Author: sfcashbaugh

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been thinking about the problem of ideology a lot lately.

From Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenburg), Henry of Ofterdingen:  A Romance (1842 edition):

The patents had already retired to rest; the old clock ticked monotonously from the wall; the windows rattled with the whistling wind, and the chamber was dimly lighted by the flickering glimmer of the moon. The young man lay restless on his bed, thinking of the stranger and his tales. “It is not the treasures,” said he to himself, “that have awakened in me such unutterable longings. Far from me is all avarice; but I long to behold the blue flower. It is constantly in my mind, and I can think and compose of nothing else. I have never been in such a mood. It seems as if I had hitherto been dreaming, or slumbering into another world; for in the world, in which hitherto I have lived, who would trouble himself about a flower?–I never have heard of such a strange passion for a flower here. I wonder, too, whence the stranger comes? None of our people have ever seen his like; still I know not why I should be so fascinated by his conversation. Others have listened to it, but none are moved by it as I am. Would that I could explain my feelings in words! I am often full of rapture, and it is only when the blue flower is out of my mind, that this deep, heart-felt longing overwhelms me. But no one can comprehend this but myself. I might think myself mad, were not my perception and reasonings so clear; and this state of mind appears to have brought with it superior knowledge on all subjects. I have heard, that in ancient times beasts, and trees, and rocks conversed with men. As I gaze upon them, they appear every moment about to speak to me; and I can almost tell by their looks what they would say. There must yet be many words unknown to me. If I knew more, I could comprehend better. Formerly I loved to dance, now I think rather to the music.”

From Walter Benjamin, “Dream Kitsch” (1925):

No one really dreams any longer of the Blue Flower.  Whoever awakes as Heinrich von Ofterdingen today must have overslept.  The history of the dream remains to be written, and opening up a perspective on this subject would mean decisively overcoming the superstitious belief in natural necessity by means of historical illumination.  Dreaming has a share in history.  The statistics on dreaming would stretch beyond the pleasures of the anecdotal landscape in the barrenness of a battlefield.  Dreams have started wars, and wars, from the very earliest times, have determined the propriety and impropriety — indeed, the range — of dreams.

Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (1977):

Such lovely little blue flowers. You’re seeing the flower of the future,” Donald, the Executive Director of New-Path, said. “But not for you.”

“Why not for me?” Bruce said.

“You’ve had too much of a good thing already,” the Executive Director said. He chuckled. “So get up and stop worshipping–this isn’t your god any more, your idol, although it was once. A transcendent vision, is that what you see growing here? You look as if it is.” He tapped Bruce firmly on the shoulder, and then, reaching down his hand, he cut the sight off from the frozen eyes.”

Gone,” Bruce said. “Flowers of spring gone.”

“No, you simply can’t see them. That’s a philosophical problem you wouldn’t comprehend. Epistemology–the theory of knowledge.”

Bruce saw only the flat of Donald’s hand barring the light, and he stared at it a thousand years. It locked; it had locked; it will lock for him, lock forever for dead eyes outside time, eyes that could not look away and a hand that would not move away. Time ceased as the eyes gazed and the universe jelled along with him, at least for him, froze over with him and his understanding, as its inertness became complete. There was nothing he did not know; there was nothing left to happen.

“Back to work, Bruce,” Donald, the Executive Director, said.

“I saw,” Bruce said. He thought, I knew. That was it: I saw Substance D growing. I saw death rising from the earth, from the ground itself, in one blue field, in stubbled color.

The farm-facility manager and Donald Abrahams glanced at each other and then down at the kneeling figure, the kneeling man and the  Mors ontologica planted everywhere, within the concealing corn.

“Back to work, Bruce,” the kneeling man said then, and rose to his feet.

Donald and the farm-facility manager strolled off toward their parked Lincoln.  Talking together; he watched–without turning, without being able to turn–them depart.

Stooping down, Bruce picked one of the stubbled blue plants, then placed it in his right shoe, slipping it down out of sight. A present for my friends, he thought, and looked forward inside his mind, where no one could see, to Thanksgiving.

Dr. Octagon, “Blue Flowers,” Dr. Octagonecologyst (1996):

Dr. Octagon, “Blue Flowers Revisted,” Dr. Octagonecologyst (1996):

Mashing up an excerpt of Michael Heinrich’s An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Marx’s Capital (pages 97 to 98) with Nobou Uematsu’s “Prelude” off the Final Fantasy VII Original Soundtrack.

I’ve now spent a week teaching at Zoom University: it fucking sucks.

There’s a kind of phenomenological flattening that happens on Zoom, at least in my experience. Each and every interaction on that platform takes on the same character. It’s wrong to describe Zoom as a platform: it’s better to characterize it as a social form. As such, a wide array of content can fill it. Regardless of whether you are taking a class, teaching a class, attending a work meeting, having an “online happy hour,” or attending a Zoom-version of any given group activity, the social dynamics remain the same: you engage in a visually and technologically mediated social interaction with a squared image, the use of which is dictated by the software and hardware you are using. There’s an act of reduction and abstraction here. I encounter my students the same way I encounter my doctor in a telehealth visit. An array of spaces and social dynamics become one mode of interaction: the Zoom Conference. Of course, it doesn’t have to be Zoom: GoogleChat and Webex are the same in practice; Zoom™ is to the web conference as Xerox™ is to photocopying. In this context, each social interaction comes to experientially resemble every other.

This is what I mean when I say phenomenological flattening. I don’t know what the impact of this is or will be, either generally or in the particular context of the university, but I’m not optimistic. It’s something that goes beyond the exhaustion that accompanies long stretches of time performing for a camera and laptop screen. I’d say it’s closer to what Jameson called a “waning of affect,” a kind of depthlessness, though I don’t think it’s necessarily an aesthetic phenomena as Jameson would have it. This framing is helpful: it pushes me to think through the above as symptoms of structural phenomena. This is why I’m starting to think through this flattening in terms of exchangeability of the sort characteristic of the value-form and the fetishism that accompanies it. At a certain point, the experiential resemblance between Zoom interactions will feel, if not be, exchangeable in the same way that capital compels everything else to be. Is this an emergent form of capitalist sociality or the inexorable conclusion of prevailing logics? Yes.

I’m predisposed to Adornoesque pessimism (i.e. “we’re doomed, but there’s a slight chance for it to be otherwise”), but the historical necessity of Zoom University seems to suggest that it’s part of a new conjuncture that’s here to stay. Covid has rendered the Zoom Conference common sense. I’m lucky and privileged that I get to teach this way. Not teaching this way is a death sentence, either for myself or others. As noted above, it fucking sucks.

started a blog again because fuck it.