[-empyre-] unplugging theory

[Johannes Birringer]

Hi
thanks, 
i didn't think I was all that alone, in my disaffection from the overtheorizing indulgences one could feel at times here, although that was not commented on so far really by others & by those not in US postgraduate programs, perhaps out of politeness or a false sense of solidarity; the indulgences reminded me of some hyperventilating performance art or body art from the 80s (and ohhm, , do those objects perform in " Corpo/Ilicito/ post-human society version 6.9" don't they?.... & no "making of a new medium"  either as Patricia Clough implies in reference to Montgomery's video;   but I realize now i was refering to your "idiom of the world,' Lauren, and much agree with what you said there so very well.


>>[Lauren schreibt]
I think it's a mistake to take the state's biopolitical aesthetics of the subject's and a population's forced appearance and translation into data as the defining taxonomy of the moment, because by copying the dominant fetishizing idiom, repeating its own profound stupidity about the relation of information and knowledge, even in resistance to it, you reproduce its idiom as the idiom of the world. 
Any representation of relational processes (or of object/scenes, as I call them) makes a new closet and a new disturbance. Practices of exposure and literalization  are false comforts. (I feel this as well about the romance of the nomad...)
>>

could you please unpack the last sentence in your post a bit more?

>>
 I think it's a sign of the crisis of the reproduction of life that the world's "we" are in that literalization, the sheer immeasurable description of the materiality of affect in action and relation, is everywhere seen as necessary for a new realism>>


with regards
Johannes

________________________________________
From: Lauren Berlant [lberlant at aol.com]
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2012 4:06 AM


Hi!  Just to say (in response to your post) that my whole post was against the parochial and paranoid version of dark matter that Zach was promoting! So I was protesting the dominant taxonomy fetish!  Therefore you can feel less alone.

LB
Lauren Berlant
..

On Jun 21, 2012, at 2:37 PM, Johannes Birringer <Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk> wrote:

>
>
>
> Hi all
> (and thanks Tim for your reply)
>
> I don't think there is an idiom of the world.
> nor do "taxonomies" define you or me or this stone or that glass, of or in [this] moment.
>
>
> i think the artist Jimmie Durham has worked rather effectively with stones, and stoning, e.g. 'Der Verführer und der Steingast' (the Libertine and the Stone Guest), and i remember him telling us
> that asking questions is considered rude in American Indian culture.
>
>
> so whole i quite agree that place is rather important when we work or make a living or talk about things, or relate to our environment,
> I'm not convinced, Micha, that "Are we perhaps in an anti-taxonomical time?" is a good question, nor did i get the impression
> [many of] you are actually aware that your theorizing is based indeed (US) best suited to your contemporary moment [which you are
> as you say]. from other places, or translated (if translatable at all), some theorizing here may look, from a long way off, like the flies you
> cite or very precious, privileged and arcane.  i had wondered why no body seemed to mind here?
>
>
> I might also have called it disaffecting.  Regarding affect, how was the "Pocha Nostra" workshop, what did you perform?  the " Corpo/Ilicito/ post-human society version 6.9"?
> the "post-human" is another term that needs un-capturing.
>
>
> respectfully,
> Johannes Biringer