The University of British Columbia has a Theory Workshop. No really; it does.
This month’s was a Derrida one. Coming up in April there will be a Deleuze one. It looks way good.
Most of us who draw from, and aim to produce, critical theory set out to make analytical interventions in the making of political transformations. This is, after all, what sets critical theory apart from mainstream theory. The ongoing wave of revolutionary unrest in North Africa and the Middle-East provides us with an opportunity and a challenge, both of which are theoretical as well as political: to put the tool kits of our conceptual assemblages to the test and re-invent and expand our intellectual horizons in response to novel political-historical configurations. In this workshop, we will explore and debate the political dimensions of the so-called “affective turn” in the humanities in the past decade. In particular, we will examine Spinoza’s concept of “affect” together with that of “resonance,” which a number of authors (including myself) are beginning to explore to understand the bodily, spatial, temporal, and affective forces that are currently transforming a central geopolitical node of global imperial power. My overall aim, in short, will be to debate the triad “affect, resonance, revolution” both conceptually and in connection with actual political terrains.
Isn’t that just a great way to make analytical interventions in the making of political transformations? Don’t you think the people of Egypt will be thrilled and grateful to see the interventions appear over the brow of the hill?
There’s a blog about it too. It’s a big intervention.
Resonance is an intensely bodily, spatial, political affair, materialized in the masses of bodies coming together in the streets of Egyptian cities in the past thirteen days, clashing with the police, temporarily dispersed by teargas and bullets, and regrouping again like an relentless swarm to reclaim the streets, push the police back, and saturate space with a collective effervescence. Resonance is what gives life to this human rhizome and the source of its power.
I think the idea is that when a lot of people get together, you have a crowd, and then sometimes things happen.
Everybody feels the resonance reverberating from Egypt and is trying to make sense of it, to name it. But the words seem inadequate, partial, incomplete: enthusiasm, energy, passion, anger, contagion, electrifying, domino effect. These terms name features of resonance but miss its salience as a physical, affective, political force made up of living bodies. Those who know it best, if intuitively, are the bodies that produce it in the streets.
Words are inadequate, so you need a Theorist to come up with better ones, like “bodies” for “people,” because that’s so…empowering. Do I have it right?
Comments
45 responses to “Here come the resonant bodies”
“Theory”. You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
snort!
I prefer Dawkins’s critical theory over Derrida’s. It’s the difference between consciousness-raising and consciousness-numbing.
There you go again, Ophelia: wilfully despoiling and vandalising an empowering and enriching dadaesque narrative. Some interrogation of discourse might appear counter-hegemonic, but on application of Barthes the reverse is revealed as the albeit subconscious reality.
What nonsense is this?! No wonder there’s nothing left! If this is the kind of piffle that “intellectuals” at universities indulge themselves in, perhaps we need to reinvent the whole concept of learning, because resonance just isn’t enough. Besides, this (from the web site) is simply untrue:
I’m afraid it’s not an unstoppable force, as the Muslim Brotherhood will demonstrate shortly, resonance or no. Religion can deal with resonance very smartly. Dress some of it in a tent, for instance. Guns work too, and torture, imprisonment, execution. Goodness, I could count of any number of ways of dealing with resonance!
Why, I’m resonating right now!
Ah yes, “resonance”. That’s another Vezzini Moment for them.
Is anyone here familiar with “Landscape Urbanism?”
I’d be curious to hear reactions.
What I love about this is that the very effect they’re talking about, people “feeling the resonance” (and the healing power of their chi) is only because they’re getting their entire impression of what’s happening through mainstream media, which is about like sampling a restaurant through the Food Network. Do they really think this is significant?
And maybe it’s just me, but whenever I see something laden with that many euphemisms and buzzwords, all I hear is, “Something something something dark side…” But I guess it worked on the people holding the purse strings. “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”
It looks basically like if I put my college syllabi and a Chopra book together in the blender. Yeesh.
Sounds to me like a coda to ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities.’ I know some funny stuff goes on at UBC, but this is absurd.
Notes from a parallel universe. What the hell has happened to Education and Anthropology,have they been infected with the PM virus?
I knew you would like it. :- )
It was Lauryn Oates who shared it with me, by the way.
RJW —
Anthropology is currently in a state of extreme internal dysfunction bordering on civil war with one side, the “social anthropologists” getting all theoretical, sorry Theoretical, and inventing accusations of genocide against fellow anthropologists they don’t like and on the other side are the “scientific anthropologists”, you know, the ones who still believe in observation, evidence, and logical inference and other quaint ideas.
I wouldn’t put all anthropology in the same basket.
Not oppressed, just volitionally-challenged.
I resonated with a cultural theorist once. (wink wink nudge nudge say no more)
This seems to be more meta-anthropology than anthropology, talking incomprehensibly about it not actually doing it.
I thought the blurb on “Claudia”, who conducted the Derrida workshop, was just wonderfully informative:
I’ve often asked myself those same thorny questions, agonistically of course. Jeez, UBC used to be a good school. These people must be from another planet…
Derrida?
Seriously?
Still?
Zizek, shurely…
Ah not to worry, the resonator quoted Zizek.
Hey, leave my buddy Slavoj out of this. He’s funny and sometimes even makes sense.
First: Stu wins today’s interwebz
Second: dirigible made me think of the following exchange. “Surely you can’t be serious!” “I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.”
Third: It’s just… so. Much. Word. Salad!!!
I’ve sent them some capacitors: they’ll be alright now.
Word salad? How can you say that?
What’s salad about that? It’s as plain as a pikestaff. These people who do critical theory like to make analytical interventions into (or perhaps under) other people’s political transformations. The other people do the transforming, politically, and then the critical theorists come up from behind and make an analytical intervention. That means they tell the people doing the transforming what their words mean, so that
um
well ok that bit’s salad, but any fule kno what “sets critical theory apart from mainstream theory” means – it means they’re better than everybody else.
Good point Ophelia: that bit is always very understandable.
Isn’t Orwell’s Politics and the English Language required reading in high school senior english? Or was my teacher just that awesome?
@24 — your high school teacher was just that awesome.
Just this afternoon, I head a news report that the military government that replaced Mubarak stated that they wouldn’t schedule elections for another year AT LEAST.
Resonate that.
Same shit, different sack.
Most fields use jargon, often including specialized definitions of standard words — I’m damned sure I won’t understand an advanced paper in quantum mechanics or musicology. Is it just that we lack the background to understand the vocabulary, or is this stuff really as vacuous as it looks? There seems to be hints of something being said there, but in the next sentence it slithers away.
I used to like lots of literary theory back when it was, you know, about literature. But Theory has gobbled up what was old school literary theory. Old school literary theory tended to have a narrower focus (which was—get this—on a particular work of literature) and didn’t claim to be more important than it was. (Twas a million miles from this “resonance” stuff.) Years ago, when my colleagues in English departments, trained literary critics, started calling themselves “cultural critics,” I knew the end was nigh.
It’s not about crowds. I think that is clear.
The meaning is flagged by key phrases throughout the text:
It’s a obviously a warning about an invasion of cybermen.
Eamon, it is as vacuous as it looks.
But “critical theory” does mean something, and is immensely interesting. Take a look at Raymond Geuss’s “The Idea of a Critical Theory”, which is a pretty damn solid and sensible little book.
@Eamon
The crucial difference between specialist jargon and po-mo gobbledygook is that the latter can be Sokaled. Physicists, mathematicians, analytical philosophers and engineers may use language that is incomprehensible to the layperson, but not to fellow experts in their field. This means they can smell bullshit trying to pass off as technical language in their area of expertise. Can’t say the same for po-mo peddlers. In fact, they’d probably be more impressed the more impenetrable the text is:
“In order to be taken seriously by French philosophers, twenty-five percent of what you write has to be impenetrable nonsense.”
– Michel Foucault’s response when asked why he was so clear in conversation but so hard to understand in print.
Chris Lawson,
Depressing. I’ve heard that some anthropologists were dispensing with all that difficult,boring sciencey stuff and relying on Theory,I really didn’t want to believe it. I don’t understand how this methodology, that originated in the humanities, can be applied to the social sciences.
Eamon Knight,
I agree, as a general principle, however, such PM intellectual wankers have been caught out before-refer the Sokal hoax. If the emperor isn’t completely naked,he’s wearing a very small figleaf.
Well let me put it differently:
If you like the stuff above, you’ll love “Landscape Urbanism” and I encourage you to look into it.
That would be morphic resonance from Egypt, yes?
I’d just like to point out that THEORY!! and THEORIST are anagrams of HEY!ROT! and HEIST ROT
This has always puzzled me about Theorists. They are not altering the actual ideological debates or real-world actions of those other people. They are just talking and writing behind their backs. This is an “intervention” how exactly?
The pitch seems to be: “if we don’t waste our time talking about this to no effect, who will?”
@25: My current understanding is that presidential in Egypt elections are due to be held this year and parliamentary elections to be held next year. A parliamentary election held sooner would in all likelihood be swept by (a) Mubarak’s former party and (b) the Muslim Brotherhood, as other groups do not yet have a functional party structure to contest elections with.
IOW, it’s the po-mo version of prayer? ;-)
[makes note to look up landscape urbanism]
Firther to dirigible’s point: If “those who know [resonance] best, if intuitively, are the bodies that produce it in the streets”, what are you accomplishing by sitting in a seminar room at UBC? Shouldn’t you be attemptng to engage those intuitive bodies somehow to try to define their intuitive understanding?
I just want everyone to realize how difficult it has been, when reading about resonance as an intense bodily affair that saturates a space with our collective effervescence, not to make a fart joke.
Well I looked up The Idea of a Critical Theory over at Amazon. From what the reviews say it appears to be a serious book. There was a complaint about the author taking too analytic an approach, not a bad thing as I see it.
I don’t buy this. Foucault made his choice to take the flashy, trendy route to stardom. No one made him do it. For a philosopher to make this excuse is an admission of a serious ethical and professional breach. The writers I respect say what they mean clearly, or at least as clearly as the subject and their abilities permit.
Ernie, yes, that’s what I said — it’s a great, informative book!
[makes another note to look up Landscape Urbanism, adds a note to find The Idea of a Critical Theory at the library]
OB.
You might start with this site, which sums it up very nicely and actually works:
landscape urbanism bullshit generator
Then, taking it slightly more seriously — which may be unwarranted — take a look here:
Landscape Urbanism: sometimes an enemy is good to have – City Comforts, the blog
Btw, one reason I urge you and others to take a look at “Landscape Urbanism” because too few non-environment wonks ever look at the terrible mis-use of language (or maybe it is mis-use of the mind) in much of the “design discourse” of our era. And bad language leads (or manifests) bad thinking.
Yes, it is a lot of BS but it — landscape urbanism, starchitecture etc — also does influence the real physical world.
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