[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 111, Issue 5

Tue Feb 11 05:10:13 EST 2014

Micha, everyone...

As someone who worked as part of the Aarhus post-digital writing group, I'd
like to also address your remarks.

Point 1:

<The writers for the post-digital research issue of APRJA articulate
conceptions of politics that completely fail to address the importance of
moving on from western systems of knowledge that are embodied in the
digital, which is unsurprising considering their own apparent subject
positions.>

This is profoundly untrue and thunderously misguided. Had you attended the
workshop in October, you would have found that we addressed western
conceptions of rationality and knowledge at some length and with great
care. Echoing Florian's comments, it's not as if we all thought the terms
'post-digital' or even 'the digital' were anything but messy and
politically ambiguous: the context of that process appears to have been
reinterpreted as some sort of pro-Western manifesto, rather than a
researcher workshop or a tongue-in-cheek operationalisation of digital
principles/defintions.

In any case, our contributions - both online and for transmediale - remain
unpublished, so if you want to aim your critique, aim it at the finished
APRJA journal when it arrives: not at a moving target.

Point 2:

As per your rejoinder to Florian's point: <I still hold that your
configuration does not address the gendered and racialized forms of
difference that underlie the logic of colonialism and which find their
expression in western conceptions such as individuality and objectivity
that lead to boolean logic and digital computing. Your essay seems to
eschew any political possibility for the post-digital in your concluding
sentence.>

Really? In addition to Florian's comments on cyberfeminist alternatives and
western/non-western conceptions of number, I'd love to know how western
conceptions solely lead to boolean logic and digital computing?
Computational reason / computationality and solutionism most certainly, but
the actual infrastructure of formal systems? If you're going down that
route, I'd argue that your own position starts to eschew political
alternatives on a different level, mainly as it blurs the ontological
affordance of computation (which is wholly different from digital
transmission btw) with epistemological principles.

Seems rather anthropocentric to suggest that material infrastructures are
correlated to reproduce similar Western principles, because they are just
an "expression" of them. Computational infrastructures are far messier than
that sort of simple divide. How are we to provide alternatives within such
infrastructures if they are *just* an expression of western concepts? Seems
bizarre to me. Last time I checked, both NSA and NIST's mathematical
standards of pesudo-random number elliptical curve encryption didn't
facilitate mass surveillance because we collectively failed to "think
differently." It is impossible to address systemic problems with subjective
solutions (which, actually, isn't a bad method of critiquing post-digital
reflection).

Also on your account, the output from trans-gender gaming communities, such
as Anna Anthropy's Dys4ia, Merritt Kopa's Lim or the research of Samantha
Allen (amongst many others), which rely on such processes, would contradict
such an assertion: as would other examples such as the extensive
infrastructure of mobile banking in parts of Africa: hardly what I'd call
westernised.

Cheers
Rob

On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 11:41 PM, micha cárdenas <mmcarden at usc.edu> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> I also want to add that, yes, of course my reply was cartesian, using a
> digital system, addressing you as an individual and using the word I to
> refer to myself. I see decolonization as a long project and its possible
> implications for our thinking as a far away horizon, yet one still worth
> working towards.
>
> thanks all,
>
>   micha
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 6:35 PM, micha cárdenas <mmcarden at usc.edu> wrote:
>
>> Hi Florian, thanks for your reply.
>>
>> In your essay "What is Post-Digital", I did see your discussion of the
>> postcolonial, which seems to be a very short part of your essay which
>> doesn't discuss any of the gendered, racialized violences of colonialism.
>> Your discussion of the postcolonial is:
>>
>> "Postcolonialism does not mean the end of colonialism akin to Hegel's and
>> Fukuyama's "end of history", but quite on the contrary its transformation
>> into less clearly visible power structures that are still in place, have
>> left their mark on languages and cultures, and most importantly still
>> govern geopolitics and global production chains. In this sense, the
>> post-digital condition is the post-apocalyptic condition after the
>> computerization and global digital networking of communication, technical
>> infrastructures, markets and geopolitics."
>>
>> and you conclude the essay with:
>>
>> "If post-digital cultures are made up of, metaphorically speaking,
>> postcolonial practices in a communications world taken over by the
>> military-industrial complex of only a handful of global players, then it
>> can most simply be described as mental opposition to phenomena like Ray
>> Kurzweil's and Google's Singularity University, the Quantified Self
>> movement, sensor-controlled "Smart Cities" and similar dystopian techno
>> utopias.
>>
>> Nevertheless, Silicon Valley utopias and post-digital subcultures
>> (whether in Detroit, Rotterdam or elsewhere) have more in common than it
>> might seem. Both are driven by fictions of agency.8<http://post-digital.projects.cavi.dk/?p=599#fn8>
>>  There's a fiction of agency over one's body in the 'digital' Quantified
>> Self movement, a fiction of the self-made in the 'post-digital' DIY and
>> Maker movements, a fiction of a more intimate working with media in
>> 'analog' handmade film labs and mimeograph cooperatives. They stand for two
>> options of agency, over-identification with systems or skepticism towards
>> them. Each of them is, in their own way, symptomatic of system crisis. It
>> is not a crisis of one or the other system but a crisis of the very
>> paradigm of "system" and its legacy from cybernetics. It's a legacy which
>> (starting with their mere names) neither "digital", nor "post-digital"
>> succeed to leave behind."
>>
>> I still hold that your configuration does not address the gendered and
>> racialized forms of difference that underlie the logic of colonialism and
>> which find their expression in western conceptions such as individuality
>> and objectivity that lead to boolean logic and digital computing. Your
>> essay seems to eschew any political possibility for the post-digital in
>> your concluding sentence. If I'm misreading it, I would appreciate your
>> clarification.
>>
>> I'm not generalizing about non-western cultures, my apologies if my post
>> sounded like that. I mentioned Diana Taylor's book the Archive and the
>> Repertoire as one example, where she specifically discusses the Spanish
>> conquest of the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas. Let me cite her more thoroughly to
>> elaborate more on what I meant and not imply any simple separation that
>> might be described as cartesian:
>>
>> "Although the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas practiced writing before the
>> Conquest- either in pictogram form, heiroglyphs, or knotting systems- it
>> never replaced the performed utterance... What changed with the Conquest
>> was not that writing displaced embodied practice (we need only remember
>> that the friars brought their own embodied practices) but the degree of
>> legitimization of writing over other epistemic and mnemonic systems.
>> Writing now assured that Power, with a capital P, as Rama puts it, could be
>> developed and enforced without the input of the great majority of the
>> population, the indigenous and marginal populations of the colonial period
>> without access to systematic writing."
>>
>> I haven't read Eglash's work, thanks for recommending it, I'll check it
>> out.
>>
>> cheers,
>>
>>   micha
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 4:49 PM, Florian Cramer <flrncrmr at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>>
>>> Micha,
>>>
>>> I'm taking great issue with this summary of my text. It is greatly
>>> distorted. If you had read it carefully, you would have seen that it
>>> actually refers to postcolonialism.
>>>
>>> Btw., your categorical split between "digital" and "embodied" knowledge
>>> is as Cartesian and Western as I can get. What's even worse, by attributing
>>> the latter to non-Western culture, it's producing a highly stereotypical
>>> image of Non-Western cultures and systems of knowledge. I recommend to read
>>> up, among others, on Ron Eglash's ethnomathematics (or any history of
>>> mathematics, for that matter).
>>>
>>> Florian
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 10:03 PM, micha cárdenas <mmcarden at usc.edu>wrote:
>>>
>>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>>>
>>>>  Thanks for an interesting discussion topic this month!
>>>>
>>>> I agree with your assessment that this limited configuration of the
>>>> post-digital is already divorced from any real politics of difference or
>>>> antagonism and so yes it is similar to relational aesthetics. In contrast,
>>>> my own formulation of the post digital, which I presented at the
>>>> Transmediale phd symposium in 2012 is centered in queer and trans women of
>>>> color's political and aesthetic practices. The horizon for the post-digital
>>>> isn't hipsters, reddit and google, as in Florian Cramer's essay "What is
>>>> post-digital?", it is a reconsideration of thought and communication
>>>> outside of the bounds of western conceptions of knowledge and rationality.
>>>>
>>>> You can read an essay version of what I presented at the #BWPWAP
>>>> transmediale symposium here, where I list a few examples of aesthetic works
>>>> that may be understood as post-digital:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://median.newmediacaucus.org/caa-conference-edition-2013/local-autonomy-networks-post-digital-networks-post-corporate-communications/
>>>>
>>>> (a short version is in the 2013 edition of APRJA:
>>>> http://www.aprja.net/?page_id=46)
>>>>
>>>> and a video of me giving this as a keynote at the Dark Side of the
>>>> Digital conference is here:
>>>>
>>>> http://transreal.org/talks-and-interviews/
>>>>
>>>> The writers for the post-digital research issue of APRJA articulate
>>>> conceptions of politics that completely fail to address the importance of
>>>> moving on from western systems of knowledge that are embodied in the
>>>> digital, which is unsurprising considering their own apparent subject
>>>> positions. For example, in The Archive and the Repertoire, Diana Taylor has
>>>> written extensively on the ways that colonial regimes insisted on writing
>>>> as the only legitimate form of knowledge as a way to disempower colonized
>>>> subjects, and digital systems of storage reproduce that hierarchy by
>>>> eschewing embodied and emotional knowledge that is not reproducible through
>>>> digital media.
>>>>
>>>> thank you,
>>>>
>>>>   micha
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 1:44 PM, Michael Dieter <M.J.Dieter at uva.nl>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>>>> Something else I want to ask about.
>>>>>
>>>>> This is the definition that the Post-Digital Research group settled on
>>>>> for their publication:
>>>>>
>>>>> "Post-digital, once understood as a critical reflection of "digital"
>>>>> aesthetic immaterialism, now describes the messy and paradoxical
>>>>> condition of art and media after digital technology revolutions.
>>>>> "Post-digital" neither recognizes the distinction between "old" and
>>>>> "new" media, nor ideological affirmation of the one or the other. It
>>>>> merges "old" and "new", often applying network cultural
>>>>> experimentation to analog technologies which it re-investigates and
>>>>> re-uses. It tends to focus on the experiential rather than the
>>>>> conceptual. It looks for DIY agency outside totalitarian innovation
>>>>> ideology, and for networking off big data capitalism. At the same
>>>>> time, it already has become commercialized."
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm curious about the emphasis here on the experiential, rather than
>>>>> the conceptual. Why emphasize one over the other in this way? What
>>>>> works or practices did the group have in mind? In a weird way, this
>>>>> description actually reminds me of something like relational
>>>>> aesthetics.
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Michael Dieter
>>>>> Lecturer
>>>>> Media Studies
>>>>> The University of Amsterdam
>>>>> Turfdraagsterpad 9
>>>>> 1012 XT Amsterdam
>>>>> http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/m.j.dieter/
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> empyre forum
>>>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>  micha cárdenas
>>>>
>>>> http://michacardenas.org
>>>> http://twitter.com/michacardenas
>>>> http://femmedisturbance.tumblr.com
>>>>
>>>> International Trans Women of Color Network Gathering
>>>> June 19, 2014, Detroit, Allied Media Conference
>>>>
>>>> https://twitter.com/twocamc
>>>> http://international-twoc-gathering.tumblr.com/
>>>> https://www.facebook.com/international.twoc.gathering
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> empyre forum
>>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>  micha cárdenas
>>
>> http://michacardenas.org
>> http://twitter.com/michacardenas
>> http://femmedisturbance.tumblr.com
>>
>> International Trans Women of Color Network Gathering
>> June 19, 2014, Detroit, Allied Media Conference
>>
>> https://twitter.com/twocamc
>> http://international-twoc-gathering.tumblr.com/
>> https://www.facebook.com/international.twoc.gathering
>>
>>
>
>
> --
>  micha cárdenas
>
> http://michacardenas.org
> http://twitter.com/michacardenas
> http://femmedisturbance.tumblr.com
>
> International Trans Women of Color Network Gathering
> June 19, 2014, Detroit, Allied Media Conference
>
> https://twitter.com/twocamc
> http://international-twoc-gathering.tumblr.com/
> https://www.facebook.com/international.twoc.gathering
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
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