NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/alt/postmode/2734

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-24 | 3.0 KB

Xref: sparky alt.postmodern:2734 alt.cyberpunk:5952 talk.politics.theory:5009 alt.society.anarchy:749
Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!kbrooks
From: [e-mail] (kevin brooks)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,alt.cyberpunk,talk.politics.theory,alt.society.anarchy
Subject: Re: Singularity (Gordon's idea)
Summary: history and sameness
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 19 Nov 92 20:41:06 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Followup-To: alt.postmodern
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
Lines: 47

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] ( BOB HOOKER) writes:
[text deleted]

> If history teaches us anything it must be that while techology may change
> the retaionalizations for class strucutre,  it may even change the members
> of the classes and their relations to one another,  but the classes remain.
>  Their form hauts human history.
>

The Dr. Seuss story is indeed allegorical of modernity and its sign systems.
These sign systems function in an allegorical mode as well; but not in the
sense that they model and tell a story of how things are, rather, in the
sense that they are used to refer to metaphysical values that exist beyond
them.

I'm not sure that I can agree with the invariable concept of class that you
propose.  First, it seems to me that if interpersonal relations change
within a class, then one may already be looking at a different class.
Second, the concept of class itself really doesn't become figured in the
literature (European) until the late 17th century.  As such, it can be argued
that this class dynamic is historically specific and does not "merely" haunt
human history.

The problem is similar to when the German critic Walter Benjamin deals with
the term "aura".  Benjamin discussed how mechanical means of (re)production
strip the work of art of its aura.  Aura is the singularity, the sense of
presence, that the work of art possessed prior to the advent of mechanical
reproduction of works of art.  But the irony that Benjamin points out is that
aura was not something we were aware of until the advent of mechanical
reproduction, until we began to sense its loss.  Therefore, according to
Benjamin's logic, something like aura can only be sensed consciously,
represented, in its decline, as it receeds away from us.

In modernity, as sign systems appear to become more volatile, the social
stratification also begins to shift.  The bourgeois and its petite
counterpart may be seen sunning themselves on the same beach.  In the
19th century literature, then, the problem becomes one of attempting to
find new invariable signs to enables us to make heads or tails of who
belongs to what class.  But the signs move faster than our senses and we
are unable to definitively define.  Similarly, classes are in flux (until
Reagan).  But static classes can only be talked about in their absence and
in C++.

Kevin Brooks
[e-mail]