[-empyre-] - noise of contagion - tuer

[Johannes Birringer]

dear all,
in a conversation, at one of the recent Segal Center talks with artists from all over the world, the Haitian theatre artist Guy Régis Jr. mentioned not only the need for a new (meta)physical theatre, but reflected on the graffiti he noted in the streets of  Port-au-Prince:  "Tuer".

I think Ricardo wrote a furious and challenging post here on undead media and zombie dreams, on dying, and I am still trying to catch its many references (i am also trying to understand what the "new normal" could possibly mean). But I had also meant to ask Junting about the fantasies about the death of China that he refered to ['if the "great empire of China” were suddenly destroyed by an earthquake, how would an average westerner react to the news?']

.... this western notion of "tuer" -  could you tell us more, Junting?

thanks, with regards
Johannes Birringer



+++++
 [Junting Huang schreibt]

Thank you, Luca. A quick note on your last point, Eric Hayot’s The Hypothetical Mandarin: Sympathy, Modernity, and Chinese Pain traced that whole tradition to the Enlightenment period, when European philosophers often used the Chinese in their thought experiments on ethics. At its core, it asks us again and again what we should do about the suffering from afar.
I also tried to follow the debates originated from Agamben, and I do feel the remarks he has made are a bit out of touch with reality, even though he may have some valid points in China’s context—considering civil liberties in the state of exception (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/09/the-new-normal-chinas-excessive-coronavirus-public-monitoring-could-be-here-to-stay), etc. However, his deliveries read more like an ideological commitment than a theoretical guidance.
Junting