Hi Brey,
Thank you for writing. I think there are so many terms - deconstruction is
another, phenomenology, critical <x>, and so forth - where the meaning is
up for grabs. When I look at Deleuze and Guattari today for example, I get
lost in what could only be (I think) metaphoricity itself. It's what makes
semantics so fascinating and so irritating at the same time. ...
Best, Alan
On Tue, Feb 13, 2024 at 2:00 PM Brey Tucker via NetBehaviour <
netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org> wrote:
> Alan,
>
> Quite on the contrary, I think I would enjoy your class very much. Seeing
> the full context of your definition for postmodernism was fascinating and I
> don't doubt it was a shared concept among a good contingent of
> intellectuals. I really liked :
>
>> Semiotic emissions of symbols which appear sourceless and undirected
>> (Disneyland effect).
>>
>
> My, now quite meta, criticism was just that the word "postmodernism" is
> awash with many definitions and contexts in what I'll jokingly refer to as
> our "modern" times. Even modern-architecture is starting to fray as a
> concrete definition.
>
> I also teach and write, (usually techno babble) to cyberpunks, architects
> and engineers, "definitioning" of terms is a verb I often use to ensure the
> act of word grounding occurs in the realms of intellectual discourse. It's
> a practice that comes from writing code where word interpretation quickly
> leads to the mind-body problem and bugs.
>
> Re:apology
> I'm sorry to hear you're having rough times. I hope this too shall pass.
>
> Cheers,
> Brey
>
>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2024 12:42:14 -0800
>> From: Brey Tucker <brey.tuc...@gmail.com>
>> To: netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org
>> Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Leonardo vs. Machiavelli: The Mediocrity
>> of Evil and a New Saint Genevieve (Brey Tucker)
>> Message-ID:
>> <CAOFRKZ1Vb00Jms4VVrU21g7CRAPCqBwN2Y07qx9vF=
>> mpoce...@mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> Greetings,
>>
>> I just wanted to follow up on Alan's criticism of the word use of
>> "postmodernism", which I found to be even more of a misuse of the word
>> than
>> the more obvious use in Max Herman's piece. Semantic shifts are
>> unavoidable
>> but just in case it's not widely experienced information...
>> Postmodernism's
>> word use definitively started in art, as a way to define the departure
>> from
>> French Impressionism by John Watkins Chapman back in 1870. Its most
>> agreeable definitions are in painting and architecture.
>>
>> Intellectually, in reference to society, I would argue that Max Herman's
>> use is still more applicable than South American favelas as the context of
>> the piece was centered on "modernity", especially with its identity in
>> European culture and democracy, etc. being much closer to the
>> original publication of Arnold J. Tynbee's 1939 essay that stated, "Our
>> own
>> Post-Modern Age has been inaugurated by the general war of 1914-1918".
>>
>> I would argue any use of the word "postmodern" or such variation of
>> "modernity" would require time to define its context as the word use is
>> extremely varied now across topics such as hyperreality, simulacrum and
>> objective reality. I quite enjoyed the way Max took the time to define it
>> and use it, albeit a departure from how I generally conjure postmodernism
>> in my mind.
>>
>> Alan, you're rich with great ideas and interesting conversation but I
>> would
>> have expected more of a criticism defending Machiavelli's positive
>> contributions to society with the need for acceptance of cruel realities
>> than this niche use of a common word.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Brey
>> --
>> >
>> > Message: 2
>> > Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2024 12:58:07 -0500
>> > From: Alan Sondheim <sondh...@gmail.com>
>> > To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity
>> > <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>
>> > Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Leonardo vs. Machiavelli: The Mediocrity
>> > of Evil and a New Saint Genevieve
>> > Message-ID:
>> > <CAO=
>> > pi2brr4caymwbe6dskawxhuleabmax87yvkwxboqxcv7...@mail.gmail.com>
>> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>> >
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > Just want to point out I've taught and published and lectured on
>> > postmodernism, and videos I co-created with Dawja Burris dealt with the
>> > subject in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez and I have no idea how you're using
>> > the word or attacking it - it wasn't facetious, it was concerned among
>> > other things, with informal economies and South America favelas
>> etc.It's a
>> > complex socio-economic subject and its effects cover issues such as
>> > migration, homelessness, around the world. I just don't think you've
>> read
>> > deeply into the subject; for example scientific methodology was an
>> integral
>> > part of the discussion.
>> >
>> > - Best, Alan
>> >
>>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2024 16:46:55 -0500
>> From: Alan Sondheim <sondh...@gmail.com>
>> To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity
>> <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>
>> Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Leonardo vs. Machiavelli: The Mediocrity
>> of Evil and a New Saint Genevieve (Brey Tucker)
>> Message-ID:
>> <CAO=pi2B1djAAyEjYCvvw0xntJxpDF=40X=
>> sr4trgmkyccsh...@mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> Hi Brey,
>>
>> I'm sorry you found it a misuse. You'll find references to Toynbee and
>> social movements; I don't have the references here at this point, but some
>> were from Latin America. It was used widely to indicate social movements
>> and informal economies as well as cultural transformations. For you there
>> are agreeable definitions, they aren't for me. When I taught postmodernism
>> (and I'm sure you'd find the course a horror) we focused on art, yes - I
>> taught in art depts. - but the wider social movements were critical. The
>> "word use" started in a lot of different disciplines, I don't know what an
>> "agreeable definition" is - perhaps agreeable for you, perhaps we should
>> take a vote? In any case, I found Max Herman's piece dismissive and
>> conservative in a way that for me, and for the writers I was teaching,
>> would have been problematic. I did edit an issue of Art Papers way back
>> then (Art/crit mag from Atlanta still going strong) on Postmodernism,
>> which
>> certainly went way beyond art per se; it might be available somewhere. If
>> you find I'm misusing the word, I'll defer to you at this point. I do
>> remember using Leotard among other theorists btw at the time - I might be
>> able to dig out the essay or biblio.
>>
>> Alan
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 3
>> Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2024 16:59:17 -0500
>> From: Alan Sondheim <sondh...@gmail.com>
>> To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity
>> <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>, NetBehaviour for
>> networked
>> distributed creativity <netbehavi...@netbehaviour.org>
>> Subject: [NetBehaviour] Pomo
>> Message-ID:
>> <CAO=
>> pi2d7ygw5txxr9zcjt+3rxfl6o4aoqpiasozxbkbfvk0...@mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> For what it's worth, I found the following, which was used in courses and
>> talks I was giving on the subject way back then. I don't want to defend it
>> now; it's way out of date. Thanks, Alan
>>
>> ostmodern Checklist
>>
>>
>> (I used this for teaching - and still use versions of it; it's only an
>> outline but at least provides a basis for discussion - Alan)
>>
>>
>> >From modernity to postmodernity, the following processes occur, primarily
>> within post-industrial societies:
>>
>>
>> Transformation of society from industrial to service to information econ-
>> omy.
>>
>> Transformation from analog to digital processing technologies.
>>
>> Transformation from knowledge to knowledge management, and from knowledge
>> management to the articulation of fragmentary flows of information.
>>
>> Exponential growth of knowledge and emergence of the knowledge industry.
>>
>> Increased ad hoc attitudes towards labor, coupled with vocational disin-
>> vestment (i.e. flexiwork).
>>
>> Transformation from late capitalism to ad hoc transnational managerial
>> capitalism and bricolage entrepreneurialism in post-industrial nations.
>>
>> Weakening of the nation state and growth of bricolage governance (local
>> mafias).
>>
>> Replacement of essentialisms by constructivisms, combined with the hard-
>> ening of essentialist positions as a rearguard action (i.e. backlash to
>> the woman's movement).
>>
>> Breakdown of materialist/idealist distinctions.
>>
>> Increasingly reified ethnicities, political consciousness and symbolic
>> capital stressing 'traditional' geographic boundaries (homelands), at
>> times coupled with anti-development attitudes.
>>
>> Increased breakdown and reification of traditional models of public and
>> private (personal) relationships (sexual, civic, social, institutional).
>>
>> Proliferation of entertainment forms tending towards technological ef-
>> fect (representations, media, programming) and distribution channels re-
>> sulting in the breakdown of network hegemonies (Internet diffused gov-
>> ernance for example).
>>
>> Proliferation of information flows into the private spaces such as the
>> home, the body, etc.
>>
>> Semiotic transformations from inscriptive (hardened, maintained, stable)
>> processes to fissuring (weakened, stuttering, pre-oedipal/symbolic, de-
>> stabilized) and fissuring regimes.
>>
>> Likewise from classical matter (stabilized signifier/sememe demarcations)
>> to non-classical matter (problematic signifiers, significations).
>>
>> Increased leakage of the signifier (excesses, supplement).
>>
>> Increasing jostling of signifying regimes within information flows.
>>
>> Increased incommensurabilities, including languages, teleologies, and
>> scripts.
>>
>> Problematizing of space-time and stable categorizations.
>>
>> Development of mathematics of non-classical spaces (monster curves, frac-
>> tals, catastrophe theory, chaos theory, eccentric or abject spaces).
>>
>> Mathematico-physical inclusion of disorder.
>>
>> Development of "intermaths" (massive parallel processes (Bailey)), with a
>> tendency towards discrete, computational, digital, mathematical develop-
>> ment (four-color theorem, reliance on the computer, artificial life).
>>
>> Endocolonization everywhere, coupled with the manufacturing of romanti-
>> cisms (not only among minority ethnicities but also among the left - i.e.
>> the "radical" effect of Wired magazine).
>>
>> Increased gaps between richer and poorer, in terms of both economic and
>> cultural/informational capital.
>>
>> Emergence of subcultural-noise cultural phenomena, simultaneously using
>> micro-technologies (pirate radio) and abjuring technology altogether.
>>
>> Ecological destabilizations and managerial or fundamentalist responses.
>>
>> Intensification of apocalyptic and survivalist subcultures.
>>
>> Increasing rhetorical/idiolectical emissions and distorted communica-
>> tions.
>>
>> Increased problematic or property in general (including the technology of
>> reproduction, birthing; intellectual property; farmlands).
>>
>> Increased development of _discursive fields_ and their receptors, and
>> their interpenetrations (hypertext, punk rock).
>>
>> Simultaneously totalization of universal (computational) languages and
>> functional idiolectical autonomies, the commodification of idiolects
>> (rants, serial murders, dualities).
>>
>> A = A (Shelling's identity, totality) replaced by 0 = {X: x not-= x} (the
>> null set as equivalent to the set of those x not equal to themselves -
>> displacement and slippage).
>>
>> Semiotic emissions of symbols which appear sourceless and undirected
>> (Disneyland effect).
>>
>> Stabilized "rigid" objects replaced by part-objects, incompletions,
>> fragments.
>>
>> Transformation from cultural hegemonies taken for granted (with their
>> associated margins) to competitive multiculturalisms within hegemonic
>> regimes.
>>
>> Advent of microelectronics expanding the tacit environment of the body,
>> tending towards full (seamless) virtual realities.
>>
>> Seamless virtual realities as the current _horizon_ of the technological
>> subject.
>>
>> Destabilization of world economies coupled with exponential population
>> growth.
>>
>> Increased reduction of DNA variability, increased toxicity of the planet.
>>
>> Massive plant and animal extinctions.
>>
>> Deep pollution of local and usually urban environments.
>>
>> Increased "natural" catastrophies as the result of human interference
>> (Mississippi flooding).
>>
>> Proliferation of shack cities (favellas, colonias) without sewage, water,
>> electric, and the growth of world-wide shack cultures.
>>
>> Emancipation increasingly tied to communication and communicative strat-
>> egies - including weapons and weapon technology as media - the void (of
>> power, territory, language) becomes integral to the emancipated society
>> which is cast adrift.
>>
>> World-wide growth of the Internet, including dark-net domains.
>>
>> Tendency towards "technology with a human face" by the development and
>> proliferation of increasingly higher-level languages - tendency towards
>> cyborg-regimes.
>>
>> Elimination of _master narratives,_ replaced by situational micro-narra-
>> tives (Lyotard).
>>
>> Backlashing through an insistence on non-transcendentalist ethics among
>> tight subgroups (survivalists, fundamentalists) coupled with a freezing of
>> inscriptions (reliance on biblical word).
>>
>> Confluence of genders, transgressive sexualities operating within an
>> _engendered field._
>>
>> Increased problematizing of gender within queer/theory/feminist debates.
>>
>> Institutionalized transgressions, abjections.
>>
>> However, circumscribed abjections and alienations replaced by irreducible
>> abjections.
>>
>> Traditional rites and rituals transformed into simulacra, combined with
>> the exhaustion of tradition (interior horizons of tradition, and _tradi-
>> tion_ replaced by _traditions_).
>>
>> Growth of technological vulnerabilities and parasitologies (manufacture of
>> illegal domain names on the Net, hacking, cracking, pirate radio and
>> television, phone phreaking, etc.).
>>
>> Art replaced by techne, and an exhaustion of traditional artistic/cultural
>> notions of progress and development.
>>
>> Questioning of historic, geographic, anthropological methodologies and the
>> emergence of self-reflexive discourses (Mike Davis, Michael Taussig).
>>
>> Increased serialities (manufactured "inauthentic" relations beneath and
>> within the sign of capital).
>>
>> Increased cultural tourisms, relativisms, equivalences, beneath and within
>> the same.
>>
>> Increased splitting of academic fields, discourses, languages.
>>
>> Commercialization of the university, alliance of business and education -
>> i.e. _the business of education,_ _education of business._
>>
>> The simulacra of desire's liberation and the potential of infinite choice.
>>
>> Replacement of the spectacle by the simulacrum (no longer strings to pull)
>> (Baudrillard).
>>
>> Replacement of the body by the cyborg-body, of the symbolic by the imag-
>> inary masquerading as the symbolic, of the real by the symbolic.
>>
>> Replacement of the televised real by the symbolic-real, the real-symbolic
>> by the real.
>>
>> The perception of life as the _condition_ of the real (Mars-life, diffu-
>> sionist theories).
>>
>> --------------------
>>
>> A split among _postmodernisms_ themselves into _apartment postmodernism_
>> characterized by wealth, personal telecom terminals, and a mobile urban-
>> ism; and a _postmodern poor_ characterized by nomadicisms, urban inten-
>> sifications, information economies (de Soto), available tech/telecom
>> strategies, and_electric media_ (loudspeaker, telephone, telegraph).
>>
>> The development of _postmodern geographies_ which include nomadic and
>> telecom geographies (electromagnetic spectrum for example), body/gender
>> territories, and noise culture domains.
>>
>> The development of telecommunications as a _third space_ beyond the
>> _second space_ of time and the _first space_ of traditional geographies.
>>
>> Appearance of the _postmodern body,_ part-object, cyborgian, simulacra
>> appearing as _transgressive logics_ across and within its surfaces, the
>> new frontier corrupted by violent social/environmental decay (appearance
>> of immune deficiency and other diseases, increased medical technologies,
>> disappearance of the dead (Gulf "War," etc.).
>>
>> Entrepreneurship within the digital realm, realm of the body - the sub-
>> tending of the real.
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> The postmodern remains unnamed; what drives it, its drives, are unnamed.
>> Names reproduce within the modern; their semantics are Kripkian, held in
>> place as rigid designators true in all possible worlds (counterfactuals).
>> In the postmodern, rigidity is problematic, deconstructed; worlds them-
>> selves are fuzzy, interwoven, partial. Communication at the speed of light
>> (Virilio) brings time to a standstill.
>>
>> (Postmodern poor: Postmodernism occurs within a critical space, a space of
>> the catastrophic, emptied of symbolic legitimation and stability. Because
>> of capital flow, emigration, and struggles for individual survival and
>> autonomy, the space begins to "fill up," creating a cacophony of (infor-
>> mal) regimes competing for cultural and economic power, gaslines, water,
>> labor, prostitutions, and so forth. The resulting struggle produces com-
>> peting domains in which the symbolic itself is at stake; nothing, not even
>> communication, can be taken for granted. The zone is a chaotic accumula-
>> tion of intensities, condensed matter and languages, a dead or deligimi-
>> ized zone. The planet itself is becoming an accumulation of such zones.
>>
>> Poor postmodernism is life which skips modernism, and heavy industry,
>> jumping when possible to radio, television, Internet - just a short dis-
>> tance from the maquiladora poisoning the environment - the early post-
>> industrial revolution of electronic assembly plants, tourisms, and small
>> manufacturing. (But here too is a myth (and where is "here"?); unemploy-
>> ment also grows, scarcity and desertification increase; but here, too,
>> a telenovella...))
>> -------------- next part --------------
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>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 4
>> Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2024 01:23:00 -0500 (EST)
>> From: Alan Sondheim <sondh...@panix.com>
>> To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity
>> <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>
>> Subject: [NetBehaviour] apologies
>> Message-ID: <7d56768e-cf9b-b8ae-7639-2265a538b...@panix.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII
>>
>>
>>
>> apologies to everyone, it's been a very rough couple of days
>>
>> best, alan
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 5
>> Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2024 06:56:58 +0000
>> From: IJAD Dance <joum...@ijaddancecompany.com>
>> To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity
>> <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>
>> Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] apologies
>> Message-ID:
>> <bf4901b5-4a33-428b-8fe2-c27b44303...@ijaddancecompany.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> Sending you positive energy, and lots of kindness.
>> I hope rough times evaporate?..
>>
>> Joumana Mourad
>> Digital performance specialist
>> Artistic Director
>>
>> ?
>>
>> joum...@ijaddancecompany.com
>> IJAD Dance Company
>> Registered Charity: 1080776
>> www.ijaddancecompany.com
>> @IJADdance
>> Facebook: IJAD Dance Company page
>> Curator:http://www.openonlinetheatre.org
>>
>> Support IJAD
>> https://www.giveasyoulive.com/join/IJAD
>>
>> To join our mailing list please subscribe at:
>> https://ijaddancecompany.com/newsletters/
>>
>> > On 13 Feb 2024, at 06:23, Alan Sondheim via NetBehaviour <
>> netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > apologies to everyone, it's been a very rough couple of days
>> >
>> > best, alan
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > NetBehaviour mailing list
>> > NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org
>> > https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
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>>
>> Subject: Digest Footer
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