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<nettime> Technological Revolution; Repression, Fascism, and the Potential f= |
or t To: nettime-l@desk.nl From: <Peter Franck> ghent@taconic.net=20 Sender: owner-nettime-l@basis.desk.nl Precedence: bulk Technological Revolution Repression, Fascism, and the Potential for the Release of Desire. By Peter Franck I. INTRODUCTION: Historic Context At a time when there is a certain amount of optimism, or at least, lively discussion about the collective ramifications of interactivity and electronic connectedness, it is essential to place these debates into realms of philosophical, psychological and historical perspectives- in short, realms of material reality. This is critical since any meaningful application of utopian metaphor that appears in the realm of cyberspace remains merely a model until it is transformed into and made operative in concrete reality. This is not to discount the "reality" of cyber-consciousness, since we seem to be inhabiting it in a progressively more complete fashion, but since we necessarily leave our bodies behind as we connect to the web, we remain, to a great degree, attached to very real environmental, political and economic structures.=20 This is not the first time, even in this century, when the promise of burgeoning technological development seemed to point the way towards utopian change. It is my aim to analyze the ideology of techno-revolution in terms laid out by the Italian Futurists among others. For the Futurists, the overwhelming reliance upon technological means for accomplishing social change ultimately created a repressive Fascistic society which could not accommodate the desires of its population.=20 Repression, as pointed out by Freud and later, Bataille (among others) creates a schizophrenic condition for the psyche that can lead to instances of violent eruptions. In this case, one could claim that repression applied by the rigid realities of the evolving technological revolution at the turn of the Century became one plausable catalyst for nightmare war machine of World War I.=20 Georges Bataille amassed fascinating ethnographic documentation about the role which violent ritual often performs in releasing pent up desire and how this release helps to maintain social cohesion. In the Mayan culture for example, the ritual of murder, where human sacrifices had their hearts ripped out at the alter, was ultimately a method for the population to express its arguably natural self-destructive tendencies.=20 Bataille's work as a hole traces the variety of methods society uses to release these desires. For example, the expression of sensuality and violence in Renaissance Art was articulated through the sadistic cruelty of Christ on the cross and the radiant (but of course untouchable) empathetic desirability of the Virgin. Through his work as a pioneering member of the Surrealists, he also developed methods to release desire in the post-war European milieu through his fiction and anthropological studies.=20 Surrealism, which followed the War, functioned as a release valve for the sub-conscious. It was an entirely opposite attitude towards technology; artists such as Duchamp and Tanguey created massively irrational machines which were intended to express the frustration of human potential as it meshed into the assembly line of technological innovation. Instead of reason serving as a direct agent of social transformation, it became the tool of the oppressor, anethma to human emotion. The irrational became a medium of expression capable of venting the alienation of a society undergoing changes which it could not comprehend or control.=20 One cannot hear the calls to arms for the promising allure of connectivity without revisiting these historical moments. One hopes that the internet can provide the technological apparatus to support a revolution of consciousness on a global level while continuing to maintain an expression of individual desire and identity.=20 The internet provides some very clear spatial paradigms; randomness and non-hierarchical structures, which if applied using the lens of theorists such as Deleuze & Guatarri, De Landa as well as a variety of psychological schemas, can provide radical models for political activity. On a personal level, the technology of the internet certainly offers a method of creating fluid identity and soft, non-deterministic modes of creation.=20 Its current allure is that it is accomodating, not domineering. The ability to fabricate one's personal composition and the possibility for the expression and satisfaction of personal erotic desire are aspects of the current technological revolution which are fundamentally different, but perhaps equally dubious as some historical antecedents.=20 II. The Metaphysics of Cyberspace Marcos Novak, in his seminal essay, "Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace" begins an investigation of the issues that arise when we consider cyberspace as an inevitable development of the interaction of humans with computers. This is a logical beginning since Novak traces the gradual release of the body as it becomes absorbed into the technological realm.=20 "Liquid Architecture" is a fiction created by the mind as it moves towards the virtual, blurring the boundaries between concrete and abstract realities. As Novak moves more deeply into cyberspace, he is enabled to exalt in at least a limited euphoria of perceptual freedom.=20 We may certainly speculate on how issues of the body seem to be suppressed during any debate about virtuality, but suffice it for the moment to be convinced that cumbersome headsets and connection requirements should be solved in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, the critical issues, which are generally neglected, are concerned with the way in which it is possible to merge, as much as possible, the ephemeral, yet metaphorically rich spatial configuration of cyberspace, with the same old reality that we have confronted in so many fashions throughout time.=20 No matter; the metaphysics of pure cyberspace are evident. So called "objects" or "bodies" or sites/locations are provisional and fluid because the reality of the ethernet is essentially constituted of data streams. The definition of attributes, (identity) and the usually understood laws of physics become completely relative and fluid. By combining bits of data and partial algorithms, identity can be morphed since boundaries between iterations are not in any way concrete, but just the result of coding shifts (in cyberspace everything is fundamentally of the same stuff). Even beyond this self-evident techno-physical fact, there are interactive paradigms on the web which are stunningly inspirational as possible modes of interaction in concrete reality.=20 I propose to follow Novak's trajectory in reverse, by taking spatial modalities inherent in cyberspace as a starting point and transposing them back on concrete reality like Orpheus leading Eurodice from Hades.=20 This strategy revolves around an investigation of the hierarchical structures in society, much in the mode of Deleuze. But also, it is interesting to enlarge the argument to encompass the biological and geological realms along with history and sociology. Manuel de Landa, in A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History further articulates issues raised in One Thousand Plateaus... De Landa is critical of hierarchical ordering systems since they tend to reinforce homogenous groupings. He instead, posits the geometrical model of "meshwork" as a form of organization which encourages flows of information and interaction in complicated patterns of interchange.=20 If one looks at some of the spatial paradigms developing on the web, one can find basic functions, such as hypertext, which because of its multiplicity of possible arrangements, non-linearity and randomness, fit very neatly into the nomadic rhetoric of Deleuze and Guattari. Similarly, the utopian attempts at establishing virtual on-line communities which are seemingly open and resistant to forces of striation can perhaps be inspirational on a political level outside the realm of the computer.=20 Before speculating about how radicalized spatial organizations manifested on the web may serve as models for active intervention in concrete reality, it is enlightening to trace historical antecedents which strove for social transformation through the ideology of technological revolution. It is also important to trace the development of a coherent metaphysical groundwork in order to accomplish a transformation from cyber-to-concrete space.=20 II. Futurism: Spatial Paradigm and the Release of Desire We are finally, at the end of this Century, faced with technological advances of sufficient magnitude to offer us an opportunity to re-evaluate established notions of spatial experience. With the advent of the virtual and the potential for mass connectivity posed by the internet, many hail the potential of these new technologies as harbingers of a new consciousness. Because technology has infiltrated our sensory perceptions, it is imperative to develop a new understanding of the subject and its relations to the world. The ascension of Modernist consciousness, at the beginning of the 20th Century, was cloaked in similar rhetoric in regard to the potential of technology to alter civilization.=20 The impetus for Modernism began as the inevitable course of technological, scientific and philosophical advances began to overwhelm the social fabric and consciousness of Europe as it entered the 20th Century. Perhaps the most coherent systematic approaches to this transformation came from the Futurists in Italy.=20 The Futurists, at the turn of the century, anointed technology as a primary force of cultural advancement. Its most radical theoretical contribution was to break with historic conceptions of art and society by redefining objects as being mediated by an emerging machine culture.=20 Their reliance on speed and motion was a clear repudiation of established standards of salon art. The Futurists waged war on the sanctity of the object and through works such as Boccioni's "Bottle in Space" were able to break down, what Walter Benjamin later termed, the "aura" of the object by extension beyond its static boundaries. This ecosystem was entirely novel in its attempt to link the mechanical and biological spheres into a single "plane of immanence." This meant that no object, body, or concept, could be removed from the infinitely complex web of interconnected forces in the environment, culture, economics; all spheres of activity were interconnected because they were all resultants of vectors of energy, bits of matter and their movement over time. These ideas are clearly precursors to the world which de Landa describes and also similar to spatial and political activities now burgeoning on the internet.=20 In Boccioni's painting Elasticity, for instance, one detects a landscape, an urban center in the distance and a farmer occupying the centerground.=20 What is of interest is that despite the seemingly fixed quality of the subject matter, one is presented with a completely dynamic composition of swirling ground plains, composition lines and color fields. No single figure or element is complete, instead, each area of intensity of the painting is made up of dynamic interplay, a multiplicity of elements which drift in and out of definition. Each partial figure independently follows its own fragmented trajectory. In the artists' words, the effect was to capture the "simultaneousness of the ambient, and, therefore, the dislocation and dismemberment of objects, the scattering and fusion of details, freed from accepted logic, and independent from one another." (Sackville Gallery catalogue, London Futurist exhibition, 1912.) These artworks articulate a precursor of Deleuze's constructs of the "pleats and folds of matter," as well as the concept of "singularity" to describe this reality as one in constant flux and fluidity. It is a reality where the absolute certainty of identity and boundary are questioned. What is interesting is that this sort of smooth space of free flowing energy and matter occurring across durations of time precisely describe the quality of space which is lived on the world wide web and will continue to intensify in our consciousness as web technology becomes more immersive.=20 This notion of the unbounded subject was an amazing theoretical advancement, but one perhaps which is not as readily apparent as the more obvious Futurist rhetoric of a call for arms under the guise of technology. Perhaps this was most apparent in the artistic artifacts and not readily stated in any of the manifestos. But, if one follows the implications of this precursor to "smooth space" one can begin to posit a world view which gives expression to all realms of experience, including the subconscious, since desire is now given the opportunity to play itself out along with all other partial subjects. This playing out of desire and expression of the repressed is perhaps the key component which the technology of the internet affords the individual user. This degree of psychological accommodation was not possible under the technology of mass production which was being actualized at the turn of the century.=20 The Futurist world is a profound radicalization compared to the reality which thinkers and artists up to that time were able to imagine. The classic grid system of spatial organization, which was best able to describe the world up until the turn of the century, does not necessarily limit one to static models of form, but it does seem inescapably linked to linear models of movement and discreetly defined bodies. Changes that objects undergo over time can be plotted precisely, but what cannot be accommodated in a Cartesian system is a comprehension of qualitative changes in an object. One cannot account for this degree of provisionality of objects and hope to define one to one relationships.=20 Even the structure of knowledge on the internet is profoundly different from that of a Cartesian understanding. The Dewey Decimal system, which allows libraries to neatly chart the organization of knowledge does not remain a valid model of organization when doing research on the web, where search engines and the arbitrary quality of wandering amongst hypertext makes coherent organization particularly daunting.=20 Similarly, in an understanding of the composition of matter, one cannot clearly map changes of states between elements, such as when liquid changes to gas, or as a single celled organism bifurcates and becomes two separate entities. One cannot map the changes to an object under the extremity of an explosion. Movement on a molecular level is too difficult to account for rationally. But beyond these simple illustrations, the complexity of dynamic forces that Boccioni posited constituted a fundamental transformation of the world. This radical redefinition is not one of aesthetic formulation, but rather it was an attempt to alter fundamental ontological relations between man and his surroundings.=20 III. Technology and Repression It is evident that Boccioni and the Futurists were instrumental in developing an ideology which placed an inordinent trust in technology. Perhaps it was inevitable that such lopsided emphasis on a single realm would result in disaster. For Europe, and the Western world as a whole, the flip side of the revolution was the nightmare of World War I. It seems that an overwhelming reliance on technology as an agent of social change would be problematic since a machinic conception of social engineering can only result in Fascistic political structures (note that Mussolini was an early adherent of Futurist dogma).=20 The mechanized wholesale slaughter of World War I brought an end to the innocent belief in the ideology of technology. However, as a result of the war, new understandings of the human psyche and its needs were unearthed. Freud, to a large degree because of his work with war survivors and their hysterical outbursts, was spurred on to develop his theories of the unconscious and subconscious. Similarly, Andre Breton, as an orderly in a soldier's hospital, witnessed massive atrocities to and by humankind, used this terror to develop the strategy of Surrealism. What is common here is that the human psyche tends to erupt when overly repressed or stratified, and thus, the danger of social engineering, or at least the attempt to change society through the reliance on technology was proven untenable.=20 The strategy of the Surrealists was to mock the certainty of the Futurists (among others) and to capitalize on a perceived futility of rational thought. So instead of reveling in the euphoric speed of the motorcar as did Marinetti, one is forced to confront Duchamp and his completely absurd constructions. Duchamp in fact from about the early 1920's carried around business cards which identified himself as a "precision occulist" and attended inventors' conventions and trade shows at which he displayed his roto-optical devices. These machines would spin images in circles, for no apparent reason, accept perhaps that many of the images, because of their asymetrical composition and the natural result of the process of rotating an image, appeared to form an image of something akin to "a breast with slightly trembling nipple=85" We are finally at a point at which an object is able to bridge the gap between a machine and the sub-conscious.=20 This interest in the use of the machine as an agent for (perhaps distorted) erotic expression continued in Duchamp's work "The Large Glass." Where his representation of "the bride" and "the bachelor" were intended to be seen against the backdrop of desire, machinery and ultimately thwarted gratification. The attempt to subvert meaning through the irrational is as radical a critique of society as the desire to use the machine to transform it from the inside.=20 The research which Duchamp performed is critical to consider when attempting to instigate political activism through technology (internet and virtuality). The lesson to be learned from Modernist history is that deterministic ideology tends to be unduly repressive and repression can result in unexpectedly viscous results such as war and totalitarian political systems.=20 IV. Conclusion: Internet and Identity The point for us now is not to be overly caught up in the rhetoric of freedom and resistance put forth by proponents of various virtual political communities. There is danger lurking in the case of the ideology surrounding the internet. Questions of privacy, commerce, control of access and freedom of expression are all issues which constitute a battleground for current struggles. This is to say nothing of the fact that the internet remains the tool for which it was designed: a form of redundant communication channels strung together for military use during times of crisis. But what is interesting about the internet is that it simultaneously provides a system of multivalent realms of resistance and expression.=20 This paper has traced the historic evolution of various moments when societies have attempted to redefine their identity in terms of the machine. Interestingly, we have found similarities between the Futurist model of open-ended structure of interpenetrating vectors and lines of action and spatial configurations inherent in the web. In the case of the Futurists, the manifesto of technological change overwhelmed the very empowering metaphysical discoveries found in their work and became a tool of repression. But the similarities between the worlds of Boccioni and Marcos Novak, for example are striking. In the case of inhabiting cyberspace, one can only hope that the model of open-ended meshworks, partial subjects and heterogeneous intensities can provide a playing field for individual identity and sub-conscious desire to enter into the realm of action.=20 V. Bibliography De Landa, Manuel, "A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History" Swerve Editions, 1997 Krauss, Rosalind, "The Optical Unconscious" MIT Press, 1993. Kwinter, Sanford, "Landscapes of Change: Coccioni's Stati d'animo as a General Theory of Models." Assemblage #19. MIT, 1992.=20 Novak, Marcos, "Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace" from: "Cyberspace: First Steps" edited by Michael Benedikt, MIT Press, Fourth Printing, 1992.= =20 ----- Peter Franck, Architect Adjunct Professor of Architecture, Graduate Program in Architecture Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY c/o 59 Letter S Road Ghent, NY 12075 518.392.3721 email: ghent@taconic.net --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl