Goldsmiths: The Third Week
So, I’m shifting these MA updates from a fortnightly to a weekly format. The ideas and theories are coming thick and fast, and – frankly – I’m struggling to hold them in my mind. Here, blogging & note-taking are tools to pin down the vague and the evasive … forcing permanence, turning thought-processes into texts …
There’s a need to trace the trajectories of meaning, the superimposition of ideas, as you can mark the trail of a star in long exposure photography. Highlighting the unexpected links and parallels, I can hope to trace the genealogies of resonance // the ideas I find myself returning to (unconsciously), time after time … invariably, the things in which I’m most interested.
Strong with the photography metaphors, this week. As a loosely linked aside, here’s a photo of Deptford Town Hall, from my increasingly temperamental Nikon camera:
Ace. So, what happened in this, the third week (12/10 – 16/10)?
Digital Media – Critical Perspectives
The Information Society. What is it? Something substantive and meaningful, or a projection of our own hopes and desires? Is it “real”?
In the workshop, we watched an excerpt from weird 90s television documentary Visions of Heaven and Hell (1994), in which Tilda Swinton (doing her best impression of HAL 9000) drawls hypnotically about how technology will save us from ourselves. Her pseudo-millennial spiel is occasionally interrupted by interviews with BT “futurologist” Ian Pearson (still can’t believe he’s holding a crystal ball in his profile picture!), a disconcertingly young William Gibson, and a whole conveyor belt of boffins responsible for the smart houses and proto-iPhones of the big tech companies. At one point, there was a mock-up of an arm-mounted mobile phone in the background of one of the interviews, all moulded plastic and 90s aesthetics. Simultaneously hilariously outdated and deeply, deeply sinister.
Some stuff about the analogous role of genes and computer code, in the aftermath of Watson and Crick (1953), Dolly the Sheep (1996), and the Human Genome Project (2000/03). Information-as-data? Information-as-signal. A message without content, standing out against the noise. Think digital radio. Think SETI.
And the “information society”?
“The most common definition of the ‘information society’ lay emphasis upon spectacular technological innovation. The key idea is that breakthroughs in information processing, storage and transmission have led to the application of information technologies (IT) in virtually all corners of society. The major concern here is the astonishing reductions in the cost of computers, their prodigious increases in power, and their consequent application any and everywhere.”
- Frank Webster, Theories of the Information Society (2002)
Of course, there are all kinds of questions about what constitutes “spectacular” innovation, and the expectation gap between qualitative and quantitative societal change. Chris May is highly sceptical of Webster and his ilk, while David Lyon gives a perspective which attempts to steer between the “oooh, isn’t it shiny?” utopians and the more sceptical, constructivist grumps.
Information society as post-industrial or New Economy? In a general sense, all these different terms refer to the same broad bundle of phenomena – stuff like globalisation, networked organisations, “on demand”, and mass privatisation (though lists vary). The important thing is to realise that there’s a great deal of dispute as to whether or not these phenomena have come together in any meaningful way, and – if they have – whether it’s worth getting excited about.
21st Century American Fiction
As windows into the representation of 9/11 in American fiction, this week’s novels were Don Dellilo’s Falling Man and Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I thought the former – though far from perfect – was one of the better “realist” novels I’ve read recently, while the latter was trite, oddly-paced, and incredibly annoying.
In the seminar, we talked about the retreat to domesticity in the wake of 9/11, the tensile relationship between trauma and representation, whether 9/11 represented a ‘cultural break’ in American fiction and popular culture. There was also some stuff about feelings of vertigo (and how that links to trauma … cultural/societal or personal), attempts to master memory and the past through narrative, and the rhetorics of foreign policy. Spirited debate all round, with some interesting differences of opinion.
I may have started off taking this course as something of a wild card, but – although it’s a lot of work – I’m seriously enjoying it. Quite how I’m going to manage writing a Masters-level English essay remains to be seen …
Performing Media (Creative Media Lecture)
This was an additional event, built around a lecture by UCIrvine Professor Annette Schlichter. “Sounds of Gender: Voices Bodies and Gender Performativity”. It had some good bits, but was a little too vague and exploratory for my liking. There wasn’t enough of an argument or thesis to it – the subject matter was far too dispersed, with little to latch onto.
The framing of the lecture, however, was really useful – with the two convenors of my MA explaining the ways in which they’re attempting to integrate their theoretical, academic work with creative practice (photography and fiction, respectively). Creative interventions, cross-disciplinarity, hybridity. Donna Haraway barking like a dog. Once again, Goldsmiths proves the place to be.
Anthropology & Representation
Representation (in art and politics) and hierarchies (of authority, of taxonomy). Marked and unmarked terms, in which ‘man’ can stand for man vs. beast, and man vs. woman. Thinking about culture and society, what does it mean to ask “When did man come to Madagascar?” Human activity doesn’t necessarily constitute the existence of a rooted society (think trading posts vs. colonies). Perhaps the question should be “When did woman come to Madagascar?” With women come children, and the basis for a tenable society.
Shift in European conceptions of manners, from the relative laxity of medieval times (places perhaps not to vomit) to the highly codified etiquette and protocol of the Victorian era (trousers for table legs). We’re talking about a reformation (and structuring) of social behaviour, in which the Catholic calendar of saints is trampled underfoot by the march of the Protestant work ethic.
We end up with a situation where people who are of a higher rank have the freedom to be more relaxed about manners and protocol. A purity of informality, springing from one’s status as the embodiment of an abstract, or a role. So, you can only talk to the Queen about a very limited list of things (probably provided to you before the encounter), but the Queen can talk to you about whatever the fuck she wants. She probably won’t, but she could.
So then we have this notion of the Queen as a big man. Despite the fact she doesn’t really do anything, and her political role could be performed by a stuffed sturgeon, she represents the United Kingdom, stands in the place of “her” citizens. Like the big man made out of lots of little people on the cover of Hobbes’ Leviathan.
In a similar way, a Maori conception of the self will (normally) include certain items of property, family members, and livestock. If you want to insult a Maori, kick his pig.
In a legal sense, property is based on a logic of exclusion. The act of ownership excludes everyone equally. Owning a car means your brother can’t use it (without permission), but it also means that people in China can’t use it either. And the fact that both your hypothetical brother and, yes, the whole of China relate to this car in exactly the same way, well, that’s kind of weird.
Returning to the beginning, the notions of political representation and artistic representation are a lot more entangled than they initially appear. Examining speech and writing, there’s an interesting question about who is allowed (ethically?) to speak for another. Is there a difference between authentic (embedded) and credible (authoritative) voices?
Picking up on last week’s analysis of “The West” as a cultural term, we start to focus in on “The West” as a weasel word. Like the need to re-evaluate after catching a reflection of the photographer in the subject’s aviator shades, we need to zoom in on the way “The West” is used to obscure the act of representation, denying the existence of a subjective author, and naturalising the representation as “truth”. Who gets to decide what’s worth commenting on?
The West is that guy, you don’t know who he is, saying: “that’s weird.”
- David Graeber