December 08, 2014

Frédéric Bazille b. December 6, 1841

On selves, forms, and forces Bruno Latour Comment on Kohn, Eduardo. 2013. How forests think: Toward an anthropology beyond the humanJournal of Ethnographic Theory

I read How forests think as part of a vast movement to equip anthropologists, and more importantly, ethnographers, with the intellectual tools necessary to handle a new historical situation: the others are no longer outside; nonhumans have to be brought back in the description in a more active capacity. Both of those features, naturally, mark the disappearance of older notions of nature and of its counterpart, namely culture; disappearance, that is itself due to the fact that everybody— ethnographers as well as former informants—are pulled deeper and deeper into the same ecological maelstrom. Whatever the term—is it an ontological or a semiotic turn?—the importance of the book relies on the most crucial turn of all: that is, a turn to experience and how to describe it empirically.

The Battle in Philosophy: Time, Substance, and the Void – Slavoj Zizek vs. Graham Harman S.C. Hickman http://darkecologies.com/2014/12/03/the-battle-in-philosophy-time-substance-and-the-void/

I’ve begun a long arduous process of tracing down this ancient battle between substantial formalists (object oriented) and non-substantive event (process) based philosophers, and have begun organizing a philosophical work around the great theme of Time that will tease out the current climate of Continental thought against this background. In some ways I want to take up Zizek’s philosophical materialism of non-substantial self-relating nothingness vs. Harman’s substantial formalism where they intersect in the notions of Time and Causality. We’ve seen work on both of these philosophers, but have yet to see the drama they are enacting from the two world perspectives of ontology vs. the ontic, substance vs. void or gap. I think this would be a worthwhile battle to bring to light what is laying there in fragments. Stay tuned.

Man on a Balcony (Portrait of Dr. Morinaud) 1912Albert Gleizes b. December 8, 1881

like one exile after anotherYu Xiangexcerpted at flowerville (....)

At this moment, my cry is not a scream ~~~ please believe in an incorrigibly stubborn life believe in a severed finger that performs for dead spirits please leave behind the earth that keeps shattering ruins that keep shattering leave behind the mudslide that blocks forklifts and cranes please leave behind, leave behind the right not to die ~~~ You can’t see me, as if you won’t see me in this life again No one notices me. In the crowd no one notices me. I see a body another body each blurrier than the other

another review by Christina Cook

In Search of a Transient Eternity: Chinese Poet Yu Xiang Fiona Sze-Lorrain & Yu Xiang

Journal of Ethnographic Theory Vol 4, No 2 (2014)Special Issue Introduction Translating worlds The epistemological space of translation William F. Hanks, Carlo Severi

Translation has played an important but equivocal role in the history of anthropology and linguistics. At least since Saussure and Boas, languages have been seen as systems whose differences make precise translation exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. More recently, Quine has argued that, in purely abstract terms, reference is ultimately inscrutable and translation between languages is in principle indeterminate. From a Kuhn-inspired point of view, we argue, on the contrary, that the challenge posed by the constant confrontation of “incommensurable” (yet translated) paradigms may become a field for ethnographical inquiry. This approach can provide a new anthropological way to define translation, not only as a key technique for understanding ethnography, but also as a general epistemological principle. Social anthropology would be thus defined not only as the study of cultural differences, but also and simultaneously as a science of translation: the study of the empirical processes and theoretical principles of cultural translation.

Personnage 1970Wifredo Lam b. December 8, 1902

The Ode to Translation or the Outcry Over the Untranslatable Natalia Fedorova

Translation is the sign of life, it indicates both interest to the phenomenon on a global scale and the presence of the reader (or readers). Translated and translatable also means valuable – something not read in the original language will hardly go through the translation sieve. Translation in case of electronic literature, written at least in two languages: a natural language and the language of code - is the translation of both. For this reason it has an immence educational potential and can be an and excellent exercise in the process of training to write on digital surfaces. Translation teaches both about the other language, about your own language, and about the work itself. Gregory Rabassa has stated (in his contribution to the Crafts of Translation) that “translation is essentially the closest reading one can give a text,” which suggests that the translation of a computational system to produce linguistic or narrative creativity would involve a very deep analysis and understanding of the system. John Zuern points out that paying attention to what happens “when we translate (or don’t translate) electronic texts will lead to finer-grained insights into the relationship between “electronic” as a category and “literature” as a category”. Just as literary translation allows for an extremely close reading and for new insights about a text, the translation of these text-machine electronic literature works allows for a better understanding of how they are literary and how computing and language come together in them. For the sleeping e-lit on the Russian and post Soviet space the flow of translated works can be a source of inspiration and a possible way to gain momentum for the future development. It is not only and not so much setting the standard but allowing to understand the paradigm, the way to know what has been done outside the world of Russian language and thought.

E-lit authors Stephanie Strickland and Marjorie Luesebrink organized a panel on the “Future of E–Lit” at the ELO 2012 conference, allowing emerging and early career authors to articulate institutional and economic, as well more familiar technological, developments that constrain and facilitate current practice. The panel papers were released in ebr in March 2014. Luesebrink and Strickland followed up with comments on the papers, offering a “progress report” on the future of the field. The individual responses are available as glosses on the essays and in full here.

La Rencontre des amis (Oiseau)Wifredo Lam 1974