In what sense is a must read a must read? Or a must-watch a must-watch? Or a must-listen a must-listen? Or to generalize, a must-obey cultural consumption/knowledge imperative. It is a version of authoritarian “what isn’t prohibited is compulsory” but an unusual kind
-
Show this thread
-
Replying to @vgr
is it really authoritarian, or do we just not like to be left out of the popular things?
2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @swimming_blerd
I think that’s a grey zone thing. Popularity is weak social proof of potential historicity, but some things embody actual historicity, where past and future of X don’t make sense without X. Memes that flood the meme pool.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @vgr
i think the statement "some things embody actual historicity" is too dubious to argue one way or the other to wit, the stroke by which the past and the present "make sense" we should always regard with skepticism, that is, as a stroke which seeks its own, artificial historicity
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @swimming_blerd
I agree, it is 100% dubious and I don’t actually believe it, but that’s the point. Historicity is a construct that a) you can opt-in to b) has no pr9vileged version. It’s more than popular appeal, but falls short of an absolute temporality (which I argue cannot exist)
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @vgr
i disagree i think absolute temporality is the mechanism which enables art to exist, in a large part by dissolving historicity into it--sort of an experiential vortex and as such, we are in no position to evaluate this kind of temporality, only experience it
2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes -
Replying to @swimming_blerd
Ah I would say there’s no way to experience this absolute temporality at all, *except* through transient experiencable temporalities that emerge from and collapse back into it. So to believe in it is a leap of faith This is where I end up disagreeing with experienced meditators
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @vgr
that's more of a feature than a bug imo transience is the essence of whatever we are, as paradoxical as that sounds; anyone who says otherwise is selling something but whether we choose to understand that negatively or positively is up to us
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @swimming_blerd
Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao
I’m not tagging it as either, just rejecting claims of absolute experiencehttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1186056484481667072?s=21 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @vgr
as paul ricoeur and virginia woolf show us, this cuts both ways: the desire to transcend the relative illegibility of finite, experiential time (ironically) produces a more illegible, abstract, and absurd vision of the Absolutepic.twitter.com/Bo1AF4ZYiE
2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
Have you seen my multitemporality talk? Curious to hear what you think. It references Woolf, Mrs Dalloway etc. About 18 months behind my current statement but mostly still roughly right re my directionhttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tSE8VdaZNuY …
-
-
Replying to @vgr
i really liked this talk--i hadn't thought to compare hg wells and virginia woolf at all, but it makes a lot of sense one thing i was struck by, just watching this video, is the extent to which the standardization of temporal is always tied to the mastery of space, and extension
2 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @swimming_blerd @vgr
a metronome, and a clock permit measurable experiences of time by presenting them spatially--that the time is expressed even now, in zones and propagated over airwaves neat stuff
0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.