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On 12/19/10 11:08 PM, Brian Holmes wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4D0E8247.30201@gmail.com" type="cite">The
political question is how to <br>
<pre wrap="">set up forms and rhtyhms of exchange that twist away from the dominant
patterns of social interaction that isolate people, that wall them up in
their poverty or their privileges?
Like Snafu (and I guess, Samuel Webber) I wrote a text about that,
focusing not so much on stories per se (though I agree they are
important) as on the visual cues, machinic protocols, ethical principles
and philosophical/metaphysical horizons that structure a networking
relation and keep it coherent over distance and time. Drawing on Knorr
Cetina's work among others, I wanted to suggest that there have been and
will continue to be rival strategies for collective self-fashioning in
the informational era:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2007/07/21/swarmachine">http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2007/07/21/swarmachine</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Brian, thanks for linking this article. I read it and found this
interesting passage:<br>
<br>
"Knorr Cetina stresses the importance of real-time coordination and
the creation of shared horizons. She shows how networked ICTs allow
distant participants to see and recognize each other, and to achieve
cohesion by observing and commenting on the same events at the same
time.Yet the technology employed is used opportunistically, it can
be “outsourced.” What matters is the system of goals or beliefs that
binds the participants together. She reinterprets the usual view of
networks as a system of pipes conveying informational contents,
insisting instead on their visual function: there is a shift from
“pipes” to “scopes.” It is the experience of the mediated image that
maintains the shared horizon and insists on the urgency of acting
within it, especially through what Barthes called the <em>punctum</em>
: the affective register that leaps out from the general dull
flatness of the image and touches you."<br>
<br>
<br>
This idea that the affective register is what enables individuals to
break the wall of isolation is a powerful one in that it forces us
to think the task of organizing a network as a process that is not
entirely rational. Barthes writes that the punctum, "that which
pierces the viewer," differs from the studium--a merely analytical
perspective on the world--because of its subjective character. While
the picture of my mom evokes specific feelings in me, it is just the
picture of a woman to a stranger. Now, it seems to me that when we
ask what holds a network together, affect, desire, and subjective
experience become essential to inform structures that cannot be
formally described and encased in standardized patterns. Luther
Blissett's mutliple-use name strategy was aimed at reaching a
precarious balance between an image or narrative that pierces you as
soon as you realize that Luther Blissett demands your participation
and the more rational understanding that everyone can be Luther
Blissett--a process of becoming other. <br>
<br>
In Precarious Rhapsody, Franco Berardi "Bifo" distinguishes between
bodily *conjunction* as an asignifying process of becoming other and
digital *connection* as a relationship between parts that have been
formatted and standardized in order to be interoperable and function
smoothly: <br>
<br>
"Conjunction--writes Bifo--is the encounter and fusion of rounded
irregular forms<br>
that infiltrate in an imprecise, unrepeatable, imperfect, continuous
way.<br>
Connection is the punctual and repeatable interaction of algorithmic<br>
functions, of straight lines and points that can be perfectly
superimposed<br>
onto each other, inserting and detaching themselves according to
discrete<br>
modalities of interaction. Modalities that establish a compatibility<br>
between diverse parts according to predetermined standards. The
digitalization<br>
of communicative processes produces a sort of desensitization<br>
to the curve, to continuous processes of slow becoming, and a
corresponding<br>
sensitization to code, sudden changes of state and the succession of<br>
discrete signs."<br>
<br>
From this point of view, the art of networking can be understood as
an art of conjoining that exceeds the smooth functioning and
articulation of a network's parts. For instance in a truly networked
narrative narrator and narratee can both insert themselves in the
story as characters. This means that the story allows for a certain
degree of unpredictability. At the same time, activist narratives
present recurring patterns--such as the existence of a power
imbalance, an antagonistic relationship between more and less
powerful subjects, and the deployment of a participatory
strategy--that prevent the story from floating in a space of
absolute indeterminacy. The political question of how a distributed
network is to be organized lies for me in the tension between what
the single nodes can do and what the network can do as a
singularity, i.e. an assemblage characterized by the proliferation
of difference.<br>
<br>
If we adopt Bifo's perspective, we may say that a truly activist
narrative cannot confine itself to the Internet but has to be able
to generate an experiential shift--a shift that far from being
purely semantic or syntactic has to be grounded in a bodily shift in
sensitivity. In this respect, I am wondering whether the new cycle
of student struggles that is emerging out of many European countries
(especially Italy, Greece, and the UK) may mark the beginning of a
new generational shift in sensitivity. You have probably seen the
video of this 15-year old at the national conference of the
Coalition of Resistance in Camden: <br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U_gHUiL4P8">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U_gHUiL4P8</a>. <br>
<br>
What is really powerful about this video is not so much what the
young Rodney says but the way he says it--a new way of experiencing
the world. He tells a story, a story in which he inserts himself and
that is at the same time the story of a new generation of activists
who have started seeing the world anew. <br>
<br>
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