[-empyre-] Further on Evil Media Studies

[Parikka J.]

Hi Magnus

while waiting already for the new openings to discussions by Saul Albert and Julian Oliver, just a quick response - sorry to have been so slow now, due to work chaos...

you raise good questions, and I have to say that I don't know; the project by Fuller and Goffey is interesting, and comes from a different direction than Hardt and Negri whose writings have been poor in terms of its specificity concerning media and digital culture. Hence, I find such approaches as Evil Media Studies closer to practice and not only as a way to attach to "bad objects" in media culture, but as a methodology to address the subrepresentational and the grey. Hence, what they are after is a new form of understanding of power and pragmatics - to quote  Fuller and Goffey " which is capable of recognising the collapsing of the technical into the cultural, social and ecological, whilst at the same time being explicitly cognisant of the opportunities for power that such a situation presents." Here, we need to move beyond mere two-phase way of understanding cpaitalism as a parasitical force that taps into the creative, lively, inventive forces of the multitude, and go to really microlevel operations of both invention as well as that greyness:

F and G again: "Alongside these, the approach works extensively with much of contemporary grey media such as expert systems, workflow, databases, human-computer interaction and the sub-media world of leaks, networks and permissions structures that establish what eventually appears as conventional media. These systems are now far more widespread and functionally significant than those which are most often apparent as media. The relative invisibility, or naturalization through ostensively neutral technicity, and their fusing of the cultures of the workplace with those of consumption and policing offers numerous opportunities for interesting uses."
- http://www.spc.org/fuller/texts/on-the-usefulness-of-anxiety-two-evil-media-stratagems/

But in any way, I think you raise difficult questions and would need to think more of those connections. My use of Hardt and Negri's ideas concerning "swarms" for instance was in the mode of mapping the various translations of such biological, entomological terms (both in Digital Contagions and now in Insect Media).

So ok, if we think of the various ways in which "social" is not only the object of what is being tapped into in terms of contemporary social media capitalism, but actually what is being produced - the specific standardized, quite a-social in a way form of social of so many social media platforms - the key question is: what different kinds of the social is being produced by such seemingly "bad" practices as piracy. Here, the social, practices and such are not only an object to which capitalism taps into, but productions - produced relations. This would take us to be point aobut power as inciting, seducing, producing...

sorry for the fragmented thoughts - but thanks to everyone for good ideas and nice discussions!
J
______
Dr Jussi Parikka
Reader in Media & Design
Winchester School of Art
University of Southampton, UK
Http://jussiparikka.net

Adjunct Professor of Digital Culture Theory, University of Turku
Visiting Fellow at Institute of Media Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin - Spring and Summer 2011
________________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of magnus lawrie [magnus at ditch.org.uk]
Sent: 15 July 2011 10:23
To: empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Subject: [-empyre-] Further on Evil Media Studies

Hi Jussi,

I've been looking further into Evil Media Studies. One quote from
Fuller and Goffy's essay which struck me as pertinent to the
discussion describes the "...world of captures wherein power
operates...by inciting, seducing, producing and even creating". This
seems to be about the ambiguous interdependencies that exist, where
"...autonomy of code...is not incompatible with the existence of the
strategically marshalled mulititude of agents who bring it into
being". As I have been reading the week's discussion I have been
repeatedly put in mind of Negri & Hardt's Empire. I suppose I am
interested to position this discussion in relation to the ideas in
that book and it's own context (which is why I mention the
self-reduction and operaismo movements - specific aspects of Negri's
own history - which whilst recognizing an opposite, other power, also
refuse to be defined by that power). I have seen that Frederic Jameson
describes this distinction as a difference between a class-for-itself
and a class-of-itself. Evil Media takes the spectacle to be "an
outmoded model" and so I wonder how these approaches I mention, may be
relevant? Another quote, for me invokes a corrupted version of the
social factory, "The social today is more or less a clumsily deigned
open prison...an abominable, stultifying, stupefying faculty for the
routinization of life." Maybe this is what we have inherited? Or
perhaps I am getting too elaborate - I know you refer to Hardt &
Negri's 'swarm intelligence' in 'Digital Contagions' so I am wondering
about the positioning, about the relation.

I found that there is so much food for thought in "Towards an Evil
Media Studies", so much that resonates, but is confounding:
"paradoxical strategies of the object" ... "straddling the distinction
between the work of theory and of practice" ... "process without
subject". As a PhD candidate enaged in practice based research, I
sense that I am operating at this apex, but to talk in this way
perhaps already is to misunderstand the subterfuge and sleight of hand
that is central to Evil Media Studies (which also, by the way, brings
to my mind the strategizing in Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone).

Ok, this is somewhat a 'Q&A post', but I hope you will have a chance
to respond still today - I know you have various additional
commitments soon.

Best wishes,

Magnus

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