Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy

The idea of the world removing the separation between local and Global is truly a Utopian idea. Globalization is happening but not to the extent that is wanted by the global powers of the world. But globalization does forget about the little people.

Arjun Appadurai has proposed that a framework of exploring such disjuncture is to look at the relationship between 5 dimensions of global cultural flow. These are ethnoscape, mediascape, technoscape, finanscape and ideoscape.

These terms are used to show how the world is becoming very globalized but this is just a small part of the world. It doesn't cover everything and it doesn't think of the little people that it hurts. Everything is not corporate. There are little things that make or keep the world local.

It is very Utopian to think we can become one world.

The Overexposed City

What has become of our cities? You can't tell where one starts and the others end. The cities have expanded so much that cities have merged into one. What happened to the dramatic entrances of cities with the gates and arches telling you have entered the city. Now your lucky if there is a sign to welcome you. Some technologies have changed how we move about cities, you can tour a city without even going to it. The city never sleeps. There is no longer restrictions to when you can go to a city. With electricity there is no real difference between night and day.

Some technologies are making what was once a big city die. Moving people to where the work is. Creating Ghost towns within cities.

And What has happened to Architecture? Is there a possibility for new architecture? Technologies have changes the way we use our cities without boundaries and limits, in time and space do we design for that and create new architecture within the virtual realm or in reality. or both? Will this change our city? Do we want our cities to change or do we continue to overexpose our city?

the Ecstasy of Communication

Face to face personal contact has changed over time. The television changed the way things were seen, moved to a scene that can be seen only in a box. The interaction is gone. The personal and private spaces have not gone away they just changed.

Speed of communication had change the way we are. You no longer have the same type of communication. An email as replaced the letter from snail mail. Instant messages have replaced phone calls. you have whole conversations on msn and never hear the persons voices.

The scene , the emotions and the personal touches all replaced by a screen. Is this the way communication is going? Is this how we want it to stay? I miss personal contact.

Idea for Deleuze Film Review

Hey guys!

I think I came up with a good idea for our review film!

It's set within a court trial that is trying to get to the bottom of a corporate crime committed within a covert office setting. The crime is the 'event' and the court trial is the platform for the discussion of the event leading to the crime (were they real or just staged? pure event or event?). Within the trial a key witness is called to the stand to implicate the defendant with the crime (is the defendent just a subject, therefore wothout value to the event, or is he the active person involved in the event?)

This sort of script can bring up all of the notions described in the book as they pertain to the Real vs. the Actual, subject vs. Individual(participant), pure-event vs. event, etc. The reason I thought of this is because I noticed that throughout the book the author makes references to analogies of detectives getting to the bottom of a crime scene to explain the philosophies. I found this helps me to understand and makes for an engaging way to explain the theories without making something too artsy and wierd. What do you all think?

let me know? And keep your eye out for these references while you're reading!

Later.

Inspiration is a butterfly

It's singular beauty is almost always appreciated from afar, but when it lands on you it's presence is painfully brief.

I found this particular theory class to be rather inspirational. In particular the last bit of the discussion that started with how we are to guard the variability of our localized environments within a globalized, homogenizing super-structure and ended with the paradigm shift towards looking for opportunites within the negative to propagate hope.

Just wanted to make a note to a concept from Deleuze that was brought up in class today for those us us who didn't catch it (as I'm sure I'll have forgotten by Monday). Jae explained the notion of 'pure-event vs. event' using the metaphor of a hockey game. Each player exists as part of the matrix within the realm of the 'pure-event' but that the player who has the puck is the only one with any value at that moment as he owns 'the event'. This is not to negate the importance of the other players as they (the pure-event) contain the potential to own the event as it shifts from player to player. The event is not the puck nor the player who owns the puck, in of themselves. The event is the hybrid of the player who controls the puck. That's a good way of looking at it as a synthesis between the field of the pure-event and the material coagulations operating within it.

Comments or add-ons, anyone?

Notes on Deleuze

Okay this might expose me as a little thick but I need to regurgitate something in my head that applies to Deleuze's assumption towards the concept of 'immanence' and it's relationship to transcending Being through repetition:

In trying to relate the notion of immanence to the philosophy of trancending being through repetition, what makes sense to me is that within an existence where everything that is (and ever will be) is already present and accessible to us, the only way to inititiate change within this existence is to constantly repeat the current state of being until we learn to see it in a new way, rather than looking elsewhere for something new. So okay, I get that. But when I think back to the explanation of the realm of Being vs. the realm of Becoming; my understanding is that 'the realm of Being' is a 'coagulation within the realm of Becoming'; this implies that the realm of Becoming embodies a larger space than that of Being, that there is more beyond the realm of Being, that there is an 'other space' beyond the material coagulation of space.

SO: rewind back to the initial statement that explains the fundamental ssumption of Immanence; does this mean that everything that exists exists within the material realm of 'Being', assuming that that is all we humans are able to perceive, the realm in which we exist? Or is he suggesting that the immaterial realm of becoming is within our grasp, that we can transcend the realm of 'Being' by reaching out and pulling the outer realm into our own (thereby expanding the coagulation)? The problem with this take is how this is to be done through repetition which implies (in my understanding) a circular, introverted method, which in my view doesn't equate to my understanding of the differentiation between the space of being and becoming....hope someone gets it! (Or at the very least I hope I didn't spread the confusion!)

Wow...after re-reading this I'd be amazed if anyone understands what I just asked!

Disjuncture and Difference

The article talks about how we should not believe in ideas of globalization, it claims we should let go of separations between local and global. Rather we have moved into "scape's" which, like air currents, flow and sweep ceaselessly throughout the globe. These "scape's" are mutable and constantly change to fit our changing technologies. These "scape's" replace typical nodes and arteries usually associated with the movement of information. Is this just a way to get around negative globalization ideas? The basic framework of these new movements of communication can be described by the relationship between five dimensions of global cultural flow: (i) ethnoscapes which is the landscape of persons who constitute the shifting world; tourists, immigrants, exiles, etc. (ii) mediascapes, which disperse information through the media; magazines, television, films, newspaper within a landscape of images. (iii) technoscapes conduct global configuration, technology. (iv) finanscapes are the scapes of currency, financial movement, the stock exchange, etc. and finally (v) idoescapes which are the concatenations of images often political, terms and images, freedom, welfare, rights, etc. All these scapes run across borders and boundaries spreading information. This is all fine and dandy but really, if you can't see these scapes and they are all just speculation it seems like this is just a way of trying to get around succumbing to dreaded globalization.

In the Place of the Public

The airport, the shopping center, the eatery. The experience is so different from what you expect. You are rushed through check in, you are herded through security, branded or ignored. You spend most of the time in a secure area where you are being watched the whole time. Sure they try to distract you with shopping and food, bars even and TVs to watch but they are watching you. The distraction is good for some since you have to be there for so long. you are lucky if you can actually see a plane that off. It doesn't surprise me that the idea of a mall can be converted into a small city with Hotels and everything you need to survive. They are not location specific, you could be anywhere and they all look the same. What is the difference from the mall and the airport?

If you are luck the air plane is the same thing, full of distractions and food so that you don't realize that your life is in the hand of the person flying the plane and not in your control. Most of the time you are herded in put in your place and told to listen to directions. Does this make you want to fly, or would you rather be in control and see the world for its true differences?

In the Place of the Public

"Space is produced by the relations of productions, mapping political economy onto the physical world." The dictation of how space is used is directly connected to how the space can make the most profit, even if this isn't the most efficient or environmentally friendly use of space. "The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people mediated by images." Image is a factor that controls social engagement, it can dictate how we act and what we think that we want. We find speed comforting, reassuring but why do we find slow unsettling? Do we stop to think and don't know what to think about, or is there just too much to contemplate ignoring is easier? When we have no time, moving at the speed of sound we don't have to think, lament, regret. Maybe that is why travelling is now about speed, how fast you can get to a space then actually appreciating the way you get there. Presently instant stimulation is a necessity.
Flight and airports mimic the feelings of replacability and homogeneity. These places are not made especially for someone but for a function; filtering the public in and out of the facility. Airports are impersonal, replaceable and non- regional. Quick stimulation spaces encourage unconscious filtering, and encourage society to be comfortable with this cattle- type approaches to travel. These spaces create a wasteland of the area they occupy; geometry conquers diversity and nature. Can we change the way we travel or are we doomed to move through spaces unconsciously?

reading notes: Times Square Dead or Alive

Time Square is Alive if you really look at the facts of the place. It has changed with the times. It keeps getting better. It was a media center, a distasteful center and now sure it is an advertisement/ commercial center but it is still there. Thousands of people go to Time Square everyday, be it as commuters or tourists. It almost seems that the history of the square is not important but it is the experience of the place. New York has a lot of places that make it New York, time square can be one of them. It still has the energy it had back in the day, it has just changed. They have cleaned Time Square up, it is regulated by private corporation, but it's it better than having the strip clubs, gang wars and the prostitutes that it once had. Some times change is good and right now the change is more advertisement and commercial. Next time it changes maybe it will give you a different feeling and be more unique, but right now it is what it is and as long as the people still keep going to see it, it is alive.

reading notes: Homebodies on Vacation

Sit back and relax and you will start your vacation, what a thought? Take a vacation without leaving your home. This may be low-cost but really you are riping yourself off of life experience. Nothing will ever compare to the experience of actually travelling to the place and seeing it with your own eyes.
Travel has become very commercial, go see the London Bridge in Arizona. Visit a movie see it's better than the real thing. The Parthenon in Nashville, exactly the same except you don't have the dramatic climb to the top. These places may look the same, but they are artificial. True you might not know the difference but your riping yourself off.
The travel to get there is just as important as the destination in some cases. Air travel has become convenient but it does take something way from the experience. My grandmother goes on a piligramage every year and the trip there is just as important in the experience. You would miss out on all the great stops that have to be made on the way there. Somethins are better taken slowly then rushed through.
When was the last time anyone really had a vacation without all the commercial aspects. Lets look to the past before we take our next vacation. Drive there if you can? Stop whenever you think there is something to experience and take the picture if you have to but only after the experience.