[-empyre-] Virgule vs. Ellipsis: the Poetics of Capital

[Michael Angelo Tata, PhD]

Nicky:

 

On a related note: please tell me about the ellipsis you love so much.  If the virgule is virtual, as you stated earlier, the ellipsis is very material, marking your language in too many places to be coincidental.  I feel strongly that this specific bit of punctuation ties back to Code, capital and contretemps--even "sequestration"/cordon sanitaire--so please, do elaborate.  


*******************************************
Michael Angelo Tata, PhD  347.776.1931-USA
http://www.MichaelAngeloTata.com/




 

> Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 06:43:06 -0700
> From: editor at intertheory.org
> To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Magma
> 
> 
> Capital sequestration need not result in financial catastrophes of the kind we are experiencing today...any more than storing up yams in a hut in Africa...(insert Chinua Achebe here)...but we need not let sequestration become abusive...this we have allowed since antiquity, and our society suffers immensely because of it. One can make the argument however, that slowly, we are getting better at equitable distribution, no? And certainly, therein lies hope for the ethicists!? :-)
> 
> Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D
> Editor, Kritikos
> http://intertheory.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: davin heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com>
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2009 3:54:52 PM
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Magma
> 
> I'm wondering what "Evil" might be. My friend Erin Labbie and I were
> chatting once and she told me that she thought "evil" was when one
> turns their back on the very question of ethics. Now, I don't know if
> she still thinks this or if she ever wrote anything down to this
> effect, but since she posed that definition for me years ago, I have
> been mulling it over.
> 
> I don't know that "evil" is so simple as all that. I like the
> theological distinctions drawn between physical evils (death,
> earthquakes, etc) and spiritual evils (which can be traced back to
> responsible entities). Augustine offers the notion that "Evil is the
> absence of good." And while, philosophically, there is a great deal
> of turf to wrangle over about whether or not evil exists at all, and
> if it does, what it might be... But, in general, I like thinking
> about evil in the way that Erin suggested so many years ago.
> 
> In the 21st Century, Google offers us "Don't be evil." What does
> Google's commandment offer us? In a sense, I think this is my main
> beef with being governed by capitalism (which is, in the end, what
> Neoliberalism is all about). It is at once all-consuming, but it is
> totally devoid of content. This is kind of classic postmodernism, but
> the idea here is that there are a proliferation of surfaces and a loss
> of the core. Google makes great stuff. And, it might strike one as
> encouraging to think that a company would operate from this idea:
> Don't be evil. But as far as commandments go, it commands nothing.
> It does not say, do what is right. It says, simply, just don't do
> what is wrong. And, well, from the perspective of capital, there
> aren't a whole lot of evils that one could even commit. If there is
> no "good" which can modify the behaviors of a market in conformity to
> external ethical concerns, simple avoidance of "being evil" seems like
> weak tea to me (unless of course, this discourse of good and evil was
> explicitly tied to a particular set of assumptions). They don't even
> say, "Don't do evil things." It's just "Don't be evil," as an end in
> itself. Even with this commandment in place, it is possible to do
> evil things without being "evil".
> 
> And I come back to Erin's comment. If ethics requires us to be
> mindful of the question of "the good life" and if to be ethical, we
> must pursue that good life intentionally insofar as we can discern it.
> But the value of finance rests precisely in its ability to shield us
> from the intersubjective possibilities of exchange (Strictly business,
> nothing personal). Money might have originated in the desire to
> protect the trader from the inconveniences of trading physical sheep
> for chickens, and chickens for shoes, and so on down the line. It
> introduces one simple nexus that is precisely intended to erase the
> physical challenges posed by the marketplace. But how quickly the
> masking of physical burdens is transmuted into the masking of deeper
> burdens, psychological burdens, social burdens, ethical burdens. It's
> easy enough to carry around a dead chicken, but it is nearly
> impossible to carry the weight of death. So, we refuse to deal with
> it altogether. We put it in the bank. And carry paper notes in its
> place. We pass the buck, if you will. (There is more to this than
> simply money. This is the way that technology and progress myths are
> mobilized. In the face of famine, what is there to do but invent some
> new device which will feed people? In the face of discrimination,
> what is there to do but allow the process to work?) This pervasive
> shirking of responsibility in favor of the Future Anterior, with
> ethics always positioned as something that will be realized when
> conditions are favorable, seems to be at the heart of this idea of a
> capitalist "ethic" (We'll save the environment when it is profitable,
> we'll cure disease when the cure can be patented, we'll consult with
> our professional ethicist before dumping out sludge in the municipal
> water supply, etc.) It limits all the various ways in which one
> person is responsible to another, in favor of a systemic buck-passing
> regimen, an automated indulgence.
> 
> And so, I wonder, if, as you say, that capital only has one ethic, to
> make use of itself, supposes that capital CAN be sequestered and still
> be ethical. I tend to favor my friend, Erin's argument, that this
> very sequestration itself is a rejection of ethics altogether.
> 
> Davin
> 
> On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 8:56 AM, Nicholas Ruiz III
> <editor at intertheory.org> wrote:
> > hmmmm...more like the cruelty of art or jeux de massacre?! As for the
> > market/culture/nature parallax...I've long maintained that Capital, and the
> > arts of capitalization, are anthro-spectacular as currencies of the Code.
> > Some bury their heads in the sand, choosing to miss that part of the view,
> > but why would we? I agree that Capital has no ethic other than to make use
> > of itself, that is, to be utilitous in the eye of its beholder, hence the
> > parallax of crime and charity. But this never means that we should let the
> > big bad protocol of capitalization run wild like lions on the plain or
> > snakes on a plane, eh?
> >
> > Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D
> > Editor, Kritikos
> > http://intertheory.org
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: "Michael Angelo Tata, PhD" <mtata at ipublishingllc.com>
> > To: Soft Skinned Space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> > Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2009 6:41:56 AM
> > Subject: [-empyre-] Magma
> >
> > The braid continues to coil and grow: our métissage becomes longer and more
> > intricate. But are we making a perruque or a merkin? Is there a difference
> > what gets covered? I suppose the spirochetes might have their own take—but
> > we have not introduced them yet.
> >
> >
> >
> > Nick
> >
> >
> >
> > I’m thrilled you see some relevance to the fortuitous appearance of the
> > spectre of the Octo-Mom. I agree that she is symptomatic of a culture and a
> > climate, like a giant zit that needs to be popped. Octo-reproduction and
> > its vocabulary/semantics of designer genes and in-vitro dalliances does call
> > into question the naturalness of nature and the culturedness of culture, as
> > well as the culturedness of nature and the naturalness of culture. All arms
> > of the chiasm and of the chromosome seem fair game for redistribution and
> > re-knottng.
> >
> >
> >
> > Off course the Octo-Mom is the direct opposite of the designer baby factory,
> > since what she has produced presumably is littered with junk DNA, autosomal
> > anomalies and every undesirable genetic combo conceivable. She is literally
> > a monster in the media’s eyes, a tentacled immigrant horror whose suction
> > cups reach into everyone’s empty pockets to snatch what they can: hence
> > everyone’s joy at calling her by her monster name. Neither “Nadya” nor
> > “Suleman” seem to figure much in these debates, nor does the suppressed and
> > secret name of the Octo-Dad, wherever and whoever he may be. Furthermore,
> > as regards her sobriquet, she has never been the “Sestuo-Mom,” nor has she
> > been the “Quatuordeco-Mom,” although she could have been: only “Octo” seems
> > to have stuck, marking her entrance to history. Nadya, an octopus with lips
> > too swollen for even her predatorial beak to protrude, gives and gives,
> > takes by giving, calling into question the very relationship between giving
> > and taking that is at the heart of our ongoing discussion about cadeaux and
> > interrupted economies. She might as well be blamed for the recent stock
> > market crash: nothing nonsensical would be risked by crediting her with this
> > economic fiasco, especially given that she represents so much of the
> > mentality and ethos that led to it (the facile, metaleptic scission of cause
> > and effect, the fawn-eyed flirtation with larger-than-life returns, the
> > inability to fathom consequence).
> >
> >
> >
> > As for the Market/culture parallax, I am left to wonder: which side of the
> > virgule marks that of Nature? Is the Market the new nature, with money or
> > capital something immanent and given, a field to be manipulated through the
> > machinations of creative artifice? Derrida places fortune on the side of
> > Nature, as it is Nature which determines the aleatory (whether our luck is
> > “tychic” or “automatic”), as well as where we stand in a social arrangement,
> > where we are positioned and whom is placed around us, whom this position
> > permits us to intersect, etc.. Is the Octo-Mom a market creation, or a
> > cultural creation? And what is “parallactic” about her? Does she institute
> > an optics, or perhaps de-stabilize an existing system of visual
> > consumption? I keep thinking she is the market, that her reproductive
> > excesses—as mediated by “culture,” specifically “science” or “genetics”—are
> > seamless with the financial arrangement of a credit-based society for whom
> > money has dematerialized almost entirely. As material as she is, Octo is
> > clearly outside all matter, floating through space with weather balloons
> > mistaking her for an Angelina Jolie blimp which has escaped the Macy’s
> > Thanksgiving Day Parade.
> >
> >
> >
> > Yes, Warhol’s concept of Business Art does weld together market and culture,
> > and does speak to so many of the phenomena we take for granted each day:
> > public art (giant Claes Oldenberg clothespins and maraschino cherries),
> > corporate art (mammoth Lichtensteins in the lobbies of Fortune 10
> > companies), even televisuality itself as source and support of an aesthetic
> > gaze (watching Nina Flowers do her thing under the watchful eye of RuPaul on
> > VH1, all for a potential Absolut prize). I find Biz Art an indispensable
> > concept, and that it helps make a lot of sense out of the art market
> > —sibling to the market market?
> >
> >
> >
> > As for short-selling, I am left to marvel: is there an ethics of capital?
> > At times, we pretend there is, as with Martha Stewart and the spectacle of
> > her punishment for being an insider and a trader, or as concerns the current
> > Madoff scandal, but ethically speaking, did he really make off with
> > anything? I find capital and ethics inimical entities: in fact, we only
> > pull ethics into the fray when things have gone too far and a massive crisis
> > which will beg the question of accountability is imminent. To me, capital
> > has no ethics: it is its own justification for everything that it does,
> > everything that is done with it, everything it inspires. It is as if, for
> > capital, everything remains at the level of the aesthetic (read as the
> > sensual, the material, what matters).
> >
> >
> >
> > Jeff
> >
> >
> >
> > Thanks for the definition of fiat currency; that helped a lot. It makes me
> > wonder: are there connections between the Great Depression and our current
> > state of affairs? Is where we are today a product of going off the gold
> > standard all those years ago, in the wake of Wall Street catastrophe?
> > Truly, Gold Rush 2009 has begun, with everyone in the US rushing off to cash
> > in their “unwanted jewelry.” “Cash for Gold” advertises constantly on US
> > TV, and apparently people are chomping at the bit to mail their useless gold
> > adornments in for some meager cash equivalent. “I took the vacation of a
> > lifetime” the African-American actress re-assures me, but I am left to
> > wonder where exactly her jewelry permitted her to go, what her lifetime
> > encompassed, where my gold could take me, if only I abandoned it.
> >
> >
> >
> > PS—You go, girl! Excellent response to Brian. I appreciate the wide range
> > of your knowledge, and the specifics you are able to volley.
> >
> >
> >
> > Davin
> >
> >
> >
> > As per your reflections, I am left to inquire if you identify the symbolic
> > as either matter or energy, as well as where we locate it with relation to
> > mc2 and e and their equation. I think of how Derrida identifies tobacco as
> > the symbol of the symbolic: in his poetics of tobacco, it is the smoke and
> > ash of tobacco which inaugurate a series of questions about the materiality
> > of the symbolic in general, how it, too, seems to evanesce at the touch,
> > leaving almost no trace or residue (except for the “gift of lung cancer,”
> > but that is another issue).
> >
> >
> >
> > There is most definitely a perverse holism to our economy, and politics:
> > bomb/rebuild, push/pull (the schizoid moment). Since my expertise is more
> > pop-cultural, I turn to the case of Britney Spears, and how the press drove
> > her into having a nervous breakdown so that she could confirm their
> > clairvoyance and omniscience by having a nervous breakdown, which then
> > necessitated continual coverage of her nervous breakdown, as well as a
> > “comeback” only possible after she broke down and reconstituted herself: in
> > short, an entire cascade of effects and counter-effects in- and outside of
> > her career.
> >
> >
> >
> > As for credit and value: is it really slippage in the sign itself—i.e., a
> > disengagement of signifier and signified—that produces the relativity of
> > value? Is the dematerialization of money a semiotic crisis, as much as it
> > is an economic one? And how do we relate these conjoined crises to Joseph’s
> > initial observation that academic cultures and Wall Street finances are of a
> > piece? Once again, those Junk Bond Salesman of Camille Paglia appear. I
> > think we need to push this issue a little further, as it is a highly
> > productive direction facilitating a discussion of economy, creativity and
> > artifice. Does money still exist? Clearly it does, but does it feel like
> > it exists from the perspective of the global everyday? Everything distances
> > me from it: colorful plastic cards, the beeps of a cash register indicating
> > that it is time to enter my digits, even my signature itself, which on so
> > many occasions is my only connection to money proper. Will money ever
> > re-materialize? And what other disappearances or disengagements has this
> > dematerialization produced? Is everything fiat? Anthropologically
> > speaking, is fiat an advance, the mark of a socius that has had the proper
> > time to “cook”?
> >
> >
> >
> > Lastly, to use the Lacanian vocabulary, is “patriarchy” a quilting point, or
> > point de caption? In other words, does it link together otherwise
> > dispersed, unrelated or abstract terms in a grand gesture of meaninglessness
> > disguising itself as meaningfulness (again, the problem of a counterfeit,
> > double or simulacrum emerges)? Here hegemony might enter the fray, as well
> > as the work of Laclau and Mouffe (as well as their roots in a Leibnizian
> > tradition of reflection on the nature of contingency)
> >
> >
> >
> > Joseph
> >
> >
> >
> > I appreciate your connection of Neoliberalism with the discipline of cult
> > studies, and really love your identification of “Just-in-Time” or JIT
> > scholarship, which has for the most part transformed the University in what
> > I might argue are some truly wonderful ways. Yes, for the 90s and parts of
> > this millennium, scholarship has had an urgent temporality at its core. The
> > tones of post-structuralist and psychoanalytic writing are desperate and
> > crisis-laden: it is almost as if Derrida and Lacan are about to leap into a
> > volcano. De-Christianized Christian guilt suffuses the atmosphere, making
> > it imperative that we find something important and canonical to say about
> > this phantom split subject who is at all moments about to disappear, or who
> > has already disappeared: how would we know? Again, I raise the question of
> > a post-postmodernism, and ask your take on what comes next culturally, now
> > that history appears to have re-condensed. Might the external referent come
> > back into vogue?
> >
> >
> >
> > As for the functional separation of Art/commerce, I would ask your take on
> > Warholian “Business Art.” I don’t think you are advocating a return of the
> > Wildean, but am intrigued to see what you envision happening with these
> > unique yet integrated realms, especially as regards the promising field of
> > e-lit. Also, is e-lit Just in Time? Timely? What is its “market,” its
> > role in Nick’s parallax view? Does it also court problems of chic?
> >
> > *******************************************
> > Michael Angelo Tata, PhD 347.776.1931-USA
> > http://www.MichaelAngeloTata.com/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:37:55 -0700
> >> From: editor at intertheory.org
> >> To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Enter...the Octo-Mom
> >>
> >>
> >> absolute ingenuity! octo-mom is the symptom, the product and the
> >> side-effect of our market/culture parallax...! when everything is genetic
> >> Code, we are equal in the sense of gross organic wealth, but then they will
> >> (and do) tell us all Code is not created equal...they tell us some Codes are
> >> inherently better suited to a particular milieu, some Codes are impaired,
> >> and so on, as a function of the market/culture/nature scaffolding... so we
> >> enter the era of genetic interventionism octo-reproduction...designer Code
> >> for designer Environments it is!?
> >>
> >> NRIII
> >>
> >>
> >> Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D Editor, Kritikos http://intertheory.org
> >>
> >>
> >> --- On Sun, 4/5/09, Michael Angelo Tata, PhD <mtata at ipublishingllc.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> > From: Michael Angelo Tata, PhD <mtata at ipublishingllc.com>
> >> > Subject: [-empyre-] Enter...the Octo-Mom
> >> > To: "Soft Skinned Space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> >> > Date: Sunday, April 5, 2009, 1:02 AM
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > #yiv895117554 .hmmessage P
> >> > {
> >> > margin:0px;padding:0px;}
> >> > #yiv895117554 {
> >> > font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana;}
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > Given Nick's reflections on the nature of the gift, and
> >> > of the given in general (for example, the phenomenological
> >> > donne of sense experience), I am left to wonder what happens
> >> > if we retain the theory of the gift central to Derrida's
> >> > thought, yet replace the "God" of the Old
> >> > Testament (the creator who demands an impossible sacrifice
> >> > from Abraham, one which becomes the extreme form of the
> >> > gift, here a violent oblation defying an ethical order and
> >> > necessitating an appeal to "absolute duty" and
> >> > "absolute responsibility") with the DNA of
> >> > biology. What does the gift become under these
> >> > circumstances? What becomes of the interrupted
> >> > economy of the gift, as it suspends the ethical in
> >> > the Augenblick of faith's leap?
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > As for reciprocity, for Derrida, there is a
> >> > fundamental dissymetry between myself and the Other, as
> >> > well as among myself and the "other others" with
> >> > whom I share social concourse: the gift I am expected to
> >> > hand over to the deity is one which will not be
> >> > reciprocated, but refused, causing me to be
> >> > remunerated in a posthumous order where spirirual
> >> > riches accumulate, but only if I forget. With DNA in
> >> > the place of the Other, does this dissymetry remain, or is
> >> > the playng field leveled?
> >> >
> >> > For Derrida, to give is to forget that one has given: but
> >> > can we forget our investments?
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On another note, I am struck by the coincidence of the Wall
> >> > Street crisis and the Octo-Mom's uterine crisis.
> >> > Like an investment scheme, she has taxed the system
> >> > by producing too much debt (all those mouths to feed,
> >> > that shabby house that needed to be replaced, etc.).
> >> > How many embryos were implanted? How many babies
> >> > came out? Is Wall Street an Octo-Mom, or is she merely
> >> > am emblem of excess in a time of defecit?
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > *******************************************
> >> > Michael Angelo Tata,
> >> > PhD 347.776.1931-USA
> >> > http://www.MichaelAngeloTata.com/
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > > Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 14:59:42 -0700
> >> > > From: editor at intertheory.org
> >> > > To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >> > > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Eddies, Whirlwinds, Trade
> >> > Winds
> >> > >
> >> > >
> >> > > 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
> >> > > >
> >> > > >
> >> > > >
> >> > > > #yiv1848887985 .hmmessage P
> >> > > > {
> >> > > > margin:0px;padding:0px;}
> >> > > > #yiv1848887985 {
> >> > > > font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana;}
> >> > > >
> >> > > >
> >> > > >
> >> > > > 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/
> >> > > >
> >> > > >
> >> > > >
> >> > > >
> >> > > > Quick access to your favorite MSN content and
> >> > > > Windows Live with Internet Explorer 8. Download
> >> > > > FREE now!
> >> > > >
> >> > > > -----Inline Attachment Follows-----
> >> > > >
> >> > > > _______________________________________________
> >> > > > empyre forum
> >> > > > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >> > > > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> >> > > _______________________________________________
> >> > > empyre forum
> >> > > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >> > > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> >> >
> >> > Quick access to your favorite MSN content and
> >> > Windows Live with Internet Explorer 8. Download
> >> > FREE now!
> >> >
> >> > -----Inline Attachment Follows-----
> >> >
> >> > _______________________________________________
> >> > empyre forum
> >> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> empyre forum
> >> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> >
> > ________________________________
> > Quick access to your favorite MSN content and Windows Live with Internet
> > Explorer 8. Download FREE now!
> > _______________________________________________
> > empyre forum
> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> >
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

_________________________________________________________________
Windows Live™ SkyDrive™: Get 25 GB of free online storage.  
http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_skydrive_042009
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20090428/22f2efd9/attachment.html