Yes, there it is: "The word creates space between stimulus and response, allowing reflection, responsibility, and resistance." In Peircian terms, perhaps, the word creates the space of mediation between the sign and the signified. Images in words' place become something like a political state of emergency; a deliberative body gives way to an execution (a response) by an "executive."
And this in your response to Addison's comment: "You stay in it, not to win, but to witness." Yes! Witness speaks of both hearing/seeing and testifying, of mediating between what was witnessed and the community the witness serves. Without this "witness," all that remains is what you aptly describe as "spectacle over meaning."
(By the way, I've been enjoying Boym's The Future of Nostalgia, which you recommended in a previous post. This post may be going in the opposite direction--A History of Futurism?)
Ahh, yes. In Peircean terms, the word mediates between sign and meaning. Replace it with image, and mediation vanishes—what once invited thought now demands action. Deliberation gives way to execution. And life becomes a meme: compressed, contagious, and primed to provoke.
As for Boym, you, and, I hope, me—nostalgia can be a failure to "witness" the past. We say things were better. That’s how forgetting works.
". . . nostalgia can be a failure to 'witness' the past. We say things were better. That’s how forgetting works." Well put and thought provoking. Both nostalgia and liturgy access the past. Nostalgia could be said to place the past in a distant, replicating future that leaves the present empty. Nostalgia, then, brings no true memory to the present because nostalgia involves both inaccuracy and absence. Liturgy, though, demonstrates that what was, is, and liturgy thereby brings presence to the present. Liturgy's version of future--its "is to come"--involves true hope since what "is to come" comes thorough "the work of the people"--through agency, contingency, and grace (the help and presence of "who is to come"). Liturgy's future is not like nostalgia's future, a Platonic form masquerading as the past. Anyway, thanks for helping me to think, as usual!
I do think good science fiction—and some of the old myths—are a good way to get smarter. (In addition to Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Neal Stephenson; think Prometheus, Pandora, Icarus, Sisyphus, Atlantis.)
Ellul would have had no use for the “Benedict Option”: he didn’t believe withdrawal was resistance—just another form of surrender. He insisted on lucidity in the midst of the machine. You stay in it, not to win, but to witness.
Yes, there it is: "The word creates space between stimulus and response, allowing reflection, responsibility, and resistance." In Peircian terms, perhaps, the word creates the space of mediation between the sign and the signified. Images in words' place become something like a political state of emergency; a deliberative body gives way to an execution (a response) by an "executive."
And this in your response to Addison's comment: "You stay in it, not to win, but to witness." Yes! Witness speaks of both hearing/seeing and testifying, of mediating between what was witnessed and the community the witness serves. Without this "witness," all that remains is what you aptly describe as "spectacle over meaning."
(By the way, I've been enjoying Boym's The Future of Nostalgia, which you recommended in a previous post. This post may be going in the opposite direction--A History of Futurism?)
Ahh, yes. In Peircean terms, the word mediates between sign and meaning. Replace it with image, and mediation vanishes—what once invited thought now demands action. Deliberation gives way to execution. And life becomes a meme: compressed, contagious, and primed to provoke.
As for Boym, you, and, I hope, me—nostalgia can be a failure to "witness" the past. We say things were better. That’s how forgetting works.
Thanks, Bryce!
". . . nostalgia can be a failure to 'witness' the past. We say things were better. That’s how forgetting works." Well put and thought provoking. Both nostalgia and liturgy access the past. Nostalgia could be said to place the past in a distant, replicating future that leaves the present empty. Nostalgia, then, brings no true memory to the present because nostalgia involves both inaccuracy and absence. Liturgy, though, demonstrates that what was, is, and liturgy thereby brings presence to the present. Liturgy's version of future--its "is to come"--involves true hope since what "is to come" comes thorough "the work of the people"--through agency, contingency, and grace (the help and presence of "who is to come"). Liturgy's future is not like nostalgia's future, a Platonic form masquerading as the past. Anyway, thanks for helping me to think, as usual!
A frightening scenario.
The scariest part? We’re getting used to it.
I do think good science fiction—and some of the old myths—are a good way to get smarter. (In addition to Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Neal Stephenson; think Prometheus, Pandora, Icarus, Sisyphus, Atlantis.)
Ellul would have had no use for the “Benedict Option”: he didn’t believe withdrawal was resistance—just another form of surrender. He insisted on lucidity in the midst of the machine. You stay in it, not to win, but to witness.