[-empyre-] Eddies, Whirlwinds, Trade Winds

[Nicholas Ruiz III]

In Derrida's "Given Time", the gift is seen as that which may theoretically interrupt economy...but in practice the gift cannot help itself; it serves to reproduce the relations of exchange through the act of reciprocity...such reciprocity of exchange seems to be the basis of human relations...

In terms of our lives today, internationally, many expect the gift of electronic credit and finance, and true to form, are expected to return its terms in full spatio-temporal reciprocity...and with interest...where did we go wrong? Why not simply, gifts, wrapping paper and bows for all, with no strings attached?  

So, we 'give' more, and perhaps, expect more too, and increasingly...the ineluctable march of 'progress'...is this the way of God or the Devil...or some other Way...at the risk of tautology or paradox: did we create exchange (the exchange of currency takes many forms (e.g. dollars/euros, DNA contributions in reproduction, posturing and innuendo in strategies of nuclear deterrence, etc.))...if all this true, human culture may be but a  side effect of some greater process of 'crescere,' that expansion and coming to be of creative Exchange, no?


nick

  
Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D Editor, Kritikos http://intertheory.org


--- On Wed, 4/1/09, Michael Angelo Tata, PhD <mtata at ipublishingllc.com> wrote:

> From: Michael Angelo Tata, PhD <mtata at ipublishingllc.com>
> Subject: [-empyre-] Eddies, Whirlwinds, Trade Winds
> To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Date: Wednesday, April 1, 2009, 8:35 PM
> 
> 
> 
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>  
> Greetings,
> all!  I’m quite excited to
> share this panel with such an eminent bunch, and look
> forward to undertaking some important reflection upon what
> the cultural ramifications of the current Wall Street
> debacle might be, both domestically and globally. Basically,
> I’ve written a book about Warhol which is currently
> forthcoming from Intertheory, so hopefully Warhol’s own
> relation to commerce, as well as the role he has been slated
> within pomo-ism proper by people like Jameson, will become a
> part of the discussion.
>   
> Aside from
> Warhol, the place toward which my mind immediately turns as
> I think about what Nicholas refers to as the Immaculate
> Deception is Camille Paglia’s identification of Jacques
> Derrida as a junk-bond salesman in her “Junk Bonds and
> Corporate Raiders” (part of Sex, Art, and
> American Culture).  I think
> my mind races to this piece of writing because it does raise
> the important question of the potential bankruptcy of theory
> in general (a risk that does not seem to plague
> philosophy quite the same way). 
>   
> Glancing anew at Derrida’s The Gift of
> Death, I take immense pleasure in the text’s flow, the
> beautiful post-structural play of surfaces that carry me
> away on currents of semantic glissement: perhaps she’s
> right, but without comprehending that the problematic she
> formulates is wrong because theory is nor philosophy, what
> it can give transcends the gross objectivity of a fact or
> datum.  Still, there is
> Derrida’s love of counterfeit money in Gift
> and Given Time. 
> How does this tropism speak to Madoff’s
> antics?  To the culture that will
> flourish in the wake of collapse and that has flowered all
> along during these golden years of HELOC madness and
> Home Depot grand openings?  To
> the “cultural logic” of late capitalism in general, and
> the late, late gerontic capitalism of today’s
> world? 
>   
> Places my
> mind travels to next:
>   
> 
> The
> marvelous bankruptcy of American culture in
> general—especially in its postmodern instantiation.  Something for nothing, nothing for
> nothing.
>   
> 
> The Dotcom
> crash of the early millennium as prefigurement to the
> present real estate crash: the no-there-there of the virtual
> reasserts itself in the financial sector.
>   
> 
> 9/11 and the
> return of a historically meaningful present, pace
> Baudrillard’s post-history: what is
> post-postmodernism?  Are we
> experiencing it now? 
> Specifically, what comes next, after irony?  The Pecker
> paradigm.
>   
> 
> “Yes We Can” becomes “Yes You Can”; the Obama
> slogan becomes a Pepsi mantra (or is it the Obama mantra
> becomes the Pepsi slogan?).  Where do we go with this
> mutation? 
> 
>   
> 
> On a recent
> trip to Geneva, I stumbled across a department store
> (Manor-La Placette) built on the original site of
> Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s boyhood home: a little placard,
> tender yet bearing the weight of history, read something to
> the effect of “Ice est né le petit Rousseau….’  How do we read this repurposing of
> Rousseau in light of his “Discourse on the Arts and
> Sciences”?  How do we connect
> the cultural bankruptcy Rousseau outlines with recent Wall
> Street hijinks?  Commerce and
> culture alike straddle an abyss of currency and meaning:
> what does each realm have to say to the other regarding risk
> and venture?
>   
> Alright: this little poetic scatter catalogues my
> various points of inception.  I
> am looking forward to reading everyone else’s.     
> 
> 
> *******************************************
> Michael Angelo Tata,
> PhD  347.776.1931-USA
> http://www.MichaelAngeloTata.com/
> 
> 
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