IntenseDebate - jkj5019

14 years ago @ Socratic Politics in D... - Humanities - The Digit... · 1 reply · +1 points

Frank, I suspect you may enjoy Tristan Tzara's input:

"If I shout:
Ideal, Ideal, Ideal
Knowledge, Knowledge, Knowledge,
Boomboom, Boomboom, Boomboom
I have recorded fairly accurately Progress, Law, Morals, and all the other magnificent qualities that various very intelligent people have discussed in so many books."

14 years ago @ Socratic Politics in D... - Marcuse, the Highway, ... · 0 replies · +1 points

“I propose that English poetry students should find dogfishes on their desks and biology students should find Shakespeare sonnets on their dissection boards.”
--Percy

I'm reminded of a Percy text that recounts two contigencies: the first, that of a vacationer who succumbs to the preformulation complex and is inhibited from truly experiencing the Grand Canyon; the second, that of a wanderer who intentionally evades demarcated pathways to reveal a truly novel experience which may be accessed only aside from the boundaries of societal structure.

Today, it seems we have internalized these regulatory effects of standardized modernity to the extent that an externally validated experience (consider, if you will, photographs taken on vacation and subsequentially posted to Facebook in service of accruing "likes" and "comments") is considered to be somehow more tangible or imbued with more actuality than one not subject to technological/social media scrutiny. I would like to believe that Percy’s sense of “really living” may still be attainable, but I am convinced that it is far from commonplace.

[youtube MB6krqnA1vQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB6krqnA1vQ youtube]

14 years ago @ Socratic Politics in D... - Final Thoughts - The D... · 0 replies · +1 points

For Heidegger, the ambivalence which pervades and characterizes man's relation to technology is illustrated in this work of revealing concealed truths that might grant greater ontological awareness. This revelatory process does not occur in or through man, which is unfortunate, as Heidegger illustrates the "intimate kinship" of truth and freedom. Yet, our access to freedom is not entirely impeded, for enframing does not transpire beyond all human doing. Admittedly, my Heideggarian chops may be a tad rusty, but I recall that the text parturitated a similar tone as the Marcuse's in that it flitted between cautionary augury and hopeful insistence that humanity might acknowledge, at last, the tenuous thread that connects the manifold danger of technological advances with their abeyant saving power.

14 years ago @ Socratic Politics in D... - Final Thoughts - The D... · 0 replies · +1 points

Tragically, my computer is not permitting me to add a new blog post. It seems that the liberating potentialities of technology are wholly mislaid in my hands.
Alex, do forgive me of my minor malfeasance in usurping your post's comment section to contribute a few insights. I'll attempt to enrich your inquiries with some supplemental sidenotes of my own.
I suspect that Marcuse's conception of the human-technology relationship would be much less polarized; that is, while we are controlled by the very devices we have generated, it is so that there is a reciprocity factor at play. Just as we summon forth the capacities of a computer by turning it on, the computer rouses particular capabilities that may have otherwise remained dormant in the user. Granted, this account is my hackneyed rendering of Heidegger's enframing 'a la "The Question Concerning Technology," which was adroitly referenced by Joe in today's class.

14 years ago @ Socratic Politics in D... - What To Read? - The Di... · 0 replies · +2 points

A few proposals:

-Baudrillard's “Simulacra and Simulations”: Disneyland, prisons, and reality are all evoked (and often equated) within the confines of a single sentence.
-Excerpts from Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life: The text is rife with societal critque, rendering de Certeau pertinent to our course.

Also, I find accord with Dan: My Freud tolerance for this semester is reaching capacity.

14 years ago @ Socratic Politics in D... - Technique and the Poss... · 1 reply · +1 points

Regarding the terse interdependency between man and technology, I must nod to Heidegger:

"The essential unfolding of technology threatens revealing, threatens it with the possibility that all revealing will be consumed in ordering and that everything will present itself only in the unconcealment of standing-reserve. Human activity can never directly counter this danger. Human achievement alone can never banish it. But human reflection can ponder the fact that all saving power must be of a higher essence than what is endangered, though at the same time kindred to it" (339, Basic Writings, from "The Question Concerning Technology").

The greatest hazard of contempory usages of technology may be this: that the enframing of beings (and Beings) renders us reduce-able, that organic life falls into servitude of its mechanical creations and is ensnared by the ignorance begat of reliance, and that the liberating remainder component of the whole:part division is abandoned to the ordered systemeticity of Enlightenment rationality.

14 years ago @ Socratic Politics in D... - Technique and the Poss... · 1 reply · +1 points

I am reminded of de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life and the distinction proffered between strategy and tactic: Dominating institutions are strategic; they operate in adherence with a model of repressive perpetuity. By contrast, individuals attempt to navigate the trajectories of pervasive culture industry and strategic impositions through the use of tactics, which involve manipulating mundane events within the framework of civilization in order to transfigure them into opportunities and outlets. (In fact, I may submit this text for the student-generated portion of the syllabus!)

14 years ago @ Socratic Politics in D... - Put a smile on your fa... · 0 replies · +1 points

In consideration of today's discussion of imagination, I find this quotation to be particularly germane. For Marcuse, the role of labor "outside" alienation would "release time and energy for the free play of human faculties"; that is, a society devoid of surplus-repression would accede to the possibility of greater fulfillment through more adequate appropriation of temporal resources to the "sphere outside labor," the dwelling-place of "freedom and fulfillment." Perlman rejects this contingency, advancing his accord with Marcuse's admission that "No matter how justly and rationally the material production may be organized, it can never be a realm of freedom and gratification..." (156).

14 years ago @ Socratic Politics in D... - Put a smile on your fa... · 0 replies · +1 points

Dan, your comment reminds me of an excerpt from a Perlman text that equates "unalienated" work with play itself:

"A time-and-motion engineer [human] watching a bear near a berry patch would not know when to punch his clock. Does the bear start working when he walks to the berry patch, when he picks the berry, when he opens his jaws? If the engineer has half a brain he might say the bear makes no distinction between work and play. If the engineer has an imagination he might say that the bear experiences joy from the moment the berries turn deep red, and that none of the bear's motions are work" (p.p. 8, Against His-story, Against Leviathan!).

14 years ago @ Socratic Politics in D... - Thought itself is alre... · 0 replies · +1 points

[youtube pIrvpn3k9A4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIrvpn3k9A4 youtube]

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