[-empyre-] Antigone's Bones, then backwards

[Alan Sondheim]

On Thu, 6 Nov 2014, Johannes Birringer wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
> dear all:
>
> And Alan (and Pia), aesthetics is involved, for sure. Why would you 
> suggest that beheadings are formeless, and not a precise choreography 
> and strategy? You say:
>> .. the form of ISIS and many other groups is close to formless; on one 
>> hand, a caliphate, and on the other, a kind of formless and violent 
>> vandalism.>>

I think you're misreading - I said the form of ISIS, not the performances 
they produce; they occupy territory on an ad hoc basis, take what and 
where they can, turn that into theater.

> It seemed to me that the modes of terrorizing an other, a people, a 
> group, an occupied population, or it being an attack 
> movement/avant-garde (of a radical Islamism or Jihad), sure it cannot be 
> formless but follows widely known patterns, no
>
Sure, it's connected to nomadic lines of flight, deterritorializations, 
etc.

> It is situations where there is a final condition that disorder can 
> actually change into order. In other words there can be a backward arrow 
> of time. (Marcus Chown, "The Universe Next Door"]
>
I'd go with non-equilibrium thermodynamics here, plateaus of organization 
fueled by a countryside in disarray.

- Alan