Non-Time and Hauntology

[tru3magic]

full video

http://vimeo.com/12262790

password is whyte

[8bitagent]

Joint winners.

I think it's a momentous and unprecedented shift.

.

I started seeing the cellphone revolution(de-evolution) in 1999, and now the entire makeup and landscape of society here in America is forever altered. Virtually every single person I see now; rich, poor or in between is always incessantly talking or texting(though I've noticed females tend to text/initiate text more) I see people at restaurants, texting or talking with others not in their company. One changeup is that the bluetooth phenomenon is more preferred by 35+ people, especially professionals while most everyone else doesn't use them. First time I saw bluetooth I thought the person was talking to themselves.
Cellphones of course went from huge to tiny to large and act as a kind of pda small computer. I've often noticed that the more connected "we" get with all this smart phone/facebook/twitter stuff, the more isolated real life seems. The integration of tv/net/gaming/computer/devices(like the Roku box) ensares people to have more reason not to leave their dwelling. The eerie blue glow of tv on an evening drive through anytown USA replacing barbeques and people playing basketball in their drive way. You can be in a big bustling city, where everyone is connected like the borg to their smart phones and facebook...but feel just as lonely as someone by themselves in a Memphis trailer. I fear what is to come next

It's interesting, when I saw Pakistani college aged youth interviewed on tv recently they looked exactly like the Western "hip college youth"...it seems many cultures worldwide with a youth class fitting into a certain economic standing all tend to be similar; yet poorer the youth seems they begin to be more rooted in their traditional culture and garb. Iranian youth in some sectors seem just like the indie emo hipster kids in American malls for instance. The newer Iranian film "No One Knows About Persian Cats" is all about this.

Also one other thing has changed...everyone is now on a unified social network: facebook. Very few people I've met or know these days arent on it, even when they get "sick of it". So ya no longer have to feel shy about asking for someones number; just hey "ya on the book?"

Anyways, thanks for showing that clip...wish the whole film was online

[8bitagent]

*
could it be the absence of my inanimate nemesis the cell phone ?

(still don't have one)

Very close, related. Now link it to Prof. Whyte's primary observation.

.

"people looking at other people"

has been replaced with people looking at their tiny screens?

Drives me right 'round the bend. I really can't describe how much I loathe what texting and cell phones in general have done to my experience of the world and the people in it.

yeah. I don't much care for it either. They're spending upwards of $500 on a good smartphone (or less on the crappy ones lot's of people have) and upwards of $100 a month or more for their phone/data plan. and when exactly is it that this is to be used? Sitting on the bus? but most people don't ride the bus. While driving? that would be crazy. At the office? You have a computer in front of you. At home? you have a laptop or computer there. I just don't see the need for it, and the cost is sufficient to buy something like 20 magazines a month with, if you really need causal reading; or bring a book. Jeez, it's such a waste of money and where that money goes is a joke... The carriers prices are OUTRAGEOUSLY inflated, unnecessarily high, CLEARLY they are all colluding because there is zero real price competition. I do think it's going to be recognized as the fad it is soon enough.

*in my best Jerry Seinfeld imitation*

"Whoooo arrre these people talking too?"

[tru3magic]

Anyways, thanks for showing that clip...wish the whole film was online

Check my post above.

[brainpanhandler]

FWIW, though, this certainly isn't the first time in my life I've heard or read pretty much the exact same argument being made. Because it's been coming up like clockwork about every ten years or so since before I was born. And if you counted loosely analogous claims too, you could make a pretty decent case for it being pretty much be as old as the first means of mass-produced culture. (I think. Um....That would be the printing-press, right?)

Despite which, imo, it's always right, always important, and (unfortunately) always as excruciatingly painful as really grief for a real loss inevitably is. Whatever rocking tomorrows lie still yet ahead will rise in part from the ashes of that, eventually, I don't doubt.

That does seem like a certainty and to some degree that will require an absence of knowledge of what has come before. I know for myself that an ignorance of the past at least circumvents the creative blockage that occurs with the thought that I cannot ever create something original and unique. Marx believed that we are fundamentally creators. That is our essence. That is what we do that is unuquely human. And being trapped in our subjectivity, something that would no doubt be desired if we weren't, but wishing to create a shared intersubjectivity (see what I see. make me feel not so alone) we recreate our experience for others. I suppose some more highly evolved artists/creators have other wellsprings from which to draw their creative energies, but I think on the whole it is about feeling less existentially isolated.

But I wonder if we really don't live in times so unique that cultural patterns of creative ebb and flow are being disrupted in ways they never have before. Sort of like when people believed it was impossible to run a mile in 4 minutes and then Roger Bannister did it. Ok. But no one and I mean no one is going to run a 3 minute mile, ever.

It seems to me that one of the thrusts of modern art as exemplified in cinema (3d!) is to recreate as realistic and immersive a representation of reality as possible. As such it seems to me that technology is a key force behind the drive to create the ultimate intersubjectivity, literal shared experience. It may well be that much of the attraction is/will be an escape from reality, but that doesn't mean the artist has to go along with that impulse. Technology is as always a two edged sword. How far can we really be from a technologically induced mind meld where the demarcation between subject and object disappears, a holodeck of sorts?

Imagine an immersive Guernica or an acid trip with Hunter S.

Will anything ever get done once we have holodecks?

[elfismiles]

It seems to me that one of the thrusts of modern art as exemplified in cinema (3d!) is to recreate as realistic and immersive a representation of reality as possible. As such it seems to me that technology is a key force behind the drive to create the ultimate intersubjectivity, literal shared experience. It may well be that much of the attraction is/will be an escape from reality, but that doesn't mean the artist has to go along with that impulse. Technology is as always a two edged sword. How far can we really be from a technologically induced mind meld where the demarcation between subject and object disappears, a holodeck of sorts?

Imagine an immersive Guernica or an acid trip with Hunter S.

Will anything ever get done once we have holodecks?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI6sBdA99c8

[justdrew]

all excellent movies elfismiles, Until the End of the World is one of my all time top ten, and an amazingly good soundtrack.

and now a little music for the end of history... (or at least the epoch of linear recapitulation) (see there's something new ZERO hits for the phrase "epoch of linear recapitulation")







if only one, see this one...




I'm leaving out Fly Me to the Moon because it's so obvious

[elfismiles]

Top google search results...

Hauntology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hauntology is an idea within the philosophy of history introduced by Jacques Derrida in his 1993 work Spectres of Marx. The word, a portmanteau of haunt and ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology

What is hauntology? | Jahsonic 2006 -2009
Nov 18, 2006 ... Hauntology update at the Existence Machine with a focus on dub, the Black Atlantic and the Talking Heads album My life in the Bush of ghosts ...
http://jahsonic.wordpress.com/2006/11/1 ... auntology/

BAM/PFA - Art Exhibitions - Hauntology
Hauntology, essentially the logic of the ghost, is a concept as ephemeral and abstract as the term implies. Since it was first used by the French ...
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/hauntology

hauntology & desirean exercise in combinatory aesthetics: bits and pieces that make up a perfect world. reblogs are set as a click-thru to the original poster rather than as ...
http://hauntology.tumblr.com

Hauntologies — New Mappings
Feb 24, 2009 ... Hauntology is a neologism coined by Jacques Derrida in his work Specters of Marx . In it, he invokes not just the ghost of Marx and the ...
http://www.newmappings.net/archives/papers/hauntologies

Hauntology, spectres and phantomsby C Davis - 2005
Hauntology, as a trend in recent critical and psychoanalytical work, has two distinct, related, and to some extent incompatible sources. ...
http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/content/59/3/373.full

Flak Magazine | Nostalgia Now: Hauntology's Specter, 12.10.07
Dec 10, 2007 ... Enter into this dreamless sleep an unlikely buzzword — "hauntology" — and the musical contrarians it describes. ...
http://www.flakmag.com/features/hauntology.html

k-punk: Hauntology Now
Jan 17, 2006 ... Derrida has been pleased to term this dual movement of return and inauguration a 'hauntology', a coinage that suggests a spectrally deferred ...
http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/007230.html

Rouge's Foam: Hauntology: The Past Inside The Present
Oct 27, 2009 ... I'm all too aware that it's no longer 2006, the year to blog about hauntology, but I've been planning to write a piece like this since the ...
http://rougesfoam.blogspot.com/2009/10/ ... esent.html

'Hauntology': Perception makes art spookier - SFGate
Aug 12, 2010 ... "Hauntology" sounds like just another clever exhibition title. But it has technical meanings to some philosophers, psychoanalysts, ...
http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-08-12/e ... t-hewicker

[Plutonia]

Actually, I'm with Hugh on this one. I don't get what you all are on about. But maybe that's because of where I live.

I ran into a friend yesterday who told me that she's seen more foragers out harvesting nettles this year than ever before- the new sprouts are excellent for eating and abundant. So are dandelion flowers BTW.

Also, to test the OP's hypothesis, I suggest that you all get a bunch of people together with picks and shovels and head towards the nearest graveyard. You'll be experiencing history lickity-split.

That BTW, was an idea for a protest that was abandoned because of it's potential to be too incendiary. The protest was to be about the remains of Native People's ancestors that were removed and sit in our museums.

[crikkett]

I still don't understand what this is about. Hauntology = kvetching?

From my point of view all this arose from discussions on some UK based mainly dance focussed music blogs and forums about 5 years ago, although the term "hauntology" (and the original concept) is from Derrida and from far earlier but basically was appropriated and used as a description and has now stuck and from the OP is now being applied to lots of different wider cultural bits and pieces.

...

tl:dr - western culture ate itself

Thank you, for such an excellent explanation. I think I understand now.

[Canadian_watcher]

PARODY:

[Canadian_watcher]

where's the vid??? grrr.....

[brainpanhandler]

Actually, I'm with Hugh on this one. I don't get what you all are on about.

Vague abstract bullshit. Onanism.

Really? As I said I read it three times and was uncertain I understood. Upon reading some of the comments and rereading a fourth time I think I got what was there to get and it was less than it seemed, but nonetheless, has a point, albeit less clearly and simply written than it could have been.

But maybe that's because of where I live.

Art and culture are everywhere and effect everyone. You have an internet connection. No?

I ran into a friend yesterday who told me that she's seen more foragers out harvesting nettles this year than ever before- the new sprouts are excellent for eating and abundant. So are dandelion flowers BTW.

Are you suggesting we should stop discussing mass arts and humanities movements and harvest dandelions instead? Can't we do both?

Also, to test the OP's hypothesis, I suggest that you all get a bunch of people together with picks and shovels and head towards the nearest graveyard. You'll be experiencing history lickity-split.

I do enjoy graveyards. They're so peaceful. But I don't think this exercise would help clarify anything to do with the OP.

We are REAL specific groups of people.
Abused by REAL specific groups of people, many in REAL military-industrial groups with NAMES.

Pull head out of ass and fight back.

I don't need Hugh telling me this, nor is it likely that anyone posting to or reading in this thread needs to be told this. The fascists usually place the subversive artists fairly high on their list of targets. Maybe trying to understand reactionary movements in the cultural sphere is a good idea if one wants to understand fascist undertones in society or at least that used to be true. But maybe now it's not and maybe it's a good idea to understand why or at least talk about it. And then go pick some wild greens and make a salad for lunch.

[gnosticheresy_2]

[
I don't need Hugh telling me this, nor is it likely that anyone posting to or reading in this thread needs to be told this. The fascists usually place the subversive artists fairly high on their list of targets. Maybe trying to understand reactionary movements in the cultural sphere is a good idea if one wants to understand fascist undertones in society or at least that used to be true. But maybe now it's not and maybe it's a good idea to understand why or at least talk about it. And then go pick some wild greens and make a salad for lunch.

It's interesting to consider, for the last 40 years we have been told "there is no alternative" to neo-liberal hyper capitalism. As everyone on here is aware, this state of affairs didn't just fall from the sky fully formed but is promoted, implemented and "ruthlessly enforced" (to quote Mark Fisher) by those people and corporations who benefit most from it. Hyper capitalism is the end game, the end point after which nothing else will be allowed to challenge it. Now look at western culture in the context of what we're talking about here. Just as in economics and politics all alternatives to the prevailing orthodoxy are ignored, if they're too big to ignore they're suppressed and if they somehow manage to grow too significant, assimilated and commodified. This state of affairs means culture is in stasis, it has no place to go but back because the wider society in which the culture is embedded is being restricted so much in what is considered to be possible. It's a point Mark Fisher makes very well in Capitalist Realism: for most people it is literally impossible for them to imagine an alternative to hyper-capitalism, and it's not because they're all stupid.

Hyper-capitalism is stasis, unchanging, "imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever".

[Pierre d'Achoppement]

It's just part of the transition from an organic, living culture, in which we were all individuals, to a mechanised, commercial civilisation, in which we are all prostitutes, as prophesyzed by Oswal Spengler in 1918. So nothing to worry about übermuch.