Re: deep humanities initiative
The thread - on the way to dissolution - has been fascinating and I've not much to add except that the list of topics avoids almost every major achievement of the humanities (and therefore the reasons why governments, pressure groups etc like to attack them). Feminism arose in the 1970s not from STEM but from HASS (humanities arts and social science). STEM did not propel postcolonial and decolonial studies or critical race studies - if anything they lent their support to the lie of biological racism. I always presumed that STS science and tech studies changed its name from History and Philosophy of Science to broaden its field but also to escape its subservient role in med schools ectetera. But like critical digital studies it owes little to schools of computing (this comment might be out of order but it has in general been at the margins where computing meets HASS that the key work has been done). Critical disability studies didn't emerge from engineering schools tho it should have. HASS have changed the intellectual and ethical landscape of the 21st century at least as profoundly as STEM On the positive side, the scientists have been far better at communicating the arcana of quantum theory and DNA than in general we have been in communicating what HASS does to the general public (tip of the hat to Nick Mirzoeff for his efforts). Feminists and critical race scholars - Ta Nahisi Coates - have done huge things here; Rebecca Solnit out of environmental humanities - but no big statements for several decades of what we collectively are doing and why. That is exactly what a major initiative should be doing. Broad is more important than deep seán From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org on behalf of nettime-l-requ...@mail.kein.org Sent: Sunday, 25 April 2021 8:00 PM To: nettime-l@mail.kein.org Subject: nettime-l Digest, Vol 163, Issue 14 Send nettime-l mailing list submissions to nettime-l@mail.kein.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to nettime-l-requ...@mail.kein.org You can reach the person managing the list at nettime-l-ow...@mail.kein.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of nettime-l digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: deep humanities initiative (Ted Byfield) 2. Re: deep humanities initiative (d.gar...@new-tactical-research.co.uk) -- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2021 13:00:32 -0400 From: "Ted Byfield" To: Nettime-l Subject: Re: deep humanities initiative Message-ID: <5aba5930-4d5d-48c5-b323-c6fc37d98...@gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"; format=flowed I have a few thoughts: the first has to do with these one-off comments about "deep," the second has to do with the gender aspect of this thread in just five messages long. They're related, in a way. (1) DEEP Somewhere in my piles of scribbles I have some notes for an essay on the poetics of "deep." tl;dr: no, *do* forget web, pockets, and Europe. Those associations are fine, but there are better ways to approach this kind of thing than a couple of guys dashing off whatever comes to mind. One of my favorite mini-methods for just-add-water cultural analysis is Google's autocomplete ? say, what it coughs up if you type in "deep a", "deep b", "deep c", etc. 26 searches is boring, but its rote, mechanical quality forces you to look at what other people are thinking. In this case it's pretty funny (part of me wants to say *deeply ironic*), because you're staring the problem right in its face: what do millions, maybe billions of people mean when they think "deep"? There are several ~layers of meaning, but I'll just get to a few: One is older, and has a miscellaneous quality because "deep" is literal: "deep pockets," "deep ocean," "deep end," etc. They're not so interesting, though "deep sleep" is one of them, and it was probably a basis for later, more metaphorical notions of deep." Then there's another layer where the marketing kick in, and you start to see more metaphorical phrases like "deep conditioner" or "deep tissue massage." This second layer is less miscellaneous because the marketing has a focus, the human body. In this sense, "deep" takes on a new, latent meaning through an implied contrast ? not just with a traditional antonym like "shallow", I think, but with something more like "superficial." It's not so explicit in this context, but this turn came with gendering ? I think because commercial representations of bodies tended to focus on women first, and conveyed a sort of double-bind message: your body is a chronic problem / this product will fix or maintain it / turn your body into a promise. Lather, rinse, repeat, as they say. I'll fast-forward past a bunch of othe
3 or 4 good links on NFTs
NFTs don't strike me as intrinsically interesting, but the seeming inability of conventional leftish/academic to address them *is* interesting. I'd be hard-pressed to think of another time when it seemed so clear that the force of criticism has been *to categorize* — that is, to dispense with the rough edges of specificity in order file something away as quickly as possible and reaffirm the big picture. That's not without its benefits; for example, it can spin off all kinds of erudition. But it shouldn't be hard to do all that *and also* acknowledge that some curious new spaces might be opening up. It seems to me that that victory of more or less disciplinary self-regard over the raw potential of things is pretty much a case study in performativity. And, like a lot of performativity these days, it feels less than promising. Here are three articles on the subject that I thought were worth the time. Just retweeting, not endorsing, as they say. But when a supermodel is doing tactical media that's far more compelling than all of nettime combined, and writing about it in ways that radiate relevance to issues that are (let's say) less 'pale, male, and stale,' it's time for a rethink. Links below, obv. Cheers, Ted --- (1) How many layers of copyright infringement are in Emily Ratajkowski’s new NFT? Ratajkowski trolls an art troll Jacob Kastrenakes Apr 24, 2021 https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/24/22399790/emily-ratajkowski-nft-christies-copyright-nightmare-richard-prince 👉🏼 note the link to her essay "Buying Myself Back When does a model own her own image?" (Sept. 15, 2020) https://www.thecut.com/article/emily-ratajkowski-owning-my-image-essay.html (2) The Downward Spiral: Popular Things Dean Kissick (n.d.) https://www.spikeartmagazine.com/articles/downward-spiral-popular-things-dean-kissick (3) The One Redeeming Quality of NFTs Might Not Even Exist Kal Raustiala and Christopher Jon Sprigman April 14, 2021 https://slate.com/technology/2021/04/nfts-digital-art-authenticity-problem.html # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: nettime-l Digest, Vol 163, Issue 16
Jack Kloppenburg's *First the Seed*, now available in a second edition ( https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/2659.htm), is superb on "the Columbian Exchange" that transformed biological life on the planet via global transfers of germplasm. As two entrants in the class of informational meta-technologies, distinct in kind from industrial technologies and pre-industrial tools, biotechnology and digital technology share many spaces. ( http://people.tamu.edu/~braman/bramanpdfs/025_biology.pdf) Sandra Braman On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 5:00 AM wrote: > Send nettime-l mailing list submissions to > nettime-l@mail.kein.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > nettime-l-requ...@mail.kein.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > nettime-l-ow...@mail.kein.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of nettime-l digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > >1. Re: deep humanities initiative (Brian Holmes) >2. Re: deep humanities initiative (mp) > > > -- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2021 14:07:35 -0500 > From: Brian Holmes > To: Keith Sanborn > Cc: a moderated mailing list for net criticism > > Subject: Re: deep humanities initiative > Message-ID: > d1y57ernn...@mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 10:53 AM Keith Sanborn wrote: > > > Interesting that at a time when planetary survival is in jeopardy, > > analysts shd return to a geological metaphor. Does history then equal > > stratigraphy? > > > > That is exactly the claim. The geologists of the Anthropocene Working Group > identify the stratum marking the end of the Holocene in radioactive > isotopes left by nuclear fallout in the period of above-ground testing > (1952-63). These can be identified in fine layers deposited in undisturbed > lake beds around the world, and most precisely, in ice cores from > Antarctica. Of course, geological markers based on the activity of living > creatures are nothing new. What's new is that the creatures are humans, and > the rate of change, particularly in CO2 concentration, is faster than > anything previously recorded, by orders of magnitude. > > The dating of the new geological epoch is hotly contested, and in my view, > the other proposed dates (Industrial revolution, colonization of the New > World) are full of significance. Colonialism inaugurates a form of > domination, the enslavement of people on plantations, that allowed early > cycles of capital accumulation to proceed through the plunder of the rest > of the planet. The formally "free" labor of the Industrial Revolution could > only compete with colonial domination because the life of previous > geological epochs was brought out of the ground and sent back into the > atmosphere by the burning of coal and oil. However, the big changes in > atmospheric and oceanic chemistry only become clearly measurable in the > 1950s, and they are correlated with the particular form of technological > development that begins in the US during WWII, then spreads around the > planet afterwards. The contemporary US state is brought to account with the > 1950s date, along with all those that emulate it. The present US > administration shows some dawning awareness of these things. If you're > interested, I and a couple friends made a short video and a long text about > these issues: > > https://vimeo.com/374696808 > > https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053019620975803 > > Basically it's a depth interpretation of the Superman festival held every > year in the tiny town of Metropolis, Illinois > > best, Brian > -- next part -- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: < > http://mx.kein.org/pipermail/nettime-l/attachments/20210425/71c0ae91/attachment-0001.html > > > > -- > > Message: 2 > Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2021 21:23:10 +0100 > From: mp > To: a moderated mailing list for net criticism > > Subject: Re: deep humanities initiative > Message-ID: <6d36de34-b56f-f9f1-48e1-ae2173630...@aktivix.org> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > > > > On 25/04/2021 20:07, Brian Holmes wrote: > > On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 10:53 AM Keith Sanborn wrote: > > > >> Interesting that at a time when planetary survival is in jeopardy, > >> analysts shd return to a geological metaphor. Does history then equal > >> stratigraphy? > >> > > > > That is exactly the claim. The geologists of the Anthropocene Working > Group > > identify the stratum marking the end of the Holocene in radioactive > > isotopes left by nuclear fallout in the period of above-ground testing > > (1952-63). These can be identified in fine layers deposited in > undisturbed > > lake beds around the w
