<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">I want to thank Alan for so directly and provocatively voicing his concerns with respect to my statements about the imperatives of contemporary media theory, concerns which clearly are his, but very likely not only his. In response I would like to point out that although I suggested that what we are here calling "theory" operates under imperatives to be of service to social justice since its condition of possibility is social inequality -- and if theory is to be thought, then it necessarily must be critical of the conditions of its emergence -- neither statements of this type nor my utilization of my "own" subject position as one framework among others for staging the drama and imperatives of this kind of endeavor is in itself particularly essentialist or, for that matter, authentic. Would it make any sense to say that an avatar is authentic, or that a picture is essentialist?<div><br></div><div>Alan, as you note, the issues here are not trivial and I completely agree. What I see happening in the language of your response to me is the functioning of a set of linguistic subroutines that process/interpret my transmission along certain metaphysical lines. I did not say anything about authenticity, you (as it were) however, recognized something in my message that felt/meant like authenticity, and expressed ambivalence about this perception: on the one hand you seem to have been drawn to some of the claims regarding exploitation and theory's commitment to being relevant to that problematic, on the other you were perhaps repulsed by what you may have felt to be the repressive exclusion of the suggestion that theory had to be this committed practice, whatever else it might be.</div><div><br></div><div>In my conclusion to the letter you responded to, you can see that I placed "rightfully," "belongs" and "global south" in quotation marks, as if to acknowledge that these words invoked metaphysical concepts that only held if one were aligned with the movement of my thought up to that point, and furthermore that this movement was contingent. Putting these words in quotation marks was itself a way of being open to other realities, as you say, and an explicit recognition that what my transmission desired to cast as a form of truth was (tragically?) not guaranteed -- indeed the proper role of theory, who thought belongs to, and who are its constituents and beneficiaries are among the questions being debated. The increasing inadequacy of language itself to represent the world in which we live is, in my view anyway, part of the problematic of media theory which must deal with the onslaught of visuality -- a phenomenon which at once marginalizes the traditional roles and capabilities of language and forces it to function increasingly as images do. When, after invoking the contingencies above, I asked "how to be adequate to such a reality?" -- a "reality" that includes both the production and reproduction of hierarchical society and capital-mediation in and through visuality -- and did not place "reality" in quotation marks, that exclusion was a rhetorical (i might even say poetic) choice on my part, an effort to produce the image of the ring of truth (a sound, by the way), _as if_ the metaphysical questions about contingency could be left behind. However the statement was less philosophical and more performative at that point -- it being recognized of course that performativity is (now) the condition of philosophy generally. The phrase was meant to mark the ineffable yet necessary movement of the possibility of justice. Thus I might call it a utopian gesture haunted by contingency, a projection of a certain form of redemptive possibility that, to take things too far, would be as beautiful as it is impossible -- the last flower in Pan's Labyrinth. I'm not saying that my letter achieved anything like this kind of movement (it really was not so carefully considered), but I am endeavoring here to say something about method: To make the words line up to produce the image of an actionable object is to strive to create "a natural perspective that is and is not," to coin a phrase. It is to produce, even momentarily, a full, desirable and pragmatic version of the world in an ocean of competing images and contingent claims -- what Jameson called the marketplace of ideas, but today is really just the marketplace in general. There may be the illusion of authenticity and of metaphysical ground, but there is nothing guaranteed about any of it.</div><div><br></div><div>Having said all this, I recognize that my particular exercise of such tactics, is not to everyone's taste. Like others, I do the best that I can, to operate in a matrix of mediations, and navigate towards becomings that may well be ultimately unfounded and unobtainable. Plying the myriad codes and mediations today (what used to be called writing) is perhaps an experience of what has been called post-representational democracy -- a movement through the infinite claims of history to date. However, we have not left representation behind entirely, even though we have a new set of terms that would include affect, intensity, viscerality, visuality and others, that are available as tools to calculate, measure, think, feel and strategize with. This is where we work -- all of us, at least to some degree -- isn't that what the theories of cognitive capitalism point to? To write is to wager, it is to make a prediction, which as Gramsci taught us, is in fact, a programme.</div><div><br></div><div>Again, Alan, thanks for the opportunity to reflect on these issues. There is implicit in what I said, some thoughts on the production of consciousness, but I'll leave more explicit remarks on that topic for another time.</div><div><br></div><div>Kind regards,</div><div>Jon<br><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Jonathan Beller</div><div>Professor </div><div>Humanities and Media Studies</div><div>and Critical and Visual Studies</div><div>Pratt Institute</div><div><a href="mailto:jbeller@pratt.edu">jbeller@pratt.edu</a></div><div>718-636-3573 fax</div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Times" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; "><br></span></font></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br><div><div>On Jul 17, 2009, at 6:41 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div><br><br>Hi -<br><br>I hesitate to say anything here; I'm simply too ignorant, haven't written <br>on the topic, and so forth. But Jonathan's letter raises a number of <br>questions that bother me although I'm definitely in agreement with its <br>direction and tenor.<br><br>My main problems deal with essentialism - i.e. Jonathan's experience and <br>life-world is somehow more attuned to a production of consciousness that <br>my experience is not (since I would, I assume, operate, from his point of <br>view, under the rubrik of 'high media theory' or some such), and that his <br>production/of/thru consciousness vis-a-vis his experience is somehow more <br>authentic, truer than mine. I won't disagree for a second re: the horrific <br>economics he describes and "our" (in quotes, because who are we here?) <br>abject ignoring of the situation, but I don't understand what "production <br>of consciousness" is. I do understand consciousness-of, i.e. intentional- <br>ity, for example, consciousness of being-Jewish, but "production of <br>consciousness" per se seems problematic to me, as does consciousness _as_ <br>production or _a_ production - consciousness as _that object_ subject to <br>creation vis-a-vis radical alterity (in which case where does responsib- <br>ility lie?). This isn't trivial; if consciousness is indeed separable from <br>economy (in one form or another, and I know I'm laying open to all sorts <br>of charges here), then those Adornamental issues of authenticity and its <br>problematic do come to the foreground.<br><br>I do feel doubly sensitive to Jonathan's letter, which is why I'm respond- <br>ing in such a convoluted fashion - obviously (hopefully) sensitive to the <br>issues described (which I bring up in my teaching) but also sensitive in a <br>somewhat negative way to his fundamental put-down of anyone doing theory <br>here and dealing with the same. I'm from Wilkes-Barre and have written on <br>the brutal conditions of anthracite mining there, but I'm Jewish/mercan- <br>tile on the other hand, so my authenticity is questionable all over the <br>map - which for me problematizes authenticity in the first place, hence <br>Adorno.<br><br>I think there's a need to embrace queer/marx/feminist/whatever/hightheory/ <br>lowtheory/ and work with/through these and through education through these <br>- not talk through consciousness produced elsewhere. Jonathan asks how to <br>be adequate to such a reality and I would think one would want to be open <br>to _all_ realities, sensitive to their interrelationships and political <br>economies, and deal, for example, with where one's students might be <br>"coming-from," rather than create situations of guilt and dispossession <br>(i.e. my consciousness is not my own because you educate me to believe <br>otherwise). I've see what happens in the classroom in those cases, and <br>they're disasterous.<br><br>I feel I should also apologize here; as I said, I'm way over my head and <br>am not an economist; I also may be misreading, for which apologies as <br>well.<br><br>Good Rushkoff interview w/ Colbert by the way - it's amazing when dialog <br>actually seeps thru -<br><br>- Alan<br><br><br><br>On Fri, 17 Jul 2009, Jonathan Beller wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">Hi all,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Sorry for the abrupt entry into this discussion -- i'm finally getting <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">set up again after two weeks gone -- but i've got to weigh in on Michael <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Bauwen's side here in this very brilliant exchange. As someone who wrote <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">one book on the emergence of new media as a technology of value <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">extraction and then a second book that was a direct response to the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">challenges I felt by years of living and working in the Philippines to <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">make my what is now called media theory relevant in a third world/global <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">south context, i have to agree that the (world-) systemic dimensions of <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">exploitation are on par in terms of importance with the violent <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">instances of the most recognizeable and brutal expressions of <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">exploititive practices: defacto agrarian slavery, the radical <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">dispossesion of casual workers in the slums, the captured bodies of <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">prostitutes, etc. To hypostasize: each is a condition of the other.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">For what its worth, I think that one of the great problems of our time <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">is to make manifest the myriad links between the pleasures available in <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">global society -- pleasure which certainly include but are not limited <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">to screen pleasures -- and systemic murder, i.e., the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">willed/automatic/unconscious deprivation of life (it is all of these) <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">that is the sine qua non of global capitalist perpetuity. What are the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">mediations?<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">In my own experience of exchanges with members of the radical left, if <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">you will, in the Philippines (exchanges which I feel at once humbled by <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">and honored to partake in), there is great interest in terms of strategy <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">and tactics to understand the logistics of media-exploitation as well as <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">possible. This interest is manifest by those who organize protests and <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">public actions against, for example, disappearances sometimes called <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">political killings launched illegally by the Macapagal-Arroyo regime in <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">the Philippines in order to preserve the rule of law by assassinating <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">those who threaten its legitimacy (more than 800 since GMA took office), <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">as well as protests in solidarity with Jeepney drivers against <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">escalating gasoline prices, and many many other forms of protest. This <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">interest in a mediological analysis of sociality has deep roots in the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">university and in the long-term anti-fascist and anti-imperialist <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">struggles and it informs scholarship, pedagogy, cultural theory, <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">filmmaking, art practice, and political strategy.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">I'll close this all too brief account with two points: first, the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">expropriation of the cognitive-linguistic as well as the sensual by <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">media-capital means that the struggle for the production of <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">consciousness as a moment in the overall struggle for the democratic <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">control of the means of production that informs the very possibilty of <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">social justice is at least as important as it has been in the past, if <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">not more so. Second, the high theory of media studies, academic marxism <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">(to use a pejorative term), feminist and queer theory, like the wealth <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">and culture of the great Western metropoles, rightfully belongs to the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">third world/ global south. All these terms ("rightfully," "belongs," <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">"global south") are subject to modification, but you get my drift -- <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">consciousness itself, and the world that sustains it, is produced on the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">backs of those who are most radically dispossessed. Personally, I am <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">haunted by an enduring question: how to be adequate to such a reality?<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Best,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Jon<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Jonathan Beller<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Professor<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Humanities and Media Studies<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">and Critical and Visual Studies<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Pratt Institute<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="mailto:jbeller@pratt.edu">jbeller@pratt.edu</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">718-636-3573 fax<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote>_______________________________________________<br>iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (distributedcreativity.org)<br><a href="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net">iDC@mailman.thing.net</a><br>https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc<br><br>List Archive:<br>http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/<br><br>iDC Photo Stream:<br>http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/<br><br>RSS feed:<br>http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc<br><br>iDC Chat on Facebook:<br>http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647<br><br>Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref<br></div></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>