[-empyre-] Re: philosphical panic?

[Sean Cubitt <scubitt@unimelb.edu.au>]

hi tim and empyricists

sorry for making a false impression: my intent was to suggest that  
specific thinkers tended in that direction, not a blanket  
condemnation of thinking, especially in the direction of the thinking  
of the aesthetic

did i already say: I am beginning to understand why the aesthetic is  
important - in the sense of art and in the greek sense of sensation /  
perception / body: odd, how hard it is to get this right but . . .

against the infliction of unspeakable, unbearable pain: to insist on  
what is speakable - that is social - and what is pleasant, in  
whatever way, be it the pleasures of food and good company, of  
beauty, of intellect, of solidarity . . .

It has something to do with the "thisness" of the specific thing or  
experience of it. Not its "thatness", which emphasises, to me, what  
it is as species, but the absolute specificity of this moon, seen on  
this night, from this place

Puzzle: what is the thisness of a network work?

Panic: the result of fear, fear of the machine; fear of the alien  
others in the machine;

I suggested that these alien others are unacknowledged and enslaved  
ancestors.

Fear of the dead, fear of dying, fear of death: transferred into fear  
of hackers, fraudsters, spammers, bandits, pedophiles, migrants,  
guerrillas . . . and the indefensible practice of describing Others  
are 'terrorists' in order to legitimise panic as the permanent state  
of emergency (Agamben) and to strip the alien of their right to speak  
- an act that forces them towards violence as the only speech left, a  
speecjh which is, of necessity, unspeakable and unspeakably painful.  
Panic politics is this vicious circle.

Giving  voice is one of the alternatives, as a practice, on this list  
especially earlyier this month.

The aesthetic might seem loike an alternative to politics, but it  
might also be an alternative politics?

s

On 26/04/2007, at 10:08 PM, timothy murray wrote:

> > Sean, sorry I didn't get this response out sooner.  I'm very happy  
> > to have bring the philosophical into the discussion. But by so  
> > demonizing aesthetics, and by proxy the philosphical reflection on  
> > art, making it the carrier of panic, I'm concerned that you turn  
> > your reader's attention from the open possibilities of thought.
>
>
>
>
> > If 20th century philosophy/theory is totalitarian by nature  
> > (because it's abstract and requires erudition thus leave all  
> > possible interlocutors out of the web?  is this the argument?),  
> > then we should put aside the works of Arendt on totalitarianism,  
> > Lyotard on the differend, Derrida's writings on justice and  
> > aparteid, Deleuze and Guattari on rhizomatic politics, Sam Weber  
> > on mediaura's and democracy, Verena Andermatt Conley on technology  
> > and ecopolitics, Bernard Steigler and Raymond Bellour on media,  
> > video and new media, and a wide spectrum of theoretical writing  
> > and new media artistic interventions on art in the age of  
> > computing, such as yours, mine, Mark Hanson's, Margaret Morse's,  
> > Anne-Marie Duguet's, or projects by artists such as out-of-sync  
> > (Neumark and Miranda), Tony Cokes, Thierry Kuntzel (whose passing  
> > we mourn at this very moment of his funeral in Paris), Du Zhenjun,  
> > Gary Hill, ad-319, Marina Grzinic, Adriene Jenik--just to mention  
> > these examples off the top of my head, etc, etc. etc.?
>
>
> So my deep concern is that your expressed panic over closed systems  
> of metaphysics and their fascist corollaries not translate into  
> panic over thought, philosophy, and/or aesthetic considerations  
> whose very core, I learned so clearly from my teacher, Lyotard,  
> often derived from listening to art's call to resist the  
> totalitarian panic resulting from the kinds of state sponsored  
> terror to which Renate and I have been responded her art projects  
> and my writings and curatorial interventions regarding Digital Terror.
>
> Thanks for taking us in this direction. I'm looking forward to  
> following this thread for the next couple of days.
>
> Tim
>
> --
> Timothy Murray
> Professor of Comparative Literature and English
> Acting Director of The Society for the Humanities
> Director of Graduate Studies in Film and Video
> Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
> A. D. White House
> Cornell University
> Ithaca, New York  14853
>
> office: 607-255-4086
> e-mail: tcm1@cornell.edu