New Post at The Avant Guardian

I've written a little sumpin'-sum at that place of internet jocularity we like to call The Avant Guardian.

There seems to be an arc developing in these pieces: something about social relations and how they've been shifting.

I thank you for your generosity in reading.

Also, many, many thanks to Tom Maxwell for turning me on to the two new blogs I've added over in the side bar there:

• A Journey Around My Skull
• BibliOdyssey

The strawman image here on our left is an illustration from "Za Lahko Noč" Ančka Gošnik-Godec (1964) which I found on A Journey Around My Skull.

Jacques Rancière Day 6

NOTE TO FACEBOOK VIEWERS: to view any of the clips you'll need to visit the actual blog. Scroll to the bottom and click "View Original Post"

Jacques Rancière taught a class entitled: POLITICS OF AESTHETICS wherein we discuss the relationship between what is allowed to be seen and the dominant political regime.

NOTE: As with all my notes from the European Graduate School, there will likely be mistakes because I did not record the lectures, I made notes as they spoke, so I am perhaps interpreting what they are saying as I am writing.

How the aesthetic revolution is transformed and ultimately canceled-out. It's not so much what Brecht, Baudrillard, or Lyotard said as much as how they construct the relationship between art and politics. The issue of post-modernism is one of re-framing Modernity. Not a new concept, but a re-framing of art and politics. The way in which they will say farewell to Modernity has led to a reconfiguration of Modernity.

"The Ecstasy of Communication" Baudrillard; published in Hal Foster's Anti-Aesthetics.
Attempts to punctuate a turning point of art, is also a turning point in the sensory experience. These texts are dealing with experience; they also recapitulate what Modernity means, a reinterpretation of the aesthetics of Modernism. The way in which they set the stage for this task is interesting.

• Diagnosis of loss or something that is about to be lost: the loss of separation, no longer borders.
• Tow ideas of the sensory: heterogeneity and homogeneity.
• For Baudrillard it's the loss of subject and object, we have lost alienation. This should be a good thing, in Marxist terms, but the issue is trickier.

For Baudrillard, alienation means illusion, but also this difference between inside and outside; so the problem of desire means we have an excess. Communication replacing alienation, there is no longer heterogeneity, only homogeneity.

Now is the reign of hyper-reality. What has been lost with the digital is, on one hand, the spectacle of the world, and the sacred secret of the inner world. Everything is communicable and there is no separation of the inner and the outer. The specificity of artistic experimentation is lost due to digital reproduction.

If the progress of scientific apparatus is responsible for the end of Modernity, it is also responsible for the inception of Modernity. The birth of photography doesn't mean the task of image-making has been perfected but that painting is impacted and Classical pictures depended upon a certain monarchical perspective on the world.

Photography isn't only the possibility of exact reproduction, but also means the end of Kantian aesthetics of the beautiful. §16 is based on adherent beauty vs. free beauty; this was determined by freedom from concepts and perfection of the reproduction in technique.

Read More

Alain Badiou Evening Lecture

As part of our curriculum at the European Graduate School we must attend evening lectures from the faculty. This evening Alain Badiou spoke to us.

NOTE: As with all my notes from the EGS, there will likely be mistakes because I did not record the lectures, I made notes as they spoke, so I am perhaps interpreting what they are saying as I am writing. To overcome my limitations I will embed the lecture here as well:



Aristotle's Book IV of Metaphysics, 3 Princles:

1. identity: a proposition is equal to itself
2. noncontradiction: it is impossible for p and non-p to exist simultaneously
3. excluded middle: there is no third way - it entails double negation

The power of exclusion and there is the power of imposition of choice; never yes & no, but always either yes or no.

Since negation of negation is affirmation we have a nullification; Hegel says it is not immediately affirmation but perhaps reflexively so - reflexive logic.

War, classically understood, is a binary - it makes no sense to say that the city is occupied by both your troops and the enemy's. If neither camps occupy, Classically we would say that the city is not at all occupied.

With paraconsistent logic we can say both camps occupy the city; and also that the city is not occupied. Think of Stalingrad during World War II, where both Germany and the Soviets claimed they occupied the city.

As we move from Classical logic to Intuitionism and then to Paraconsistent logic we have a gradual diminution of negation.

In my ontology, a thing is a possibility without any qualification, a pure multiplicity. All laws are appearing within a context. The thing exists as an object in the world. Clearly the logic of being qua being is Classical; this is because Classical is extensional, this assumes point A and point B. As a consequence of this thinking, multiplicity is seen as Classical.

Read More