicting judgements  and the cultural 
systems in which and across which they are made?
To take just a very simple example; how can a typically modernist  
aspiration as the quest for self-actualisation of the subject,  
ultimately be reconciled with a culture which is entirely predicated  on 
family relations and where these family relations define the moral  
framework within which judgements about proper behaviour are made? We  
cannot erase that difference by going back to common biological and  
material determinants as this would inflict terror on all language  
games  / cultural systems - culture after all 'is' our nature....
Another option would be a regression to closed cultural systems, a  
reactionary move away from the modernist affinity with infinity, a  
rejection of the desire to see all, know all, and to realise all, and  
instead opt for deliberate restriction to a historically grown and  
fortified cultural framework, in which difference is not so much  denied 
as it is evaded or ignored. That would indeed be a completely  
regressive and reactionary move that might work for somebody like  Roger 
Scruton, but certainly not for me.
Overlooking this battle-field I cannot help but feel totally immersed  
in modernity and quite unable to escape it, even if its limitations,  
its implicit terror and its internal contradictions are blatantly  clear 
to me, and as such I can no longer claim "I'm a believer!".  Instead I 
feel hyper-modern, and in this case, and different from  Lyotard, in a 
sense closer to the notion of the hyper-real that  Baudrillard has 
suggested.
This could be summarised as being fully aware that what is  circulating 
in the networks are the empty signifiers of failed modern  project, the 
symbols of empty modernism, yet acknowledging that (in a  society 
saturated by technological mediation) symbols is all that is  left to 
act through in the social arena, in the public domain. When  Naomi Klein 
wrote "From symbols to substance" she was dead-wrong,  symbols is the 
only substance that is left for our social reality,  which has scaled up 
so far beyond the face to face that any physical  action only becomes 
socially meaningful in as far as it is  technologically / symbolically 
mediated.
The approach one could take then to still act socially and in public  is 
concrete action in this symbolical and technological mediated  domain, 
for which the history and legacy of modernism and the  avantgardes 
offers us all the conceptual and practical tools to  deploy such actions.
--------------------------

I tried to explore some of these issues in the text "Transfiguration  of 
the Avant-Garde" and I think that this text is still not  satisfactory, 
also it links up quite exclusively to interventions of  The Yesmen  in 
the second part of the text (though this material was  developed way 
before they became a hype), and the analysis needs to  be expanded along 
the lines roughly sketched above. You can find the  text in various 
places on-line, a.o. here:
http://www.debalie.nl/dossierartikel.jsp?dossierid=13636&articleid=13798
Some more info concerning my biography, projects, texts, can be found  
here:
http://www.debalie.nl/persoon.jsp?personid=920

I hope this was / is of interest.
best wishes,
Eric
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

--
Brett Stalbaum, Lecturer, PSOE
Coordinator, Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM)
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
Department of Visual Arts
9500 GILMAN DR. # 0084
La Jolla CA 92093-0084
http://www.c5corp.com
http://www.paintersflat.net
Info for students, spring quarter 2K6:
-Vis 141b (Advanced Computer Programming/Arts) office hour:
WED 3-4PM, VAF 206, Contact via WebCT
-ICAM and Media (computing emphasis) faculty advising:
WED 4-5PM, VAF 206, Contact via email stalbaum@ucsd.edu
-ICAM 110 (Computing in the Arts: Current Practice) office hour:
WED 5-6PM, Location TBA, Contact: via WebCT
- Notes:

Week 1 (Wed, April 5th) office hours for Vis 141b and ICAM/MediaC moved 
to Thursday the 6th, 1-2PM and 2-3PM, Vaf 206. (ICAM 110 unchanged.)

Week 3 (Wed, April 19th) office hours for Vis 141b and ICAM/MediaC moved 
to Thursday the 20th, 1-2PM and 2-3PM, Vaf 206. (ICAM 110 unchanged.)

Week 10 - No office hours this week.

Meetings available by appointment during finals week.