sufi
lala
... & the Journal of Subjectivity
So what do we know/think about BIFO?
Bifo ...
- Thread starter sufi
- Start date
version
Well-known member
This Heroes book's great, tbh. Bit reductive, as any narrative will be, but compelling. There's no translator credited, so I assume he wrote it in English himself. Reads pretty smoothly considering it isn't his first language.
He starts off discussing various mass shooters - Aurora 2012, Virginia Tech, Columbine - then tries to unpick the societal currents that can lead to that particular flavour of violence. It's all the kind of thing we've already discussed on here - high finance, atomisation, triumph of the virtual - but it's nicely stitched together.
One thing I like's the way he simplifies then combines Baudrillard and D&G. He uses Baudrillard's thing of the breakdown of referentiality - signs being exchanged for signs rather than real things - and D&G's deterritorialization/reterritorialization - social relations being destroyed and reconstituted - to sketch out a trajectory of abstraction that's being responded to by people attempting to reclaim their identity through things like racism and nationalism. A more developed, contemporary take on what McLuhan's saying in this interview:
Couple of other factors he highlights are 'semiocapitalism' - this is what he calls the current version as he says it's predominantly based around signs, information, and attention now - being at a stage where people think of themselves as winners and losers rather than classes, and that increasingly the young are socialised via machines, that's where they learn a lot of their vocabulary, and it changes the relationship to language, to emotion, etc. when you're doing the equivalent of playing tennis against a wall rather than a partner, especially that early in life. The combination of the two can lead to a certain kind of psychopathy seen in people like the Columbine shooters who were bullied, considered themselves 'losers', retreated into a virtual world of video games, then decided to try to "win" in some sense by lashing out in the warped way that they did.
The outlier so far's Anders Breivik who has a similar profile, but whose crimes were more calculated and ideologically motivated. He uses that as a jumping off point to describe Europe going through the same process of abstraction as the EU pursues the usual agenda of profits over everything and that leading to breakdowns in Greece, etc. and the rise of right wing parties across the continent as people fall back into the old petty tribes and nationalisms.
There's more going on than that, but that's a rough, somewhat disjointed, outline of his argument.
He starts off discussing various mass shooters - Aurora 2012, Virginia Tech, Columbine - then tries to unpick the societal currents that can lead to that particular flavour of violence. It's all the kind of thing we've already discussed on here - high finance, atomisation, triumph of the virtual - but it's nicely stitched together.
One thing I like's the way he simplifies then combines Baudrillard and D&G. He uses Baudrillard's thing of the breakdown of referentiality - signs being exchanged for signs rather than real things - and D&G's deterritorialization/reterritorialization - social relations being destroyed and reconstituted - to sketch out a trajectory of abstraction that's being responded to by people attempting to reclaim their identity through things like racism and nationalism. A more developed, contemporary take on what McLuhan's saying in this interview:
Couple of other factors he highlights are 'semiocapitalism' - this is what he calls the current version as he says it's predominantly based around signs, information, and attention now - being at a stage where people think of themselves as winners and losers rather than classes, and that increasingly the young are socialised via machines, that's where they learn a lot of their vocabulary, and it changes the relationship to language, to emotion, etc. when you're doing the equivalent of playing tennis against a wall rather than a partner, especially that early in life. The combination of the two can lead to a certain kind of psychopathy seen in people like the Columbine shooters who were bullied, considered themselves 'losers', retreated into a virtual world of video games, then decided to try to "win" in some sense by lashing out in the warped way that they did.
The outlier so far's Anders Breivik who has a similar profile, but whose crimes were more calculated and ideologically motivated. He uses that as a jumping off point to describe Europe going through the same process of abstraction as the EU pursues the usual agenda of profits over everything and that leading to breakdowns in Greece, etc. and the rise of right wing parties across the continent as people fall back into the old petty tribes and nationalisms.
There's more going on than that, but that's a rough, somewhat disjointed, outline of his argument.
other_life
bioconfused
that doesnt sound half bad but something about his public persona rankles. as if he's trying intentionally at that 70s style intellectual celebrity baudrillard had. the mononymous BIFO
other_life
bioconfused
also too charitable towards/not cynical enough about the significance of the obama election? i tried watching a lecture of his and he forwards that very early, completely lost me
version
Well-known member
Yeah, I've watched a few clips of him being interviewed and find him an irritating, unconvincing presence. He's much better in book form. Although, to be fair to him, it's not as though he's some young guy trying to emulate that French lot. He was actually there and friends with some of them.
other_life
bioconfused
oh for sure. hes just survived past them and still vying for that spot, i think
version
Well-known member
I have my misgivings about it but I also like that there's still someone like that around. There aren't too many of them left.
other_life
bioconfused
jameson is great but getting pretty old
other_life
bioconfused
the lines about bernie in 'an american utopia' have also dated, ofc
version
Well-known member
There are a few of the French lot left, although I haven't read them. Badiou, Ranciere, Kristeva, Cixous, probably some others I'm forgetting.
other_life
bioconfused
fool! badiou is on my dartboard!
version
Well-known member
What do you have against Badiou?
other_life
bioconfused
he brings foul air
version
Well-known member
Surprising how many threads we have on him. Guess he was having a moment when k-punk, Woebot and others picked up on him back in the 2000s.
Badiou has all the answers
A passage from Badiou's Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism HIGHLY relevant to a number of recent threads here: 'What is the real unifying factor behind [the] attempt to promote the cultural virtue of oppressed subsets, this invocation of language in order to extol communitarian...
www.dissensus.com
Badiou.
Like a good boy I've been reading Badiou's "Infinite Thought". It's not at all difficult in fact, and he's a charming, gentle and good-natured guide. What he says can be more or less distilled thus: Analytic, Hermeneutic and Post-Modern Philosophy, the BIG THREE, variously miss the point by...
www.dissensus.com
Badiou, Spinoza, Lacan and moNONtheism
Infinite Thought is right. It is totally misleading to construe Badiou as a religious thinker. Attempts to dragoon Badiou into being a crypto-Catholic theologian will inevitably produce only distortion. The whole point of Badiou's book on St Paul is that is not a religious text. What Badiou...
www.dissensus.com
craner
Beast of Burden
Yeah, he was.
other_life
bioconfused
(which is why he leaves a bad taste in my mouth/what im driving at even if ive never gone over his works w a comb; i just have an awful gut feeling we need to correct for his entire 'cultural moment'
craner
Beast of Burden
I remember Nina Power telling me she was trying to learn Set Theory in order to understand him.
Looking back, that seems like a waste of time.