[-empyre-] some thoughts on complicity

[Gerry Coulter]

Re Frankfurt School doom and gloom.

What we are dealing with today and in our near future makes Frankfurt School "gloom and doom" seem like a frolic in the park.

Gerry
________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of virginia solomon [virginia.solomon at gmail.com]
Sent: January 8, 2010 7:03 PM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] some thoughts on complicity

I do believe that precisely the intervention that Johanna makes, or at least how her work proves useful for me, is that she points to and problematizes precisely this founding assumption of metaphysics. It's one of those a priori assumptions that is performative precisely because it covers up its very construction, and thereby the ideological purpose that it serves. The challenge is to come up with other frameworks that acknowledge the impossibility of opting out without succumbing to Frankfurt School doom and gloom, yes?

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 6:04 PM, Gregory Ulmer <glue at ufl.edu<mailto:glue at ufl.edu>> wrote:
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<mailto:empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au> [empyre-
>> bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au<mailto:bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>] On Behalf Of Johanna Drucker
>> [drucker at gseis.ucla.edu<mailto: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
>> _______________________________________________
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>
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--
*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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Virginia Solomon
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