Re: [-empyre-] Baudrillard and the future of theory

[Brian Holmes <brian.holmes@wanadoo.fr>]

McKenzie Wark wrote:

> If we were to hold all theorists accountable for their epigones, who
> would we have left? That the gesture sold well i won't hold against
> him (or Sylvere, who sold it). Good luck to anyone who can make a
> living at 'theory'. That the gesture was repeated i take to be an
> aesthetic choice, a kind of minimalism. But the 'take away' is that
> there can be an aesthetic to theoretical writing. It need not all have
> the 'tone jam' and 'frame lock' quality as Charles Bernstein describes
> it.

Well, one could hope to produce more interesting epigons, imho. Maybe 
somehow the worm was in the fruit? On the other hand, the aesthetics of 
theoretical writing, I'm all for it! It's just which aesthetics and for 
whom. When I recently received in the mail an excerpt from the Hacker 
Manifesto all printed up like a broadsheet I thought, yeah, this is 
great, this is working. But it's precisely not that kind of 
postmodernism that says everything is a spectacle, rather it's a toolbox 
for doing something else. Even the aesthetic is a toolbox, you can play 
around with it, tweak it, take it in another direction.

best, BH