Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 20:15:11 +0000
From: "steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
Subject: Re: leotard - in vain with a brick


Eric/all

some notes to clarify my immediate response to Silverman's introduction 
text...

Hugh Silverman writes of the attack on 9th of September using very 
specific and telling terms 'two beautiful modern buildings', 
'modernity', 'American', 'America' and so on. Consider this sentence - 
"....two beautiful modern buildings in New York City came crashing down 
as two modern American airplanes were piloted directly into those 
exquisite symbols of one of the great aesthetic capitals of the world. 
Between the wonderful technologies that produced the World Trade Center 
- the twin towers, as they were commonly known - and the intricate 
advances that designed the two Boeing airplanes was the political - an 
ugly, excriciating politics....."  There are a number of interesting 
things wrong with the underlying logic, that continues in the 
introduction which this is an early sentence of.

Let's be clear - firstly the attack was not an attack as he sates an 
"attack on modernity" but an attack, a gesture against our rapacious 
capitalism, our post-modernity. In essence you can understand, define 
our postmodernity as starting at many points in recent history - in 1956 
or 1968 for example, economically in 56 because at this point the 
numbers of people employed in industrial production began to fall whilst 
productivity continued to rise. In 1968 as Tony Negri argues "...In 
postmodernity, that is, in the epoch that began with the revolutionary 
events of the 1960s, and in which we continue to live, the ethical and 
ascetic illusion of modernity seems to have reached an end; and with it 
so to the metaphysical folly of transcendence and command...." (Time for 
Revolution P188). However whilst I would accept that Negri's argument is 
more accurate than the former - in real terms it is irrelvant. If 
postmodernism has any meaning then, surely we must accept that it is 
intellectually fraudulent to say, for an editor of a book built around 
Lyotard that the 9th of September was an attack on modernity - when then 
as now we exist in postmodern times.

Similarly to speak of an event which is global in statue, that is 
marking an escalation of the rejection of the postmodern capitalist 
endaevor, as an 'American' event is extraordinarily strange given that 
you would have to be an African Pygmy to escape the significance of the 
event as it rolls on and on, ruining the lives of millions of human 
beings, is denied by the triviality of the word 'American'. An event 
happens at a given geographical location which gives it a certain 
socio-political flavour and result, adn consequently it has an 
'importance' in the 52K sphere of local space. But ths does not 
legitimise it as an 'American event' - (Marie goes to Japan...should 
dissuade anyone from thinking that the use of such a term would have 
been acceptable to  Lyotard). The event has a truth associated with it 
that is related to the nature of postmodern capitalism  and not as 
Silverman implies to the differend between modernity and islam - this is 
not to say that the islamic faith is not 'nasty brutish and sexist' - 
whereas postmodern capitalism is 'nasty and brutish' but politically is 
indifferent in its economy to 'sexism'.

Were the two towers - modern or post-modern - I suspect that Silverman 
uses the term modernity to describe the 'rejected present'because he 
wants postmodernism to be 'critical' rather than descriptive and 
defining of the present - in this I (and we) should differ for here we 
are living the clash between postmodern forces. Following Baudrillard I 
think we have to accept them as postmodern icons rather than referential 
to a pst-modernity. Understanding it then, through postmodern 
philosophies and political and cultural theorists... where does 
modernity enter into the discussion...

[I'm aware that I'm ignoring Lyotard's late discussions of modernity...]

regards
steve
Eric wrote:

>Steve,
>
>I also bought the book, but haven't looked at it in some time. Thus, no
>comments for now, but maybe we could talk about some of the essays
>later.  I agree the essay on Emma alone is worth the price of admission.
>
>I read an interesting short essay by Zizek recently where he talks about
>the current Bush administration in the context of the film "The Minority
>Report."  I don't know if this should be construed as modern or
>postmodern, but the interesting thing about the movie is that it is all
>about being pre-emptive, resolving crimes before they even occur. In
>this it resembles the Bush administration, attempting a pre-emptive war
>against Iraq because they have the 'potentiality' of developing and
>using weapons of mass destruction. The Bush regime says, like Tom
>Cruise, that we must stop now their possible future contingent acts.
>(and just like the movie, Bush himself is accused of murder.)
>
>What is interesting about the movie is that the clairvoyants may
>sometimes disagree, creating a 'minority report.' Isn't that exactly
>what is going on right now?  The Bush administration continues to assure
>us that everything will be fine - after the regime change, democracy
>will blossom like Southern magnolias in the Middle East, but all these
>other voices still continue to mutter and strangely these minority
>voices cannot be kept silent.
>
>What is most frightening about the Bush regime is the fact that they
>seem to lack the imagination to envision any other future than the one
>they want to sell us; theirs is a world where faith and macho strength
>become of form of hubris. I am fearful of what these men who believe in
>God will do to the world today and perhaps this very doubt and
>skepticism is the best form of postmodernism. 
>
>Unlike Bush, I can't conceive of the future as a series of discounted
>cash flows ushering in the pre-millennial Apocalypse and the return of
>Jesus with a flaming plutonium sword. 
>
>Thus, I urge the dissident clairvoyant voices be listened to. The
>minority report tells us that the future need not be what the Masters of
>War tell us it must be.  In the crack in the void where strange futures
>dissipate another world may yet emerge.  Let the weirdness in....
>
>eric
>
>  
>
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>[mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu] On Behalf Of
>steve.devos
>Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 1:35 PM
>To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: lyotard - in vain
>
>All
>
>I bought a copy of a text 'Lyotard' - edited by Hugh J Silverman's - 
>mostly because it had a translation of Lyotard's 'Emma. Then today, 
>whilst drinking espresso in Dean street I read the first paragraph of 
>the Introduction. In which Silverman draws together the words American, 
>beautiful, modern into...  a hysterically funny mess?
>
>(Bizarrely he thinks the WTC was a modernist endaevor - post Baudrillard
>
>I thought everyone understood there postmodern status)
>
>Has anyone read this text and any reason to believe its worth finishing 
>- given my non-american status?
>
>regards
>steve
>
>
>
>  
>