[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to create / the social beyond the mechanisim?

[Simon Biggs]

Hi Martin

All good stuff, although I would resist any mystical interpretations of what
I am considering. I see it as concerned with the materiality of things. You
might be able to take a Lovelockian view of what I am proposing, although I
am not entirely happy with that idea either. I am not proposing that there
is a unified or unifying force at work.

Sean has hit the nail on the head by identifying "dark matter" as mediation
- with each instance of mediation distinct. It is like those other weak
forces in nature (gravity, evolution, etc) which exert their influence ever
so subtly with a simultaneous particularity and indifference to that which
they are mediating.

Best

Simon

Simon Biggs
s.biggs at eca.ac.uk  simon at littlepig.org.uk
Skype: simonbiggsuk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/

Research Professor  edinburgh college of art
http://www.eca.ac.uk/
Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
http://www.elmcip.net/
Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts


> From: "j.martin.pedersen" <m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk>
> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:40:56 +0100
> To: <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
> create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
> 
> 
...

On 15/07/10 09:33, Simon Biggs wrote:
> I am using agency in a sense
> that some might find contentious as I am
> considering it as an ontological
> phenomena in a context where individuals,
> whether human or animal, alive or
> inert, physical or virtual, are not where
> agency is located. Rather, I am
> entertaining the idea that agency is of (or
> is) the relationships between
> things (whatever those things might be). In
> this respect I am proposing a
> folding of agency and creativity into one
> thing which might be considered
> somewhat like a dark matter which binds
> everything together. The units that
> are bound within this prima materia (for
> want of a better term) might then
> be considered rather like quantum
> phenomena - the closer you look the more
> you realise there is nothing there
> and that it is the phenomena around the
> unit that give it its apparent
> properties. The subsequent question, of
> course, is what is the unit (here I
> include people)? Clearly there is
> something there - but what?

Hmm... Yes, there is something to that in a
> spiritual sense - for me -
but I am not sure that it would be agency, since I
> would like to
maintain a creative, spiritual energy (or potential, ie. agency)
> located
in me - and you - that could perform, be the creator of, instigator
> of,
source of magic or at least its facilitator, in the sense that we
perhaps
> find most neatly suggested in A Midsummer Night's Dream
(Shakespeare, of
> course):

³And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the
> poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation
> and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but
> apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night,
> imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!²

..and to some
> degree also in the political phenomenology - if there is
such a thing - in
> Sartre's musings on the imaginary (not that I have
read it, but it sounds
> good!):

"We may therefore conclude that imagination is not an empirical
> power
added to  consciousness, but it is the whole of consciousness as
> it
realizes its freedom"

But that of course, in a sense, takes us back to
> where you located it -
I suspect - insofar as we consider consciousness a
> collective form.

These are of course "merely" language games - discursive
> formations,
narrative structures - that serve to explain what we cannot quite
> grasp,
but is there not a good reason to maintain a creative agent -
> hence
agency in ourselves - to cherish and work on, reflect on, and also,
> in
the case of wankers (think politicians, capitalists...), hold
> accountable?

In some Amazonian linguistic measures - on anecdotal note - to
> make
sense of spiritual energies and magic acts, healing processes and so
> on,
entities other than humans - animals and plants etc. - are also
considered
> as having creative agency - thus the relational fields are
energy flow and not
> agency, and agency is what can navigate, manipulate,
reflect, deflect energies
> - and I think that is rather where I would
want to go to transcend the more
> limited Western (Cartesian?) framework
of mind, body and connections.

A
> clarification: The "mystical" here, if anyone should see it as such,
when seen
> from inside the Amazonian cosmovision (of which I have read
very little, just
> been hanging out there for a few years with shamans in
other dimensions, so
> this is a set of particular experiences
gratuitously and opportunistically
> generalised): is very material.
Indeed, energy flows are the foundation of all
> things material. (David
Graeber writes some interesting stuff slightly
> relevant for these
matters of flows and flows of matters with reference to a
> dispute
between dispute between Parmenides and Heraclitus [1]).

The relations
> between people as "agency" - to my mind, in my imagination
- leads to a muddle
> that I cannot navigate satisfactorily, but perhaps
that is a circularity
> problem, in case your explanation is more to the
point, and I am merely
> lacking proper access to the big web of agency. A
question remains then,
> though: How do I get that access? What is my
pilot and my fuel to interact, to
> stroll through energy flows of
relations, if not my agency?

In other words,
> Yes - contentious. What is it, that unit? So why not
just stick with human
> agents? We have trancended the simple notion in
our understanding, but end up
> in the same place with a new perspective.
Do we need to throw the
> baby........?

best,
martin

[1]:
> http://www.commoner.org.uk/10graeber.pdf
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