Archive for May, 2010
Some Lazy (But Hopefully Interesting) Links
So, clearly I’m having a bit of trouble keeping this blog updated regularly. It’s not that I can’t think of anything to write – I just can’t seem to find the time or focus to put ideas together coherently (as my last post was obvious testament to). So in the meantime, I’ll be a little lazy and link you to writing I’ve done elsewhere:
- At Techi, I tried my best to do a mainstream version of a quasi-Marxist critique of the Facebook privacy backtrack. It’s only a fraction of what I wanted to say, but attention span etc. The thing I’m actually much more interested in – but just wouldn’t fly on a blog with a general readership – is to think about the links between the Death of Privacy and the Death of the Author. We’re edgy about this privacy business because of the way the signs and texts of identity disseminate multiply and are then repurposed against our original intention. So there’s an obvious, if not particularly literal, connection between Barthes and Zuckerberg, and it seems it would be interesting to think about how we are being asked to reconceptualise the self in relation to its online functioning – it scatters, it spreads, yet, like the author function that Foucault articulated, we still need a discourse of the bodily or physical self in order to still talk about selves in general.
- Also at Techi, I tried to round up some ‘trends’ (yeah yeah, shut up) in interface technology. Not the usual abstract rambling about how I think interfaces are to tech what language is to reality, but it might interest those of you who share my fascination with UI’s.
- Finally, a little while ago I spent a couple of days at Mesh – Canada’s Web Conference – and wrote things up for Torontoist. I’ll be doing the same for the first NXNEi when it shows up later this month. Oh, I never wrote about it, but I was, erm, on a panel for some ‘social media for PR people’ thingy at the Royal York with Sarah Evans and the awesomeness that is Rea. The main thing of note – other than the shocking feeling that I almost knew what I was talking about – was that ‘PR professionals’ are almost exclusively women, who are young, well-dressed and stereotypically attractive. It was weird.
Would Donna Haraway Use Firefox?
Posted by Nav in Cultural Theory, Culture of Technology on May 25, 2010
A little while ago, I said h+ Magazine “occasionally feels like the imaginary lovechild of Donna Haraway and the guys at Snarkmarket.” As if to prove at least half of my point, today they re-linked to an older piece on Haraway. Actually, I’m not sure if that proves anything. Maybe I just wanted to re-quote myself.
But Haraway has always fascinated me from the start. Something about self-consciously using metaphors that aren’t meant to reference something that exists yet really appeals to me. It’s a way of at least starting to think ‘beyond’.
Aaaaannnd, of course, the long block quote, explaining the basics of Haraway’s cyberfeminist shtick:
Cyberfeminism takes as an axiomatic principle that, though technology is inherently neutral, the entire process of technological development, design, and engineering is influenced by society and culture and, thus, in part by normative forces such as patriarchy. While eco-feminists propose to fight fire with water, countering tech with nature, cyberfeminists champion fighting fire with fire. Feminism — and critical theory in general — provide tools and concepts necessary for transhumanists to understand how “the human” is socially constructed. “What makes us human” is constantly up for debate because the meaning of “human” changes through history and from culture to culture. The accepted or “normal” definition is the result of sociological power structures best described by French philosopher Michel Foucault. For example, Foucault noted in A History Of Sexuality that a “sodomite” was one who had committed the act of sodomy, perhaps once, perhaps on multiple occasions, while the later designation of “homosexual” was someone with a medically or psychologically diagnosed pathology. In short, a man having sex with a man went from a single act, a sin, to a condition, a problematic state of being. Furthermore, it is now largely recognized as one sexuality among a multitude. The implications for transhumanism are clear: if Foucault’s method of historical genealogy can be used to deconstruct what is seen as “natural” sexuality, then what other “natural” aspects of the human subject can be shown to be equally constructed and open for change, perhaps in the form of augmentation (of body, mind) or elimination (of suffering and death).
What I’ve been thinking about lately is the way in which technology has increasingly become subject to various ideological positioning. This has always happened, of course – it’s just interesting to watch how it’s happening now.
Facebook’s privacy fuck-up is, to some, an increasing sign of the commodification of human relationships; to others, it is about a reformulation of the self from an interior experience to public performance. Similarly, Google et al are either part of the concentration of the late-capitalist overlap of commerce and culture, or they are the liberators of the world.
But this debate over the ideological functioning of the web seems to be generally locked in a particular mode of thinking. So what is a little fun to think about for me is what a ‘technophilic anti-capitalism’ might look like.
I know the knee-jerk response is Linux, Mozilla, open-source etc. But I wonder: isn’t open source a sign that the ‘mode of production’ of the web is always-already destined to reproduce a concentrated version of global capitalism? After all, Firefox is very good at promoting a kind of individualist, liberal approach to the web that is about empowering users – but not very good at critiquing how individualism can itself enable the creation of hierarchies. To wit, open source is a bit like the hybrid car: it’s a better alternative, but it encourages the stability of the existing system.
At the same time, because something like Firefox doesn’t necessarily rely on creating a profit, it may be more likely to introduce features for oft-overlooked groups of users: non-English speakers, people with physical challenges, versions without built-in corporate components etc.
Bittman on Dining Alone
Depending on who you talk to, dining alone is: a slightly sad, pathetic activity; a sign of maturity; an unfortunate but necessary compromise; an underrated joy. In my life, it’s definitely a case of ‘e) all of the above’. While at times it is downright miserable, at others the combination of solitude and gustatory indulgence can be a delight.
And in this great piece, food writer Mark Bittman picks up on the ambivalence of performing an ostensibly social act – ‘going out for dinner’ – alone:
Perhaps we don’t eat alone more often because we’re taught not to—or rather we’re not taught how to. From day one we learn to eat in the company of others, and we figure out fast that the kids who eat alone at school are the kids who don’t have anyone to eat with. Socially, eating alone is not a sign of our strength, but of a lack of social standing.
We’re ingrained to believe that meals are communal activities. And, in today’s overly stimulated world we’re so accustomed to constant distraction that the act of doing something so focused, of sitting quietly in an intimate environment like a restaurant – with just ourselves for company – leaves us feeling exposed. With no one sitting across the table to keep us occupied, we wonder what those others sitting in the room make of our solitary status.
I also like the fact that, inevitably, reading a book always pops into these discussions; reading and eating/drinking alone seem to go hand-in-hand.
Not mentioned here, however, is that when you dine alone but also write a food blog, you totally feel like a tool taking photos of your food – so 95% of the time, I just don’t.
“…but I really can’t exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it.”
Posted by Nav in Cultural Theory, Theorizing the Web on May 9, 2010
So, for those of you who don’t know (i.e. all of you) the general topic of my dissertation is how literature deals with the changes to the concept of the individual brought about by the web and video games.
And recently, during yet another beer-fueled conversation with a friend, we stumbled upon the realisation that Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was basically tailor made for my project. I hope to be able to give you a decent explanation why later.
But I’ve also been thinking about this whole Facebook privacy kerfuffle and why so many of us feel weirded out by the recent changes. What model of the individual are we using when we think about the private and the public?
Well, I don’t have any answers to that yet, but this snippet from the beginning of Wilde’s novel certainly felt like it was worth quoting:
When I like people immensely I never tell their names to any one. It seems like surrendering a part of them. You know how I love secrecy. It is the only thing that can make modern life wonderful or mysterious to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town I never tell people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one’s life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?
It’s just a tiny thing. But, at the very least, this notion of inside and outside, the dynamic of desire produced by secrecy, and the manner in which technology – even the painting – allows for the ‘externalisation of the individual’ – well, it all seems like an interesting place to start.
Mario, Bumping Up Against His Own Limits
Posted by Nav in Cultural Theory, Video Games on May 8, 2010
Perhaps a slightly out-of-the-blue post for SiW (maybe?), but notoriously finicky game magazine Edge have reviewed Super Mario Galaxy 2 and given it a 10/10.
I’ve written before about how difficult I found it to articulate what I saw as the genius of Super Mario Galaxy – how it seemed to both engage and then ironically or self-reflexively reconfigure the nascent language of video games. But I think it was this passage from the review of the new game that really intrigued me:
That desire to experiment is this astonishing game’s most dangerous achievement. As the adventures soars onwards, its various spaces become increasingly warped, and the final levels switch the emphasis from perfecting the 3D platformer to deconstructing it. Mario is rubbing up against the limits of the form as much as the edge of the universe here, and you’ll see worlds where ledges hang sparse in the air, and where ghosts plucked from the entire sweep of videogame history emerge in half-familiar clumpings of cubes or a nimble arrangement of switches.
Is gaming then entering its own postmodern phase? Or is the very notion of virtual play – of the sudden historical phenomenon in which one can almost step into the represented world and manipulate the of the elements of representation; or the destabilisation of the barrier between author and reader; – itself the logical extension of the breakdown of representation? So that, from the very beginning, the form could not help but invoke its own representational and experiential limits in its own presentation?
The Green Utopia That Is Europe
Not sure when it went up online, but now that it has, I can finally link to Chris Turner’s Walrus cover-story on the greening of Europe and its concomitant urban transformations. And yeah, this is the same Chris Turner who wrote Planet Simpson, the book that I always pull that “the future belongs to the sincere” line from.
There Is No Looking Over The Horizon
Posted by Nav in Cultural Theory on May 6, 2010
Image courtesy of Flickr user Valentina Photography under a CC license
I will admit that Benjamin Kunkel’s 6700-word review of Frederic Jameson’s latest book – The Valences of Dialectics - isn’t exactly a light read.
But there’s something about it – something that hovers just out of reach, glimmering around the edges of the piece – that I think makes it worth the time to read.
Kunkel’s review does what good reviews should do: it says a lot more than simply stating whether or not the book was good. But in going through the scope of Jameson’s work, a man who almost single-handedly resurrected Marxism in North America, Kunkel also seems to almost inadvertently bring up a kind of melancholy or emptiness.
After all, he outlines the fact that a man whose body of work encompasses some extraordinarily rare and impressive erudition, rigour and commitment still cannot quite get at what makes the contemporary tick. Indeed, reading it, you feel not only the massive weight of both history and capitalism, fracturing everything beyond all understanding, you get the distinct sense that even the greatest minds of our age are utterly lost as to how to explain what is happening.
There’s something a bit terrifying in that. Comforting too. But still. We’re peering into the abyss, starting at a place that neither light nor thought can reach.
Buzzfeed, ROFLCon and Something Like Hipster Prejudice
Posted by Nav in Cultural Theory, Culture of Technology, web culture on May 4, 2010
Those of you unfortunate enough to be subject to my musings on Twitter may already know that, for a couple of years now, I’ve had the uneasy feeling that the fine folks at Buzzfeed may occasionally do as much harm as good. The site, which gathers memes, funny tumblrs, strange photos and the culture that surrounds them, is often funny and informative. But occasionally, simmering underneath, there is an uncomfortable current of smugness and elitism.
The picture above sorta’ crystallised things for me*. It seems to mark out how at least part of ‘meme culture’ ostensibly about the ironic critique of difference – but ultimately displays that ironic critique contains its own politics; you do, after all, have to be in on the joke. Or, in a sense, you have to be hailed by the joke as the right kind of person – if you get it, you are of those who judge culture. If you don’t, you are the object of entertainment for those who do. So it feels vaguely fun and okay when it’s Tea Partiers who are ridiculed – but when you see something like a racial-cultural hierarchy underpinning the humour, suddenly the whole thing starts to feel a bit insidious and icky.
If Buzzfeed is a site that collects much of this new subcultural undercurrent, then maybe it’s a good place to look for how meme culture deals with the difference of culture and class. And when you take a look at the examples, it doesn’t feel very promising. Differing linguistic systems are met with the ‘English, do you speak it motherfucker?’ response. People of Walmart is classism at its very finest. A picture of a young Muslim girl with a mohawk-esque hijab probably shouldn’t seem as incongruous as it was made out to be. And Stuff White People Like was just one long exercise in back-patting, the conversation surrounding it seemingly oblivious to the privilege that enabled the ironic distance of the site’s readers.
I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, but just haven’t had the energy and haven’t done it any justice here. Thankfully though, rather than listen to me ramble on, you have the beautiful prose of Matthew Battles instead – which is really why I’m writing this. After attending ROFLcon II, he collected his thoughts on the web culture conference and, among other things, he too speaks of the uneasy treatment of difference in ‘meme culture’. I like that he’s careful not to condemn – and helpfully points out that, “when we laugh together at a funny accent or a tone-deaf singer or a baby biting his big brother, we’re having and sharing fun. And it’s a good thing, too!”. Still – it’s worth keeping in mind the dynamics of the the kind of audience that ‘ROFLing’ creates: it is, after all, culturally homogeneous and has to be in order for it to find things funny. Anyway, if for some reason you don’t already have HILOBROW in your feed, Battles’ piece is well worth the few minutes it would take to read.
*Anyone who has grown up in an immigrant household – or is surrounded by friends who have – knows that the rice and lentils (or whatever) you have most days is just ‘food’, and the hamburgers, pizza, french fries et al. are ‘English food’ or ‘Canadian food’ or whatever country you happen to be living in. The irony of pizza and ‘french’ fries being ‘Canadian’ food is irrelevant. The point is – only someone hermetically sealed in privileged white American culture would find this strange or unusual.
