Hephaestus' Golem

Is the title of my first journal publication (well...for visual art, still counts right? ) that is appearing in UT's Literary and Arts journal Analecta 38 (www.analectajournal.com) . 

For those who (justifiably) do not want to pay $15 for the journal here is the picture being published:

Cascades of Resonance

I've talked about the writing of Gastón Gordillo before in reference to his great work on resonance. He has written another great essay going deeper into a discussion of how resonance has shaped networks of resistance in the middle east uprisings.  Anarchist without Content provides a good exert by Gaston Bachelard about how the reverberation of resonance is part of a becoming-expression. And finally Maximilian Forte at Zero Anthropology (a great blog for those currently not following it) about using the Exodus story to understand western conceptions of revolution that was inspired by the above discussions of resonance.

I wish I had the time to enter into this discussion of resonance, however I (and most of the other LoF contributors) have been busy with state debate tournaments. However, once spring break is over and all of us are done with debate you can expect much more output from the blog.

The Enframed Mirror or Beyond the Technological Horizon

There's been much talk the past months over the power of social networks and the role they play/are playing in the revolutions in Egypt and other middle eastern nations. Some have deemed these the "Facebook Revolutions" or alternatively the "Twitter Revolutions". This is on the basis that large parts of the organizing, planning, and mobilizing was done through these social networking and their ability to instantly connect people in a decentralized and rhizomatic (hence network) way.

However these lines of analysis were shown to be highly premature and quite shallow when Mubarak essentially "turned off" the internet for the Egyptian population and the revolution kept barreling forward. To the surprise of Mubarak (and those in the FB/Twitter camp) people were still able to mobilize in the same instantaneous decentralized patterns they were before. There were two main reactions to this new development. The first ,by those singing the praises of social networking, was that the internet blockade had come to late, social networking had already done its job. The second, mostly hedged by the Left, was that it proved that social networking was indeed a useful tool for organizing people but the same things would of been accomplished without they just might of been slightly more difficult.

I think however that there is a third much more metaphysical way of thinking about social media's role in the Winter of Dissent. Jean Baudrillard brings up an interesting quote of Heidegger's in the lecture The Murder of the Real:

...to quote a very mysterious phrase of Heidegger: “When we look into the ambiguous essence of technology we behold the constellation, the stellar course of the mystery.”... It so far refutes the very conception by Heidegger himself of technique and technology... This would be that at the extreme horizon of development, of technique, perhaps something other happens, a reversibility.

 This quote by Heidegger is so very intriguing because Baudrillard is right this does seem to go against much of Heidegger's project. Heidegger was no Luddite but his ideas about how technesis enframes the dasien into standing reserve is quite a gloomy one. However the above quote makes it seem that  if we are to behold this constellation of technology perhaps we can invest in a strategy that instead of retreating from technology strives to push it to it's limits past the horizon, a reverse enframing.

 The protests in Egypt provide a pretty good example of how this reverse enframing can ideally function. When looking at the revolution in this light both the Left and the social media cheerleaders were wrong: Facebook and Twitter were did not start a revolution, but they also were not merely helpful tools of protesters.

The majority of the original protesters and organizer of the Egyptian protests were the youth of Egypt. A generation of people for whom being constantly integrated and connected is a daily function of life (I know, I'm one of them).A generation whose default mode of being is not one static identity but rather one that is constantly in motion and concert with other identities in an interconnected world, similar to how stands of DNA collide into each other and come away with bits of foreign code causing recombinants, cross-overs, and mutations.So when these individuals have a goal (oust Mubarak) there is not a need for them to study social networkings to see how decentralized networks are created because it is how they normally function in everyday social life.

This is why simply shutting down the internet didn't stop the protests- the Egyptians were not using Facebook, they were being Facebook. Heidegger and Virillo got it correct that speed and technology could easily turn the social into an apathetic silent majority, but they failed to see beyond that mysterious horizon were these would be the new methods to turn an standing reserve into a mobile one.

Debate and Theory

Peter Gratton over at Philosophy in a Time of Error has an extremely interesting post on K debaters. From his just surface knowledge of the activity by way of interaction from people who used to be/are in the activity he has the practice of K debate pinned down. For example:

"...as I understand it, is that the Continental approach is mostly used by under-dog teams taking on rich East Coast private high schools. Need to take on realist accounts of nuclear proliferation? Counter with a post-colonial critique of the creation of the global south or a feminist critique of phallo-centrism as represented in the use of missile technology (I’m not making either of these up). Apparently, it throws off the better profile teams used to more standard counterarguments, which seems to match Continental’s role in the academy in general."

I would also add to the discussion that the use of theory is not only strategically used by these "under-dog" teams but also because many of these team gravitate towards this style out of necessity (the catching people off guard is just a bonus). "Rich East Coast private high schools" are not just found on the east coast but everywhere, and they are the teams to beat. Policy debate (where teams argue in the traditional means about the desirability of policy actions) requires massive amounts of resources from high capacity printers, massive amounts of paper, large coaching staff, travel expenses, etc. These larger programs are also able to sustain large squads that can be mobilized for high amount of research production. Due to these structural advantages these larger schools are able to excel at the traditional policy style debating because they have the time and woman power. This is because they are able to stay current on research and produce enough evidence to cover all angles and arguments that are involved in a policy debate.

Because of all this teams/debaters from schools that have a small (or functionally non-existent) team need to find ways to be able to have a debate strategy they will have time to manage and research all by themselves as well as keep on top of their school  and life requirements. These easy to maintain strategies normally manifest themselves as the K (critique). A debater will find one author/critical position that they might find interesting (I myself did this with Nietzsche and later Baudrillard) and then do all the research they can possible do to understand that position inside and out, once that is done these debaters are able to go to bat against the best policy teams in the nation with relative success.

The other interesting part of Peter's post was that he was interested in ways that theory can be made more accessible to debaters:

I’m on the SPEP advocacy commitee the next couple of years so this seems like this would be an area where one could advocate for Continental in a certain way, but I’m not sure how: by putting Continental in touch with debate prep coaches? By leading some of these students into Continental friendly programs?

 I thought of a few suggestions myself for how organizations like SPEP could reach out to debaters:

1. Instead of reaching out to coaches, reach out to the debaters- set up a program where debaters who are interested in theory can get help/advice/direction in their research/thought. This could be done by organized web chats or Q&As where debaters can ask questions to be answered by somebody versed in Continental. Or set a "database" where you provide the emails of certain people who are experts in separate fields that so that they can be contacted, this can be broken up by school of thought or by knowledge of figure head type authors (Heidegger, Deleuze, Baudrillard, etc.). Once this is done THEN contact debate coaches and debate discussion boards.

2. Tell us how - Offer information on how to/where to do theory after high school. Many "k debaters" want to go to college and do/study Continental Philosophy but they are not quite sure how exactly to accomplish this. Do they go into the philosophy department, the english department, sociology,cultural studies, anthropology, political science? Sadly there is really no Critical Theory department, so providing information about issues such as this would probably increase the "recruitment" of high school debaters to Continental.

3. Dazzle them - This somewhat jives with #1 but i think deserves its own- Critical debaters are always amazed by great, interesting, applied thought - and this amazement doubles when it can be used by them. Maybe have a group of disparate Continental authors take the current high school topic and have each write a short essay or use it as a starting point to levy a critique/explain their own theoretical positions, give the collection away by having students email one address. Then SPEP has a mailing list of (elated) high schoolers interested in Continental thought.

This is all I got for now, but if anyone reading this blog has suggestions of their own I highly encourage you to post them in the comments here and/or at the post I linked up top.

Speechless.

I honestly have not many words to say at the moment, except that everyone should stay glued to Harman's blog http://doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com/ . He has the most up to date and truthful coverage of unrest in the middle east. I just finished watching videos that he is hosting of the Libyan army firing fully automatic weapons into protesters - this is horrific. I can do nothing more than express my greatest hope and solidarity with those who are in that situation.

Sometimes our Biggest Enemies are those who Realize our Greatest Hopes

Texas Lutheran University Philosophy Symposium

My good friend Jaynellen Stokes is helping to put on a symposium at TLU on the topic of "The Problem of Evil: Why Bad Things Happen to Good People". It's not in the vein of continental philosophy that those here at LoF dabble in, but it will be interesting nonetheless , everyone who can make it should check it out.
(click the photo to enlarge it)

The Egyptian Resonance Machine

Gastón Gordillo over at Space and Politics has an amazing post examining the material role that resonance has played in shaping the current events going on in Egypt.  It is quite lengthy but by far worth the read, Gordillo goes in depth on how resonance is not just a physical affect but also one that is mainly generated by the material affect of bodies, sound, movement, and spaticality.

One thing I would like to comment on that is interesting about Gordillo's essay is that his discriptions of the mass of protestors that are in the streets are often very visceral ones:

"...These bodies are determined to defend this square and willing to bleed and die if need be because this is the first free space of the new Egypt and the node of its revolution..." 

Aside from commenting on the physicality of resonance (Gordillo handles that), the way in which the revolution is represented as one of flesh, blood, gashes, wounds, grime, and sweat proves that the revolution is not only about removing the regime out of the state but one of cleansing (even if violently) the States control over protesters' physical bodies. The mass in the streets seems to be aware (even if subconsciously) that they are a body-politic. That the sacrifice of their flesh is just as much a challenge to power as their political demands. However what is also important to note is that this battle ground of the body is one fought on both sides, the State has a large amount of interest in mutilating these same bodies to regain control of the populace. Foucault tells us that the bio-political state operates is by managing the physical existence of  the public. This power over life and death normally expresses itself in policies that extend sovereign control through the managment of life (immunizations, reproduction policy, etc.), however when these policies fail to subdue dissent, the State is quick to drop the "benevolent" nature it works hard to sell. Just as the Egyptian protesters shed the States grasp on them by sacrificing the well-being of their bodies, the State also realizes that the body is just as important to regain control of as the square:

"...hundreds of detainees were being beaten up and tortured, with their screams of pain permeating the whole space. Tortured and dead bodies are the price Egyptians are paying for the US ongoing support of the Mubarak regime..."

 Like Kafka's machine of the Penal Colony the State attempts to stop the revolution by inscribing their rule across the bodies that are detained. The State uses extreme violence, pain, and suffering in order to re-discipline to body to "act as it should".  However just like the inscribing-machine from the Penal Colony the regime will not succeed in this endeavor, it will furiously exert itself by trying to regain control in increasingly violent manners, eventually imploding upon itself by it's own inertia. The more punishment the regime inflicts to those who are on the streets fighting for freedom the more people see that revolution is truly a matter of survival.

Glued.

Still glued to all information that is flowing out of Egypt. Seriously this is one of the biggest things we will witness in our lives, if you haven't realized that yet start here : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/we-all-helped-suppress-th_b_818497.html.

Thoughts on "Doing Revolution"

Adam mentions in Occupied that it is not enough to just talk about revolution but to enact it. I find this concept interesting, but i don't think the acts of discussion and "talking" is mutually exclusive with political praxis. Rather thought and action are both symbiotic forms that play with each other, taking and borrowing from each other, to create spirals that we call critique. I think the school Occupation movements last year (UC, New School, etc.) are a great example of this, not only was thought necessary to shed light on and  organize dissent against the budget cuts and war profiting that galvanized the student movements but to spread this movement. The students did not just "make revolution" by occuping the buildings - it's of value to note one of the first things that the student coalitions did once the doors and halls were barricaded was "think". They produced manifestos, websites (included with how to guides), and theory relating to what they were doing. Their praxis was not only generated by thought but was a catalyst of an entire intellectual movement based on the ideas of what it means to occupy and challenge dominant power structures.

Thought is not only valuable to give context to movements but also to generate solidarity between movements. The literature and reports generated by the students that were part of the student movements all became a part of a resonance machine that spread occupation across California like a wildfire (irony not intended). Situating our thought on resistance is key to connecting our social action of creating counter-hegemonic ideologies (doing-thought) with not only the current social actions of others that are building barricades, beating back riot police, and planting urban gardens (doing-action) but future movements like those that are still festering under the surface (like Egypt a few weeks ago) of a pacified status-quo. This resonance between doing-thought and doing-action are both equally important actions of doing-revolution. Like a  Briggs-Raucher reaction the fluid mode of revolution is in constant oscillation between different poles of doing-thought and doing-action but it never stops being revolution.

Probably the best award decision I have heard about in a long time

This would definitely make up for Zuckerberg beating him out for the Time Person of the Year. 

A Norwegian lawmaker has nominated WikiLeaks for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, saying Wednesday that its disclosures of classified documents promote world peace by holding governments accountable for their actions.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee keeps candidates secret for 50 years, but those with nomination rights sometimes make their picks known.
Snorre Valen, a 26-year-old legislator from Norway's Socialist Left Party, told The Associated Press he handed in his nomination in person on Tuesday, the last day to put forth candidates.
"I think it is important to raise a debate about freedom of expression and that truth is always the first casualty in war,'' Valen said. "WikiLeaks wants to make governments accountable for their actions and that contributes to peace.''
Valen also announced his choice on his blog, where he wrote that WikiLeaks had advanced the struggle for human rights, democracy and freedom of speech, just like last year's winner, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.
Valen cited disclosures of nepotism and corruption in Tunisia's presidential family, saying WikiLeaks "made a small contribution to bringing down'' that regime.
The prize committee typically receives more than 200 nominations, so being nominated doesn't say anything about a candidate's chances of actually winning. And there's no way of knowing for sure that people who announce candidates actually submitted a legitimate nomination to the award committee.
Kristian Harpsviken, a leading Nobel-watcher and director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, said he didn't consider WikiLeaks as a strong candidate for the 10 million kronor ($1.6 million) award.
"The reason I think it's unlikely is that there has been so much criticism of WikiLeaks, not least how they have handled identification issues of people in the documents,'' he said. "I don't think it quite does the trick.''
Harpsviken keeps a list of "possible and confirmed nominations,'' based on public announcements and his own sources. His list this year includes WikiLeaks as well as Bradley Manning, the Army private accused of leaking material to the website.
Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva, Afghan human rights advocate Sima Samar, and several rights groups including U.S.-based Wings of Hope and Cuban opposition movement Damas de Blanco are also on the list.
His own top guess is Russian rights group Memorial, followed by activists Leymah Gbowee of Liberia and Ory Okolloh of Kenya.
The committee will announce the winner in October.

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/02/133439342/wikileaks-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize

Baby Steps pt. 1

Just dropping by to give an update of Lines of Fracture. First I would like to give a huge thanks to everyone that has stopped by to witness all of our first awkward steps in the big world of blogging. I hope you enjoyed what you saw and have decided to add us to your blog roll and visit again, hopefully we will continue to provide you with entertaining posts. Now to just document some of the baby steps that LoF has accomplished so far:

-Moving on up:  LoF was officially launched by Chris's post Tangible Philosophy on the 30th, since then we have had 330 views, for those not so good at math that 110 views a day.
-Big Winner: The most views at once came today after the posting of Brian's had to talk about debate, he posted at 9:59, and at 10:00 we have 49 views to the site
-Divide and Conquer: We are officially an international blog, and have covered the entirety of north america. Out of our 330 audience members 229 have been from the states (including alaska) and 1 has been from Canada.
-Chromed Out: Chrome is currently the browser LoF is viewed most in by a 27% of our views, coming in close second is Firefox with 25%. There is also 10% of you who are still using Internet Explorer, come'on guys! Its 2011, get with it!
-Old News: We have already got so much posted that in order to view them all the "older posts" button actually has a purpose.


I think we are doing pretty good so far, and we will only get better. Adam has started an advice column to provide some humor here. We have had another wonderful author join our ranks, everyone should get acquainted with PJ Martinez here. And finally Chris promises a post on D&G in the coming days, so get excited.

Holloway on Fractures

Came across an excellent passage in John Holloway's new book Crack Capitalism that is highly relevant to this blog:

"Imagine a sheet o f ice covering a dark lake of possibility. We scream 'NO' so loud that the ice begins to crack. What is it that is uncovered? What is that dark liquid that (sometimes, not always) slowly or quickly bubbles up through the crack? We shall call it dignity. The crack in the ice moves, unpredictable, sometimes racing, sometimes slowing, sometimes widening, sometime narrowing, sometimes freezing over again and disappearing, sometimes reappearing. All around the lake there are people doing the same thing as we are, screaming 'NO' as loud as they can, creating cracks that move just as cracks in ice do, unpredictably, spreading, racing to join up with other cracks, some being frozen over again. The stronger the flow of dignity within them, the greater the force of the cracks."

"Screw Your Mother!" - Links and comments on the Egyptian situation

If you have not been completely glued to the reports about the current situation in Egypt, then you need to get on it now. The Huffington Post has been a great resource for up to date reports also Graham Harman's blog has been amazing on providing on-the ground analysis and definitely worth keeping track of.

The Scu has a good post at Critical Animal relating this to the Iranian Revolution, and providing an intriguing distinction between a demonstration and an experiment.

It is good to see that the Egyptian population is not satisfied by reforms and concessions that the state is willing to offer. They are in full realization that the government is not "their" government but owned by the very outside forces that benefit from an illegitimate sovereignty. I think the we are not just on the cusp of a revolution here in Egypt but on the cusp of a global movement as a whole, the situation in Egypt in a great example of a global revolutionary resonance machine that began with the 06 riots in France, to the 08 Greece demonstrations, and now to Egypt. Jean Baudrillard phrased it best in his 06 article The Pyres of Autumn:

"The superiority of Western culture is sustained only by the desire of the rest of the world to join it. When there is the least sign of refusal, the slightest ebbing of that desire, the West loses its seductive appeal in its own eyes. Today it is precisely the ‘best’ it has to offer—cars, schools, shopping centres—that are torched and ransacked. Even nursery schools: the very tools through which the car-burners were to be integrated and mothered. ‘Screw your mother’ might be their organizing slogan. And the more there are attempts to ‘mother’ them, the more they will. Of course, nothing will prevent our enlightened politicians and intellectuals from considering the autumn riots as minor incidents on the road to a democratic reconciliation of all cultures. Everything indicates that on the contrary, they are successive phases of a revolt whose end is not in sight"

Hypertangible Philosophy

"Lines of fracture, inversions, splits, rifts: there is, as it were, a line beyond which, for every expanding system - every system which, by dint of exponential growth, passes beyond its own end - a catastrophe looms."
- Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil

To begin with I need to say that I have never felt completely comfortable writing about myself, there is something unsettling about revealing and explaining what might constitute yourself, an awkward intellectual undressing, that ends up seeming like a contrived strip-tease to somehow save face. With that being said my name is Hank Stolte. I come from an impossibly small (my graduating class contains 57 kids) rural Texas town named Thorndale, a town that is just what you would imagine it to be - filled with extreme right-wing/religious/populous sentiments. Probably due to this fact I have always felt more at home with any one who fell outside of these quite rigid and exclusionary categories.

My foray into critical though and philosophy was born through my participation in high school debate, when during the summer between my 8th grade and freshman year I happened across something called the "Nietzsche K" on a site devoted to the activity of debate cross-x.com (an excellent site,btw ). Now a discussion of how high school debate operates or what a "K" is are discussions for other times and places, the important thing is that this chance encounter with a certain dead German philosopher has put me on a trajectory that I am still highly engaged in. After I had read the short spinets of Nietzsche that made up the debate argument, I wanted more, so i got my hands on all the Nietzsche I could find and devoured his works in short time. A while after this the great game of debate introduced me to Marxism and other areas of anti-capitalism, most notably the writings of Slavoj Zizek. After an intellectual upbringing in Nietzsche and an adolescence in Marx my thought turned in probably the only way that was left - I discovered Jean Baudrillard and the rest of the post-68 gang, who still dominate most of my reading time. Other authors i have delved in include Paul Vrillio, Georges Bataille, Giles Deleuze, Felix Guarttari, Micheal Hardt, Antonio Negi, and (to save time) all the others in Brian's list of influences, except Kincheloe and hooks.

Its easy to describe my critical background, but my political grounding is a little more problematic. I would be hard pressed to admit to any political grounding, my ideas normally fluctuate depending on what is influencing me at the time. I don't care to much for teleological and dogmatic ideologies, but it would be safe to say that I probably near the Radical Left, if not in politics than at least in spirit. No matter what I believe is a good strategy for combating it at the time, I will always be put off by forms of violent exclusion. And this is probably how I will treat my participation in Lines of Fracture.There will probably never be a coherent meta-theme to my posts, rather I plan on approaching this blog as an expression of those fluctuations in my thought.

This is an approach I am not only taking in my individual post, but one i hope the blog as a whole embodies. An approach that hopes each post -whether it be scattered thoughts, esoteric prose, commentary on current events, or structured critical analysis- can be the starting point for trajectories that open up spaces for new ways of thinking, no matter how small these spaces may be. That we on this blog can generate ideas that can exploit the stress points of a system, crack and shatter previously solid ground, widen existing schisms, and become the ground work for larger processes of undermining and reorganization  - these are lines of fracture.