[-empyre-] some thoughts on complicity

Sun Jan 10 02:44:17 EST 2010

At the most general level, Simon, your description rings true to me. 
That acknowledged, I would point out that there is huge human 
variability at every level, from atomic biology on up, and each level 
has aspects that are discrete unto themselves. At another high level of 
abstraction, for instance, biologists understand that work accomplished 
with the living organism (in vivo) is different from in the petri dish 
or under the microscope and so on down the chain of analytic tools (in 
vitro). Individuals, mediating and being mediated, are not seamlessly 
alike, either in their basic equipment or in their life experiences, 
culture/sub-cultures, etc. So there is always a need for decoding and it 
gets really interesting because of this need to explore the "fit" or 
lack of it.

Christina

Simon Biggs wrote:
> Deleuze’s view does contain within it aspects of dualism, as Gregory 
> has observed. Latour and Ihde offer potential ways out of this, with 
> network theory and expanded concepts of agency, respectively. This 
> allows the individual to be seen as part of a larger discrete but 
> deeply interconnected system. Deleuze was sort of there too, with the 
> concept of the rhizome – but his affection for Bergson ensured 
> difficulty in moving beyond certain 19th and 20th century paradigms. 
> When Foucault said that Deleuze would come to be seen as the key 
> philosopher of the 20th century he probably meant to damn him with 
> faint praise, knowing that by then people would be more concerned with 
> 21st century thought.
>
> I will await the barbs of the Deleuzians...
>
> The nature/culture debate becomes muted within a framework where 
> agency can be seen as arising from anywhere, or nowhere (which is to 
> say from diffuse and difficult to identify origins), and anything can 
> be an actor on the stage. Metaphysics is arguably put to bed. Within 
> this context we can understand experience as not only mediated 
> throughout but our very being as an outcome of this process of 
> mediation. There is no self distinct from the other, with some 
> mysterious differentiating force at work. A complex interweaving of 
> agency that is not limited to a physical or mental construct and 
> without intent or will gives rise to a state we call being. To a large 
> extent this is a process of representation and we are all part of that 
> network of interactions. We mediate and are mediated. In short, 
> everyone is always complicit.
>
> Sorry – that sounds like metaphysics again ;)
>
> Best
>
> Simon
>
>
> Simon Biggs
>
> Research Professor
> edinburgh college of art
> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
> www.eca.ac.uk
>
> *C*reative *I*nterdisciplinary *R*esearch into *C*o*L*laborative 
> *E*nvironments
> CIRCLE research group
> www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>
> simon at littlepig.org.uk
> www.littlepig.org.uk
> AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From: *Gregory Ulmer <glue at ufl.edu>
> *Reply-To: *soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> *Date: *Fri, 8 Jan 2010 18:04:02 -0500
> *To: *soft_skinned_space <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>, Gregory 
> Ulmer <glue at ufl.edu>
> *Subject: *Re: [-empyre-] some thoughts on complicity
>
> Johanna Drucker wrote:
> > I just don't want anyone to be excused from it.... I mean, it's like
> > not an opt-out category....
> >
> Right, but the desire to opt-out, and the intuition that one ought to
> disown complicity, is inherent in almost every metaphysics (the wisdom
> traditions of every civilization, every apparatus expresses a feeling of
> distaste for the world of experience, of embodiment itself). Plato's
> account of metempsychosis, his dualist ontology sublated into
> Christianity is familiar. This feeling achieved its clearest statement
> in Western philosophy in Descartes (as I don't have to tell you): the
> cogito. It is the fundamental philosophical problem of transcendence:
> what is the relation of humans with the natural world? There is none,
> Descartes was understood to have said. That is, Human Being is outside
> of, and dominant over, material nature. Modern philosophy has attempted
> to refute that account, but the worldview persists in our contemporary
> conduct. Deleuze&Guattari's insistence on "immanence," and Deleuze's
> admiration for Spinoza as "prince of philosophers," is due to the
> latter's equation of God with Nature (Deus sive Natura). The model of
> being as "complicity" (as tainted) proposes that life is best lived as a
> quick roundtrip (the quicker the better): the best is never to have
> been born; and second-best is to die soon. Modern, secularized
> concerns about complicity retain an aura of these transcendental systems
> (Sufi poet Rumi: life is a tavern, and I am waiting to go home with the
> one who brought me).
> Apologies for the shorthand.
> To place "complicity" in this context clarifies to some extent why
> ecology as politics and ethics meets so much resistance in practice: to
> think ecologically requires admission of complicity. The motto of the
> EmerAgency is "problems B us."
>
> thanks for this conversation.
> Greg Ulmer
> > Johanna
> >
> > On Jan 8, 2010, at 11:38 AM, Gerry Coulter wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Given the current state of the globalizing system of promotion --
> >> no, I dont think complicit can be thought of without carrying a
> >> perjorative connotation. It is precisley the perjorative connations
> >> enveloping complicity that have made this discussion so interesting
> >> so far ... especially inasmuch as they have been avoided
> >>
> >> you wish to avoid binaries but speak of original sin?
> >>
> >> hmmmmm
> >>
> >> ________________________________________
> >> From: empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-
> >> bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Johanna Drucker
> >> [drucker at gseis.ucla.edu]
> >> Sent: January 8, 2010 1:04 PM
> >> To: soft_skinned_space
> >> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] some thoughts on complicity
> >>
> >> I wonder if it is possible to keep complicit from carrying a
> >> pejorative connotation? I meant for it to be a description, not a
> >> judgment, that exposes the inevitable condition of participation in
> >> cultural conditions as the place from which we each think, work,
> >> write, live. I'm not a religious person, but in a way, this is
> >> equivalent to acknowledging a form of original sin in cultural terms
> >> -- that we are all always part of the conditions we survey. Does that
> >> make sense? I'm trying to avoid binarisms that might spring up by
> >> putting complicit on one side of a value judgement, that's all.
> >>
> >> Johanna
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> 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
> >
>
>
> -- 
> *Gregory L. Ulmer*
> http://www.english.ufl.edu/~glue <http://www.english.ufl.edu/%7Eglue>
> http://heuretics.wordpress.com
> University of Florida
>
>
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