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Archive for February, 2011

The affective resonance of Tahrir Square

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , on February 7, 2011 | 1 Comment »

My thoughts on the “affective contagion” of revolutionary events such as those in Tehran a year and a half ago, or those currently happening in Cairo, have always been somewhat undertheorized. Posthegemony‘s Jon Beasley-Murray points to an exhilarating piece written by his UBC colleague Gastón Gordillo on Resonance and the Egyptian Revolution that is helpful […]

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25 random things

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 7, 2011 | 3 Comments »

A couple of off-line conversations about the inspirational power of music and of SF (science/speculative fiction) have gotten me to dig up this old Facebook piece and to share it here. See bottom for details. I dedicate it to Little Rinpoche. 1. My best friend in kindergarten used to mix up mind and matter; he […]

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First contact (again & again)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on February 5, 2011 | 3 Comments »

Thanks to the “Jungles” segment of BBC’s Human Planet series, Survival International’s photos of an “uncontacted tribe” in the Amazon are making the rounds once again — see Environmental Graffiti’s “Images of the Last Uncontacted Tribe on Earth“, Ron Burnett’s “Never Before Seen Footage of an Amazonian Tribe,” and MSNBC’s PhotoBlog. The rhetoric here — […]

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Egypt & everywhere

Posted in Philosophy, Politics, tagged , , , on February 1, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Uprisings, revolutions, and sudden political realignments are perfect subjects for process-relational philosophical reflection. Their causes are always somewhat mysterious; historians may reconstruct the events that led up to them, and may come up with theories to account for them, but these almost always remain highly contestable. They are moments when suddenly much more is at stake than is normally the case.
[. . .]
But the effort will have been worth it because, as Antonio says, “To behold such a space is a beautiful thing” and “to unlearn it is impossible.” The role of the theory of self-determination and civil disobedience (alongside the practice of social networking) in these uprisings cannot be underestimated. And every time those streams get watered, they deepen.

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