<nettime> Re: Oliver Marchart: Greetings from Neutopia (reply by author)

[Alan Myouka Sondheim <sondheim@gol.com>]

On Wed, 30 Sep 1998, Oliver Marchart wrote:

> it is precisely their contingent status, on the other hand, which
> implies that they are open to emancipatory re-articulations (not to mere
> "disclosures" of an assumed reality behind). Maybe the Neutopia cult was
> a bad example for trolls but it was still a good example for the
> eco-globobrain-colonial ideology of the net.
> ---

I agree to some extent with your conclusion here; my difficulty is that by
arguing I may be a troll, DN is a troll, etc., you remain on the plane of
discourse, as well as oddly turning towards issues of authenticity. As far
as trolling goes, it would have been relatively easy to call, say, U. M.
Amherst about her thesis. But you draw your evidence from the newsgroup,
reach wrong conclusions, and I find somewhat problematic, that's all.
(This woman was even written up in Newsweek at one point, picture in-
cluded.) 

I wish the troll model you develop _weren't_ tied into Neutopia in fact -
because then these issues of intention, authenticity, authorship, auth-
ority, etc. do come up. 

There's a second problem, which is the "for" in your last clause - most of
what DN has done started off the Net - so you are in effect applying her
work as an ideological formation _for_ . While I also find it eco-glo-
col etc. (as well as close to crackpot in some of her conclusions - hence
the opposition it's garnered in the newsgroup) - it doesn't _necessarily_
represent anything _of_ the Net, unless you're assuming a certain trans-
parency of communication here. And if it does represent _of_ the Net -
then the Monster Truck Neutopian opposition also represents _of_ the Net -
from a very different viewpoint (I think).

By the way, DN, at least when I knew her (on and off the Net) is totally
"serious" about her writing, in an inordinately humorless way. I can vouch
for this, although I could deconstruct "serious."

yours, Alan
---
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