File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2004/lyotard.0411, message 17


From: steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 17:40:51 -0000 (GMT)
Subject: Re: Refusals, Passions and Palindromes


bizarrely i understood it the way you propose below...

steve
> Bah!  What I meant to write in my last mess.age is that
> Derria-Baudrillard's  space allows for a thinking for a space other
> than the proto-Stalin/Hitler  space that Eric's prescient observation
> makes for.  What I was trying to say is  that the
> palindrome-anagram-Francis Ponge signature is suggestive of what might
> be un/done...a thinking other/wise...
>
> And yet! What a slip I have committed! For as I read back over my
> mess.age --to  my horror!!!-- I have suggested something completely
> opposite from that!!  My  sentence sez what I do not mean for it to
> say!  And that moreover, some might  regard such a slip as completely
> perfect!  Oh, the reversibilty!  Oh, the  iterability!  Oh, what faces
> I have yet to lose!
>
> feog-geof
>
>
> Quoting gvcarter-AT-purdue.edu:
>
>>
>> Eric/Steven,
>>
>>             IN GINUM IMUS NOCTE ET CONSUMINIMUR IGNI
>>
>>   --We Go Round and Round in the Night and Are Consumed by Fire--
>>
>> ...This palindrome, which Libero Andreotti begins his essay
>> "Architecture and
>>
>> Play" in _Guy Debord and the Situationsit International_, is not only
>> the title
>> of one of Debord's last films, but leads to the conclusion
>> (re-beginning?) of
>>
>> Andreotti essay, which notes a quote by Renato Poggioli's notion of
>> the avant-
>> garde movement towards "an obscure sacrifice to the success of future
>> movements," and, too, is suggestive of the another line from Debord,
>> "All  revolutions enter history and history rejects none of them; and
>> the rivers of
>>
>> revolution go back to where they originated, in order to flow once
>> again"...
>>
>> Such 'obscure sacrifices,' or what Baudrillard might call 'fatal
>> strategies,'
>>
>> are interesting to th.ink about, particularly w/ regard to the
>> palindrome and
>>
>> anagrams.  Baudrillard, who is dis/connected w/ the Situationists,
>> explicates
>>
>> an interesting approach to language via the latter in the final
>> chapter of  _Symbolic Exchange and Death_, "The Extermination of the
>> Name of God," which
>>
>> examines Saussure's unpublished fascination w/ anagrams in ancient
>> texts.   Unpublished because, as Baudrillard puts it, "Saussure falls
>> into the trap of
>>
>> scientific validation, in the superstition of fact."
>>
>> Baudrillard's fatal strategy...anti-semiological, reversible, neither
>> ontological nor mystical...plays along this tightrope between
>> Saussure's  unpublished possibilism of the anagram and his fetish for
>> facts...such space,
>>
>> which I would suggest shares something w/ Derrida's choral opening of
>> the  signature of Francis Ponge, which both marks itself through the
>> etching of a
>>
>> stone (fr. common noun "francis") and erases itself with a sponge
>> (s.Ponge), is
>> the realm of a thinking, as Eric so horrifyingly puts it, where Stalin
>> and  Hitler become "prototypes of a kinder and gentler fascism"...
>>
>> Such a line has has me turning to another fatal strategy, Don
>> Delillo's _White
>> Noise_, wherein the main character is chair of the department of
>> Hitler studies
>> at the College-on-the-Hill under the fear of the The Airborne Toxic
>> Event.
>>
>> "The sound of boots on the packed snow, the contrails streaked cleanly
>> in the
>>
>> high sky.  Weather was very much the point, although I didn't know it
>> at first."
>>
>> geof-foeg
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Quoting Eric <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>:
>>
>> > Steven wrote:
>> >
>> > A link has been posted on one of the founders of the Situationists.
>> > Anyone
>> > well versed on the group, or perhaps in particular, psychogeography?
>> >
>> > Steven,
>> >
>> >
>> > It is arguable that the real political and economic issue of the
>> > twentieth century was not between socialism and capitalism (slavery
>> > versus freedom as the ideologues would have it) but something darker
>> > and more sinister.  One could argue that the growth of
>> > industrialization gave birth to a radically new society of control
>> > in which masses were simultaneously created and managed using the
>> > newly formed propaganda tools of the emerging electronic media.
>> >
>> > From this perspective, it wasn't really the so-called political
>> > opposition, left versus right, liberal versus conservative, but
>> > something at a much deeper level that was driving the process.  From
>> > this perspective Stalin and Hitler were not exactly failures; they
>> > represented merely the early and necessary attempts at a kind of
>> > social and political experimentation - the prototypes of a kinder
>> > and gentler fascism.
>> >
>> > Over time, the elites began to realize that centralized planning and
>> > explicit forms of oppression and censorship were merely
>> > counterproductive and unnecessary. It was possible instead to have a
>> > decentralized totalitarian system with 'free' markets and
>> > 'democratic' elections that would give the masses the illusion of
>> > freedom while still maintaining the requisite controls through the
>> > pressures of a wage economy and a media geared towards keeping the
>> > populace passive and entertained as well as anxious and fearful.
>> >
>> > It was Huxley's Brave New World that triumphed in the end and not
>> > merely Orwell's 1984.
>> >
>> > For all the conventional talk of individualism and competitiveness,
>> > perceptive analysts such as Virno have commented on what they call
>> > the communism of capital.  The current global economy is sustained
>> > by a shared and cooperative infrastructure based upon networks
>> > derived from computer and communications technology.  Mergers and
>> > transnational integration become necessary in order to consolidate
>> > operations more effectively.
>> >
>> > The radical possibility remains that these changed technological
>> > conditions could usher in a life of greater leisure and freedom from
>> > anxiety in which individuals would be free to explore the inherent
>> > possibilities of life beyond a market economy; engaging life as play
>> > and participation rather than as enforced authoritarian modes of
>> > boring full-time work and passive recreation.
>> >
>> > Instead the working stills (and it is all of us) are now working in
>> > more dead end jobs than ever before. Meanwhile, fear and terror
>> > situate themselves inexorably within the quotidian.  That is the new
>> > "revolution of everyday life".
>> >
>> > These depressing thoughts come the day after an election in which
>> > perhaps the most fascist U.S. president in history, one who has
>> > committed impeachable crimes and murdered thousands of Iraqi
>> > civilians has been re-elected in a 'mandate' by people who claim
>> > they were voting on behalf of morality.
>> >
>> > Lyotard in his later years spoke of a postmodern fable of
>> > development in which humanity becomes extraneous to the needs of the
>> > system.  In a strange way, it is echoed today by Christian
>> > left-behind fundamentalists who are unconcerned with history except
>> > to the extent that it can hasten the rapture and the return of a
>> > vengeful Jesus, at the sight of which the secular liberals will have
>> > true hell to pay. For Jesus is a true terrorist and hell is his
>> > ultimate weapon of mass destruction. The old Jesus who spoke of
>> > peace and mercy is merely for wimps. Today's supply side Jesus is
>> > packing. He belongs to the NRA and the GOP.
>> >
>> > In the frenzy of this sadio-masochistic piously democratic carnival
>> > I think fondly tonight of Guy Debord and his society of the
>> > spectacle. History has hardly superceded his idea today.  At best we
>> > have fulfilled it.
>> >
>> > As we look at a populace that continues to act against its own
>> > political and economic interest in the name of morality obscenely
>> > fixated on sexual and gender issues that begin and end in the
>> > bedroom, in which evangelical Christians and resentful conservatives
>> > unwittingly serve the interest of global elites, I ask the following
>> > question in good Kantian form:
>> >
>> > How is a postmodern situationism possible today?
>> >
>> > eric
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>>




   

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