tobaccoey
dreams, fiery thoughts : the right to learn, the right to the remix
“That’s my choice—I’m glad! I should have done the
same if I had had the first lot.”
Plato, The
Republic
passion,
darkness, and -- theater
Seekers learn. Learners seek. Partly, the privilege
is manifested as and in the capacity to immerse oneself in the very act, to be
synchronized with the adventure, and continuously energized by it. Partly, it
is integrated into the playfulness inherent in such endeavors; abundance of its
challenging, yet rewarding, tasks; quirkiness of its content, the ways it is
delivered, and the nexus between the two; persistent invocation of its nature,
of its authentic character.
Each instance within the trajectory called learning
is a reminder to revisit the dark theater from Sherman Alexie’s story “Fearful
Symmetry” from the book War Dances (2010).
It is a story about the guy who embarks on a journey during which his
resilience, adjustability, adaptability, stamina, and resourcefulness are
tested. He was going to be hired as a
screenwriter in Hollywood. Sherwin Polatkin was to adapt an account of a former
smoke jumper who captured the event in which sixteen adventurers parachuted in
the Sirois Canyon to “fight a small wildfire” (162) that soon, unpredictably
evolved into raids of raging flames, scorching adversaries threatening to
obliterate the scenery. Calamity lurking from each wild movement of the
destructive cohorts. The only survivor from the whole team, Wayne Ford, set a
fire to escape the fire. It was weird. And yet, he was the only one who did not
try to outrun the nature ablaze. The only one who did not run:
Did you know that you
can escape a fire by setting another fire at your feet? You might seem to be
building a funeral pyre, but you’re creating a circle of safety. In order to
save your endangered ass, all you have to do is burn down the grass surrounding
you, lie facedown in the ash, and pray that the bigger fire will pass over you
like a flock of blind and burning angels. (162-163)
The event chronicled by Harris Tolkin decades in the
aftermath of the event is entitled Fearful
Symmetry: The True Story of the Sirois Canyon Fire. Sherwin was to devise a
cinematic version of it. Only, he would have to de-tragedize it, so to speak:”The hero can’t die” (171 italics
original). As a means of ensuring and, hopefully, enhancing box office success,
he was advised to possibly include ”a scene where the hero fucks his girl in
the ash after a fire” (169). And it was also suggested to him to “[g]et
rid of the William Blake shit” (171
italics original).
We don’t buy it. That’s when his “odyssey” across
the seas of crossword puzzles begins. After those unlikely ordeals and trials,
he settles in the territory he knows, but from which he was temporarily
distracted due to challenging circumstances, tribulations, and inner
oscillations spurred by and invigorating deceitful uncertainty, and elusive
self-confidence.
Before them, as if his whole life could be
encapsulated within, sublimated into, a single experience: a visit to a movie
theater with a girl. Unexpectedly, Karen, who was not exactly an epicenter of
his romantic world, turns the dark room and viewing of The Breakfast Club into an immensely intense, passionately emotional
sensation that grips his whole adolescent being. She touches his hands. She
plays with his fingers. His palms. He had had a sexual experience. He had sex
with three girls before. The contact with Karen was very different from those:”It
was simple—and nearly innocent—but it still felt like sex” (161). As their
hands touch, in the midst of an ordinary, potentially quite prosaic viewing,
the initial semi-indifference of the movie theater experience is being transformed
into one of the most powerful, most vibrant, and most memorable moments.
From then on, it is deeply engrained in his mind
map. It turns out that everything that follows is a search of the possibility
to generate “courage to step into a dark theater, hold hands with a beautiful
woman, and fall back in love with [his] innocence” (181). He is entertaining
the idea on the plane, on his way back from a crossword puzzle contest. He is
soon to land in San Francisco. On his way back home, he devises a metaphor as
powerful as the passion that fuels the realm of letters itself is. And his
place within it, as well.
We,
too, need the passion that sustained Polotkin’s persistence in living up to the
intensities of the magical moments of his and Karen’s dark theater experience.
We, too, need it in order to go back to the dark theater and elucidate veering
vagaries, lurking from disguises. Neither darkness nor blackness is what
characterizes the dark theater. It is a symbolic device galvanizing the
capacity to disambiguate hypocritical enchantment in the midst of babylonian
noise and reconstitute energies regenerating the potential of the remix.
truths, worlds & scientists : re-vo-lu-tio-nize
& know it
Neither
darkness nor blackness is that what characterizes the works on which this book
focuses. One of the ways to persevere in discerning and sustaining distinctions
is to learn resistance against oppression, against coercion. In a word,
learning resistance simultaneously fuels and is invigorated by critical
thinking. One of the ways of deploying and demonstrating it through encounters with
pieces reflecting that faculty is to look at the juxtaposition and parallels
between and among them with regard to both the style and the message.
Specifically, there is an undoubted sense of stylistic disparity—despite
obvious reverberations—between Hubert Selby Jr.’s Requiem for a Dream and Dennis Cooper’s Try.
The
former is unmistakenly a piece of realist prose. Everything in it is in tune
with the dynamics of the street, monstrosity of drug addiction, terror of
degradation, discomfort of a dysfunctional family, unease of the collapse of
the solidity of societal institutions, morality, and human relations. And
that’s just how it should be perceived. The latter, however, in spite of the
persuasiveness of horror genre and all the aspects of the underbelly and
demimonde of what to a majority of denizens who inhabit this planet appears as
the only form of the everyday, in spite of the intricacies and, indeed, at
times puzzlement, of the opacity overshadowing destinies of the characters and bending
their orbits, there is a streak that stands in stark contrast to the disastrous
aspect supposedly underscoring the
overarching concept that unifies the whole novel.
Particularly,
there is a cartoonish, so to speak, characteristic that contradicts the cruelty
of the word depicted that enables dissolvement of those mindless forces. The
cartoonish streak in question is that what inspires distrust of the
philosophies some of the characters propagate. The cartoonish streak is that
what ensures the basis for recuperation. Were it solely for the plot, solely
for the content of the dialogues taken at face value, solely for
superficialities of the manifestations of inner dynamic, the characters of
Ziggy and Calhoun would be sensed merely in terms of their messed up syntax,
stinky jeans, stained linen, dimlit rooms-as-an-epitome-of-dimlit universes, dispassionate
responses, or inexplicable affinities. Were those components solely the focus, Ziggy’s
magazine I Apologize would be
suggestive merely of the noise in the communication channel, rather than the
noise coming from the amplifiers channeling the signal of the mighty strings,
resonating with the time steadily sustained with each and every strike of the
drum stick on the surface of the snare drum, with the symphony of
cymbals—rather than the glorious polyphony of his favorite band Hüsker Dü. Were
those tangential elements under the disguise of the key ingredients
constitutive of the substantiality of the message, the reading of this
immensely inspiring novel would be divested of the joy of diving into the
profound lyricism it so generously offers and presents.
Those
features that typically characterize fiction writings and are mainly woven in
the layer that belongs to the sonic aspects of prose--the tone--apparently are
not exclusively pertinent to the genre in question. More precisely, there is a
peculiar narrative device that can be found in nonfiction, as well. Surprisingly,
it reveals the stylistic components as central to the statement of the work.
From those versatile manifestations of that audio plane one learns.
In
Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), where
he considers a dynamic within the discipline called science, patterns of normal
science are juxtaposed with the occurrences of revolutionary science. The
former is characterized by cumulative mode of acquiring and storing knowledge
aimed at and deployed in the service of solidifying and reconfirming the
existing body of knowledge and the entrenched perception of phenomena and data
alike. The latter demarcates the crux of the dynamic: the moments when new
insights, that no longer support the previous theories and hypotheses, are
obtained.
Such
moments require and entail a rather holistic reconfiguration of both the
information and access to it. Those moments are called paradigm shifts. That’s
when normal science is rendered obsolete, inoperative, when the knowledge
available is not sufficient to explain the world, and when the pattern known as
scientific knowledge is questioned, rethought, and refigured. That’s when it
(the particular pattern/paradigm, not the category) is replaced by an alternative vocabulary,
new theories, hypotheses, perception, and approach to the subject matter. That’s
when revolutionary science occurs.
However,
one cannot but notice numerous instances of Kuhn’s debating the issues from
which it could be inferred that radical paradigm shifts are quite unlikely. There
is a sense that each seemingly radical shift of scientific vocabulary is an
increment on the scale of revision of the existing ones, that the existing ones
are to diverse degrees being redescribed. This puts the theorist, and
philosophers especially, in a curious position. For one, s/he acknowledges
versatility of what is taken to be objective knowledge, thereby ascribing the
same revisibility to the fact that knowledge is human creation.
To
attribute an unchangeable character to a particular paradigm would mean setting
it in stone, thereby enabling it to occupy a privileged position in culture and
assume an unrivaled, uncontestable status. That, in turn, would entail an
assumption of a demigodlike position of scientists—authors of(f) inventions, owners of patents, of copyrights,
royalties, principal researchers within projects funded by multifarious
sources, the ones who both articulate and subscribe to the discovery. At the
same time, to claim a discursive character of science would put emphasis on contingency
that might be (as it has frequently been) misinterpreted as sheer
arbitrariness, absence of structural solidity, unhinged relativistic anomie. It
might be misconceived as a randomly articulated, purely subjective – matter.
Yet,
Kuhn undoubtedly maintains the stance that heavily relies on the anchorage of
scientific vocabulary (regardless of its being subject to redescription) in the
objectivity of the world. His advocating objectivity features no affinity to
determinism whatsoever, especially not at the expense of agency and
individuality. So, rather than disruptions, discontinuity, and discrete nature
of paradigm shifts, Kuhn’s theorizing inspires thoughts of continuity, process,
constancy of revolution.
Kuhn
seems to be reluctant to credit new angles of looking at certain scientific
questions with the status of a revolutionary shift. Part of the reason he never
explicates that hesitance might be understood in the context of the relationship
between normal science (paradigm) and revolutionary science (paradigm shift).
Specifically, the basis of the conundrum can be the problem of radical newness related
to the notion of incommensurability. In other words, were those paradigms,
indeed, utterly incommensurable, the shift would be out of the question
altogether. They might be incongruous in the context of, with regard to, the
object level (the questions they concern), but communication between them on
the metalevel is intact. Hence, incommensurability is partial, conditional,
specific, particular. So is newness. So is “revolution.”
Thomas
Kuhn:” Two men who perceive the same situation differently but nevertheless
employ the same vocabulary in its discussion must be using words differently.
They speak, that is, from what I have called incommensurable viewpoints. How
can they even hope to talk together much less to be persuasive. Even a
preliminary answer to that question demands further specification of the nature
of difficulty” (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 200).
To
say that revolution is partial is to highlight the context within which Kuhn
considers scientific vocabularies. His cautious approach to the notion of revolutionary/paradigm
shifts is anchored in the understanding that new paradigms do not discredit
scientific status/character of the one it questions and, potentially, modifies.
Thus, the sense of certain kind of continuum of scientific vocabularies may imply
that they do not necessarily propose completely different answers to the same
questions. Paradoxically, it is not unreasonable either to presume that they might
be addressing related issues and that they are constitutive of the same
vocabulary called science.
The
caution with which this should be handled results from the assumption inherent
in such a precept. Particularly, the standpoint could be suggestive of there
being diverse discursive descriptions of the world and that they are conjured
up by humans called scientists. This may suggest ascribing to that knowledge
merely subjective nature perceived as a radically mutually exclusive with
objective knowledge. To say that absolutely objective knowledge is a
philosophical impossibility by no means implies that the world can be molded by
just any discursive description. Nor does it mean that any description is
valid. Thomas Kuhn: “Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of
scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same
direction. Again, that is not to say that they can see anything they please”
(150).
One
needs hardly be reminded how extravagantly challenging Kuhn’s wording here is.
The “different worlds” cannot be more symbolic in portraying disparity of
views. Let’s consider a subtler version of the discussion in question: “To say
that the members of different groups may have different perceptions when
confronted with the same stimuli is not to imply that they may have just any
perceptions at all” (195). The “different worlds” could be understood as
different wording of “different groups. “ And yet, two vocabularies are quite
what the phrase means. The contrast could be encapsulated by the observation
Kuhn offers, thereby enhancing the critical edginess of the debate and
accentuating both elusiveness and distinctiveness of the literal and the
metaphorical, of the object level and the metalevel:”In the metaphorical no
less than in the literal use of “seeing,” interpretation begins where
perception ends” (198).
Capable
of spurring relativistic accusations as it may be, the claim, in fact, clears
the path to the clarification regarding both antirelativist purism and
uncritical randomizing. That it is merely a demonstration of sensitivity to
resilience, and yet, distance from unselectivity, sensitivity to critical
thinking, and yet. distance from rigid discrimination Kuhn’s remark fortifies:
I do not doubt,
for example, that Newton’s mechanics improves on Aristotle’s and that
Einstein’s improves on Newton’s as instruments for puzzle-solving. But I can
see in their succession no coherent direction of ontological development. On
the contrary, in some important respects, though by no means in all, Einstein’s
general theory of relativity is closer to Aristotle’s than either of them is to
Newton’s. Though the temptation to describe the position as relativistic is
understandable, the description seems to me wrong. Conversely, if the position
be relativism, I cannot see that the relativist loses anything needed to
account for the nature and development of the sciences. (207)
To
generalize relativity would require drawing from the axiom that subverts its
ever so versatile nature. Needless to say, it would spell out both its
self-including and self-excluding, (self)denying and (self)affirming character.
Simultaneously, to limit its scope, to negotiate articulating takes on it
solely for the sake of ensuring “safe space” of theorizing that would enable
its “immunity” can be a dangerous, dishonest, unscrupulously utilitarian,
uncritical, theoretically not viable, and morally questionable maneuver. It’s
not tasteful, either. Obviously, the dilemma implies the underscoring paradoxes
generating the debate. Necessity/contingency, determinism/relativism are some
of the polarities around which the conversation revolves. While they are per
se frequently sensed as valid--despite numerous objections to dichotomies
as such and albeit being even potentially theoretically untenable—it by no
means invites mechanistic adjustments between theory and what it is supposed to
fit in, let alone vice versa.
That is precisely the reason why
Kuhn might be reluctant to acknowledge and embrace in its entirety the
postulate of/presumption about the continuum of scientific vocabulary. Simply
put, it would signal an understanding of it as a succession of diverse takes on
the constant called truth. Kuhn rightly has reasonable reservations regarding
such a view. It is an admirably humble attitude towards the subject matter. Likewise,
it is a manifestation of the awareness of both elusiveness and protectiveness
of language, awareness of the limit and the greatness of the human.
fluctuating
axioms, un-anchored tenets : limits to overregulated anomie
From
another angle--from another group--a voice of a theorist resonates with Kuhn’s
critique. Terry Eagleton’s book After Theory (2003) considers the
trajectory that theoretical flows have delineated progressing from the clutches
of the grand narratives toward a free wheeling discursive polyphony. The
portion of the trajectory the book is mostly focused on spans the fluctuations
characterizing discourse of the twentieth century and the very beginning of the
twenty-first century. The period has brought to intellectual history the
vernaculars widely known as modernism and postmodernism.
While
distinct in some respects, the two may be approached in the key that addresses
abandoning foundational, essentialist, universalist narratives. They both, in
their own distinctive ways, tell a story about the ways we talk, think, create,
live, and perceive the world, ourselves, and each other. Each in its
distinctive manner demonstrates disagreement with a monolithic, homogenous
expressive mode and, instead, offers a perspectivalist take on pluralist
discourse and pluralist culture. Such a state of affairs may be perceived as
ungrounded, uprooted, and unhinged. Some of its versions appear even as
arbitrary, uncritically contingent, reductionist, and/or relativistic vocabularies.
Many of the variants might sound way too unstructured. Some might even be untenable.
Those
varied manifestations and perceptions of the increments on the
modernist-postmodernist scale, those diversified approaches to the world within
and without alike considered through modernist and postmodernist discourses can
be understood through the prism of Eagleton’s theorizing, notably with regard
to the observation about the quirky dialectic, oscillations between the
polarities such as contingency-determinism, the conditioned-innate,
discursive-biological, metaphorical-literal:“Moral values, like everything
else, are a matter of random, free-floating cultural traditions” (57). Eagleton
challenges this versatility raising a question about one of the most sensitive
areas. His tone is unshakable, yet it is also comforting. Once he introduced
the remark about limitless possibilities of discursively “founded” morality,
Eagleton elucidates the counterpoint:”There is no need to be alarmed about
this, however, since human culture is not really free-floating. Which is
not to say that it is firmly anchored either. That would be the flipside of the
same misleading metaphor” (57).
Strangely,
part of Eagleton’s discussion reflects an aspect of the conundrum Kuhn is
depicting. Kuhn is a scientist-turned-historian. Eagleton is a theorist. Both
realize the bliss of polyphonic playfulness. Both warn against ruthless misuse
of such a benefit. Each of them demonstrates uncompromising refutation of the
equation between unlimited potential of language and senseless belief in human
omnipotence. Each of them draws a clear distinction between the world and what
we say about it, each acknowledges points of intersection between these. While
sustaining a balanced approach to such a weird dynamic, not for a second
denying objectivity as such, these immensely provocative, yet incredibly vibrant,
thinkers keep inspiring investment in resistance to mindless proliferation of
discourses and worlds--orgies of hypostatization. Eagleton’s extraordinarily
vivid and lyrically loaded trope is suggestive of the stabilizing component in
the midst of deceitful, tumultuous wanderings: “We are like someone crossing a
high bridge and suddenly being seized by panic on realizing that there is a
thousand-foot drop below them. It is as though the ground beneath their feet is
no longer solid. But in fact it is” (57). Theories like theirs invigorate
critical thinking, re-establish the significance of critical distance,
galvanize the edginess of critique, and reintegrate the sound basis for the
preservation of playfulness: elusiveness, but also protectiveness--by virtue of
poisenous poetics.
/
To
articulate it all might be ambitious beyond good taste. To demand verbalizing
it entirely precisely might be even less tasteful. It could even be
ridiculously delusional. Or both. However, to understand it--if not completely--to
communicate it, and to even deliver the message in a logical, rational, coherent,
imaginatively invigorating, engaging, but also accurate manner might not be
impossible. One thing is quite certain: the tone, imbuing the signature in the
content, is if not the same, then closely related to the voice. The concept of
voice is not likely to be separable from the notion of the subject, as Steven
Connor observes in his essay “Choralities” (2015).[1]
While he concerns audio manifestations of soundscape in its aural form, the
thoughts he presents can be understood in the context of the voice as the tone
of the narrative. The sonic imagery thus delineated can be perceived via the
awareness of the notion of the subject: ”there is no disembodied voice. That
is, there can be no voice that does not imply and require the possibility of
somebody and more particularly some body to utter it” (1).
Connor
succinctly and ever so subtly unpacks the specter of objectification haunting
this benighted planet. He does so in a fascinating lateral manner. The tactic
almost resembles the-fire-to-escape-the-big-fire strategy from Alexie’s story
“Fearful Symmetry.” Namely, verging on being perceived as a claim about insubstantiality,
almost hallucinatory character of voice, Connor, in fact, strips the voice of a
mythical dimension. He de-subjectifies it. He focuses on the perception of it,
thus repurposing the narrative, as suggested in his essay”“Acousmania” (2015).[2]
Re-purposing in question concerns subjectivity as the pivotal component of the
polemic--the focus and the source. To look at the phenomenon of sound more
closely, Connor proposes an angle from which sound is rendered undetectable,
unperceivable unless received in its relational form. The form in question is constitutive
of content. Sound is that what one hears, as it were: “A sound is a relational
entity, not any kind of thing in itself” (6).
Tracking
the debate back to the vacillations between the metaphorical and the literal,
one is prone to note the persistent centrality of the perception-awareness
nexus in Connor’s critique. Not only does he divest sound of thing-in-itself, but
also demystifies the stance by illuminating the crux and directing the discussion
toward disentanglement of knots: “The set of relations that constitutes a
soundscape is certainly a relation between auditory elements, but the relations
themselves are not auditory” (6). To further clarify the point about
de-subjectification of the inanimate and re-subjectification of the subject, he
goes on to fortify the awareness of the subject matter:
Nor, let us
hasten to add, are they necessarily visual, so this is not a question of the
auditory being subsumed under or reduced to the dominative order of the eye, as
audiomanes like to insists. For relations belong to the intelligible rather
than the sensible, and are therefore as anoptic as they are anaural; we may see
the relations between visual items, but we can no more ‘see’ the relations than
we can ‘hear’ the relation between a major chord and a diminished seventh. (6)
How does one then rejoice in the
intricacies of the caprice of quirky chords if it is not possible--and not necessary,
either--to simultaneously listen to the pretext, so to speak? Perhaps
transposing the discussion into philosophical lingo could be instrumental in
understanding the quandary--if not in its entirety, then, at least, the major
part of it: ”because sound is all and always epistemology, and not ontology”
(5). Through this prism, Connor reveals the key to the enigma of sound as
relations, as perception. He does so by invoking the linguistic playfulness
teaching one and, at the same time, confirming the capacity for and sensitivity
to the power of language generated through a paradoxical dialogue between its
elusiveness and protectiveness. Specifically, Connor evokes reverberations of
and between the words intelligible, sensible, awareness, perception,
understanding, perspective, point of view, sound, voice, the tone. He
approaches the perplexity via the analysis of the act of listening--one of the
most precious faculties cultivated by human beings: “Perhaps, it may be said,
when one listens for the way in which things operate as sound, rather than
simply listening through the sound to what they mean, one is doing something
different – but it is really no more or less sonorous, or ‘intuitive’ than the
action of listening for meaning” (4-5).
Connor solidifies the point where
the key aspects of his reasoning intersect: “I have begun to wonder whether
subjects must be understood as those entities who know how to subject
themselves” (3). Indeed. One should be reminded that the discussion Connor
offers is constitutive of the discipline called sound studies. In philosophical
jargon, it is the metalevel to the object level called sound. At the same time,
sound studies is the object level of the metalevel called acoustemology.
Explorations of /observations about sound put the subject on various levels of
the investigation and conversation. Since much of what is pertinent to sound
concerns the subject’s perception of it -- the knowing -- clearly, studying sound
can only be conducted from the metalevel looking at sound as the object level.
However, that metalevel always includes interrogation of those who observe,
contemplate, and communicate, i.e., human beings who are, thus, simultaneously
constitutive of the subject matter.
Connor’s interpretation is
sophisticated. It summons the awareness of a perpetual introspection,
especially within the endeavors such as those linked to phenomenology, and yet,
it refrains from self-referentially. It amply centers on the significance of
the subject, and yet, it does not wallow in an inflated image of self. It
shamelessly, yet humbly, positions itself in the world. It is an admirable
homage to language: elusiveness, but also protectiveness--communicating the
potential of the remix.
/
In
the age that colors the world the shade of fabricated desire and dromospheric
pollution enables reckless commoditization as a channel of oppressive mechanisms
of control—a tunnel of noise. In the age that obscures via overexposing, where
distraction is packaged in myriad false foci, the world’s angles from which blindness
generates vision hide in the shadow of noise. In the age that threatens to
transform the communication channel in an empire of a mindless monetized flux,
unselective, uncritical perception of the world, oneself, and others
perpetuates sensationalism as the controlling mechanism in the universe of
hollowness.
The
world that welcomes the ecstasy of bewilderment celebrates euphoric haze that devours
critical distance. Critical thinking. Such a world believes that its modus operandi is its genuine
character—battlefield of power. Such a world believes that viagra, bank
account, and mortgage are linked by virtue of mysteriously woven digitized
fantasies. In such a world, power has become the new l’art pour l’artism. Only, it’s neither. It’s a misnomer.
Some
of the perplexities of this nature call for sharpening the edginess of critical
thinking enabling, inspiring, generating, and invigorating the capacity to
discern and sustain distinctions. One of them is the distinction between
individualism and individuality, between uniformity and unity. The legacy of
the Enlightenment keeps the awareness of the world plagued by amnesia. The
legacy of the Enlightenment keeps the awareness of the world that forgot the
fervor of the investment in the age of reason. The era clad in a distorted
image of the significance of the private sphere obliterates the distinction between
the public and the private at the expense of transforming the latter into a
cacophony void of a bilateral dialogue. The former, needless to say, is
rendered self-referential to the point where individualism dissolves in the bacchanalia
of disconnectedness. Both are dissolved in the murky entanglement of dictum of
fiscal logic under the disguise of a crossbreed between sociopolitical
structures and morality. Individuality is something else. It is constitutive of
and is engendered through refacement.
Cacophonic multivoicedness is a deviant
version of polyphonic playfulness. Perspectivalism on steroids, hypostatization
galore, proliferation of worlds, vocabularies, and senseless fantasy of human
omnipotence reflect a misperceived potential of
pluralist discourse. In it, differences, instead of inspirational
heterogeneity, establish the common denominator divesting them of --
distinctiveness. Such a proliferation of flawed diversification is, in fact, a
means of further fragmentation, atomization, insularity, disconnectedness—by blandness.
This paradox is the mode that both reveals and sustains a mutually dissolving
relationship between cacophony and uniformity. Unity is something else. It is
constitutive of and generated through refacement.
Both
individuality and unity are pivotal to the remix. They are also key to
refacement: subtonic hi-fi solidarity of selfless, yet re-individualized,
fellow humans united in enduring the hindrances to the patient, persistent creation of a free culture based on trust and
love. The remix is both the source and the vehicle for the intersection between
vibrant creative / critical responses, peaceful/peaceable resistance, and
reverence. By virtue of such intersections, learning persists, and so does the
fellowship: against noise, and in the service of the remix.
[1] A
lecture given at Voices
and Noises, Audiovisualities
Lab of the Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke
University, 27th March 2015. http://stevenconnor.com/choralities.html
[2] A lecture given at Sound
Studies: Art, Experience, Politics, CRASSH,
Cambridge, 10th July 2015. http://stevenconnor.com/acousmania.html
