File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2004/lyotard.0411, message 32


Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 19:47:37 +0000
From: "steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
Subject: Re: question... lucasist and the SI - modes of production


glen

I'll take this with me and get back to you after the weekend - off to 
the island for a couple of days.

steve

Glen Fuller wrote:

>Steve,
>
>I don't really deal with gender. That is one of my general scholarly 
>blindspots that I am working on to improve. In my paper I kind of gloss 
>over it. I think it is a very complex issue that requires someone a lot 
>smarter than me!!! The (re)production of enthusiasms I guess could be 
>aligned according to gender. But I would be wary of associating 
>something like the buffy series with a necessarily non-masculine 
>enthusiasm. I have actually been thinking about it in terms of 
>the 'pimp' as the pimp figure has become a constituent part of one of 
>the dominant tropes within popular culture, especially MTV-ised pop 
>culture. I have been thinking about the pimp seriously after the rise 
>to popularity of the 'Pimp My Ride' tv show on MTV. I am currently in 
>Europe so I got watch all the episodes a couple of weekends ago. 
>Anyway, you are either a facilitator of desire (pimp) or the 'hoe' (fan 
>object - fanject) or the perp who enjoys 'himself' (fan). Is the 'perp' 
>and 'pimp' necessarily masculine? Is the 'hoe' necessarily feminine? If 
>desire is unlocked from the oedipal triangle, but then re-examined in 
>terms of how it is reconnected within popular culture formations I am 
>not sure if gender is the best way to talk about it. The pressing 
>problem is more the economic considerations of enthusiasm and how it is 
>(re)produced, sustained and exploited if the economic is understood 
>(along with desire) as a determinate modality of enthusiasm. Or 
>something like that, needs a lot more work.
>
>More specifically, I am normally only interested in gender, if gender 
>(understood as the discoursed molar aggregate of power relations 
>facilitated through distinctions made of biological difference) is one 
>of the necessary conditions for a specific event. It then becomes a 
>question of scale and what happens in an event ('what do bodies do'), 
>like if there are a group of guys and someone does something, is that 
>action related to gender? What are the necessary conditions for the 
>action-event? In my car stuff I talk about technological difference in 
>much the same way as gender, as not all actions of participants in a 
>hyper-masculine culture like car enthusiasm are in a direct relation to 
>the incorporeal attributes of anthropomorphic gendering. Why? Because 
>technologies also have a 'gender' (derived from Marx's "nonhuman sex") 
>that is no way human. This is a controversial position and expect to 
>get hammered by feminists, but I think it is more important to focus on 
>which differences 'matter' in the eventuality of action, not how such 
>actions can be reconciled to conform to well worn reductive notions of 
>mimetic relations. In other words, it is a bit like saying all candy-
>events are candy-ish because of the dominant ingredient of sugar. But 
>all candies are different from each other because of the minor 
>ingredients that differenciate the sugarness. For example, in Coke it 
>is allegedly the 'secret ingredient' that defines Coke by its Cokeness. 
>I think work on the big stuff (like gender or sugar) needs to be 
>complimented by the 'little stuff' (which is why it is a question of 
>scale). However, in enthusiast car cultures the role of the car is not 
>exactly 'little'!!! 
>
>Is it even possible to talk about 'truth-value' anymore though? I think 
>this discussion has happened a number of times on this list! I have 
>been reading some stuff that begins teasing out the ramifications of 
>D&G's conception of simulacra. There is a particularly good paper by 
>Nathan Widder [(2004). "Foucault and Power Revisited." European Journal 
>of Political Theory 3(4): 411-432. online version here if not a member 
>of sage journal databases: http://www.psa.ac.uk/cps/2003/nathan%
>20widder.pdf ] that does some good work talking about post-identity 
>politics from a Deleuzian rereading of Foucault. Anyway, in a similar 
>way, I would ask if we should rather be talking about 'post-truth 
>politics'? If you take the Badiou/Lacan/Zizek-event (here is Zizek on 
>the event, which is close enough):
>
>"The Event is the impossible Real of the structure, of its synchronous 
>symbolic order, the engendering violent gesture which brings about the 
>legal Order that renders this very gesture retroactively 'illegal', 
>relegating it to the spectral repressed status of something that can 
>never by fully acknowledged-symbolised-confessed. In short, the 
>synchronous structural Order is a kind of defence-formation against its 
>grounding event which can be discerned only in the guise of a mythical 
>spectral narrative." from The Fragile Absolute, or, Why is the 
>Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?, p.92.
>
>Then Truth is still possible in some Real sense. However, if the 
>actualisation of the virtual only ever produces a low-level simulacra 
>(from Massumi on the molar aggregate of the 'person'): 
>
>"Since no particular body can entirely coincide with the code 
>(regularized functions) enveloped in its assigned category and in the 
>various images recapitulating it, a molar person is always a bad copy 
>of its model - an unacknowledged, low-level becoming; an undercover 
>simulation." User's Guide, p. 181, fn 12.
>
>Then we end up with Guattari's politico-aesthetic paradigm, which would 
>contradict the SI/Spectacle perspective. Maybe the 'labour of truth' is 
>a better way to talk about the different levels of discursive practice 
>(linguistic and extra-linguistic) that facilitate the becoming of an 
>event's modality (passage from the virtual to the actual). A key 
>example I will probably be using in the politicized version of the 
>sequels paper is Powell's 'case' for war put forward at the UN. In 
>other words, I am much more interested in the production of truth by 
>way of the cinematic (spectacle) than the truth value of the spectacle. 
>Maybe, in this way, you could align the pessimism of the SI take on the 
>Spectacle with Baudrillard's take on simulacra. I have yet to read 
>Deleuze's cinema books so maybe they can offer something?? But first I 
>need to read logic of sense (after I finish D&R!!)...
>
>Ciao,
>Glen.
>
>
>
>  
>
>>glen
>>
>>i was interested in  your paper - (you'll have to email me a copy, 
>>    
>>
>please).
>  
>
>>Is it necessary for the 'fan' to be masculine in your  theory? in 
>>    
>>
>other
>  
>
>>words in the mode of production where does the woman enter into the
>>structure.  I was thinking  especially of the attack on the 
>>    
>>
>blockbuster by
>  
>
>>such movies as 'Hero'  and of course the Buffy and  Chicklet 
>>    
>>
>phenomenas.
>  
>
>>What made me think of 'value'  was the existence of those media 
>>    
>>
>events such
>  
>
>>as the documentary series 'The Power of Nightmares'  which uniquely 
>>    
>>
>deserves
>  
>
>>the status of being a truth-event given the way in which it describes 
>>    
>>
>the
>  
>
>>history of the neo-cons, the islamists  and third-way neoliberals
>>relationsionships to power and their use of fear. The Debord/SI point 
>>    
>>
>is
>  
>
>>that they believed that all media events/images were absolutely 
>>    
>>
>equivilant
>  
>
>>in that there is no truth in the spectacle.  It occurred to me that a
>>media/event such as the Power of Darkness  considered as a truth-event
>>denying the absoluteness of the SI perspective - truth  is an 
>>    
>>
>interesting
>  
>
>>problem...
>>
>>steve
>>
>>
>>
>>    
>>
>
>  
>


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