mxmlsm

March 2, 2010

"It is hard not to be intimidated by New Left Review. At times, the journal can seem like an elaborate contrivance for making us feel inadequate."

—

Stefan Collini on New Left Review at 50 via @aldaily

very often, i feel that large swathes of useful intellectual labor come filled to the knee with contrivance…

give me a reason, don’t give me gestures.. or names.

“What other publication would take out a full-page advertisement in a national newspaper announcing its “quinquagenary issue”? NLR has been accused of many things, but never of populist dumbing-down.”

…or just stfu. (see also pikachu & deleuze via @naxos)

(also also, see @bradfidler’s now deleted post on spivak’s emancipatory jargon. it’s good, trust me.)

10:37am | URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/421818557

February 7, 2010

what’s in a name?

@F414 There is no such thing as “capitalism” #

@sdv_duras @F414 [..] are you going to explain why we cannot describe the dominant socio-economic system in a term ? #

@F414 @sdv_duras “capitalism”is based ona simplistic,monolithic view of reality that is in turn based ona simplistic,deterministic view of history #

@sdv_duras @F414 of course I disagree but then you already knew that didn’t you, but then I tend to think that naming something helps us understand it #

@pareidoliac @sdv_duras @f414 naming may assist understanding and equally contribute to making hidden other things… #

@sdv_duras @pareidoliac sure i agree with that, but I would still maintain that a definition and name is a useful starting point… for example without # the name and concept of ‘feminism’ … well we know what that would mean in our society # […] I’m not speaking as a leftist here but as someone interested in why specific acts of naming are being refused # for example where ANT theorists refuse the notion of capitalism they end up with something un-understandable by non academics # for some reason that really bothers me… #

@pareidoliac @sdv_duras well i agree with @f414 that capitalism tends to be used in totalizing ways that are hardly productive of understanding # when used by non academics, ‘capitalism’ often tends to be entirely absurd! # when used by Marxist academics, ‘capitalism’ tends to play into a game of reification # perhaps if those who like the term were less ambitious with their goals… # i wonder if ‘capitalism’ is as misleading as ‘democracy’ or ‘terrorism’ for that matter? #

@sdv_duras @pareidoliac - that’s a different thing entirely, a matter of academicism, not being one its not my concern # a term like capital is a short hand which you can unpack and use, it’s a tool how you unpack it and use it is what amatters #

@pareidoliac @sdv_duras i agree with you re: ‘capital’ yet when we look at so many cases of how this is unpacked and used… that IS what matters! #

@sdv_duras @pareidoliac - if you reject all the huamn ‘isms’ including religion, science, democracy, liberal etc you reject all human knowledge #

3:00pm | URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/376146673

FILED UNDER: language twitter capitalism resistance academia theory

January 31, 2010

the only reason this #ipad thing even registered…

…is my love for theory war; to the death!

@psychemedia: Ipad isn’t for geeks’n’techies, “it just works”. Got that? “It just works”. It brings digital goods to folk who don’t use or want a computer # “A (personal) computer in every home”. Probably not. A TV in every home? Pretty much. An ipad in every home? Something like it… # aargghhh…most people are not geeks. Their phones, game consoles, cameras are not computers, they are phones, games consoles, cameras # my view is that what ipad range will come to represent is not primarily intended for anybody who is likely to read this… Maybe;-) #

@hauntagonist: Btw the iPad is a further evolution towards interpassivity-enabling technology. Touch only reinforces the paradox and myth of interactivity. # We do not lack communication. On the contrary we have too much of it. We lack *creation*. We lack resistance to the present -Deleuze #iPad #

@sdv_duras: @hauntagonist - does that not imply that all modern technologies are leading to increasing passivity ? #

hauntagonist: @sdv_duras I think I agree with that. #

@kpunk99: @hauntagonist Baudrillard For A Critique Of The Political Economy of The Sign is astonishingly prescient on these matters IMO #

via @josshands: @mckenziewark: Rather than phones becoming tiny computers, we’re going to get computers that are just big phones: closed, proprietary, unhackable. #

And then also this via @jayrosen_nyu & that by @sociologylens

fun!

4:38pm | URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/363378034

FILED UNDER: theory technology conflict capitalism Consumption culture

January 28, 2010

Das Kapital in Lithographs via @IlllllllllllllI

9:52am | URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/357686188

(No. OF NOTES: 3)

FILED UNDER: marxism art graphics literature theory history

January 17, 2010

All the best theories are…

via supermassiveblackhole

1:56pm | URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/339133592

(No. OF NOTES: 10)

FILED UNDER: graphics internet history me culture theory

January 10, 2010

wildcat2030:

We asked some of the world’s most prominent futurists to explain why slowness might be as important to the future as speed.

via user.cloudfront.goodinc.com

2:19pm | URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/326945659

(No. OF NOTES: 5)

FILED UNDER: graphics theory culture

December 18, 2009

"What would happen if the printed book had just been invented in a high-tech world in which people had never done their reading from anything but computer screens? The unquestionable advantages of the computer would not be threatened by this new product but the people, who so love to compare apples with pears, would be quite bowled over by this ultra-modern invention: after years spent chained to the screen they would suddenly have something they could open like a window or a door – a machine you can physically enter! For the first time knowledge would be combined with a sense of touch and gravity – this new invention allows you to experience the most incredible sensations, reading becomes a physical experience. And after experiencing knowledge only as a bundle of connections, as a system of interacting networks, suddenly here is individuality: every book is an independent personality, which cannot be taken apart or added to at will. And how relaxing these new reading appliances are, their operating systems never needs updating – the only thing that changes over the course of time is the message that they contain, which is always open to new interpretations."

— Juan Villoro, in an article in last month’s adn CULTURA (an Argentinian culture magazine) about the “future of books.” via Photography Prison + Darius Himes

9:50am | URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/288761544

(No. OF NOTES: 2)

FILED UNDER: media academia literature technology culture genre theory

November 24, 2009

"Latour’s concept of translation is broader than that of translation as it applies to linguistics or the transposition of texts from one language to another. The key point to take home from his analysis– and he doesn’t spell these implications out himself –is not so much the fact that a translated text always differs from the text that it translates, but rather that the process of translation produces something new, regardless of whether the relation is between texts in different languages, conscious minds to world, or relations between objects. What Latour wishes to do, I think, is generalize the concept of translation, such that translation is no longer restricted to the domain of language, nor requiring the involvement of living beings of some sort, but rather involves any relations among actants, human or nonhuman, living or material."

— Levi Bryant, “Relations of Translation Between Actants.” The production of the new via translation — this is already the point of Whitehead’s theory of prehension. via steveshaviro + wildcat2030

3:42pm | URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/255728838

(No. OF NOTES: 8)

FILED UNDER: language theory philosophy materialism network

November 21, 2009

"It is important not to see the rhizome in binary opposition to the tree … The concept of the rhizome was set up precisely to challenge dichotomous branching."

—

Chuen-Ferng Koh in Internet: Towards a Holistic Ontology,

Communications & Society: Enter the Rhizome: Non-duality

via wildcat2030

“Rhizomes are inclusive of hierarchies. Hierarchies, however, do not include rhizomes, at least not formally. I think it certain that rhizomes have existed in the most rigid of hierarchical structures throughout history, but on a clandestine, ad hoc, submerged basis that is almost never recognized by the power structure of the hierarchy and never sanctioned. Indeed, one of the formal characteristics of hierarchies is that they are exclusive of all that is not within the hierarchy, and they invest great resources in marking the boundaries between the organization and the rest of the world. Hierarchies are always mindful of managing their entry and exit procedures, and they tend to make the barriers to entry and exit rather high.

Rhizomes are not opposite to hierarchies so much as they simply ignore hierarchies, cutting in arcs across hierarchical boundaries and levels, connecting nodes at various levels within the hierarchy to each other and to nodes totally outside the hierarchy. Hierarchies find such connections and collaborations highly disruptive and treasonous.

Rhizomes are indifferent to entry and exit barriers. Whoever will can enter the rhizome, and whoever won’t can exit. In either case, the rhizome is largely unaffected. Its formal characteristics persist.”

3:28pm | URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/251946879

(No. OF NOTES: 3)

FILED UNDER: network philosophy theory internet

November 21, 2009

ephemera: theory & politics in organization

“ephemera encourages the amplification of the political problematics of organization within academic debate…” - radical business schooling?

via federicoariasr

3:22pm | URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/251942569

(No. OF NOTES: 1)

FILED UNDER: capitalism politics theory

November 21, 2009

After 1968

On the notion of the political in postmarxist theory.

via federicoariasr

3:15pm | URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/251937452

(No. OF NOTES: 1)

FILED UNDER: politics marxism theory history europe capitalism

November 6, 2009

Learning Truth Telling Beyond Neoliberal Education > Radical Notes

[..] It not uncommon to hear in academic seminars, policy meetings and debates that the theoretical is anti-practical and theoretical discussions slow down the completion of projects. There is a tacit agreement that when a discussion gets into a deadlock on account of theory a decision can be taken on the basis of the practical. Often at meetings one hears “too much of democracy is not going to lead anywhere”. In other words, there is no time for discussion. Time constraints are imposed by financial considerations – ‘the work needs to be one within the time-frame for which the money has been sanctioned’.

There is a conflict between financial time and discussion time. In this conflict the discussion time shrinks and this obviously implies a shrinking of theoretical space.

Such conflict and shrinking has filtered down to other fields of social and political life. Debates on policy are short and snappy, what with political activists being averse to theory. They want action and have no time for reflection. In universities there are fewer students who opt for the social sciences for they do not get one a job. Such pressure has compelled the re-invention of more market-friendly syllabi in the social sciences.

The meaning of theory itself has changed. A good example is ‘theory for computer programs’ taught in schools and institutes. It refers to a list of terms and procedures to run the program and there is no space for asking the why how and what. Here theory itself has become the instrument.

In social sciences, theory is more often than not envisaged as the lens or the frame (legal, conceptual, experiential, religious…) through and within which we see the world. In the first instance, the world appears either smaller (as if viewed through a convex lens) or larger (seen through the concave) than what it is. In the case of theory being the frame, the world is viewed with the terms of reference specified by the task to be accomplished. In both instances, theory is the ally of fragmentation and encourages the exclusion of critical voices of people from diverse experiences and plural cultures.

The neoliberal economy has converted theory into an instrumentality for manufacturing consent. [..] ###