#media theory
This is another way of saying that the archive, as printing, writing, prosthesis, or hypomnesic technique in general is not only the place for stocking and for conserving an archivable content of the past which would exist in any case, such as, without the archive, one still believes it was or will have been. No, the technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure of the archivable
content even in its very coming into existence and in its relationship
to the future. The archivization produces as much as it records the
event. This is also our political experience of the so-called news media.
Derrida, Archive Fever
In fact the trade in books styled livres de nouveauté can be summed up in this commercial theorem: a ream of blank paper is worth fifteen frans; once printed it is worth five francs or three hundred francs according to the success it obtains.
– Balzac, De l'état actuel de la librairie
It must be understood that each individual, through the combined operation of his innate disposition and the influences brought to bear on him during his early years, has acquired a specific method of his own in his conduct of his erotic life – that is, in the preconditions to falling in love which he lays down, in the instincts he satisfies and the aims he sets himself in the course of it. This produces what might be described as a stereotype plate [ein Klischee] (or several such), which is constantly repeated – constantly reprinted afresh – in the course of the person’s life, so far as external circumstances and the nature of the love-objects accessible to him permit.
–Freud, The Dynamics of Transference
Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but it is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.
–Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
Shades of Rilke’s Du, Nachbar Gott.
Everyone seeks their look. Since it is no longer possible to base any claim on one’s own existence, there is nothing for it but to perform an appearing act without concerning oneself with being- or even being seen. So it is not: I exist, I am here! but rather: I am visible, I am an image- look! look! This is not even narcissism, merely an extroversion without depth, a sort of self-promoting ingenuousness whereby everyone becomes the manager of their own appearance.
–Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil
The problem of the dialogue between the individual and society […] is nothing other than this capacity human beings have of distancing themselves from their environment, both external and internal. This detachment, which expresses itself in the separation between tool and hand and between word and object, is also reflected in the distance society creates between itself and the zoological group. The whole of our evolution has been oriented towards placing outside ourselves what in the rest of the animal world is achieved inside by species adaptation. The most striking material fact is certainly the “freeing” of tools, but the fundamental fact is really the freeing of the word and our unique ability to transfer our memory to a social organism outside ourselves.
– Leroi-Gourhan, Gesture and Speech
In films, there is the wind that blows and the wind that is produced by a wind machine. Computer images do not have two kinds of wind.
– Harun Farocki
Realizing Newton’s mechanics in the realm of transportation, the railroad creates conditions that will also ‘mechanize’ the travellers’ perceptions. According to Newton, 'size, shape, quantity, and motion’ are the only qualities that can be objectively perceived in the physical world. Indeed, those become the only qualities that the railroad traveller is now able to observe in the landscape he travels through. Smells, sounds, not to mention the synaesthetic perceptions that were part of travel in Goethe’s time, simply disappear.
–Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey
Discourse analysis practices a ‘joyful positivism.’ It accords not even a relative autonomy to philosophical discourse. It does not deal with the one Urschrift which every metaphysics of presence has supposedly forgotten, but rather with the many forgotten techniques which were invented to counteract forgetting.
–Kittler, “Forgetting”
The methodological hypothesis of discourse analysis is as simple as that. It presupposes forgetting and disappearance, disintegration and erosion precisely where philosophy decreed presence and retaining. Such simplemindedness has its advantages. It is only against the background of disappearance without return that the techniques and institutions which produce or insure a certain permanence can appear in their specificity.
– Kittler, “Forgetting”
i have no problem with this stuff being spelled out in an article bc it’s important history people esp north americans should be aware of but like how did u not think about this until now. how did u think stede bonnet a white man got so rich in the fucking caribbean. how do u think anyone in history got rich. how are u only just realizing this
anyway the whole fucking story is fictional for fucks sake. they took his namesake and that’s it. even if they didn’t and it was some random made-up white rich man from barbados he would’ve made his wealth the same exact way as stede bonnet. this show never claimed historical accuracy and if u saw blackbeard being played by a māori dude in full leather with a motley crew of genial characters and assumed it was all true to history then i’m sorry but that’s on u.
pirates were horrible horrible people who were extremely implicit in the atlantic slave trade. as were the characters in bridgerton and jane austen novels and most historical fiction that depicts the lives of rich people. stede bonnet and edward teach are burning in hell and i enjoy seeing entirely fictional versions of them kiss on my tv. those two things can coexist and while im not here to police anyones reaction to that i feel like if i as a black person from the caribbean, directly descended from slaves, can be cool with that then white people shouldn’t have to thoughtlessly guilt-trip themselves into hating the show
i made this post way too much like “i’m the black friend who says it ok”. all i’m saying is critically examine the media u consume , learn some history, and think for urselves. don’t reblog this and say “thanks op i was thinking this but it wasn’t my place to speak!” have some conviction! u aren’t forbade from speaking on things and by forcing marginalized people to speak on shit before u feel safe addressing it, you’re falling into the age-old trap of separation and exclusion, just wrapped in the package of progression. we r all humans we have a shared history of suffering and exploitation and we can only break those cycles once we choose to allow ourselves to freely share our thoughts on the basis of human-to-human solidarity and kindness
