[-empyre-] II (

[Alan Sondheim]

Hi Jon again,

I think some of these concerns were addressed by you in III, in which case 
possibly ignore the below.

For me, re the discussion, the virtual and the real are inconceivably 
entangled; on one side, subject/abjection and on the other /virtual 
elementary particles/particle properties/pheomenology of inscription on 
the llevel of the life world/inscription itself. These devolve; years ago 
there was talk of Eddington's table or the physicist's table, which was 
full of holes, etc., subject to quantum mechanics, etc. That was the 
'real' table; in fact, though, I think the table today would be seen as a 
cultural object, a collocation of particles, etc., just as well, and one 
can develop ontologies that pertain to or are relevant in relation to 
particular domains, physics, mathematics, the lifeworld, affect, etc. etc. 
One looks towards the domains, the properties of the domains, their 
projects into and among other domains, etc. The problems become different. 
But there is for me the practical problem, on the level of ordinary talk, 
how to work within virtual worlds and social media online, and bring pain 
and the misery of slaughter, torture, etc., not only to the table, but to 
the subject hirself who is viewing etc. the materials. So this is a 
practical problem, one outside the subject, outside the body - the 
construct of pain within these areas, and the other is a theoretical 
problem - the flooding and de/construction of pain, the abject, the 
collapse of the signifier, inconceivable suffering, etc., within the body 
itself.

- Alan


On Tue, 9 Oct 2012, Alan Sondheim wrote:

>
>
> Hi Jon,
>
> I think some of these myths are true, that we're too much online and too 
> close to the 'virtual' to see that.
>
> You say
>> In either case the virtual world was remote, ?virtualised?, different and 
>> disembodied.
> - but in fact at least from my experince in putting Being on Line and a 
> special magazine issue together, the virtual world was seen exactly as the 
> opposite - intimate, 'real,' entangled and embodied within the body.
>
> The comment about the wires maybe refers to "I feel the wires" article I 
> republished by Andy Hawks - and its basis was affect itself; it wasn't 
> analytical, but talked about the pain and entanglement with the virtual.
>
> Michael Current and the Walkers in Darkness list were living and dying 
> embodiments of that as well, as you know.
>
> - Alan
>
> On Tue, 9 Oct 2012, Jonathan Marshall wrote:
>
>> II
>> 
>> I began living online with a thesis in mind, sometime in 1994. I had read 
>> much of what was then available as analysis. This is ?ancient history? and 
>> the amount of writing was small enough. But what was then available, struck 
>> me as fundamentally misguided. Firstly people tended to write about things 
>> which were not as if they were present day activities. They wrote about 
>> being online as if it was Gibson?s cyberspace with immersive reality, with 
>> translocation and working teledildonics amongst other things. They wrote 
>> about being online as if it were one domain, which conquered or transcended 
>> space, place, bodies and gender. They wrote about being online as if we 
>> were enmeshed in the wires or as if becoming cyborg was somehow radical or 
>> liberating. They said that nobody knew if you were a dog, and that free 
>> speech rained and fertilised everything, so we would have worldwide 
>> democracy and mutual understanding. They wrote that capitalism was now 
>> perfect, or that socialism was natu! ral.  They wrote we were free of the 
>> chains of matter. They claimed we would download our souls into the ether. 
>> They claimed that we lived in an information or knowledge society, and that 
>> knowledge would arise by compounding our opinions and research, and that 
>> networks gave superior social morphologies. They claimed that people 
>> engaged in immaterial, or virtual, labour. We even had virtual classes. 
>> Knowledge workers were central.
>> 
>> The less triumphalist said that the internet would corrupt thought, would 
>> corrupt presence, would corrupt relationships, would alienate people from 
>> reality and responsibility, and was full of deceit. It was Heideggerianly 
>> inauthentic or fake; a forgetting of being.
>> 
>> In either case the virtual world was remote, ?virtualised?, different and 
>> disembodied.
>> 
>> Sometimes it seems that such statements are still made today, and I wonder 
>> if we have gone beyond thinking the myths that we brought to online life, 
>> before we had even had any such life?.
>> 
>> jon
>> 
>> Some formal writings gathered at
>> http://uts.academia.edu/jonmarshall
>> 
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