{"id":337,"date":"2010-09-02T10:09:09","date_gmt":"2010-09-02T15:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.montclair.edu\/creativeresearch\/?p=46"},"modified":"2018-12-13T10:35:04","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T15:35:04","slug":"affirmative-media-theory-and-the-post-911-world-part-1-by-gary-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/creative-research-center\/2010\/09\/02\/affirmative-media-theory-and-the-post-911-world-part-1-by-gary-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"Affirmative Media Theory and the Post-9\/11 World – [Part 1] by Gary Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Gary Hall writes to NB] Thank you for the invitation to contribute to your born-digital, dynamic, nimble, open-source, collaborative space at Montclair State University. I\u2019m very happy to join the conversation of your Creative Research Centre and take part in your symposium, \u2018<\/strong>The Uses of the Imagination in the Post-9\/11 World\u2019<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You\u2019ve asked me to address \u2018the inherent viability of the concept of \u201cpost-9\/11 world\u2019 and explain what this \u2018over-arching concept\u2019 means to me.\u00a0\u00a0Perhaps you\u2019ll forgive me, then, if I begin by telling you a little about\u00a0my own research<\/a>. This currently involves a series of born-digital, open, dynamic, collaborative projects I\u2019m provisionally calling \u2018media gifts<\/a>\u2019. Operating at the intersections of art, theory and new media, these gifts\u00a0employ digital media to\u00a0actualise\u00a0critical and cultural theory. As such, their primary focus is\u00a0not<\/em> on\u00a0studying<\/em> the world in an attempt to arrive at an answer to the question \u2018What exists?\u2019, before proclaiming, say, that we\u2019ve moved from the closed spaces of disciplinary societies to the more spirit- or gas-like forces of the societies of control, as\u00a0Gilles Deleuze<\/a> would have it.<\/p>\n

Instead, the projects I\u2019ve been working on over the last few years \u2013 which include a \u2018liquid book<\/a>\u2019, a series of internet television programmes<\/a> and an experiment that investigates some of the\u00a0implications of internet piracy<\/a> through the creation of an actual \u2018pirate\u2019 text[i] \u2013 are instances of media and mediation that endeavor to produce the effects they name or things of which they speak.<\/p>\n

The reason I wanted to start with these projects is because they function for me as a means of thinking through what it means to \u2018do philosophy\u2019 and \u2018do media theory\u2019 in the current theoretico-political climate.\u00a0\u00a0I see them as a way of practicing an\u00a0affirmative<\/em> media theory<\/strong> or philosophy<\/strong> in which analysis and critique are not abandoned but take more creative, inventive and imaginative forms. The different projects in the series \u2013 there are at least ten at the time of writing \u2013 thus each in their own way experiment with the potential new media technologies hold for making affective, singular interventions in the here and now.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Possibility of Philosophy Today<\/strong><\/p>\n

Having said that, I want to make it clear I\u2019m not positioning the affirmative media theory I\u2019m endeavouring to practice with these media gifts in a relation of contrast to earlier, supposedly less affirmative, theoretical paradigms.[ii] In a discussion with\u00a0Alain Badiou that took place in New York in 2006,\u00a0Simon Critchley constructs a narrative of this latter kind when describing the \u2018overwhelmingly conceptually creative and also enabling and empowering\u2019 nature of the former\u2019s system of thought.[iii] For Critchley, the current situation of theory is characterised, on the one hand, by \u2018a sense of frustration and fatigue with a whole range of theoretical paradigms: paradigms having been exhausted, paradigms having been led into a cul-de-sac<\/em>, of making promises that they didn\u2019t keep or simply giving some apocalyptic elucidation to our sense of imprisonment\u2019; and, on the other, by a \u2018tremendous thirst for a constructive, explanatory and empowering theoretical discourse\u2019. It\u2019s a thirst that Badiou\u2019s philosophy apparently goes some way toward quenching. It\u2019s \u2018refreshing\u2019, Critchley declares.<\/p>\n

This desire for constructive, explanatory and empowering theoretical discourses of the kind offered not just by Badiou, I would propose, but in their different ways by\u00a0Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri<\/a>,\u00a0Bernard Stiegler, Slavoj\u00a0\u017di\u017eek<\/a>\u00a0 and others, too, is of course understandable.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help wondering, though, if such discourses aren\u2019t also a manifestation, to some degree at least, of what Germaine Greer has characterized as male display — although the books Greer is thinking of are\u00a0Malcolm Gladwell\u2019s\u00a0Outliers<\/em> and\u00a0Levitt and Dubner\u2019s\u00a0Freakonomics<\/em>,\u00a0\u00a0— rather than Badiou\u2019s\u00a0Being and Event<\/em> or volumes by the likes of\u00a0Nicolas Bourriaud<\/a> and\u00a0Marc Auge that put forward theories of the\u00a0altermodern<\/a> and\u00a0supermodernity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Every week, [Greer writes] either by snail mail or e-mail, I get a book that explains everything. Without exception, they are all written by men… There is no answer to everything, and only a deluded male would spend his life trying to find it. The most deluded think they have actually found it. … Brandishing the \u2018big idea\u2019 is a bookish version of male display, and as such a product of the same mind-set as that behind the manuscripts that litter my desk. To explain is in some sense to control. Proselytizing has always been a male preserve. … I would hope that fewer women have so far featured in the big-ideas landscape because, by and large, they are more interested in understanding than explaining, in describing rather than accounting for. Giving credence to a big idea is a way of permitting ourselves to skirt strenuous engagement with the enigma that is our life.[iv]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Still, as I say, I can recognise the appeal of enabling and empowering theoretical discourses to a certain extent. It\u2019s a different aspect of the current situation of theory as it\u2019s glossed by Critchley I\u2019m particularly concerned with here.<\/p>\n

Critchley \u2013 who is himself the author of The Ethics of Deconstruction<\/em> and co-author of\u00a0Deconstruction and Pragmatism<\/em> \u2013\u00a0is careful to name no names as to which exhausted theoretical paradigms he has in mind. But given that a \u2018certain discourse, let\u2019s call it deconstructive\u2019, Critchley suggests, is\u00a0also<\/em> explicitly placed in a relation of contrast to Badiou\u2019s \u2018very different\u2019 creative, constructive philosophy, I wonder if deconstruction is not at least\u00a0part<\/em> of what he is referring to?[v]<\/p>\n

If so, then I have to say I find it difficult to recognise deconstruction, and the philosophy of\u00a0Jacques Derrida<\/a> especially (with which the term deconstruction is most closely associated, and which is very important for me), in any description that opposes it to that which is conceptually creative, enabling, explanatory and empowering.<\/p>\n

Derrida\u2019s thought is all of these things \u2013 although in a different way to Badiou\u2019s philosophical system, it\u2019s true.\u00a0\u00a0The interest of Derrida and deconstruction lies with systems \u2013 including what Badiou, in the same discussion with Critchley, refers to as \u2018the classical field of philosophy\u2019 \u2013 but also with what destabilizes, disrupts, escapes, exceeds, interrupts and undoes systems. And this would apply to Badiou\u2019s own system of thought (\u2018and this is a\u00a0system<\/em>\u2019, Critchley points out). This doesn\u2019t mean deconstruction can be positioned as \u2018melancholic\u2019, though, and contrasted to construction and \u2018reconstruction\u2019, as Critchley and Badiou would have it.<\/p>\n

For all his interest in radical politics, theatre, poetry, cinema, mathematics, psychoanalysis and the question of love, there\u2019s an intriguing\u00a0return to philosophy<\/em>, and with it a certain\u00a0disciplinarity, evident in Badiou\u2019s work (as opposed to the interdisciplinarity associated with cultural studies, say — or the\u00a0trans-disciplinarity of your CRC). Badiou refers to this as being very much a philosophical decision on his part:<\/p>\n

And finally my philosophical decision \u2013 there is always something like a decision in philosophy, there is not always continuity: you have to decide something and my decision was very simple and very clear. It was that philosophy was possible. It\u2019s a very simple sentence, but in the context it was something new. Philosophy is possible in the sense that we can do something which is in the classical tradition of philosophy and nevertheless in our contemporary experience. There is in my condition no contradiction between our world, our concrete experiences, an idea of radical politics for example, a new form of art, new experiences in love, and the new mathematics. There is no contradiction between our world and something in the philosophical field that is finally not in rupture but assumes a continuity with\u00a0the philosophical tradition from Plato to today<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And we can take one further step, something like that. So we have not to begin by melancholic considerations about the state of affairs of philosophy: deconstruction, end of philosophy, end of metaphysics, and so on. This vision of the history of thinking is not mine.\u00a0\u00a0And so I have proposed \u2013 in\u00a0Being and Event<\/em><\/a> in fact \u2013 a new constructive way for philosophical concepts and something like a reconstruction \u2013 against deconstruction \u2013 of the classical field of philosophy itself.[vi]<\/p>\n

Yet, what kind of decision is actually being taken here? What is it based upon or grounded in? How philosophical\u00a0is<\/em> this decision by Badiou?\u00a0\u00a0Couldn\u2019t it be said that\u00a0any<\/em> decision to the effect that philosophy is possible, that a \u2018reconstruction \u2013 against deconstruction \u2013 of the classical field of philosophy\u2019 is possible, has to be taken by Badiou in advance of philosophy; and that his decision in favour of a \u2018new constructive way for philosophical concepts\u2019 therefore takes Badiou outside or beyond philosophy at precisely the moment he is claiming to have returned to or defended it? As such, doesn\u2019t\u00a0any<\/em> such decision do violence not just to deconstruction but also to the classical tradition of philosophy?<\/p>\n

These are questions that Derrida and deconstruction\u00a0can help with. For Derrida\u2019s philosophy is nothing if not a thinking of the impossible decision. As someone else associated with deconstruction,\u00a0J. Hillis Miller<\/a>, puts it:<\/p>\n

Responsibility… must be, if it is to exist at all, always excessive, always impossible to discharge. Otherwise it will risk being the repetition of a program of understanding and action already in place\u2026 My responsibility in each reading is to decide and to act, but I must do so in a situation where the grounds of decision are impossible to know. As Kierkegaard somewhere says, \u2018The moment of decision is madness\u2019. The action, in this case, often takes the form of teaching or writing that cannot claim to ground itself on pre-existing knowledge or established tradition but is what Derrida calls \u2018l\u2019invention de l\u2019autre\u00a0[the invention of the other\u2019].[vii]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From this perspective, what\u2019s so helpful about Derrida\u2019s thought is not that it disavows the possibility of taking a decision in favour of a reconstruction of the classical field of philosophy; it\u2019s that Derrida enables us to understand how any such decision necessarily involves a moment of madness. This is important; because once we appreciate the decision is\u00a0the invention of the other<\/em> —\u00a0of the other in us —\u00a0we can endeavour to assume, or better, endure \u2018in a\u00a0passion\u2019,<\/em> rather than simply act out,\u00a0the implications of this realisation for the way we teach, write and act, in an effort to make the impossible decisions that confront us \u2013 including those concerning philosophy – as responsibly as possible.[viii]<\/p>\n

The Concept of the post-9\/11 World<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why am I raising all this here, in response to the CRC invitation to address \u2018the inherent viability of the concept of ‘the post-9\/11 world\u2019?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m doing so because if Critchley is right and the current situation of theory is characterised by a thirst for constructive, explanatory and empowering theoretical discourses then, as I say, I can understand this. I can also appreciate that the concept of the \u2018post-9\/11 world\u2019 may be of service in this context (including, perhaps, in terms of what Badiou refers to as the political name or poetic event). In fact, it has already been adopted as a new means of historical periodisation by some. But as far as\u00a0practicing a creative, affirmative media theory or philosophy is concerned,\u00a0it seems to me that whether what you are referring to as the \u2018over-arching\u2019 concept of the post-9\/11 world is \u2018viable\u2019 or not, in the sense in which my dictionary defines viable – as \u2018being capable of functioning successfully, practicable\u2019, as being \u2018able to live in particular circumstances\u2019 – is just such an impossible decision.<\/p>\n

[i] See:\u00a0New Cultural Studies: The Liquid Theory Reader<\/em><\/a> \u2013 co-edited with Clare Birchall and others, and published by Open Humanities Press in the\u00a0Culture Machine<\/em> Liquid Books series.<\/p>\n

Liquid Theory TV<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Gary Hall,\u00a0\u2018Pirate Philosophy (Version 1.0): Open Access, Open Editing, Free Content, Free\/Libre\/Open Media\u2019,\u00a0Culture Machine<\/em>, Vol.10, 2009. Originally placed on the Mininova torrent directory, \u2018Pirate Philosophy Version 2.0\u2019 is currently available from AAAAARG.ORG, Alive Torrents, Torrentslib, and Torrentzap, among other places.<\/p>\n

For more on the media gifts series, see\u00a0www.garyhall.info<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[ii] A desire to avoid positioning the affirmative media philosophy I\u2019m attempting to practice in a relation of contrast to previous theoretical paradigms is one of the reasons I\u2019ve taken the decision not to explicitly relate the media gifts series\u00a0to the so-called affective turn. For an example of the latter, see Richard Grusin\u2019s recent book on affect and mediality after 9\/11, where he writes:<\/p>\n

one of the attractions of affect theory is that it provides an alternative model of the human subject and its motivations to the post-structuralist psychoanalytic models favoured by most contemporary cultural and media theorists. Affectivity helps shift the focus from representation to mediation, deploying an ontological model that refuses the dualism built into the concept of representation. Affectivity entails an ontology of multiplicity that refuses what Bruno Latour has characterized as the modern divide, variously understood in terms of such fundamental oppositions as those between human and non-human, mind and the world, culture and nature, or civilization and savagery. Drawing on varieties of what Nigel Thrift calls \u2018non-representational theory\u2019, I concern myself with the things that mediation does rather than what media mean or represent.<\/p>\n

(Richard Grusin, Premediation: Affect and Mediality After 9\/11<\/em><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another of my reasons for not relating the media gifts series to affect theory lies with the fact that, as I have already intimated, I\u2019m not so interested in developing ontologies or ontological models of understanding the world.<\/p>\n

Still another is that, just as such affect theory attempts to do away with oppositions and dualisms, so it simultaneously (and often unconsciously and unwittingly) seems to repeat and reinforce them \u2013 in the case of the passage from Grusin above, most obviously between before and after 9\/11, between representational and non-representational theory, and between post-structuralist psychoanalytic models and affect theory itself. And that\u2019s without even mentioning the way Grusin\u2019s book is constantly concerned with providing a\u00a0representation<\/em> of the logics and practices of mediation after 9\/11; and with explaining what things such as the global credit crunch\u00a0mean<\/em> in this context in a manner it\u2019s frequently difficult to differentiate from the kind of cultural and media theory he positions his book as representing an alternative to:<\/p>\n

remediation no longer operates within the binary logic of reality versus mediation, concerning itself instead with mobility, connectivity, and flow. The real is no longer that which is free from mediation, but that which is thoroughly enmeshed with networks of social, technical, aesthetic, political, cultural, or economic mediation. The real is defined not in terms of representational accuracy, but in terms of liquidity or mobility. In this sense the credit crisis of 2008 was a crisis precisely of the real \u2013 as the problem of capital that didn\u2019t move, of credit that didn\u2019t flow, was seen as both the cause and consequence of the financial crisis. In the hypermediated post-capitalism of the twenty-first century, wealth is not representation but mobility.<\/p>\n

(Richard Grusin, ibid,\u00a0p.3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[iii] Simon Critchley,\u00a0\u2018\u201cOurs Is Not A Terrible Situation\u201d – Alain Badiou and Simon Critchley at Labyrinth Books\u2019, NY, March 6, 2006.<\/p>\n

[iv] Germaine Greer, in Germaine Greer, Andrew Lycett and John Douglas, \u2018The Week in Books:\u00a0The Male Desire for Explanation; the Real Quantum of Solace; and Merchandising Fiction\u2019,\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>, 1 November, 2008.<\/a><\/p>\n

[v] For Badiou\u2019s work to be understood in the US and for his influence to grow there, what is required, according to Critchley, is \u2018the creation of a new theoretical space or a new intellectual space where a number of things come together\u2019. Along with a radical politics, \u2018an interest in theater, in poetry, … for cinema, for psychoanalysis and… also for mathematics\u2019, these\u00a0\u00a0include \u2018a very strong and constructive idea of philosophy, which is in a certain way novel and unlike what one is used to within a certain discourse, let\u2019s call it deconstructive\u2019\u00a0(Simon Critchley, op cit.).<\/p>\n

[vi] Alain Badiou, \u2018\u201dOurs Is Not A Terrible Situation\u201d – Alain Badiou and Simon Critchley at Labyrinth Books\u2019, NY, March 6, 2006.<\/p>\n

[vii] J. Hillis Miller, in J. Hillis Miller and Manuel Asensi,\u00a0Black Holes: J. Hillis Miller; or, Toward Boustropedonic Reading<\/em> (Stanford, California: Stanford\u00a0\u00a0University Press, 1999) p.491.<\/p>\n

[viii] For Derrida, such \u2018a double bind cannot be assumed\u2019 by definition; \u2018one can only endure it in a\u00a0passion\u2019<\/em> (Jacques Derrida,\u00a0Resistances of Psychoanalysis<\/em> (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998) p. 36).<\/p>\n

To be continued<\/em><\/strong>. Watch for\u00a0Part II<\/strong> of Gary Hall\u2019s essay coming soon on the\u00a0Creative Research Center Web Site<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Gary Hall writes to NB] Thank you for the invitation to contribute to your born-digital, dynamic, nimble, open-source, collaborative space at Montclair State University. I\u2019m very happy to join the conversation of your Creative Research Centre and take part in your symposium, \u2018The Uses of the Imagination in the Post-9\/11 World\u2019.   You\u2019ve asked me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-research-center-guest-essay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/creative-research-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/creative-research-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/creative-research-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/creative-research-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/creative-research-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/creative-research-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":966,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/creative-research-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions\/966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/creative-research-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/creative-research-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/creative-research-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}