“What can we glean from these complex dynamics of word and image in a particular cultural industry? Rather than generalize specific ‘findings’ from stock photography to cultural and media production per se, I would prefer to focus on a largely ‘theoretical’ consequence and its methodo- logical implications: the refinement of our a priori assumptions about material and semiotic production and of our approaches to studying them. To borrow the terminology of Bruno Latour (1987): We need to open up the ‘black boxes’ of images and texts as self-evident, inert artifacts and stable, closed signifying elements, exploring instead their agency in one another’s ‘becoming’ across sites of production and circulation—and in the very processes of creating cultural practices and products.”
— Paul Frosh, 2003, “Industrial ekphrasis: The dialectic of word and image in mass cultural production”, Semiotica Vol. 4
June 2013
1 post
December 2012
1 post
“The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudoworld that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world evolves into a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving.”
— Guy Debord, The Society and the Spectacle
November 2012
1 post
“When considered in relationship to space, the nation may be seen to have two moments or conditions. First, nationhood implies the existence of a market gradually built up over a historical period of varying length. Such a market is a complex ensemble of commercial relations and communication networks. It subordinates local or regional markets to the national one, and thus must have a hierarchy of levels. The social, economic and political development of a national market has been somewhat different in character in places where the towns came very early on to dominate the country, as compared with places where the towns grew up on a pre-existing peasant, rural and feudal foundation, The outcome, however, is much the same everywhere: a focused space embodying a hierarchy of centres (commercial centres for the most part, but also religious ones, ‘cultural’ ones, and so on) and a main centre -i.e. the national capital”
—Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space
October 2012
2 posts
“In the late nineteenth century, influenced by the drive to create a science of society modeled after developments in the hard sciences, William Jevons and Alfred Marshall, among others, established the neoclassical paradigm that continues to provide a model for mainstream economics. Choosing to concentrate on describing, preferably through a set of mathematical equations, the outcomes of different combinations of productive factors (land, labor, and capital), this school of thought eliminated most of the political from political economy.
In the twentieth century, the neoclassical view became what Kuhn (1970) calls “normal science,” or textbook economics. Not unlike the way Newtonian mechanics came to mean physics, the neoclassical approach came to mean economics. But the process of normalizing economics was one of continuous intellectual and political ferment that itself merits a volume on the political economy of economics (Foley, 2006). The so-called Austrian and Cambridge wings of the mainstream neoclassical school debated the centrality of markets and the role of the state. Institutional, Marxian, and corporatist approaches leveled more fundamental criticisms at the paradigm’s assumptions, concepts, conclusions, and engagement (or lack of engagement) with political and social life.” — Vincent Mosco, The Political Economy of Communication
In the twentieth century, the neoclassical view became what Kuhn (1970) calls “normal science,” or textbook economics. Not unlike the way Newtonian mechanics came to mean physics, the neoclassical approach came to mean economics. But the process of normalizing economics was one of continuous intellectual and political ferment that itself merits a volume on the political economy of economics (Foley, 2006). The so-called Austrian and Cambridge wings of the mainstream neoclassical school debated the centrality of markets and the role of the state. Institutional, Marxian, and corporatist approaches leveled more fundamental criticisms at the paradigm’s assumptions, concepts, conclusions, and engagement (or lack of engagement) with political and social life.” — Vincent Mosco, The Political Economy of Communication
September 2012
10 posts
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This idea, that the realization of a chosen emotional situation depends only on the thorough understanding and calculated application of a certain number of concrete techniques, inspired this “Psychogeographical Game of the Week” published, not without a certain humor, in Potlatch #1:
“In accordance with what you are seeking, choose a country, a more or less populated city, a more or less busy street. Build a house. Furnish it. Use decorations and surroundings to the best advantage. Choose the season and the time of day. Bring together the most suitable people, with appropriate records and drinks. The lighting and the conversation should obviously be suited to the occasion, as should be the weather or your memories.
“If there has been no error in your calculations, the result should satisfy you.”
” —Guy Debord, Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography
“Most of the world’s great cities have grown haphazardly, little by little, in response to the needs of the moment; very rarely is a city planned for the remote future. The evolution of a city is like the evolution of the brain: it develops from a small center and slowly grows and changes, leaving many old parts still functioning. There is no way for evolution to rip out the ancient interior of the brain because of its imperfections and replace it with something of more modern manufacture. The brain must function during the renovation. That is why the brainstem is surrounded by the R-complex, then the limbic system and finally the cerebral cortex. The old parts are in charge of too many fundamental functions for them to be replaced altogether. So they wheeze along, out-of-date and sometimes counterproductive, but a necessary consequence of our evolution.
In New York City, the arrangement of many of the major streets dates to the seventeenth century, the stock exchange to the eighteenth century, the waterworks to the nineteenth, the electrical power system to the twentieth. The arrangement might be more efficient if all civic systems were constructed in parallel and replaced periodically (which is why disastrous fires – the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are sometimes an aid in city planning). But the slow accretion of new functions permits the city to work more or less continuously through the centuries. In the seventeenth century you traveled between Brooklyn and Manhattan across the East River by ferry. In the nineteenth century, the technology became available to construct a suspension bridge across the river. It was built precisely at the site of the ferry terminal, both because the city owned the land and because major thoroughfares were already converging on the pre-existing ferry service. Later when it was possible to construct a tunnel under the river, it too was built in the same place for the same reasons, and also because small abandoned precursors of tunnels, called caissons, had already been emplaced during the construction of the bridge. This use and restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of biological evolution.” —Carl Sagan, Cosmos
In New York City, the arrangement of many of the major streets dates to the seventeenth century, the stock exchange to the eighteenth century, the waterworks to the nineteenth, the electrical power system to the twentieth. The arrangement might be more efficient if all civic systems were constructed in parallel and replaced periodically (which is why disastrous fires – the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are sometimes an aid in city planning). But the slow accretion of new functions permits the city to work more or less continuously through the centuries. In the seventeenth century you traveled between Brooklyn and Manhattan across the East River by ferry. In the nineteenth century, the technology became available to construct a suspension bridge across the river. It was built precisely at the site of the ferry terminal, both because the city owned the land and because major thoroughfares were already converging on the pre-existing ferry service. Later when it was possible to construct a tunnel under the river, it too was built in the same place for the same reasons, and also because small abandoned precursors of tunnels, called caissons, had already been emplaced during the construction of the bridge. This use and restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of biological evolution.” —Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Before tackling the problem itself we must be quite clear in our minds that commodity fetishism is a specific problem of our age, the age of modern capitalism. Commodity exchange and the corresponding subjective and objective commodity relations existed, as we know, when society was still very primitive. What is at issue here, however, is the question: how far is commodity exchange together with its structural consequences able to influence the total outer and inner life of society? Thus the extent to which such exchange is the dominant form of metabolic change in a society cannot simply be treated in quantitative terms-as would harmonise with the modern modes of thought already eroded by the reifying effects of the dominant commodity form. The distinction between a society where this form is dominant, permeating every expression of life and a society where it only makes an episodic appearance is essentially one of quality. For depending on which is the case, all the subjective and objective phenomena in the societies concerned are objectified in qualitatively different ways.”
—George Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness
“Haussmann — breaking long, straight and broad streets through the closely-built workers’ quarters and erecting big luxurious buildings on both sides of them, the intention thereby, apart from the strategic aim of making barricade fighting more difficult, being also to develop a specifically Bonapartist building trades’ proletariat dependent on the government and to turn the city into a pure luxury city. By “Haussmann” I mean the practice which has now become general of making breaches in the working class quarters of our big towns, and particularly in those which are centrally situated, quite apart from whether this is done from considerations of public health and for beautifying the town, or owing to the demand for big centrally situated business premises, or owing to traffic requirements, such as the laying down of railways, streets, etc. No matter how different the reasons may be, the result is everywhere the same: the scandalous alleys and lanes disappear to the accompaniment of lavish self-praise from the bourgeoisie on account of this tremendous success, but they appear again immediately somewhere else and often in the immediate neighborhood.”
—Friedrich Engels, The Housing Question
“As for the commodity in general, it is obvious that kilograms of sugar, sacks of coffee beans and metres of fabric cannot do duty as the material underpinning of its existence. The stores and warehouses where these things are kept, where they wait, the ships, trains and trucks that transport them - and hence the routes used - have also to be taken into account. Furthermore, having considered all these objects individually, one still has not properly apprehended the material underpinning of the world of commodities. Nor do such notions as ‘channel’, derived from information theory, or ‘repertoire’, help us define such an ensemble of objects. The same goes for the idea of ‘flows’. It has to be remembered that these objects constitute relatively determinate networks or chains of exchange within a space. The world of commodities would have no ‘reality’ without such moorings or points of insertion, or without their existing as an ensemble. The same may be said of banks and banking-networks vis-à-vis the capital market and money transfers, and hence vis-à-vis the comparison and balancing of profits and the distribution of surplus value.”
—Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space
“‘Navarrenx is medieval, but not obviously so (it was built to a fairly regular plan in the fourteenth century, by a large bridge over the Gave on the road from Le Puy to Santiago de Compostela, and on the site of a much older hamlet; in its time it was a new town, and an even newer two centuries later when it was rebuilt on an even more geometric groundplan, and ringed with Italianate ramparts). I know every stone of Navarrenx. In these stones I can read the centuries, rather as botanists can tell the age of a tree by the number of rings in its trunk. But for Navarrenx - as for many other places„villages and towns - a different analogy springs to mind: the image of a seashell. A living creature has slowly secreted a structure; take this living creature in isolation, seperate it from the form it has given itself according to the laws of its species, and you are left with something soft, slimy, and shapeless; what can it possibly have in common with this delicate structure, its ridges, its grooves, its symmetries, its every detail revealing smaller, more delicate details as you examine it more closely? But it is precisely this link, between the animal and its shell, that one must try to understand. It summarizes the immense life of an entire species, and the immense effort this life has made to stay alive and to maintain its own characteristics. History and civilisation in a seashell, this town embodies the forms and actions of a thousand-year old community which was itself part of a wider society, ever more distant from us as the years pass by. This community has shaped its shell, building and rebuilding it, modifying it again and again according to its needs. Look closely, and within every house you will see the slow, mucous trace of this animal which transforms the chalk in the soil around it into something delicate and structured: a family. Every house has its own particular face.’”
—Henri Lefebvre, Introduction to Modernity.
August 2012
2 posts
“Plato possessed the art to dress up illiberal suggestions in such a way that they deceived future ages, which admired the ‘Republic’ without ever becoming aware of what was involved in its proposals. It has always been correct to praise Plato, but not to understand him. This is the common fate of great men. My object is opposite. I wish to understand him, but to treat him with as little reverence as if he were a contemporary English or American advocate of totalitarianism”
— Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (1945)
July 2012
5 posts
“Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers: ossification through too much discipline and reverence for tradition, on the one hand; and on the other, dissolution, or subjugation to foreign conquest, through the growth of an individualism and personal independence that makes co-operation impossible. In general, important civilizations start with a rigid and superstitious system, gradually relaxed, and leading, at a certain stage, to a period of brilliant genius, while the good of the old traditional remains and the evil inherent in its dissolution has not yet developed. But as the evil unfolds, it leads to anarchy, thence, inevitably, to a new tyranny, producing a new synthesis secured by a new system of dogma.”
— Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (1945)
“”Dogmatism is strong, it can call on the force of authority, of the State and its institutions. Moreover, it has advantages: it is simple and easily taught; it steers clear of complex problems, this being precisely the aim and meaning of dogmatism; it gives its adherents a feeling of both vigorous affirmation and security.”
— Henri Lefebvre, Dialectical Materialism (1939)
