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

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"Hvis den [civile] identitet nødvendigvis er en form for fiktion, en indretning af os selv, der gør det muligt at fortælle historien om vores liv [...] findes der i skyggerne af det, jeg er, et andet princip, mig, som på en helt anden måde, og med et nødvendigvis fattigt sprog, opleves som 'en sand identitet', med sand defineret som 'en subtraktion fra det kendtes nøjagtighed, fra statens klassifikation; en nyskabelse en acte, der er utilgængelig for statens klassifikation, og som finder sted ved et brud med dens normale sammenhæng, dvs. som hændelse.' Den tvungne navngivning af det, der undviger klassifikation, af det, der tager del i en sandhedsproces [...] er statens værk, en genindsættelse af status quo og af den myndighed, staten besidder gennem sin stabilitet, et eksempel på statens ondskab, dens korrumpering af en sandhed, der undslipper den"

Mikkel Thykier

Uden taktilitet, uden krop

 

”I det digitale rum dannes der ingen stabile vi’er, der kunne forandre samfundet til det bedre. Snarere arbejder homo digitalis på at optimere sin profil. I en verden af likes opdrages det digitale menneske til positivitet, mens det udstiller og udbytter sig selv uden reelt at se, møde eller nogensinde mærke de andre. Solidariteten forsvinder, og de fælles værdier går i forfald. Det digitale er designet uden taktilitet, uden krop. Vi kommer aldrig til at se den andens blik (tænk f.eks. på Skype-telefoni, hvor den andens øjne er sært fremmede og aldrig reagerer ’naturligt’ på dit blik). Alting transformeres til det samme. Alt og alle bliver til additive komponenter, proklamerer Han, der finder det fatalt, at negativiteten (sproget for det kritiske, det fraværende, det tavse, det forsvindende, det endnu ikke skete og tænkte...) afvikles, og erfaringen tørrer ud. Den digitale tid er en tid uden fødsel og død. Det digitale apparat gør dig fri til at arbejde, hvor du vil. Til gengæld er du tvunget til at fortælle om dig selv for ikke at blive usynlig og dermed forsvinde ud af cirkulation. Jo mere der kommunikeres, jo mere kapital kan der akkumuleres. Det intensiverede kredsløb af kommunikation og information fører i sidste ende til et accelereret økonomisk kredsløb, der udspiller sig bag ryggen på det tastende, klikkende og kiggende menneske”

Artikel i Information

Hastighed

 "Speed is not a phenomenon but the relationship between phenomena. Speed is relativity and relativity is politics!"

"The current era is marked by the acceleration of reality: we have reached the limits of instantaneity, the limits of human thought and time"

"Speed causes anxiety by the abolition of space"


Fra Paul Virilio: The Adimistration of Fear

Skriften er urolig

"Sådan er det med alt skrevet, hvis vi lader det ligge i længere tid og ser på det gentagne gange, bliver det i sagens natur uudholdeligt for os, og vi får først fred, når vi har destrueret det"

Thomas Bernhard

Moderen i munden

"Du stopper dig selv ind i min mund, og jeg er ved at blive kvalt. Stop dig lidt mindre ind i mig og lad mig se dig. Jeg ville så gerne se dig, mens du giver mig mad. Og ikke tabe mine/dine øjne af syne, når jeg åbner munden for dig. Og også have dig hos mig, mens jeg drikker dig. Bliv ved med også at være udenfor. Behold også dig/mig udenfor."

Luce Irigaray: Og den ene bevæger sig ikke uden den anden