[-empyre-] uncapturing theory citations

[Timothy Morton]

Hi Johannes,

It seems to me you are not missing anything. If a glass could speak, we
would not understand what it was saying.

Yes Zach I am a transcendence boy. Sometimes that frightens immanence
people but I mean no harm.

That's pretty accurate actually--for me, there are as many gaps in the real
as there are things.

Yours, Tim



On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 12:00 PM, Johannes Birringer <
Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk> wrote:

>
> hello all.
>
> intriguing discussions, which got off on a euphoric tone, then became
> more contentious & noisy, as they probably should; and yet it seems our
> enthusiasm about queerreals and transitional objects remains unabated,
> working around the systems and inside them as well
> (possibly, as Amanda might argue, that is because
> "engaging queerly with technology [etc/] is about tinkering, hacking,
> modding -
> working around the system to create our own circuits of meaning"). so what
> happened to high theory and the urge to cite?
>
> and what do you do when you have never heard of ooo?
>
> I particularly loved, however, the less discourse-theory-heavy remarks
> that came the other night
> as I listed to music --    i think it was Tim speculating on the opera
> singer making the glass explode,
> "exploding glass into not-glass."
>
> >>The dead (as it were) glass is nowhere, there are just memories,
> including fragments of glass, which are new things.>>
>
>
> last weekend at London's Barbican,  Pina Bausch's "Ten Chi" staged the
> scene in a slight variation:
> a dancer in a long white dress is lifted onto a chair, ready to sing, but
> in her hands she holds a large block
> ice.  As she prepares so sing and drop the ice, another, dark-haired
> dancer enters with a red towel that has glass inside
> as we find out. She puts the towel on the floor and vigorously steps on it
> with her sharp heels. The glass
> breaks.  She opens the towel and admires the "dead" glass, the fragments.
>
> The woman on the chair with the ice is upset, gets down and leaves
> muttering something about someone
> always wanting to steal her show.
>
>
> neither the glass, not the ice, can sing or break to us whether they have
> an idea of beauty or jouissance. why would they?
>
> what is it i am missing about objects and their thoughts?
>
>
> Zach scheibt:
>
> >> it seems that many theorists and writers who focus on
> technology, the nonhuman, and the new materialisms you have already
> mentioned engage affect through a deleuzian / spinozan approach. and
> they do so because it affords them a particular way to think technical
> / nonhuman materials. it seems like one of the critiques we could
> think about here is the one that jack has already brought up, which is
> on the use of high theory and a politics of citations. do you think
> its possible to explore this strand of affect through low theory?
> >>
>
>
> but, Zach, what if one were to produce or engage affect without a
> deleuzian /spinozian
> approach? or without the high or low?
>
>
> the story about the opera singer's voice breaking the glass does not need
> theory, and yet, hmm,  in Tim's telling of it, it implies an aesthetics of
> transcendence.
> Münchhausen-Stockhausen, I believe, was so foolish to speculate on that,
> also.
>
>
>
> with regards
> Johannes Birringer
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>



-- 

Ecology without Nature <http://ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com/>
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