Udvidet tænkning

"Den udvidede tænkning er ikke et sted, hvor den almindelige logik er suspenderet, men nærmere udvidet, så følelser, fornemmelser og anelser får den vigtige rolle, der tilkommer dem."

"... man har bekæmpet enhver form for metafysik og mistænkeliggjort alle de erfaringer, mennesket gør sig af merbetydning eller af transcendens, altså det som er hinsides det konkrete."

"Det at tænke er at placere sig det sted, hvor tænkningen springer frem."

"På den ene side har man afskaffet filosofikum som det grundlæggende fag på universitetet, på den anden side har man afskaffet de praktiske uddannelser på kunstskolerne for i stedet at filosofere. Men den filosofi, der kommer ud af det, er teoretisering og ikke refleksion."


(Fra artikel i Weekendavisen om Dorthe Jørgensens doktordisputats: Den Skønne Tænkning)

Kattedame (autonomi)

Jeg faldt over det her citat i dag:

"... autonomy means that social life does not depend only on the disciplinary regulation imposed by economic power, but also depends on the eternal displacement, shiftings, settlings and dissolutions that are the process of the self-composition of living society. Struggle, withdrawal, alienation, sabotage, lines of flight from the capitalist system of domination. Autonomy is the independence of social time from the temporality of capitalism.
This is the meaning of the expression refusal of work. Refusal of work means quite simply: I don't want to go to work because I prefer to sleep. But this laziness is the source of intelligence, of technology, of progess.
Autonomy is the self-regulation of the social body in its independence and in its interaction with the disciplinary norm."

Der er noget jeg ikke forstår i det her citat, som ofte dukker op: Hvorfor møder man i kritikken af arbejde så ofte op med dovenskaben (eller søvnen)? Er det vigtigste (og afgørende) ikke en anden relation mellem den der udfører og det der udføres?

Inger Christensen har skrevet et fantastisk essay om arbejde, hvor der står:

"Levende væsener er defineret som en særlig slags genstande, der er udstyret med et projekt, med noget de vil udføre, fordi det vil udføres i dem."

Og dér har vi det, tror jeg. Problemet er ikke arbejde, men at vi i vores arbejde – eller når vi i vores arbejde – ikke lytter efter om dette arbejde nu også vil udføres i os.

Kapitalen er kendetegnet ved at spalte arbejdet i adskilte og entydige funktioner, der afskærer os fra den fornemmelse. Det er ulykkeligt.
 
Men en lille kattedame – en pige på 15 år fra Bornholm – gjorde mig glad i dag fordi hun har skrevet det her på sin Instagram-profil:

"My dream was to be a photographer, but a person pointed out that I would have to take pictures of people I don't like, and now I'm kinda lost..
So my plan is to become a fat and lonely cat lady.."

Det gjorde mig glad fordi jeg forstår hende. Men også fordi jeg tror hun forstår noget om arbejde.

Hun skrev også:

"I used to be a little depressed, and I would only wear this black long dress..
Now I only use it for photography and I also sometimes sleep in it"

Fortrolighed

"Den til hvem et menneske har det inderligste forhold, altså det forhold, der mest egnede sig til at være genstand for den fortrolige meddelelse [...], kun til ham kan dette menneske egentligen fortroe sig, eller have fortrolighed, eller meddele sig i fortrolighed. Men således forholder jo fortroligheden sig til sig selv, og således bliver der, som det væsentlige, i fortrolighed et uudsigeligt, istedenfor at man skulle tro, at fortrolighed var udsigelsen."

Kierkegaard

Umuligt skridt til siden/ned fra tårnet af intet

Hvordan kommer jeg ned,
fra tårnet af intet? Det
går jo ikke, det ved jeg  Men måske
er der et umuligt skridt til siden?
En supertangent, som ikke er svigten, til
tilintetgørelserne, af andre  Eller
opgåen i det bestående, modstandsløst

Göran Sonnevi

.

"Mange omkring mig holder af mig, drager omsorg for mig, men ingen er stærk: alle (vi er alle) gale, neurotiske – "

Roland Barthes: Sorgens dagbog

Sorgens politik?

"Every lament is shadowed by the specter of its own insufficiency, redundancy, or inappropriateness – too much, too little, too soon, too late (the very terms of measure, the relentless pressure to compare and quantify, already suggesting a fundamental mismeasure) --and this dissonance only escalates when mourning is forced to tally among its own losses the essential context of recognition that might have made mourning itself either authorized or even visible as such. This accounts for the reflexive intensification and proliferation of lament, the uncomfortable slide from “plaint” to “complaint” -- from grief to grievance, from Klage to Anklage (Nietzsche and Freud both remark on this semantic slippage)-- but also underscores its intractably ethical and social stakes. Even as it chokes on its own impossibility, the very act of lament indicts a world in which lament itself would be stifled. Antigone, Hecuba, Hamlet –the list continues-- make the political stakes of this stifling explicit. This implies that lament itself can be a political intervention. We see this every time a funeral ignites into a demonstration, or whenever police take measures to ensure it doesn’t."

Rebecca Comay: Paradoxes of lament

Machine for fighting anxiety

"The situation feels hopeless and inescapable, but it isn’t. It feels this way because of effects of precarity – constant over-stress, the contraction of time into an eternal present, the vulnerability of each separated (or systemically mediated) individual, the system’s dominance of all aspects of social space. Structurally, the system is vulnerable. The reliance on anxiety is a desperate measure, used in the absence of stronger forms of conformity. The system’s attempt to keep running by keeping people feeling powerless leaves it open to sudden ruptures, outbreaks of revolt. So how do we get to the point where we stop feeling powerless?

A new style of precarity-focused consciousness raising is needed

In order to formulate new responses to anxiety, we need to return to the drawing board. We need to construct a new set of knowledges and theories from the bottom up. To this end, we need to crease a profusion of discussions which produce dense intersections between experiences of the current situation and theories of transformation. We need to start such processes throughout the excluded and oppressed strata – but there is no reason we shouldn’t start with ourselves.

In exploring the possibilities for such a practice, the Institute has looked into previous cases of similar practices. From an examination of accounts of feminist consciousness raising in the 1960s/70s, we have summarised the following central features:

• Producing new grounded theory relating to experience. We need to reconnect with our experiences now – rather than theories from past phases. The idea here is that our own perceptions of our situation are blocked or cramped by dominant assumptions, and need to be made explicit. The focus should be on those experiences which relate to the public secret. These experiences need to be recounted and pooled — firstly within groups, and then publicly.

• Recognising the reality, and the systemic nature, of our experiences. The validation of our experiences’ reality of experiences is an important part of this. We need to affirm that our pain is really pain, that what we see and feel is real, and that our problems are not only personal. Sometimes this entails bringing up experiences we have discounted or repressed. Sometimes it entails challenging the personalisation of problems.

• Transformation of emotions. People are paralysed by unnameable emotions, and a general sense of feeling like shit. These emotions need to be transformed into a sense of injustice, a type of anger which is less resentful and more focused, a move towards self-expression, and a reactivation of resistance.

• Creating or expressing voice. The culture of silence surrounding the public secret needs to be overthrown. Existing assumptions need to be denaturalised and challenged, and cops in the head expelled. The exercise of voice moves the reference of truth and reality from the system to the speaker, contributing to the reversal of perspective – seeing the world through one’s own perspective and desires, rather than the system’s. The weaving together of different experiences and stories is an important way of reclaiming voice. The process is an articulation as well as an expression.

• Constructing a disalienated space. Social separation is reduced by the existence of such a space. The space provides critical distance on one’s life, and a kind of emotional safety net to attempt transformations, dissolving fears. This should not simply be a self-help measure, used to sustain existing activities, but instead, a space for reconstructing a radical perspective.

• Analysing and theorising structural sources based on similarities in experience. The point is not simply to recount experiences but to transform and restructure them through their theorisation. Participants change the dominant meaning of their experience by mapping it with different assumptions. This is often done by finding patterns in experiences which are related to liberatory theory, and seeing personal problems and small injustices as symptoms of wider structural problems. It leads to a new perspective, a vocabulary of motives; an anti-anti-political horizon."

http://www.weareplanc.org/we-are-all-very-anxious/#.U0Hc7McdjML