8th Wonderland

I've seen the trailer for Cameron's Avatar, albeit not in 3D, and my initial impression is that the film may be impressive on a conceptual level (not least for the depiction of a militarised future reminiscent of Aliens), but perhaps lacking in its execution. Therefore I concur with the many bloggers who have complained about the character design resembling the dreaded Jar Jar Binks from the Star Wars universe.

I don't have much else to go on at this stage, and I'm also not particularly interested in following the Fanboy type arguments too far, so I've directed my attention elsewhere. I've come across 8th Wonderland, which is already starting to generate some positive advance notices (visit the accompanying "virtual" nation here). I regard the film as effecting a thematic displacement of the Darwinian model of evolution embodying adaptive fitness towards a greater emphasis instead on creativity, as per the vitalism of Henri Bergson and, perhaps more importantly, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's conception of the "noosphere".

Hence I foresee critical discussion devolving on the issue of whether the emergent noosphere depicted in the film is representative of a new "post national" stage of human evolution. One should remember in this context that nationalism is a discourse intended to heal the contingency associated with modernity (which is why it has been described by Benedict Anderson as equating to an "imagined community"). It is analogous to Walter Benjamin's urban archetypes, such as the detective, who attest to the power of consciousness to retain its synthesizing powers. In comparison this makes the hacker a dangerously ambiguous figure: on the one hand very creative and autonomous, in the manner of the detective who also steps back from the circumstances at hand through a sheer force of will and intellect. Of course the difference is that the hacker is ultimately less interested in rationality as a restorative agent for law and order, leading us to understand that anarchist movements always remain a possibility because self-organizing networks are an inherent feature of complex systems, including social systems.

Because I have yet to see the film, I can't judge the extent to which it acknowledges this fact as either a good or a bad thing. The former could exist anywhere on a continuum spanning from Rheingold's electronic homesteaders to Negri and Hardt's emergent "multitude", whilst the latter would dovetail with Jean Baudrillard. Judging by the capsule review I've pasted below and the representation of violence in the trailer, it is probably closer to a Baudrillardian dystopia insofar as it is [seemingly] not amenable to rational planning and democratic control by human beings. I haven't read Julian May's Galactic Mileu series so I can't cite it as a sci fi precedent for the themes of this movie. In any case, here are some details about 8th Wonderland:

They are of all nationalities, all professions and creeds. They’ve never met face to face but they share a common secret. Together they form a clandestine community based in 8th Wonderland, the planet’s first virtual country. Motivated by the same goal, they communicate daily to concoct strategies for counteracting the Machiavellian plans of the world’s capitalist societies and create a land on Earth where, at last, peace reigns. After disabling a project that might have started a war, 8th Wonderland finally attracts the attention of the global media and with it, that of anti-terrorist organizations. Risking the worst, the inhabitants of the synthetic nation elect to move ahead with plans to impose their laws on all the world’s leaders. A new era is beginning to emerge, even if it’s threatened buy the sudden intrusion of someone claiming to be the creator of 8th Wonderland.

Easily one of the most fascinating genre films of the last half-decade, 8TH WONDERLAND, by newcomers Nicolas Alberny and Jean Mach, is a triumph on every level. By imagining an alternate world that would no doubt have intrigued Jean Baudrillard, the French filmmakers offer a smart consideration of the place of new media in contemporary society. The undeniable political power of Web communities has never been so effectively presented in cinema. Though editorial commentary is the leitmotiv, Alberny and Mach dodge intellectual heavy-handedness by incorporating it into a gripping story of suspense, a conspiracy tale loaded with humour, tension and surprising twists and turns. This captivating trip across the Web culminates in a climax that matches that of Park Chan-wook’s OLDBOY in its impact. With a multitude of mini-stories woven into a massive narrative and a precise and original use of the split screen (the scenes occurring inside the 8th Wonderland site are a feast for the eyes), Alberny and Mach succeed where Zack Snyder failed in his transposition of the spirit of Alan Moore’s comics to the big screen. 8TH WONDERLAND may well be the film of its generation, for whom Facebook and Twitter are part of a daily existence split between the real and the virtual, one that demands justice and equality for those denied them, one that wants to see its utopian dreams at last realized.

—Simon Laperrière (translated by Rupert Bottenberg)

Cultural Studies & the Sociology of Culture

This is one of my all time favourite critical essays. It has inspired me so much ever since I first read it. I know that the sociology of culture has had little, if any, penetration into the blogosphere, which quickly becomes obvious as soon as anyone looks into the predominant meeting of Continental philosophy and avant garde music (what I've elsewhere called "cultural journalism"). It is an interesting exercise to compare such work to some of the "musicological" examples Wolff takes to task, if memory serves correctly, in the introduction she coauthors with Andrew Goodwin to the volume edited by Elizabeth Long, From Sociology to Cultural Studies. That introduction is a marvelous companion piece to the essay I've linked to here. Afterall, criticism is fairly pointless unless it offers a constructive alternative.

I just figure, in the same spirit, that there should always be room for a few [more] contrarian bloggers. Given this blog's iconography of the mummified space jockey, it should be obvious that in principle I don't really have much of a problem with banishment to the outer limits. Maybe it is sometimes possible from this position to enjoy a greater latitude to be exploratory and critical than those constrained by the discourses Wolff describes.

Shaviro on Birbeck: "what happened to political economy?"

Derridata, in case you're still putting together a response to Mark Fisher, thought I'd mention this assessment of the conference by Steve Shaviro (not sure if you've already read it). This is one of those times when I find myself really enjoying Shaviro's work, as he proves again that he is one of those rare persons who knows the work of contemporary Continental philosophers really well, without needing to always throw in his lot with them (unlike the hermetic exegesis one often finds in the Continental blogosphere), letalone the positivism Fisher tried to identify as an inadequate alternative.

Reading Shaviro's report, it struck me that Badiou must really be digging himself into a hole when Ken Wark can call him out on a critical point, and sound convincing too!!! Kudos to Shaviro for such a balanced report of this event, and it's always refreshing too to see a bit of doubt expressed about Zizek. I still haven't recovered from that Eurocentric garbage Zizek wrote a few years back claiming that Taoism and Buddhism are emerging as the dominant ideologies of "virtual capitalism". Adopting his usual slapdash approach, which in this instance involved some off the cuff remarks about Star Wars, no appeal was made to any evidence taken from actual Buddhist scriptures or literature such as Amata (the subject of one of my previous posts). Therefore no rational person could read that book, or study the Thai public discourse surrounding it, and conclude [with Zizek] that Buddhist ethics merely encourages a withdrawal into the self as an escape from material reality. Anyone wanting to understand cultural exchanges between East and West, would be better served by studying civilizational complexes (Shmuel N. Eisenstadt), Robert Bellah, "multiple modernities", Aihwa Ong, please anything really, other than Zizek....

This reference to Zizek reminds me of the felicity of the phrase Shaviro uses in a critical manner, "voluntarism". The danger here of course is that voluntarism cannot be corroborated, or "grounded", if you prefer, with the result that philosophy merely becomes a self legislating activity. So once again this conference provides much evidence of the "noosphere" tendencies I have earlier remarked upon on this blog, albeit presented in the guise of "radicalism".

From legislators to interpreters......

And here is a wonderful supplement to my previous post regarding the changing contexts of academic labour:

"Zygmunt Bauman’s discussion of the rise and decline of the “legislator intellectual” is of crucial importance here. Bauman connects the value of “culture” to the role of intellectuals in legitimating the power of the early modern and modern nation state. The value of culture, the notion that to be fully human meant to be cultured or cultivated, was tied to the way in which the emergence of the modern state involved the replacement of traditional forms of solidarity with centralized social control. It was in this context of the rise of the nation state that Bauman locates the legislator intellectual. Intellectuals, as guardians of “culture,” played a crucial role in legitimizing these new forms of social control and political-cultural identity. Bauman writes: “The intellectual ideology of culture was launched as a militant, uncompromising and self-confident manifesto of universally binding principles of social organization and individual conduct.” The legislator intellectual played a role in defining and asserting the superiority of the national culture, and thereby in legitimizing the power of the nation state. Bauman argues, however, that this role of the legislator intellectual has declined as national culture has been replaced by the market as the central ordering principle of modern societies. “More and more,” he argues, “the culture of consumer society was subordinated to the function of producing and reproducing skilful and eager consumers, rather than obedient and willing subjects to the state.” In consumerism, normative regulation through the nation state is replaced with seduction through the market and the commodity spectacle.
In this context, intellectuals are no longer looked to as “legislators” of cultural values. Instead, they become “interpreters”: “from the perspective of the present-day intellectuals, culture does not appear as something to be ‘made’ or ‘remade’ as an object for practice; it is indeed a reality in its own right and beyond control, an object for study, something to be mastered only cognitively, as a meaning, and not practically, as a task.” The task of creating culture has shifted from intellectuals to the media and other purveyors of mass entertainment and mass consumption. This context provides little rationale for the maintenance of the university apart from the market as a source of high-cultural values.
However, Bauman’s analysis of the importance of the rise of consumer society needs to be supplemented with an account of the relationship of intellectuals to global politics....."

Ghosts in the academic writing machine?

I immediately suspected that Latour would have cited Gabriel Tarde as a precursor to actor network theory. So one needs to be extremely careful about where the critiques of cosmopolitanism in Schillmeier's article could end up taking you.

Derrida also wrote a slim volume on cosmopolitanism (a popular term in social theory that has been favourably mentioned previously on this blog), so I must check the bibliography of said article, and once I get hold of it, trace other elective affinities as well.

It's the sort of conversation that I believe could and, moreover, should, be taking place more generally in Continental philosophy circles as well (including the blogosphere), but it does not seem to be. From what I've seen lately on blogs, the greater focus there is on (the usual, hermetically closed off, internal conversations) regarding subjects such as whether Deleuze's philosophical system presupposes a biological metaphysics.

Fine, do a rigorous scholarly philosophical reading in such terms, but even if you disagree with the conception of philosophy as "underlabourer" for the social sciences, why not still attempt to foster as well a more expansive public debate, say along the lines of the Steve Fuller references I've also listed here? Why just address another philosopher and not the representative of another discipline or some other greater public interest/representative? By the same token, why just append some contemporary philosopher to the latest movie, dubstep album etc, as per usual in the Continental philosophy blogosphere, when you are not really logically obliged to stand behind your words by being made answerable to the subject in question? How high, really, are the stakes in those kinds of "analysis" anyway? [once they become ends in themselves]

I say this because I can remember derridata voicing some strong critiques years ago of a fellow philosophy postgrad who was deep in the throes of a doctorate: "it should be finished soon...it's practically writing itself". Precisely my point: the student becomes a mere ghost in an academic writing machine, thanks to the autonomy of the discourses in question. It's almost like a game.

I know that someone such as Geoffrey Bennington would argue that my line of reasoning presupposes "already knowing what politics is", so it can only amount to something like "journalism". But surely this pro forma response is itself nonsense? For how could a philosopher already know what form the conversations would take until they had made the leap of faith and attempted to dialogue with the other? Bennington writes commentaries (or exegesis if you prefer), but he also teaches in an institutional setting (a university), where surely he does not believe that such a formal setting, by virtue of its very existence, closes off all possibilities for dialogue? It's hard to see how he could justify his existence as a [tenured] philosopher if he believed otherwise. So why wouldn't the same principle apply in other formal (or even less formal) settings, albeit outside of the academic circuit, where Bennington could also test his philosophical propositions?

I don't mean to imply in every case this requires participating in something like a science court. It could be as simple as posting some thoughts to a blog [outside one's immediate area of expertise] that addresses important scientific debates with clear public ramifications, such as, for example, Telic Thoughts.

It's one thing then to argue that the death of the author thesis absolves the academic philosopher of personal responsibility, and that the upside of this is that your work will be taken up subsequently in all sorts of other contexts you cannot personally control (so writing is like a message in a bottle). Changing metaphors, it's another thing though to acknowledge that the apple does not usually fall very far from the tree, which becomes immediately obvious when one notes the similarities between academic practice and what goes on in the Continental philosophy noosphere. The only difference I can see is a greater willingness by the latter to apply the canon to popular culture, but with the publication of titles such as The Matrix and Philosophy, even that gap may be rapidly narrowing. How about a reflexive inquiry then to try to explain why this might be the case? I'm pretty sure though that thinkers such as Zizek would only be pleased with these developments, as he has cannily played both sides all along. Of course, I'm not claiming that none of this kind of work can be of any value, I'm simply wondering why so often it seems in some circles to be "all there is".

And so to some articles I hope to acquaint myself with before making any further attempts to try to fill in the gaps.....

The Social, Cosmopolitanism & Beyond Michael Schillmeier

History of the Human Sciences 2009;22 87-109
http://hhs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/22/2/87?etoc

History of the Human Sciences 2009;22 87-109
http://hhs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/22/2/87?etoc

Review symposium: Steve Fuller's The New Sociological Imagination: introduction: Steve Fuller, The New Sociological Imagination. London: Sage Publications, 2006. 240 pp

Zaheer Baber

History of the Human Sciences 2009;22 110-114
http://hhs.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/22/2/110?etoc

Fuller's project of humanity: social sciences or sociobiology?: Steve Fuller, The New Sociological Imagination. London: Sage Publications, 2006

Francis Remedios

History of the Human Sciences 2009;22 115-120
http://hhs.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/22/2/115?etoc

The fabrication of man: Steve Fuller, The New Sociological Imagination. London: Sage Publications, 2006

Peter Baehr

History of the Human Sciences 2009;22 121-127
http://hhs.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/22/2/121?etoc

Disenchantment of the world and the devaluation of human species: Steve Fuller, The New Sociological Imagination. London: Sage Publications, 2006

Chai Choon-Lee

History of the Human Sciences 2009;22 128-132
http://hhs.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/22/2/128?etoc

Fuller's nostalgic imagination: Steve Fuller, The New Sociological Imagination. London: Sage Publications, 2006

Christopher Kevill

History of the Human Sciences 2009;22 133-137
http://hhs.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/22/2/133?etoc

In search of sociological foundations for the project of humanity: Steve Fuller, The New Sociological Imagination. London: Sage Publications, 2006

Steve Fuller

History of the Human Sciences 2009;22 138-145
http://hhs.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/22/2/138?etoc

Ghosts in the Machine: Publication Planning in the Medical Sciences
Sergio Sismondo
Social Studies of Science 2009;39 171-198http://sss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/39/2/171?etoc

Cold weather tourism

Before I went on holiday, I made brief reference to the topic of "extreme tourism". There I hinted at a possible rapprochement between the society as "camp" or "ballardian" and more empirically robust accounts of such zones in the academic field of tourist studies. I'm greatly impressed by what I've seen so far in the field of nissology ("Island Studies") as a possible suitable candidate. Particularly noteworthy is the series of related questions posed in relation to "extreme tourism", with a focus here on "cold weather tourists".

If these are partly methodological issues, then I see Island Studies as a vehicle for escaping the traps found in the kind of "cultural theory" that dominates the blogosphere (which I prefer to call the noosphere in this case), and, to a lesser extent, cultural studies in its more formal academic settings. I've previously mentioned how the "fish scale model of omniscience" provides a ready explanation for the ubiquity of Continental philosophy in the "noosphere". If the problem there is an inflated, abstract, grand mode of theorising, at the other end of the scale, difficulties can accrue where large scale empirical verification requires greater team project work. What this can mean in practice is that the team of researchers can more easily become beholden to the wishes of their sponsors, thereby denuding the work of critical content. In other words, it becomes a question of economies of scale.

The appeal of so-called "middle range" theorising lies in navigating between these extremes. Given my [oft stated] reservations about actor network theory, I am unhappy whenever I encounter attempts to frame it as a form of middle range theory. However, I believe there is still something good about such conversations taking place, as they at least imply a degree of reflexivity on the part of the authors about what and how they are doing something, and the kinds of problems that might arise as a result. Again, this characteristic is largely absent in the noosphere, which is why I refer to that method repeatedly in this blog in terms of its being "an avant garde formalism". While not couched in exactly these terms, a very good explanation of middle range theory, reflexivity, descriptive and normative critique, can be found here, which teases out the full implications of the issues I'm trying to raise. 

An example of the kind of work that interests me is using reflexivity in conjunction with the "key questions" raised in nissology in relation to "cold weather tourism" (as per the above link). So rather than just do a typical noosphere style "mash up" of, say, Fred Jameson and Slavoj Zizek, this alternative method offers the promise of elucidating the reflexivity of authors such as Kim Stanley Robinson. For example, how may a text such as Antarctica be construed as a reflexive commentary on the "key questions" raised by nissologists when discussing "cold weather tourism"?

What may start to emerge is a sense of reflexivity where this means a fluid conversation between theory and empirical work (and one should remember that Robinson heavily researches the subject matter of all of his novels to the fullest extent possible, in addition to foregrounding how the context is mediated by particular, and often conflicting, world views).  Perhaps a nissologist could justifiably apply said method to other texts as well, such as Herzog's documentary Encounters at the End of the World? To convince me otherwise, you would have to explain in detailed methodological terms why it was not possible in principle (and I would take a lot of convincing).

I also see it as an interesting way of expanding "key question" number 3 in the study of "extreme tourism". Consider then the compatibility with Fred Jameson's discussion of the connotations of "extreme cold" on page 268 of his Archaeologies of the Future, where he notes how the loss of physical autonomy in a harsh environment equates also to a loss of psychic autonomy. This makes the layers of insulation a cold environment necessitates stand in contrast to the tropics, where heat:

 "...is conveyed as a kind of dissolution of the body into the outside world, a loss of that clean separation from clothes and external objects that gives you your autonomy and allows you to move about freely...." 

Or so it would seem...afterall, maybe it is wrong to say something opposite is at stake here, so that the cold environment would necessarily consolidate a more autonomous, survivalist personality. In situations such as these, what could scandalize the typology is that section of Cyclonopedia, which discusses "openness" and the "outside". It is seemingly the act of resistance, the attempt at maintaining autonomy, that can make for a strange attractor for those forces that may affect a transformation into something else. Think here of that quintessential "body horror" film, John Carpenter's The Thing, and note then how Jameson's terms such as "dissolution" can be equally applicable in the "cold weather" setting. However, I don't see this as troubling the nissology paradigm, as "question 3" is posed as an open question, and must be tested and contextualized in relation to the other listed key questions. Any problem in this instance would seem to relate more to Jameson than nissology per se, which is more equally balanced [than Jameson] in terms of receptiveness to empirical, case by case studies.

The Continental Philosophy Blogosphere: Noosphere or Public Sphere?

I'm deep in the throes of editing a paper for an academic economics journal, so my thoughts here will have to be impressionistic and require future unpacking. But I'm in a playful mood and need to unwind for a moment. Suffice to say, I'm struck of late by the serial effect of so much of what passes for critical analysis in the blogosphere: take the latest Continental philosopher who refers to "capital", and then apply said reading method to the film, dubstep album etc of your choice. In my earlier "Crash" post I touched on a few characteristics of the kind of "interpretive community" that may have generated these tendencies, and I've wondered ever since if they could bear closer examination in terms of a sociology of knowledge, or the perspective I'm more familiar with, social epistemology.

The questions asked would need to be reflexive ones about why these people blog, which should ideally help to elucidate any commonalities between them. It would also have to be determined why this reading method has proliferated to the point where it seems to be the preferred option when it comes to sociocultural theory in the blogosphere. A cynic might argue that it has to do with Donald Campbell's infamous "fish scale model of omniscience", where those who conduct the least amount of empirical research are particularly suited to the mobile conditions of a network society. When such individuals have tenureship, one can expect to find them disproportionately represented at international conferences. When there is no tenureship, cyberspace substitutes as the preferred space for generating network connectivity. Crosscutting both situations, however, is the tendency for depth of knowledge to explode in direct proportion to interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary mobility.

What typologies could potentially be used to draw the relevant distinctions? As I see it, there are essentially 3 choices. Surprisingly, in a moment of rare lucidity, Slavoj Zizek has managed to sketch 2 of these, which could serve as heuristic devices when investigating the blogosphere of Continental philosophy. In his words:

If I understand this point of a one-mind-entity correctly, then it's a version of cyberspace I didn't mention. I first of all mentioned the deconstructionist version of cyberspace which is this post-Cartesian one: Each of us can play with his/her identities and so forth. This is the feminist, deconstructionist, Foucaultian version. But as you probably know there is another, let's call it the New Age school of cyberspace-ideology. It is this neo-Jungian idea that we live in an age of mechanistic, false individualism and that we are now on the threshold of a new mutation...
...the Noosphere...
Slavoj Zizek: Yes, that's precisely the idea. We all share one collective mind.

The first alternative is clear enough, but I'm wondering if the second has any explanatory power when it comes to understanding the curious phenomenon in which capitalism is portrayed as increasingly emancipated from human agency, and that it is this inherent tendency that might explain its current dysfunction? I suspect the answer would be "yes", insofar as the Continental response, for all of its rhetorical appeal to complexity, merely complements the widespread disenchantment with human subjectivity as the driver of change on the contemporay scene. We are typically presented with portrayals of the "alien" nature of capital, which affords the Continental commentariat the luxury of just in effect sitting back and anticipating how the disaster will play itself out. Only at that point may the rising crescendo of voices proclaim the emergence of a "new mutation"; in Deleuzian terms, for example, something like "a non facialised individual", and/or a realisation of the promise of "the multitude" (Hardt & Negri). If these preliminary speculations are amenable to further analysis, then their provenance might also be traced back even further.

For example, here is how the social epistemologist Steve Fuller interprets the opportunism of the Continental movement [sic]:

Intellectual pathologies of our times I: Continental philosophy

Generally speaking, today’s stereotype of the intellectual is the continental philosopher – a quasi-literary, somewhat deep figure of French or German origin. The origin of this image is normally traced the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, who regarded himself as a ‘universal intellectual’, very much on the model of an Enlightenment figure like Voltaire. However, this image came under serious reconstruction after the disappointments of the student revolts in the 1960s. At this point Michel Foucault emerges as a downsized and more academicised version of the Sartrean intellectual. Here we shall explore how continental philosophy provides intellectual rationalisation for political impotence that has spread to cover a wide range of movements, including feminism.

The third alternative is one which I am more familiar and sympathetic with. What needs to be determined here is the extent to which the blogosphere can be modelled on a public sphere. Unlike the Continentals, it is a perspective less preoccupied with the complexities of "the virtual", than the development of new concepts and their practical, collective applications, such as "information war". A key figure here is Frank Webster, who is one of the most renowned, sociologically influenced, critics of the idea of "the information society". A further advantage of his work is that it spares one from the option of having to endure the crude polemicism that oftentimes features in exchanges between the Continental blogosphere and its opponents. Like Fuller then, Webster has developed a detailed system of thought which offers the promise of constructive criticism when engaging with the mediation of ICTs by capitalist interests.

I did once come across a superb Adorno quote from Minima Moralia that speaks to the sense of how the historical moment can give the tenured Continental philosopher an innate sense that they are a fraud (which I'll have to track down again). It's particularly frightening when this sense of powerlessness is compensated for by the overzealous marking of students' work. The image which came to my mind was of some of the younger dons, who are more likely to perceive students as future competition, thereby increasing a feeling of insecurity, as resembling Jack Torrance in The Shining; except in the philosopher's case the university substitutes for the Overlook Hotel. In each scenario, the place where they toil merely teases out the innate destructive capacities by giving them a space for their free reign. Word counts and body counts hence become indistinguishable as writing transmutes into a form of serial violence repeated ad infinitum (Mark Seltzer style)........

But rather than end on such a pessimistic note, I can at least report that my preliminary research on the noosphere has yielded an interesting science fiction find: the anime, intriguingly titled, in light of my last remarks, Serial Experiments Lain. I hope I can track it down some time.

Oh yes, and I can't forget about some other pertinent observations concerning the death of libertarianism at this point in our economic history. It would follow that seasteading is merely a retreat into degenerate utopia once the signs of market failure have become too obvious to ignore (and in the case of the seasteaders, too obvious to deal with).