Encountering the Blair Witch: The Effacement of Media (redeux)

I watched The Blair Witch Project with my friends this Saturday with our text, Remediation, fresh on my mind. To be perfectly honest, I was terrified: I've seen the film several times, and at least one other time within the past year, yet the specter of the unknown, unseen Blair Witch haunted my dreams and kept me curled up next to my girlfriend at night. What made this particular antagonist so terrifying - was it my imagination, filling in the empty signifier "witch" with the most horrible, gruesome monster that my mind could conjure up? No: upon interrogation, it was precisely the absence of the witch - what perhaps Bolter and Grusin would call the "self-effacement" of the experience of media offered by the film - that plagued my nighttime thoughts. Indeed, it was the very reality of the film that haunted me. The characters' experience, seemingly unfiltered by Hollywood, commanded the power of authenticity, yea, even the aura that Benjamin spoke of. As Ryan asked: What would Benjamin say - that the experience technology offers belies the absence of media, of mediation: it obscures the means of its own production. The Blair Witch's absence belies the absence of intention, of mediation - of capital. When the characters, lost in the woods, flee from their tent upon having their campsite disturbed by an unknown force, we flee with them; however, we aren't running away from the witch, we are chasing her, immersing ourselves even further in the Hyperreal, fully invigorated by our encounter with the horror of Reality.

What is interesting about the Blair Witch Project is that it actually requires no imagination, even though the film seems to demand it: never do we actually need to imagine the figure of the witch to be terrified. Rather, we need only dare let ourselves not imagine, let ourselves accept that the "unknown" is our relationship with this radical alterity (the Blair Witch, the Supernatural). Otherness is terrifying, but, an Other that we can never encounter: that is Hitchcockian, baby. The Witch is an Other so possessed of Otherness that we can never encounter her - she is forever off-screen, always in the periphery. We can never reconcile ourselves with her. From a Marxist perspective, what this amounts to is alienation - we long to encounter the witch, to have power over that which never manifests itself. Perhaps, as Foucault would say, we desire to subject her to a field of visibility so that we may subordinate her to particular strategy or a tactic, in a way, disciplining her and making her a better subject to power?

But I digress...

In reading Remediation, I couldn't help but recall several questions that came to mind during last Monday's class with Dr. Moberly: what is the point of critically interrogating media? Why did we spend time deconstructing James Cameron's Avatar only to come to understandings already evident with readings of Marx and Dyers-Witheford? Perhaps a better question would be: what's the point of understanding theory through film, or, for that matter, any other particular form of media? What's to be gained through interpreting Avatar via particular critical lenses: Dr. Moberly explains that there are two different iterations of capitalism battling themselves out in the film, simultaneously exposing but effacing themselves through their very articulation. But what the hell does this mean?

Actually, what does any of this MEAN: why do we bother interpreting film and other media through the critical lenses offered by Benjamin, Zizek and Bolter and Grusin? Why is coming to understand the nature of media's mediation-function important? What is the ideological function of media and how powerful is it? Does watching Avatar make us more susceptible to the ideology of capital? Do we gain something through the exegesis-izing that we wouldn't get through reading Marx proper? Are we merely being uncomtemplative in our understandings of our own socio-economic stations? Is the conclusion that we should just turn off our TVs and read instead of acquiring information via the immediacy of cable news and video? If so, then ok – sounds good to me.

I don't ask these questions superfluously; these are some very serious thoughts that come to mind - I have a basic understanding of Marx, but what does this application grant me? Why spend 2.5 hours learning about Marx via Avatar rather than discussing actual readings of Marx?

My own attempt at critically interpreting The Blair Witch project seems to me a genuflection to Hollywood, granting them even greater authority as the purveyors of truth. They are now even more genius and/or sinister than before: are they the evil agents of capitalism, inserting near-subliminal messages into media in order to dupe us further and anesthetize our revolutionary desire; or, are they simply reproducing the discourses that expose us to the processes of capital and labor-value that doom us all to certain extinction?

When we perform an exegesis of Avatar or The Blair Witch Project aren't we presupposing the existence of some central truth that only we, via our superior critical lenses, can uncover. And this is precisely the criticism D&G offer of Freud and why they titled their first book Anti-Oedipus – texts are machines of production, producing desire and do not have to be understood as static works that only yield their ghosts upon being properly psychoanalyzed. Why can't we just let media be desire-production machines? Why can't we continue to pursue the Blair Witch as a supernatural spell-caster then go demand better working conditions for workers and better pay and better environmental regulation and, x and y and z.

Is criticism all we need or do we need to make sure it penetrates every aspect of culture?

Encountering the Blair Witch: the Effacement of Mediation

I watched The Blair Witch Project with my friends this Saturday with our text, Remediation, fresh on my mind. To be perfectly honest, I was terrified: I've seen the film several times, and at least one other time within the past year, yet the specter of the unknown, unseen Blair Witch haunted my dreams and kept me curled up next to my girlfriend at night. What made this particular antagonist so terrifying - was it my imagination, filling in the empty signifier "witch" with the most horrible, gruesome monster that my mind could conjure up? No: upon interrogation, it was precisely the absence of the witch - what perhaps Bolter and Grusin would call the "self-effacement" of the experience of media offered by the film - that plagued my nighttime thoughts. Indeed, it was the very reality of the film that haunted me. The characters' experience, seemingly unfiltered by Hollywood, commanded the power of authenticity, yea, even the aura that Benjamin spoke of. As Ryan asked: What would Benjamin say - that the experience technology offers belies the absence of media, of mediation: it obscures the means of its own production. The Blair Witch's absence belies the absence of intention, of mediation - of capital. When the characters, lost in the woods, flee from their tent upon having their campsite disturbed by an unknown force, we flee with them; however, we aren't running away from the witch, we are chasing her, immersing ourselves even further in the Hyperreal, fully invigorated by our encounter with the horror of Reality.

What is interesting about the Blair Witch Project is that it actually requires no imagination, even though the film seems to demand it: never do we actually need to imagine the figure of the witch to be terrified. Rather, we need only dare let ourselves not imagine, let ourselves accept that the "unknown" is our relationship with this radical alterity (the Blair Witch, the Supernatural). Otherness is terrifying, but, an Other that we can never encounter: that is Hitchcockian, baby. The Witch is an Other so possessed of Otherness that we can never encounter her - she is forever off-screen, always in the periphery. We can never reconcile ourselves with her. From a Marxist perspective, what this amounts to is alienation - we long to encounter the witch, to have power over that which never manifests itself. Perhaps, as Foucault would say, we desire to subject her to a field of visibility so that we may subordinate her to a strategy or a tactic

This text owes much to Jean Baudrillard and the authors make note of it. The implications of the

But what does any of this MEAN: why do we bother interpreting film and other media through the critical lenses offered by Benjamin, Zizek and Bolter and Grusin?

In reading Remediation, I couldn't help but recall several questions that came to mind during last Monday's class with Dr. Moberly: what is the point of critically interrogating media? Why did we spend time deconstructing James Cameron's Avatar only to come to understands already evident with readings of Marx and Dyers-Witheford? Perhaps a better question would be: what's the point of understanding theory through film, or, for that matter, any other particular form of media? What's to be gained through interpreting Avatar via particular critical lenses: Dr. Moberly explains that there are two different iterations of capitalism battling themselves out in the film, simultaneously exposing but effacing themselves through their very articulation. But what the hell does this mean?

I don't ask these questions superfluously, these are some very serious thoughts that come to mind - I know Marx, but does the application grant me? Why spend 2.5 hours learning about Marx via Avatar rather than discussing actual readings of Marx?

Mediation begs a number of questions:

I wonder if the text understated how much it owes to Jean Baudrillard. Hypermediacy is, at least it seems to me, an extrapolation on his notion of the simulacrum: the hyperreal, or in other words, a reality more real than our immediate sensory experience.

Perhaps my question is directed at the political or, in other words, the relationship between

"Marx Beyond Marx": incongruous marxisms and the liberatory potential of technology

Dyer-Witheford's book was a breath of fresh air, simultaneously granting me identification with someone who is interesting in articulating clear, finite "demands" and alternatives to capitalism whilst still challenging my present conceptualizations of various Marxisms, revolutions, and political strategies. In particular, I've come to take for granted the centrality of worker struggle and the wage-labor relation to criticisms of the status quo, and by this I mean that I tend to assume that leftist intellectuals are already in some form of agreement as to capitalism's role as the primary antagonist of leftist intellectuals and its threat to our collective survival. As the author points out, a great aspect of identifying oneself as a Marxist is that you aren't (necessarily) subordinated to a totalizing structure or body of understanding - rather, Marxism connects (but does unify) many seemingly disparate criticisms of capitalism whose commonality is their location in Marx's oeuvre. I think the point I'm trying to make is that this realization that I've "taken for granted" the importance of identifying capitalism as the central problem facing politics is that, in so doing, I've demanded a totalized, ideologically pure commitment to anti-capitalism. This is the over-coding of Marx, etc. (insert D&G) and fractures communities that, otherwise, could unify in their "immiseration" beneath the structure of production. Communities need to be bridged, not atomized through delineation and categorization. As the author explains, capital needs to "decompose" unions and fracture alliances in order to expose individuals to the processes of labor-value and commodity. Furthermore, inconsistency and contradiction are present within every system of thought - to demand congruity and consistency of Marxism would deny its flexibility and potentiality to embark on new lines flight that could bring about the liberation so desired by leftist thinkers.

The particular solutions offered by Dyer-Witheford (guaranteed annual income, public ownership of satellite networks, etc.) are not of particular interest for the purposes of this post but are incredibly important and must be reckoned with; however, I am interested in his arguments concerning the relevance of Marx in our day. In particular, I'm interested in the relevance of Marx to our class and its focus on technology.

As the author points out, Marx was not optimistic about technology, but rather saw it as an essential sustaining force behind capital's wage-labor relation and the attendant impoverishment of workers. Dyer-Witheford, however, sees the potential for technology to disrupt the circuit of capital and introduce breaks that allow for alternatives to be realized. In particular, the author sees the potential for technology to break the "moment" of exchange that is essential to the cycle of commodification - the instantaneous speed of communication provided by digital technology and the internet makes the commodity process untenable. Goods are not "consumable" in the sense that they are infinitely replicateable via digital mediums (computers, etc.) and, consequently, cannot be reduced to a value.

I find this point to be effectively illustrated today by the availability of "pirated" media and software via bittorrent and other peer-to-peer networks. While these modes of disseminating goods outside of the market have not gone unchallenged by public and corporate institutions, the fact that they have endured and remain viable today is indicative, to me, of the potential for technologies to short-circuit the commodity cycle and "free" the products of labor from its subordinated status as commodity.

I also find compelling the implicit point raised by the author's optimism about technology, more specifically that technology offers some hope for creating sites of resistance to capital instead of being necessarily constitutive of the commodity cycle and its impoverishment of workers. The Occupy Wall Street protests hold promise, however not as the result of technology's liberatory potential, but rather the onslaught of capitalism that has left so many without work and income that they are forced to the streets in protest. I'm a bit torn, however; how does one realize change with Marx's criticism of the state in the back of your mind; more specifically, should we demand of the state changes within the structure of our economy even though, as Marx says, the state is the instrument of the bourgeoisie (as the bailouts have proved)? Should our demands be clear and finite, or infinite and abstracted?

Mimic the strata: deterritorializing the self

I wonder why we still follow the rules. So many criticisms later, I've come to understand many of the institutions, organizations and practices that have always been a part of our society; every "good" seems to belie its malevolent origin. The flow of capital co-opts every effort at revolution - every reform seems to perpetuate inequality. Despite China's "cultural revolutions" they ended up with perhaps the most closely perfected iteration of capitalism yet.
D&G compel us to "mimic the strata":

You have to keep enough of the organism for it to reform each dawn; and you have to keep small supplies of significance and subjectification, if only to turn them against their own systems when the circumstances demand it, when things, persons, even situations force you to; and you have to keep small rations of subjectivity in sufficient quantity to enable you to respond to the dominant reality. Mimic the strata. You don't reach the BwO, and its plane of consistency, by wildly destratifying. […] Connect, conjugate, continue: a whole "diagram," as opposed to still signifying and subjective programs. We are in a social formation; first see how it is stratified for us and in us and at the place where we are; then descend from the strata to the deeper assemblage within which we are held; gently tip the assemblage, making it pass over to the side of the plane of consistency. It is only there that the BwO reveals itself for what it is: connection of desires, conjunction of flows, continuum of intensities. You have constructed your own little machine, ready when needed to be plugged into other collective machines. (160-161)

I think this passage (and the omitted content in between) best captures why Capitalism and Schizophrenia is generally understood as a "game changing" work. Both Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus are, themselves, the body without organs: pure potentiality. This potentiality manifests itself in their deterritorialization - the ideas do not resist appropriation, rather, they can help create "lines of flight" - new possibilities and planes of potentiality on which we can do something. I'm not sure what that something is, but perhaps that's the point.

This quote is illustrative of two things for me: (1) the importance of resisting the tendency to automatically defer to "poles", to binaries, dichotomies, antagonism and war; and (2) the importance of resisting being generically avant-garde: the nihilism of so many "revolutions" today has ceded the political to those who can wield it against people. Sure, it might be fun to go to Disneyland ironically and silently mock Cinderella's castle - but you still bought a ticket.
The BwO reminds me of Schrodinger's Cat in the sense that observation affects the object. The BwO is not striated space - it possesses no end - and thus, cannot be observed, for when one sees the BwO it has already taken flight in a new direction. And that's the epiphany: that ends are fascist, that privilegings of knowledge spur inquisitions and holocausts, and that our compartmentalizations are really confinements.

A quote from Anti-Oedipus I think is appropriate here:

All writing is so much pig shit - that is to say, any literature that takes itself as an end or sets ends for itself, instead of being a process that "ploughs the crap of being and its language," transports the weak, the aphasiacs, the illiterate. At least spare us sublimation. Every writer is a sellout. The only literature is that which places an explosive device in its package, fabricating a counterfeit currency, causing the superego and its form of expression to explode, as well as the market value of its form of content.

The fact that Ryan had us read ATP in the order he did is not only to assist the learning process but to demonstrate just another way that D&G have deterritorialized their text. The territory of the text - to be read cover to cover - can itself be challenged; flows are not left to right.

Foucault's introduction to Anti-Oedipus sums up my thoughts perfectly:

Last but not least, the major enemy, the strategic adversary is fascism (whereas Anti- Oedipus' opposition to the others is more of a tactical engagement). And not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini - which was able to mobilize and use the desire of the masses so effectively - but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us. I would say that Anti-Oedipus (may its authors forgive me) is a book of ethics, the first book of ethics to be written in France in quite a long time (perhaps that explains why its success was not limited to a particular "readership" : being anti-oedipal has become a life style, a way of thinking and living). How does one keep from being fascist, even (especially) when one believes oneself to be a revolutionary militant? How do we rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and our pleasures, of fascism? How do we ferret out the fascism that is ingrained in our behavior? The Christian moralists sought out the traces of the flesh lodged deep within the soul. Deleuze and Guattari, for their part, pursue the slightest traces of fascism in the body.

Paying a modest tribute to Saint Francis de Sales, * {*A seventeenth-century priest and Bishop of Geneva, known for his Introduction to the Devout Life} one might say that Anti-Oedipus is an Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life.

This art of living counter to all forms of fascism, whether already present or impending, carries with it a certain number of essential principles which I would summarize as follows if I were to make this great book into a manual or guide to everyday life:

Free political action from all unitary and totalizing paranoia.

Develop action, thought, and desires by proliferation, juxtaposition, and disjunction, and not by subdivision and pyramidal hierarchization.

Withdraw allegiance from the old categories of the Negative (law, limit, castration, lack, lacuna), which Western thought has so long held sacred as a form of power and an access to reality. Prefer what is positive and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic.

Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable. It is the connection of desire to reality (and not its retreat into the forms of representation) that possesses revolutionary force. Do not use thought to ground a political practice in Truth; nor political action to discredit, as mere speculation, a line of thought. Use political practice as an intensifier of thought, and analysis as a multiplier of the forms and domains for the intervention of political action. Do not demand of politics that it restore the "rights" of the individual, as philosophy has defined them. The individual is the product of power. What is needed is to "de-individualize" by means of multiplication and displacement, diverse combinations. The group must not be the organic bond uniting hierarchized individuals, but a constant generator of de-individualization. Do not become enamored of power.

Mimic the strata: deterritorializing the self

I wonder why we still follow the rules. So many criticisms later, I've come to understand many of the institutions, organizations and practices that have always been a part of our society; every "good" seems to belie its malevolent origin. The flow of capital co-opts every effort at revolution - every reform seems to perpetuate inequality. Despite China's "cultural revolutions" they ended up with perhaps the most closely perfected iteration of capitalism yet.

D&G compel us to "mimic the strata":

You have to keep enough of the organism for it to reform each dawn; and you have to keep small supplies of significance and subjectification, if only to turn them against their own systems when the circumstances demand it, when things, persons, even situations force you to; and you have to keep small rations of subjectivity in sufficient quantity to enable you to respond to the dominant reality. Mimic the strata. You don't reach the BwO, and its plane of consistency, by wildly destratifying.

[…]

Connect, conjugate, continue: a whole "diagram," as opposed to still signifying and subjective programs. We are in a social formation; first see how it is stratified for us and in us and at the place where we are; then descend from the strata to the deeper assemblage within which we are held; gently tip the assemblage, making it pass over to the side of the plane of consistency. It is only there that the BwO reveals itself for what it is: connection of desires, conjunction of flows, continuum of intensities. You have constructed your own little machine, ready when needed to be plugged into other collective machines. (160-161)

I think this passage (and the omitted content in between) best captures why Capitalism and Schizophrenia is generally understood as a "game changing" work. Both Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus are, themselves, the body without organs: pure potentiality. This potentiality manifests itself in their deterritorialization - the ideas do not resist appropriation, rather, they can help create "lines of flight" - new possibilities and planes of potentiality on which we can do something. I'm not sure what that something is, but perhaps that's the point.

This quote is illustrative of two things for me: (1) the importance of resisting the tendency to automatically defer to "poles", to binaries, dichotomies, antagonism and war; and (2) the importance of resisting being generically avant-garde: the nihilism of so many "revolutions" today has ceded the political to those who can wield it against people. Sure, it might be fun to go to Disneyland ironically and silently mock Cinderella's castle - but you still bought a ticket.

The BwO reminds me of Schrodinger's Cat in the sense that observation affects the object. The BwO is not striated space - it possesses no end - and thus, cannot be observed, for when one sees the BwO it has already taken flight in a new direction. And that's the epiphany: that ends are fascist, that privilegings of knowledge spur inquisitions and holocausts, and that our compartmentalizations are really confinements.

A quote from Anti-Oedipus I think is appropriate here:

All writing is so much pig shit - that is to say, any literature that takes itself as an end or sets ends for itself, instead of being a process that "ploughs the crap of being and its language," transports the weak, the aphasiacs, the illiterate. At least spare us sublimation. Every writer is a sellout. The only literature is that which places an explosive device in its package, fabricating a counterfeit currency, causing the superego and its form of expression to explode, as well as the market value of its form of content.

The fact that Ryan had us read ATP in the order he did is not only to assist the learning process but to demonstrate just another way that D&G have deterritorialized their text. The territory of the text - to be read cover to cover - can itself be challenged; flows are not left to right.

Foucault's introduction to Anti-Oedipus sums up my thoughts perfectly:

The major enemy, the strategic adversary is fascism (whereas Anti-Oedipus' opposition to the others is more of a tactical engagement). And not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini - which was able to mobilize and use the desire of the masses so effectively - but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.

I would say that Anti-Oedipus (may its authors forgive me) is a book of ethics, the first book of ethics to be written in France in quite a long time (perhaps that explains why its success was not limited to a particular "readership" : being anti-oedipal has become a life style, a way of thinking and living). How does one keep from being fascist, even (especially) when one believes oneself to be a revolutionary militant? How do we rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and our pleasures, of fascism? How do we ferret out the fascism that is ingrained in our behavior? The Christian moralists sought out the traces of the flesh lodged deep within the soul. Deleuze and Guattari, for their part, pursue the slightest traces of fascism in the body.

Paying a modest tribute to Saint Francis de Sales, * {*A seventeenth-century priest and Bishop of Geneva, known for his Introduction to the Devout Life} one might say that Anti-Oedipus is an Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life.

This art of living counter to all forms of fascism, whether already present or impending, carries with it a certain number of essential principles which I would summarize as follows if I were to make this great book into a manual or guide to everyday life:

Free political action from all unitary and totalizing paranoia.

Develop action, thought, and desires by proliferation, juxtaposition, and disjunction, and not by subdivision and pyramidal hierarchization.

Withdraw allegiance from the old categories of the Negative (law, limit, castration, lack, lacuna), which Western thought has so long held sacred as a form of power and an access to reality. Prefer what is positive and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic.

Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable. It is the connection of desire to reality (and not its retreat into the forms of representation) that possesses revolutionary force.

Do not use thought to ground a political practice in Truth; nor political action to discredit, as mere speculation, a line of thought. Use political practice as an intensifier of thought, and analysis as a multiplier of the forms and domains for the intervention of political action.

Do not demand of politics that it restore the "rights" of the individual, as philosophy has defined them. The individual is the product of power. What is needed is to "de-individualize" by means of multiplication and displacement, diverse combinations. The group must not be the organic bond uniting hierarchized individuals, but a constant generator of de-individualization.

Do not become enamored of power.