Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 13:25:30 +1100 (EST)
From: "Glen Fuller" <g.fuller-AT-uws.edu.au>
Subject: RE: Article 136 - The Digital Death Rattle of the AmericanMiddle Class


BTW, there is an excellent article here:
http://www.a-aarhus.dk/velfaerdsbyen/sider/download/nabd-mobilityUK.pdf
The Nordic countries really seem to be on top of contemporary mobility 
research. And to add a little note to their article about the 
connection between speed and mobility (which they do not spell out, 
maybe because they think it is obvious, I dunno?). Mobility is related 
to speed in that the greater the speed, the greater the distance 
travelled, therefore the greater the mobility. To tie it into their 
power=speed virilio-esque argument, the greater the (potential for) 
mobility the greater the (ability to exercise) power (as power 
differentials only ever emerge as a relation). 

> Steve,
> 
> Very interesting article. I know these comments below do not fit with 
> the current discussion to do with religion, et al (well, maybe 
> not...ha!), but it kind of fits with the C-theory essay. 
> 
> I have been thinking about John Armitage's notion of Chronotopianism 
> (the merging of 'speed' and utopianism, which operates as an 
> ideological myth) and John Urry's suggestion that mobility is a key 
> concept that can transcend the nation-state framework of 'society'. 
In 
> terms of my own work I have been thinking about the translocal 
> phenomenon of young males infatuated with cars in terms of 
> a 'subcultural' response to the inherent contradistinction with the 
> dominant culture's chronotopianism (the feedfoward loop of 
the 'faster' 
> ideal) and the 'chronodystopic' conditions of their own existence. 
They 
> have near absolute mobility with new communications and auto-
transport 
> technologies, however it amounts to nothing, as they are already 
> running, plugged in and dressed up with, literally, no where to go. A 
> simulacra of mobility, like Wild E. Coyote's running in mid-air 
before 
> he perceives the drop (feels the friction of gravity) after flying 
off 
> a cliff face, mobility without destination or departure, the 
perpetual 
> cruise...
> 
> I orginally headed down the Deleuze/Foucault route, looking at the 
> micro-politics of what they were doing, but that is almost useless. 
> Foucault is useful for his 'macro' concepts to understand how the 
road 
> safety industry disciplines the biopower of road users to accept the 
> necessary losses and assume the road-user-habitus (look right, look 
> left, look right again, whoops, crash!) the highly destructive 
> technologies of automobility. As one critic of the road safety 
industry 
> has suggested, they are not actually worried about safety in any 
> definitive sense, they are more concerned about shaping the human to 
be 
> as safe as possible (which is not very 'safe'!) in the face of auto-
> death. Deleuze is useful for understanding 'why' my car-dudes would 
> want to be car-dudes, but neither of their respective theories and 
> concepts are very good at explaining 'how', the 'captured' conditions 
> of emergence (what Bourdieu calls a 'field of possibility').
> 
> The 'abstract machine' of the subcultural response to the 
contradiction 
> between the myth of freedom through mobility and the reality of the 
> simulacrum of 'speed' is represented quite well by the film 'Mad Max 
> 2', known in the US (and maybe the UK?) as 'The Road Warrior'. The 
film 
> is actually premised (in the opening sequence) on an Arab vs US oil 
> world war, but that is not what is interesting. Max is the meanest 
> mother of the road driving the meanest mother of all vehicles - the 
> last V8 Interceptor. The 'diagram' of the subcultural response to the 
> inherent contradictions in the myth of the freedom of automobility 
> finds form of the lone warrior transversing the Australian outback 
> looking for fuel to feed his supercharged monster. His existance is 
> determined by nothing else other than the ongoing struggle to sustain 
> his accelerated mobility, otherwise 'stasis is death'. Social 
relations 
> premised on a dromocratic society without war are social relations 
> based on the logitics of everyday life. No one benefits from the 
> displacement of sites of sociality like work, home, liesure sites 
from 
> one another except for those groups or individuals who can produce 
and 
> extract a surplus profit from the myth of surplus speed. Those that 
> benefit are, what Armitage calls, the 'global kinetic elite' and 
those 
> that suffer are the '(s)lower classes'. 
> 
> If it is the tendenct of 'capital' to migrate to the localities of 
low 
> overhead/production costs to extract maximum profit (the 
dromoeconomic 
> equivalent of a low pressure weather pattern) produces global 
> displacements of 'home' (consumption) and work (production), and 
social 
> relations are premised on the circulation of goods, services and 
people 
> between them, then the diagram of the mad max abstract machine can be 
> found in the US response to the dwindling supplies of oil-energy. 
They 
> hit the road in the meanest mother of all 'war machines' whose 
> existence is determined by nothing else other than the ongoing 
struggle 
> to sustain their accelerated mobility. 
> 
> Ciao,
> Glen.
> 
> 
> -- 
> PhD Candidate, Centre for Cultural Research
> University of Western Sydney
> 
> 

-- 
PhD Candidate, Centre for Cultural Research
University of Western Sydney