Notizen über den Begriff der Freiheit

“Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des mitseins, oder es ist nichts”. So umreißt Jean Luc-Nancy einen Freiheitsbegriff der nicht im Paradoxen endet, sondern dort beginnt. Das Individuum kann es nur durch ein Zusammensein geben, durch ein Kollektiv aus radikal gleichen. Hier liegt die Aporie von Freiheit und Individualität. Wie kann es Individualität geben, wenn dessen Voraussetzung seine Negation ist? Die Gleichheit: x=X. Ebenso wie es Freiheit ohne Sicherheit nicht geben kann – hat Sicherheit nicht einzig zum Ziel die Freiheit in die Schranken zu weisen? - so kann es auch kein freies Individuum ohne die Notwendigkeit der Gemeinschaft geben. Die Gemeinschaft ist das Absolute. Ohne die Gemeinschaft kann kein Individuum das erreichen worin alle Vorstellung von Freiheit notwendiger Weise kulminiert: Sinn. Nur das Sinnhafte ist eine menschliche Kategorie, Freiheit ohne Sinn ist individuelle Unfreiheit in Einsamkeit.

Wenn die Notwendigkeit der Notwendigkeit die Freiheit ist, was ist dann der Sinn des Sinns? Zunächst müsste man ergründen, wie sich der Sinn zu anderen Konzepten verhält. Zum Beispiel zur Freiheit. Wir haben festgestellt, dass Freiheit der Sinn ist. Der Sinn an sich ist aber nicht gleichsam Freiheit. Die Freiheit der Freiheit wäre die totale Unfreiheit, die Tyrannei. – Ich meine damit die radikale Freiheit eines extremisten, oder eines Diktators. Ein Subjekt über allen - Ist damit der Sinn des Sinns der Unsinn? – Die Negation des Sinnes.

Freiheit und Negation stellen sich gegenseitig bloß. Die Negation ist die Befreiung vom unmittelbaren.

Superfluity and the transnational topography

Is it true? Is globalization really happening? And to whom? I am boarding the plane from Sydney to Bangkok.

“The passenger ___ has been paged. Please proceed to gate 55 and make yourself known to the boarding staff”.

The incessant flux of information, commodities and people that is spanning the globe seems to suggest universal access to almost everything: information, people, places and cultures. But who has access and who does not? The buzzword of the “flow“ has been haunting the discourses of globalization since I started to read texts about transnationalism and I have always asked myself whether it wasn’t actually superfluous itself; in all its connotations, both, as “to overflow, to escape and to exceed” as well as “useless”. Think about the distinction between cosmopolitans and refugees! We have heard about migration flows that were triggered by flows of capital, we find flows of images that are followed by flows of tourists. But can we really equate the two movements by using the same terminology? Doesn’t that render the difference between cosmopolitan- and refugee transnationalism somehow superfluous? Neglecting its brutal disjuncture?
In his introduction to “Migration and Transnational Social Spaces” Ludger Pries explains that throughout the 20th century the nation-state was usually conceived of as a container-like space that bordered social and cultural spaces. The social and the political geography were congruent (Pries 1999). Now, in times of transnational globalization we do not only witness a vast influx of people and different cultural influences into that container of the nation-state. Furthermore many migrants even channel back and forth between their state of origin and their new residence and actually keep “in touch” with other social spaces by means of global communication networks. Following Pries, this leads to the breakdown of the congruence between the social and the political geography, disrupting the old (Cartesian) conceptualisation of social space as container space. But what if global mobility is intrinsically superfluous? Again in both of its connotations, overflowing the constraints of Cartesian geometry and challanging a dualist, clear cut, non-fuzzy binary thinking, (e.g. saying something could be useless and if so how would the recent explosion of Social Software with all its seemingly useless blogposts contribute to this process?)

Especially the new non-euclidean spaces created by transnational mobility and social software demand new categories of thought. So the term superfluidity in this sense shall point to something that quantum physicists call “superposition”: namely the breakdown of the wave function by the mere act of observing. Or put differently, the inclusion of the question of who is effected by global flows and what this means for the subjective realities of these people:

At the gate a vast number of passengers is already lining up to board the plane. I am supposed to make myself known? “Excuse me, may I introduce myself? I am a student of Cultural Studies and I was just thinking about global mobility when I heard my name.” I have a bad feeling when I approach the check-in-desk.
“Hi. I am ___”
“Ah yes, you have just been upgraded to business class, here is your new ticket, thank you sir. You can now board the plane at your convenience”.
“What does that mean?”
“Well, you don’t have to line up, just go straight to the gateway.”
I feel superfluous as I pass the waiting crowd.

Barockok

Dass Dinge, die von einander unterscheidbar sind, nicht auch zwangsläufig von einander trennbar sein muessen, ist mir nirgends so deutlich begegnet wie in Bangkok. Diese Meagalopolis ist als wichtigster Hub und Knotenpunkt für ganz Süd-ost-Asien nicht nur eine Global City, sondern auch ein Raum, der das Begriffspaar -post-moderne Urbanität- als schlicht unzureichend zurueck laesst. Der Seinsmodus dieser Stadt ist nicht das Nacheinander, die lineare Entwicklung, der eurozentristische “Fortschritt”. Es ist das permanente Nebeneinander. Augenscheinlich alles findet hier Kontingenz und Berührung: das Alte, Neue, Aermste, Reichste, das Lebendigste und das Tote. Neben Buddhistischen Tempeln findet man Bordelle, neben Hypermodernen Skyscrapern, unbefestigte Schlammstrassen. Teure Mittelklasse Wagen fahren durch fast elende Straßen, die immer, zu jeder Tageszeit verstopft sind. Die Thais haben eine eigene abgewandelte Form des Buddhismus zur Staatsreligion erklärt und manchmal habe ich den Eindruck auf den Strassen von Bangkok verdunstet das permanente „JA“. Es gibt so etwas wie einen Grundtenor der Gerueche, die sich mit jedem Schritt aendern aber der abartigste Gestank von fauliger Scheisse, liegt meist nur einen Schritt vom leckeren Dunst der bruzelnden Strassenkuechen entfernt. Und diese gibt’s ueberall. Man kann sich des Eindrucks nicht erwaehren, dass das gesamte Leben dieser Stadt auf den Strassen abspielt. Ganze Restaurants haben ihre Kueche auf dem Buergersteig. Und gerade hier in Chinatown, tafeln abends ganze Großfamilien im schlimmsten Verkehrschaos.

Dazu wird permanent gehandelt. Hat man tagsüber den Eindruck, dass 40 % der Thais ihren Lebensunterhalt damit bestreiten Essen auf den Strassen zuzubereiten, so verkaufen die selben Leute nach Sonnenuntergang ihren Krimskrams auf kleinen Deckchen. Chinatown war schon seit einiger Zeit ein bluehendes Handelszentrum und das ist es auch jetzt noch. Hier scheint es ganz und gar keinen Unterschied zwischen Handeln und Leben zu geben, zwischen Interaktion und Transaktion. Die ganze Stadt wird zum Einkaufszentrum. Aber es gibt auch mehr und mehr Shopping malls in denen man hin und wieder der vom Smog bitterern und klebrig heissen Luft entkommen kann. Doch diese sind meist erstaunlicher Weise gaehnend leer und verweist, zwar gibt es auch in Thailand eine starke Mittelklasse, doch ist der unterschied zwischen den kuehlen, leblosen Malls und den stickig an Leben ueberquellenden Strassen eindeutig. Welcher Kontrast zu Australien! Wenn ich durch diese Stadt laufe, durchlaufe ich auch immer das kontinuierliche Nebeneinander von Schock und Faszination. Wie fast alle Extreme gehören beide hier zusammen und sind untrennbar verschränkt. Als wäre es das Leben selbst, so entfaltet die Manigfaltigkeit dieser Stadt ein chaotisches Fraktal und spinnt globale Rüschen.
„Die ins Unendliche gehende Falte ist das Charakteristikum des Barock“ schreibt Gilles Deleuze in Die Falte und wenn der Begriff „Neo-barock“ als strategisches Instrument Sinnvoll erscheint, dann hier.

Designated Driver

So far the road, like all roads, has done the thinking for us. It seems empty up ahead - except for the shimmering glimpse of something half-seen, half-dreamed – it is the space of desire. And behind us our memories unravel, only the slowly settling dust seems material. (Muecke, 1997),

Equipped with printed copies of texts about transactions we start your journey into the outer inside. 5000 km in 10 days. Captured in a silver cage of auto-mobilisation and propelled by the spectre of “transported immobility” I translate kilometres into Australian Dollars: Fuel every 100 km with 10 bucks and you are entirely driven by symbols. What is the value of 10 Bucks? Value is virtual: is pure abstraction. As I fold the next blue note between my fingers its virtual value actualizes as landscape on the windshield like on a screen. I picture it burning in the engine as the car accelerates. Is it more real now?
Like the flickering channels on a TV set, the machine is changing the gears, for me, for you, for all of us. We have transmitted ourselves to automatic transmission. Yet, luckily the illusion of freedom is always also the freedom of illusion…

Network populism or the coming together of the medial ecology and the political economy

In his often cited article on “Market Populism” published in The Nation on October, 30th 2000. Thomas Frank argues that with the rise of the “new economy” the market has come to be perceived as the perfect realization of democracy. This is what he calls: “market populism”. He writes:

“With their mechanisms of supply and demand, poll and focus
group, superstore and Internet, [it is believed], markets manage to express the popular will more articulately and meaningfully than do mere elections. By their very nature markets confer democratic legitimacy, markets bring down the pompous and the snooty, markets look out for the interests of the little guy, markets give us what we want.”

There seems to be an intense correlation between the “new media” of the “new economy” and “market capitalism” in general. In Frank’s terms the market is not only a medium of exchange, a place where supply and demand, seller and buyer meet, but also a “medium of consensus”.
I would even go so far to say that there is no real distinction between the concept of “the market” and the concept of “the medium” and nowhere is this as visible as in what has been called Web 2.0. In a recent article titled “Digital Maoism”, the computer scientist Jaron Lanier has shown that the well trusted Wikipedia, does neither represent a public will nor specific discursive realities. Just as markets and their instruments of polls and focus groups do not automatically reflect the wishes of clients and customers, also the new web based services called Web 2.0, do not necessarily communicate what is generally believed as well-founded. Hence, being mindful of Frank’s “Market Populism” I propose the term “network populism”.

Interestingly however, the relation between the political economy and the medial ecology, though somehow obvious, is not clear cut. Value, as defined by Marx, (especially concerning the difference between exchange and use-values) has always been an abstract entity, alienated from any materialist reality. The commodity as Derrida puts in “Spectres of Marx” has constantly had a ghostly apparition.
Now, in the case of web 2.0 and the similarity between “market populism” and network populism we cannot easily conflate the two terms because, the popularity of Web 2.0-applications does not automatically imply an economic applicability. Where’s the space for profit in Web 2.0 services? Who wants to pay for low quality home videos or mediocre Wikipedia articles? There might be, as the example of Flicr has shown, a chance to successfully charge for uploads instead of downloads, but whether this turns out to be applicable or not, is not of major relevance. What is at stake instead is the fact that we are quite likely to witness a further dispersal of market mechanisms into other areas of human activity and life. While a pervasive commodification of knowledge and discourses can already be seen at increasing privatisation of education, the mechanism that is at work here seems to demonstrate a tendency that appears to be even more fundamental. For Web 2.0 is first and foremost made possible by what is called “social software” the commodification of social relations that results by applications such as flicr only points to a much more fundamental change that is happening in the era of transnational globalization: a fundamental shift from interaction to transaction.

Contingency

A bookshop on King Street. Newtown, Sydney.

Wolfs Cree(d)

Wie ich gerade gesehen habe, kommt demnächst Wolfs Creek in die deutschen Kinos. Horrorfilme sind ödipale Machtinstrumente und mit Sicherheit der perfideste Mechanismus einer Gesellschaft der gegenseitigen Kontrolle. War die Disziplinargesellschaft des 19. und 20 Jahrhunderts durch eine Androhung der Bestrafung von „Oben“ also durch moralische Institutionen wie die Kirche, den Staat, die Familie, die Schule und die Fabrik gesteuert, so erledigt diese Aufgabe im 21. Jahrhundert, wie alles andere auch, der “User” selbst! In der Terminologie des Web 2.0 heißt das jetzt User Generated Content, und alle feiern die Neuerfindung der Freiheit. Aber nur weil nun jeder Idiot seine beschleunigten Exzesse, - in von der Gesellschaft dazu bereitgestellten Hüpfburgen wie zum Beispiel deutschen Autobahnen, auf denen es immer noch keine allgemeine Geschwindigkeitsregelung (?) gibt - zu youtube „hochladen“ kann, sind hierarchische Machtstrukturen noch lange nicht abgeschafft. Im Gegenteil, omnipräsenter Wettbewerbsdruck und ein Wechsel von Interaktion zu globalisierter Transaktion (click here) schaffen eine Ökonomie der Angst, in der der “User” für die ihn einschüchterne Propaganda auch noch bezahlt (siehe Wolfs Creek). Sicher ist das Outback kein Spielplatz aber jedes Verlassen der Straße, mit dem unsere Kultur diesen Raum kolonialisiert hat, konfrontiert uns nur mit der indifferenten Offenheit der Natur. Die Psychopathen schafft die Leinwand. Das Paradox der Konsumgesellschaft: beim erkaufen der Freiheit behält der Verkäufer die selbe als Pfand ein ! Besitz, besitzt nur den Besitzer.
Wir gegenwärtigen gerade die Rückkehr einer paternalen Weltmarktreligiösität, die als vermeintlicher Hedonismus verkleidet auf jeder Party wie Ronald McDonald lustig die Hüften schwingt. Also doch: We have never been modern.
„Ach wenn mir’s nur gruselte.” (Grimm)

Globalitätsparadoxon

Fragt man sich: “was ist Transurbanism eigentlich?“ stapeln sich die Probleme. Denn wenn wir uns, wie der Begriff Transurbanism nahe legen soll Globalisierung in erster Linie als urbanes Phänomen vorstellen, geraten wir von einer Schwierigkeit in eine andere. Vor allem, wenn wir weiterhin, wie Ökonomen es tun, annehmen, dass die Globale Stadt in einer Zentrum-Peripherie Dichotomie gedacht werden kann. Im Kern finden wir nach dieser Sicht dominierende Metropolen wie New York, Tokio oder London, danach in Schichten Städte wie Berlin und Sydney und schließlich die Ränder des Welturbanismus die lediglich die Rolle von billigen Zuliefer- und Produktionslagern haben. Interessanter Weise, ist dieses Bild sehr eindrucksvoll einleuchtend und doch auch zutiefst erratisch. Einleuchtend, weil sich letztlich ein Umzug von Berlin nach Sydney mit einem Umzug in einen anderen Stadtteil in einer ähnlichen Sozialen Lage vergleichen lässt. (In diesen Kategorien bin ich also gerade von Prenzelberg nach Schöneberg gezogen) Erratisch, weil sich zum einen auch in den Kernmetropolen „interne Ränder“ (Antonio Negri) also Slums bilden und zum anderen, weil die Idee einer urbanen Totalität uns in die logischen Unannehmlichkeiten der Russellschen Antinomie verstrickt.
Nach Russell kann es keine Menge von Mengen geben, die sich nicht auch selbst enthält. Man hat das Problem oft mit dem Babier Paradoxon wie folgt übersetzt.

Der Barbier von Sevilla rasiert alle Männer von Sevilla, nur nicht die, die sich selbst rasieren. Wenn das so ist, rasiert der Barbier von Sevilla sich dann selbst (er ist kein Bartträger)?

Bringt man dieses Modell nun in Hinblick auf das Transurbanism Problem in Anschlag, so werfen wir neues Licht auf die alte Frage nach der Homogenisierung von Globalisierung und der Unterscheidung von Global und Lokal. Wenn wir nämlich annehmen, dass die Global City eine Menge von Städten ist, die sich nicht selbst enthält, da sie ja so etwas wie eine „Meta-Stadt“ ist, postulieren wir eine Totalität, die es nicht geben kann. Es gibt keine Menge von Mengen, die sich nicht auch selbst enthalten muss. Für Deleuze ist dies der Beweis, dass es statt einer absoluten Totalität nur Manigfaltigkeiten geben kann. Das Totale ist für ihn das Offene. Man könnte also sagen, dass das Ganze nicht „mehr als die Summe seiner Teile ist“, sondern im Gegenteil, dass das Ganze nicht mehr als ein Weiteres seiner Teile ist. Jede Globalität ist immer nur ein weiteres Lokal in der unendlichen Menge aller Lokalitäten.
Ich glaube man kann auf diese Art und Weise ganz gut beschreiben, was das Internet eigentlich ist. Es ist eine Globalität, die doch immer wieder nur lokal als eigene Singularität auf anderen Schreibtischen erscheint.

Mapping Maps

“Faced with masses of ways of knowing things coming from all points of the compass,the contemporary writer asks what now can legitimate his or her point of view,and then tends not to just add to existing views of the world, but traces a path (which the reader will follow, avidly of course) showing how we got to this position, and what is at stake. What is at stake for fictocritical writing is the task of ‘deforming’ literature in a world whose politics is more defined by global transcultural relationships than by pride in one’s national literature; by pragmatism more than idealism; by new ways of feeling emerging out of decades of reading in a multimedia fashion; and by the significant influence of new post-structuralist philosophies and post-modernliterary experiments. (Muecke, 2002. p108).

Reading like travelling means following lines, lines of flight. The most important tool for a traveller is his or her map. Be it the Lonely Planet or a GPS device, a map always serves to connect lived moments on an abstract plane. We all know the insights we have, when we arrive at a well known place from an unknown route and are able connect two lived spatial experiences anew. But a map is not a (re)presentation of the place it sketches and must not be mistaken for one. Maps are invasive and immanent. They always interfere with the very reality they are laid upon. Look, for example, at the way we rely on maps to navigate through urban spaces. The way we read our maps determines the way we move, see and expect things. David Holmes (2001) notes that there is basically no difference between following the path prescribed by a tourist brochure and surfing virtual spaces on the world wide web. Kirsty, who works with asylum seekers in Melbourne told me the story of an illegal immigrant from Ghana that was picked up in Sydney with a map of London. He was either a victim of hapless coincidence or of especially macabre people smugglers, for he spend all his possessions to reach relatives in London actually believing that he was in London until he was told otherwise. Now, besides the gruesome fact that this incident, must have doubled his sense of displacement, it shows significantly how maps shape and are shaped by the spaces they map. Interesting in this respect:
Our planet is mapped in its entirety now. There are no white spots on Google Earth. But whose map is it? Especially Google Earth is the perfect example of a technology of seeing and mapping that is homogenously globalized around the world, overriding local perspectives by a ‘world picture’ that is operating according to a Anglo-European logic. In his short essay The Age of the World Picture Martin Heidegger states that it is precisely this ‘structured image’ of the word that is so momentous for western civilisation. According to Escobar (2005) neither the Ancient Greeks nor the middle Ages came up with a global view onto the world. This however, raises the interesting question whether it is actually necessary to develop a “world map”, before a certain culture had explored and eventually even colonized this world. One could argue that the world map of western culture is embodying the diagram of its agency. High technology as a globalized and post-colonial “way of knowing” is not only representing global and local realities, but as every map, also ultimately changing and alternating global and local realities.

Buffer Zone

Back in the hostel John and Arkin are ready to go out. But as always, I find them stuck on the porch, drinking box wine. Dwellers on the threshold. They are exactly what I always imagined backpacker to be like. And yet they are completely different. Boringly funny, eloquently stupid. They seem to carry their huge rucksacks with a lightness of being that leaves me wonderstruck. John is a 26 year-old Postgrad from Oxford. He has a sociology degree but got sick of all “the useless intellectual shit”. So instead of reading Giddens he turned to account management only to realize that he could not manage the non-eventful life behind some help desk in the suburban desert. Australia, it seems must have been the better desert, his “third way”. A long way though, lined with bungee jumps and half-true stories about poisonous spiders. He dressed the most brainless things in pure oxford English and presented intellectual intricacies in blunt cockney. If not more, the encounter with him taught me one thing: being intellectual means becoming profane. Being profane, means becoming intellectual. I remember an absurd conversation we had, when the girls were not in the room. We were talking about Baudrillard and his notion of simulacrum. I was blathering about Symbolic Exchange and Death, pointing out that what had struck me most about this book was not the idea that we live in an era governed by the logic of simulacrum, but that this simulacrum was determined by the code. John started to quote a text massage conversation he had with a girl from another room. “Hi, what was your name again? This is John, your English savior. Have you recovered from me yet?” He was a wise man wanting to be a fool. (And yes, how foolish to want to be a wise man?) There were no hidden depths. The world was an allocation of surfaces. Stratified. Folded. Smooth. Striated. Planes. Shallow. Strained. Membranes (of meaning?). So intricately simple, complexly plain. Flat white coffee lands. What were they doing here? What was I doing here? or should I ask: “How the hell did I get here?” (Muecke, 2001, p. 108). Filled up with drive-through-desires in a land of Hungry Jack’s. “The large food for thought meal deal and a shake, please.” Where had I seen all this before? Was it in Hume? But no: “Repetition changes nothing in the object repeated, but does change something in the mind which contemplates it.” (Deleuze, 2004, p.90 ) The shake was a shock to thought.

Übers Denken ohne Denkerlaubnis

Viele Leute lernen das Fahren während sie den Führerschein machen. Klar dazu geht man zur Fahrschule. Dort setzt man sich in Kurse und muss erstmal regeln lernen und lesen. Texte? “Warum Texte und Theorie?” fragst du. “Es geht doch ums fahren. Gibt’s da einen Zusammenhang?”
Ich antworte: Mh, in erster Linie, besteht eine Straße auch aus Linien. Ich würde sagen, dass es prinzipiell keinen Unterschied zwischen den Linien auf einer Straße und den Linien in einem Text gibt. Beide markieren etwas. Die Fahrbahnmarkierung ist die Verlängerung der Straßenverkehrsordnung. Übertretung wird bestraft. Will man jetzt mit dem Auto umherfahren muss man also erst einmal beweisen, dass man diszipliniert ist und auch ja keine Linien überschreitet. Also ab in die Fahrschule! Dabei ist Autofahren das einfachste der Welt. Streng genommen fährt man doch auch das Auto nicht, man lässt fahren! Wie jetzt? Na, vom Motor. Ganz automatisch. (Im englischen wird das deutlicher to drive meint ja auch den An-trieb). Also ein richtiges Auto-mobil, ein Auto zum Selbstfahren währe so etwas wie ein Fred Feuerstein Auto. Das wär doch mal was: die neue Ich-Klasse.
Das gleiche gilt fürs Denken. Wenn man Denker werden will, muss man erst mal zur Uni gehen. Warum? Kann nicht jeder von Hause aus denken? So schwer ist doch das nicht. Schon früh hört man die Frage: Was hast du dir denn dabei gedacht? (Interessanterweise meistens dann, wenn man mal wieder eine Line überschritten hat.) Also Denken geht scheinbar von ganz alleine, ist keine Anstrengung. Lass dich gehen und du denkst von ganz allein. Schon mal gar nicht gedacht? Die Buddhisten versuchen das seit Jahrtausenden. Aber denkste, is nicht so einfach. Warum also Uni? Na damit das Denken diszipliniert wird ! Such dir aus was du willst. Beeil dich! Hast 9 Semester Zeit ! Nu watt nu Philosophie, Literatur oder Medienwissenschaft? ” Ähm, Kann ich bitte interdisziplinär sein?” Du meinst un-artig? Ja! Aber mach schnell, da wollen auch noch andere den Lappen machen. Die wollen alle eine Lizenz zum Denken haben. Artig sein. Stehen Schlange, in einer Linie. Sonst lässt man die doch nicht auf die Straße. Aber Moment mal ! Was haben die sich eigentlich dabei gedacht?

Alterity

I don’t want to sit down, because I fear that this would only intensify the feeling of being wet. I am trembling. It is interesting that it always takes the shock of getting wet in a heavy rain or being blown away in a storm to involve us with the world, to expose our interior, to make us think. My clothes stick to my limbs and I have an intense feeling of not being detached from the world. That was a bit of an encounter. I feel awake, thoughts are racing through my mind.

“Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of an fundamental encounter. What is encountered may be Socrates, a temple or a demon. It may be grasped in a range of affective tones: wonder, love, hatred, suffering” (Deleuze, 2004, p.176).

So remain where I am and lean against the window of the tram. I try to recapitulate where I am heading: I am about to write a paper about the relationship between travel, post tourism, the perception and creation of virtual and actual spaces in respect to the concept of agency in the context of transnational cultures. What a mouthful of buzzwords. It would take a 300 paged thesis to tackle all of these points in proper detail, or an incredibly fast, almost incomprehensible tour de force through highly abstract territory. There must be another way to do it, a more immanent method of scholarly writing. Ficto-Criticism. Maybe. But what is the “fictitious” element in ficto-criticism? It’s a paradox. The position of a critic is potentially the position of an agent. Criticism is intervention. In its best form it can be what Giddens has called “change agency” (cf. Caldwell, 2006). But doesn’t fiction ultimately acknowledge the presence of an objective reality, when it tries to be critical by intention, when it tries to intervene? Fiction is (art)iculation, criticism is (re)presentation. Ficto-criticism however is not authoritarian. When the author is dead, how can he change something? It remains a paradox! Fictocritical writing might be what Foucault has called an thinking from outside. It brings about, as Meaghan Morris has demanded, “social change while at the same time contesting the very concept of change” (quoted in Grossberg, 1996, p. 179). Being here and there at the same time it solves problems not by adding meta-levels of thought but by staying immanent. As Deleuzeo-potetical “[t]hought [it] is primarily trespass

and violence, the enemy, and nothing presupposes [its] philosophy, everything begins with misosophy. Do not count upon thought to ensure the relative necessity of what it thinks. Rather, count upon the contingency of an encounter with that which forces thought or a passion to think. The conditions of a true critique and a true creation are the same: the destruction of an image of thought which presupposes the image itself and the genesis of the act of thinking in thought itself.” (Deleuze, 2004, p. 176)

But who wants to read that? Maybe the author is alive and it’s just the reader that is dead. Maybe both are just two sides of one and the same thing. Only a readerwriter would be ficto-critical.

Actual

I get off the tram. There is a heavy rain pouring down and I wish I had gone with the punks. They were going to a concert and it probably wouldn’t have been a problem to ask them if I could come. Why didn’t I do it? I cross the street and check when the next tram is going back. It’s dark and since I stoped smoking, I don’t have a lighter to illuminate the schedule. From what I can tell, it said something like “Heidelberg” but I decide not to trust my eyes. The next tram must be due in about 30min. I look around and notice that the houses look quite deteriorated. There is a lot of glass of smashed car windows on the curbs. Someone from L.A. once told me that this is an indexical sign for a bad neighbourhood. These paranoid Americans, a sign is just a sign, is a sign is a sign is a sign. There is a group of juveniles standing in a circle across the road. They are wearing hoods (to protect them from the rain?). They keep on looking at me, debating. What are they doing? I am nervous. They are just waiting for the tram, I try to relax. As I think: “30 minutes is not that long”, the rain is getting heavier. I am getting soaked. So, this will be extremely long thirty minutes. How could Newton assume that time was a constant? He obviously never got lost in an unknown part of a town on a rainy day. All our technological apparatuses, GPS, cars, trams, airplanes operate on a Newtonian axiomatic. It’s incredible how the most secular technology, still draws on a transcendent notion of time. For Newton, linear time was a proof of god. The divine clock. I remember a conversation I had with a Vietnamese student of engineering at one of these international student parties who told me that the Einsteinian notion of space-time would only apply at high speeds or in extremely small spaces, quantum mechanical spaces. In “our world” he kept explaining “Newton is still as real as anything else. We wouldn’t be able to built cars otherwise”. His English was way better than mine and I assumed that he has been living here for quite some time. Nevertheless, I was amazed and fascinated to hear this from a non-anglo-european student. I still had the naïve believe that cultural descent had a greater influence on the way we conceptionalize the world, on our Weltbild. However, especially when it comes down to technology, you find an enormous homogeneity in the world. Sure, making technologies work is all about setting standards. The internet as the most visible agent of globalization is just the standardization of protocols. Glocalization is all TCP/IP these days. Maybe, technologies are in fact just the actualization, the manifestation of other abstract machines that operate on the plane of consistency. If so, technology and the way it renders the perception and poesies of realities is the most powerful mechanism of something that we might call a post-colonial agency. A transagency. As Stephen Muecke pointed out: it is still badly euro-centristic to assume that technological progress means cultural advance (2004). As it turns out, even the most secular empirical science is actually driven by some kind of religious, and more often than not, Christian belief (Zizek, 2001). Indeed, especially the people in my Digital Media Class were so enthusiastic about the Web 2.0 frenzy that I thought they believed technological development was driving towards some kind of salvation. The gadget at my wrist, imposing the Newtonian time onto my reality attests that I had only managed 20 min. A petrol sniffing bum is approaching me asking for change. He mumbles something of Hungry Jacks. His eyes are distant, he can hardly stand. Something that looks like a mixture of vomit and blood is dribbling down his chin. I step back and say “sorry mate” in a feeling of pity, fear and disgust. He doesn’t go away. “you got change, hungry jacks?” I say no again, wondering if he can notice the rain. One of the hooded juveniles starts to shout “give him some change motherfucker”. They start to cross the street and I start to get really scared. But before they reach my side of the road, the tram arrives and I am relieved to be able to enter the apparatus of salvation again.

Virtuality

While moving, the tram sings the familiar hum of European engineering. Two German backpackers in front of me, with a southern German accent, talk about their fruit picking experiences. I could be in Stuttgart now. What I learn about fruit picking: You don’t do it for the money. Who wants to work for 5$ an hour? It’s the experience. Cheap first world labour. I briefly think of Antonio Negri’s notion of an “internal margin” and feel that this would be something like a simulated reversal of it. I wish I had an iPod. I would like to listen to one of these constantly overplayed songs from the 60’s or 70’s now. Again. Just to replace one Déjà entendu with another one. How about “Dweller on the Threshold” by Van Morrison? The iPod is the absolute personalization and privatisation of public space. I pull a copy of David Holmes (2001) from my bag. He writes: “Everyday wearable technologies like these mark a reversal of the prominence of physical over media space. They suggest an intensity of association which is amplified by the fact that they are used in ‘public spaces’ but completely privatise the space of the user”. How good to have books. I don’t need an iPod to redirect my attention. And besides, how much difference does it make to be immersed in a book or in music, while staying in public spaces?
While the tram continues its tracked motion through something that looks like St Kilda, I sneak at the notes from my sleepless bus ride again. I had written:

Busses just as cars or trains, modulate the perceptions of space in a decisive way. I agree with David Holmes (2001:16) , who notes that “the railroad and the sensibility of traced motion, transforms the experience of travel, the experience of the gaze, and the nature of practices of representation.”. He points out that this “tracked motion” can be seen as a predecessor of virtual reality. Interestingly enough, Holmes calls attention to the fact that the track bears a structural resemblance to the film. The road turns into a filmstrip as the bus as a projector is set upon it“

The tram stops and the privacy of my thoughts is distracted and attracted by three punks that have entered the wagon. They drink cheap box wine from broken glasses. What a surrealist picture. To intensify the image and probably their hangover tomorrow, they have added some kind of red juice to the wine, leaving their mouths blood red. They are about my age and actually look more like students, dressed as punks. At least, they do not look like the kind of punks that you usually meet on a S-Bahn in Berlin. I notice that no one of them has scars, tattoos, or piercings. The wagon fills with people and one of the three starts to entertain other passengers. Suddenly, he addresses one of them:
“Hey, you remind me of someone. You look like a movie star”.
The person in question is a rather skinny man, in his mid forties. He is wearing a business suit and does indeed look like someone famous. His style however is heavily contrasted by the appearance of his friend, who - about the same age, unshaved, front tooth missing – starts to grin in a witty way. He starts to play a game with the punks.
“What do you think? “, he replies, as if being his manager.
The movie star, fakes an uncomfortable smile. The eyes of the other passengers acquire an expression of spectatorship. A teenage girl smiles knowingly.
“ You played in American Werewolf in Paris, right”
“No”
“Ah come on, tell me! “
Two other passengers enter the game and throw names at the movie star. He remains silently embarrassed, while his manager distributes “No’s”. An old man from the back keeps saying something like “Don’t forget your toothbrush”. It’s getting weird. Like subliminal massages, or ads, he keeps on saying:
“Don’t forget your toothbrush”.
I want to participate and say:
“Thomas Pynchon”.
The manager turns to me, amused.
“Hey you read Pynchon ?”
“Sometimes, but only when I am paranoid”
“Where’re you from?”
I am just about to say “guess”, when the tram stops again. The movie star drags his manager from the stage, threatening to leave the riddle unsolved. But suddenly, like a “Deus ex Machina”, the tram driver opens the door of his cabin and asks excitedly:
“Hey was that Tim Ferguson?”
“Yeah”
Who the fuck is Tim Ferguson? And where am I? I had missed my stop .

Reiteration

Leaving the library I find myself walking down Swanston Street again. I realize that writing is all about difference and repetition. Did Deleuze and Derrida know each other? Possibly. A word has to be repeatable to be understood. I remember that Derrida talks about that in Signature, Event, Context. A code would not be a code if it wasn’t potentially repeatable, decodable. In fact every word is a citation, a quote. Every time I utter a word, I read and leave a trace, follow a path that innumerable speakers have left before me. “Swanston Street”. And yet, every quote makes a difference, it is displaced from its context. The old is anew, every time we repeat it. Every time we think of it. The quotidian is full of newness. Doesn’t “Itera” actually mean “other” in sanskrit? When repetition includes some difference, the world is a paradox. When language is what Paul Gilroy has called the “changing same”, maybe only reminiscence grants true oblivion. I reach Federation Square and I sit down on a bench to wait for the tram. Picking up Stephen Muecke’s No Road I read:

“ A language like English is like a group of textual suburbs. Each suburb has its character, some are systematic: red-brick houses on a grid of small streets. Some texts have the imperial sweep of the avenue, some the paranoia of cul-de-sacs with groups of houses in a circle. In each suburb the language is like the architecture, like the space it vibrates in”(1997, p.22).

I remember a reading of the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk at the Udk in Berlin. He called the late Heidegger a “concierge in the house of language”. Somehow branded and changed from his dance with the devil fascism, he withdrew into this position, “waving with his heavy keys”, as Sloterdijk put it, offering the occasional visitor the revelation of some hidden door. The language of anglo-europoean culture is archi-textual, we built room after room, house after house, city after city. We occupy places, impinge our texts, our houses upon other peoples. And yet we always remain just “dwellers on the threshold”, can never really enter the room of meaning. Is that the reason why we colonized this world, because we are not at home in our house of language? I have a subliminal vision of how the place of this tram station might have looked like some hundred years ago, just before someone placed a sign with the letters: Federation Square. But before I can immerse myself in this image, really enter this fictitious room, the tram arrives and takes me to another “textual suburb” of Melbourne.

(In)sight seeing- confessions of a post-tourist

Displacement

Invisible loudspeakers announce that the Victoria State Library is closing in 10 minutes. I’m transcribing my notes to Zoho, the new online word-processor, submitting my handwritten madness to some seemingly transcendent elsewhere. Uploading my assignment for the transnationalism class back in Sydney to some unknown web host leaves me with a somehow pleasurable feeling of total displacement. I am writing on a virtual typewriter turning my externalized ideas from my sleepless bus ride to Melbourne into globally disseminated data packets that are now nowhere and now here at the same time. Web 2.0 is unprecedented, so much is for sure. I pick up my mobile to check my balance. While I endure the ads on the phone I ponder where my assignment might be now. Where do they host their stuff? Probably somewhere in the vast unlocatable spaces on one of these US American “server farms”. I learned that in my Digital Media Class. I am an educational tourist, in so many respects. If agriculture is the “cultivation of land”, server farming must the cultivation of what ? I think too much. In any case I certainly lost my author rights with clicking on “save”. They just disseminated in a way that amplifies the death of the author. Web 2.0 is a massacre of authority. Try to write a fake article on Wikipedia and it will be deconstructed within a couple of hours. Who are these people anyway, who are the agents of the internet ? Should we rather speak of agencies? I hear: “There are thousands of cool logos for your mobile and its all up for grabs ” before I am kindly reminded to recharge my balance to continue to make calls. How do I know where to meet Penny now? But hang on: that’s true. The logos is free floating, free from his eidos, its father. The state of origin is reversed. As soon as you utter something, you give birth to an orphan. Who said this? I get up from the desk and look for a copy of Derrida’s Dissemination:

“The Phaedrus would already be sufficient to prove that the responsibility for logos, for its meaning and effects, goes to those who attend it, to those who are present with with the presence of a father. These ‘metaphors’ must be tirelessly questioned. Witness Socrates, addressing Eros: ‘If in our former speech Phaedrus or I said anything harsh against you, blame Lysias, the father of the subject (ton tou logou patera)’. Logos – ‘discourse has the meaning here of an argument, line of reasoning, guiding thread animating the spoken discussion (the Logos). To translate it as Subject as Robin does, is not merely anachronistic. The whole intention and the organic unity of signification is destroyed” (p. 83).

“Excuse me Mr. the library is closing now. You have to leave.”

I am cut off again.

A Camera is a gun.

Ich war in den Blue Mountains letztes Wochenende. Die heißen so weil es hier riesige Eukalyptuswälder gibt, die das größte Dampfbad auf dem Planeten veranstalten. Von der Innenstadt braucht man nur etwa 3 stunden mit dem Auto, und diese Landschaft ist deshalb auch tierisch touristifiziert. Man kann von Aussichtspunkt zu Aussichtspunkt fahren. Mac Nature’s Drive Inn. „Hi how are you?“ „Fine thanks, the large Mountain Meal and a Shake please”.

Damit man sich nicht verfährt gibt es natürlich einen ausgeschilderten Tourist Drive. Mit riesigen Schildern, die einen Scenic Lookout versprechen. Das Auto wird zur mobilen Glotze. Die Landschaft zum Hyperspace.

Ich habe neulich Aden ( ein unglaublich talentierter “Poet” der mit Sicherheit ein neuer Allen Ginsberg wird) getroffen. Sein Nebenjob ist so etwas wie location-spotting für eine Filmproduktionsfirma. Er hat mir erzählt, dass eigentlich niemand Filme über bestimmte Orte und Räume macht sondern, dass es zuerst eine abstrakte Landschaft im Drehbuch gibt, zu der man dann eine passende Location sucht. Hier kommen Leute wie er ins Spiel. Sie suchen und finden Landschaften in Australien, die aussehen wie ein mittelalterlicher Forst in Mittelengland, wenn es sein muss. Das ist ziemlich witzig, denn in dem Maße in dem Filme Landschaften nicht nur total deterritorialisieren und irgendwo neu einpflanzen, verdrehen sie sozusagen auch die reale Landschaft des „Drehortes“ in einen Hyperraum.

Na! Aber bitte hier nix verdrehen ! Klar es gibt doch kein außerhalb des Simulakrums. Jaja. Mir wurde nur an diesem Scenic Lookout plötzlich bewusst, dass das Wechselspiel aus De - und Reterritorialiserung, das Verpflanzen und Zitieren von Räumen der eigentliche Mechanismus des Simulacrum sein muss.
Aber schöner als am Schirm ist das „Naturschöne“, dann aber irgendwie doch. Auch wenn man nur glotzend da steht und wie Jameson schreibt: mit dem Nicht-Menschlichen, der Landschaft, der Natur, konfrontiert ist. Ok. Was macht man mit dieser Begegnung? Man macht ein Foto davon, damit man es mit nach hause nehmen und immer und immer wieder konsumieren kann. Das Foto wird zum Platzhalter und Substitut des nunmehr nicht mehr anwesenden Augenblicks, der abwesenden Begegnung.
As my friend Thomas said „A Camera is a gun, every picture taken is a death performed“. Das trifft es wohl mal wieder ziemlich gut. Schnappschussphotographie ist Fetisch and I shot the Blue Mountains again “Sorry”.

Alteritätserfahrungen

Der andere, das bin ich. Mein Mitbewohner heißt Kataro. Kataro ist ein Japaner, der ganz still und schüchtern in einem kleinen gedrückten Zimmerchen haust. Er sieht aus wie Michael Jackson und arbeitet als Kochgehilfe in einem japanischen Restaurant. Leider spricht er kaum Englisch und es ist immer extrem schwierig etwas aus ihm herauszubekommen. Immerhin habe ich schon herausgefunden, dass er erst 19 ist. Krass, das kann ich den Japanern einfach nicht ansehen. Das spannende an ihm ist allerdings, dass aus seiner kleinen Kammer auf dem Hof, auf dem die Waschmaschine steht, immer total abgefahrene und magische Musik kommt. Kataro ist offensichtlich Jazzexperte. Vor kurzem hat er in seiner kleinen Kammer Johan Hedin aufgelegt. Ein Schwedisches Free Jazz Naturtalent. Jazz hat mich eigentlich nie so richtig aus den Socken gehauen, aber diese Musik ist Magie. Dann hat er mir noch ein paar CDs gegeben unter denen ich zum Beispiel auch Joni Mitchell gefunden habe. Großartig. Ich glaube wir verstehen uns. Wozu also unnötig reden…

Alles Raus zum 1.Mai !

Yet, nobody seems to do it anymore…

NASE

Als ich die Bourke Street in Richtung Norden bis zum Pier und an den ersten noblen Katamaranen vorbei entlang laufe, empfängt mich fischiger Meergeruch. Klar, Hafen eben. Aber Moment mal ! Das ist der einzige Ort, das erste mal, dass ich diesen Geruch in Australien überhaupt wahrgenommen habe. Das ist der Kürzeste Weg zum Royal Botanic Garden und ich bin schon unzählige male über diesen Pier gelaufen. Wenn man sich hier umsieht müsste man eigentlich gar nichts riechen können. Hier liegen Segeljachten, mit einem Gegenwert, der sicher reichen würde um eine Kleinstadt in Afrika für 5 Wochen mit Lebensmitteln zu versorgen. Hier gibt es nicht mal Zigarettenkippen auf dem Asphalt. Vielleicht hat der Hafenbetreiber hier letzte Woche eine künstliche Stinkmaschine installiert, weil sich ein von Allergien geplagter Vorstandsvorsitzender von Ernst&Young über mangelnde Naturbelassenheit an seinem Pier beschwert hat. Das Hafenwasser jedenfalls ist viel zu sauber um diesen Gestank zu produzieren. Egal. Als ich die Treppen zum Park hinansteige, frage ich mich wie viele Bedeutungen eigentlich das Wort Nase hat. Das erste was mir einfällt ist eine Szene in meinem Episodischen Gedächtnis, in der ich irgendeine Tür streiche und mir mein Vater sagt: „pass auf, dass du keine Nasen kriegst“. Ich Nase, ich weiß noch, dass meine Tür so einige hatte. Am ende der Treppe folge ich dem Asphaltweg. Immer der Nase nach, führt er auf eine ziemlich schöne Anhöhe von der ich das Opera House sehe. Riesige Nasenlöcher. Was sonst. Schade, dass ich keine Kamera dabei habe? Nee, man kann diese Nasen nicht mehr fotografieren. This is the most photographed Barn in Australia. im Internet finde ich mit Sicherheit ein Foto, das von exakt dieser Stelle gemacht worden ist. Ich nehme mir vor zu hause „Nase“ zu googeln. Und in der tat: in der Architektur bezeichnet eine Nase : “die Öffnung eines Maßwerks vorspringender Spitze“. Im weiteren Sinn jedoch ist eine Nase doch auch etwas Hervorstehendes, überschreitendes, Transgressives, oder? Umgangssprachlich ist eine Nase laut Wikipedia das Maß nasal aufnehmbarer Drogen.

Ja. Auf molekularer Ebene ist die Nase so etwas wie ein interface mit der Umwelt. Ein Gesicht im Gesicht. Wenn ich etwas riechen kann, streichen molekulare Ausdünstungen dieses Etwas an meinem Riechfeld vorbei und werden dort auf wundersame weise von Rezeptoren in elektromagnetische Impulse von Neuronen verwandelt. Wow. Ist nicht das Riechfeld auch für den Geschmack beim Essen verantwortlich? Heißt das, dass ich alles was ich rieche schon quasi im Mund habe? An der Nase wird innen Aussen.

Einen ganz ähnlichen Riecher hatte übgrigens auch Paul Ford.