----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
dear all
realizing the discussion is invited to move on (by Adam's post today), I still
hope Oron will follow up his initial postings and perhaps expand on the notions
of regenerative biology
and designing life that he brought here. Am not sure how they relate to "deep
time", as Adam suggests, and I am also not convinced that we can draw easy
parallels between the first
and second weeks' subject matters.....
>
What's intriguing to me is how much the conversation is an elaboration of last
week's developing discussion on urbanization [Adam]
>
Could you refine how you see 'urban data politics' related to the modes and
"modalizations" of life, as Manchev may imply that side of
biology/biotechnology -- introduced by Oron or projected by the quasi-critical
designs of bioartists who investigate growing cultures or tinkering with cells,
at the genetic level -- when critiquing the politics of plasticity. For
those who were interested in my reference to Boyan Manchev's writings but could
not track the german text, i found an english translation from a Slovene
translation ("Odpor plesa", Maska 25 [2010], pp. 9-19), and cite a paragraph
from the opening pages of that text on modes of life:
<
Forms of Life as commodities
The society of the spectacle undoubtedly complies with technology-based,
post-industrial capitalism, its logic of production as well as the modern logic
of representation: it is the outcome of hyper-technologization and
functionalization, codifying life and prescribing processes of subjectivation,
which are nothing less than forms of subjugation. The new model up for debate,
as it surpasses the model of developed modernity, introduces a completely new
commodity to the game: the forms of life itself. In reference to Debord’s
definition of the society of the spectacle, one could define this new model as
“capital accumulated to the point that it becomes a form of life”.
But first, in what sense can the term ‘life forms’ be used? The term has the
fundamental task of introducing a different notion of life, which implies that
there is no essentially determined life, only life forms, or rather modes of
life: Life is the modalization of life...
Traditional capitalism was based on the notion of growth: Working more
efficiently and producing more meant an increase and expansion of leisure time
for autonomous life beyond commerce, thus creating more space for forms of life
that do not conform to the rules of any market. The distinct quality of the new
model, in contrast, lies in the attempt to absorb the subject’s modern autonomy
by taking over the sphere of privacy. Philosophically speaking, this means
taking over the sphere of possible experimentation with different modes of
subjectivation, life and alternative human interaction, in short, the sphere
that is the actual site of ‘human existence’.
The new model thus takes over the ‘un-producible’, totalizing the range of the
market....
>
regards
Johannes Birringer
dap
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