Re: <nettime> [NMF] Blue Monday Review

[Brian Holmes <brian.holmes@wanadoo.fr>]

Kazys Varnelis wrote:

> I've been a lurker for a time, largely due to information overload,
> but I suppose I should chime in now if I ever should. 

Hey, this is great, even after so many years I always love it when a 
distant author from the world of print suddenly appears in the 
electronic midst! Totally cool...

> When we started, we weren't really aware of Boeri &
> Co. but rather were stimulated by our disgust with the predominant
> interpretation of Deleuze and Guattari in the architectural circles

Well, yes, I can sure understand it! It was hard to bear the opportunism 
of the 80s, and then when it dragged on throughout the Glorious Clinton 
Years... ugghhh.

> I should leave it up to others to decide if we suceeded, if this is
> a productive vein of research or just another formula in search of
> admirers (though how precisely our work could be copied productively,
> is baffling to me).

Hmm, I'm less sure about that. I think what dogs all theorists in the 
intellectual side of the spectacle society (myself included) is ideas 
that are simply admired and repeated, rather than producing effects. Of 
such stuff fads are born... It's a doubt I often have, nothing personal.

> our book is a 
> critique of Multitude. We simply don't understand how the multitude   
> can work. Perhaps this is our own theoretical failing, but to us, the 
> question (which animates Blue Monday) is why, collectively, we are so 
> happy to submit 

Certainly it's the question of the decade. And to the extent that Negri 
and Hardt got it wrong, and that the USA really IS the controlling 
source of the networked realm they called Empire, there is a definite 
need to find out how that control works, in real spaces and with real 
systems. Where H&N got it right though, is that they didn't propose just 
submitting, or just analyzing submission, they have proposed ways of 
acting which are real and go far beyond their books. I'm curious to see 
how people are working with those proposals (and there are lots of 
people doing so now, on the level of research as well as activism), and 
the critique of their ideas is also important, because of the 
limitations and imprecision of the sweeping notion of the multitude. So 
I'm interested to read the book, many thanks for the link.

best, Brian

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