Alan Sondheim on Sat, 14 Oct 2017 17:35:28 +0200 (CEST)


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: <nettime> The Looming Impossibility of the Present


For me, this depends on whose future, not an abstracted one, but one 
within which genocide all too easily inheres, where the extinction of a 
species is absolute; a few years ago Johannes Birringer and I co-moderated 
a discussion on empyre on absolute terror which centered, for me, around 
scorched-earth operations that permanently eliminated cultural narratives 
from whole regions. So 'whose future' is absolutely critical, given this 
and given the enclaving of so many of the top .1%; obviously the planet 
will survive, things change, etc., but given the potential of nuclear war 
etc., the future may be brutal indeed.
And as I've grown older, I've come to the opposite realization, that life 
is not resilient at all...
- Alan

On Sat, 14 Oct 2017, Peter ciccariello wrote:

This is brilliant. Thanks Ian Alan Paul.
I would like to share it?

On Oct 14, 2017, at 10:04 AM, Ian Alan Paul <ianalanpaul@gmail.com> wrote:
And so here we are. In the present, the new normal. In a situation that 
feels just as quotidian as it does impossible.
With my coffee I read of fires in California and I scroll through 
friends' facebook posts debating which filters and breathing masks are 
best to buy. I read of the news from Puerto Rico, where a tragedy 
smears across days and then weeks in slow motion, obfuscated by 
politicians but nonetheless occasionally breaking through the surface. 
I listen to friends talking about what white supremacists are doing on 
their campuses, worried about posters and about speaking events, while 
some have begun receiving death threats. I hear of safehouses being 
organized for migrants that are soon to be made illegal. Everywhere 
things are heating up, the seas are rising, and democracies fall from 
the air like flies.
On mornings like this one, I'm reminded of Brecht when he wrote that 
"Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they 
are." What could better describe our present? There's no room for 
nostalgia in such a formulation, in a rapidly disintegrating present 
that forcefully collapses towards the future. While collapse is always 
to some degree anticipated as we can see its shadow stretching across 
the ground beneath us, even its most astute architects cannot be sure 
in which direction the debris will fall.
As I've grown older, one thing which has become increasingly clear to 
me is that life is resilient. It goes on. Whether in occupied 
territories, under the weight of a military coup, or after the election 
of a demagogue, tea and coffee are still brewed in the morning, and 
people still find, even if somewhat troubled, sleep at night. Even in 
the face of the most tremendous of losses, the past's rubble is slowly 
and carefully accumulated into something new and is in turn guarded by 
the living. We find temporary and fragile shelters from our looming 
impossibility.
And so here we are. In the present, the new normal. In a situation that 
cannot stay this way because of the way it is. In a kind of life we 
live because we must continue living.
The question for us, I think, isn't whether or not the future can be 
warded off, although promises that it can be will continue to fill the 
air with their vacancy. All that remains for us is to embrace the 
possibility of the impossible present we find ourselves within. If the 
world can no longer hold as it is, what can come to be in its stead? As 
our lives in their present forms become increasingly less possible to 
live, the only refuge may be in the collective invention and 
elaboration of new forms of living.
#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:


New CD:- LIMIT:
http://www.publiceyesore.com/catalog.php?pg=3&pit=138
email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 718-813-3285
current text http://www.alansondheim.org/uw.txt
#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: