Twilight Of The Machines - Part 6
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Part 6

' Boris Greys, The Insider is Curious, the Outsider is Suspicious," in Geert Lovink, ed., Uncanny Networks: Dialogues in Virtual Intelligentsia (MIT Press: Cambridge, 2002), p. 260.

" Andrew Feenberg, Transforming Technology (Oxford University Press: New York, 2002), P. Igo.

" D. Urquhart, Familiar Words (London 1855), quoted in Marx, Capital I, p.363.

13 Adam Smith,An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations [1776] (Modern Library: New York, 1937), pp 734-740.

14 The great leap backward," according to Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox, The ImperialAni- mal (Holt, Rinehart and Winston: NewYork,1971), p. 126.

'S Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2001), p.4.

" 6 Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1998), p. 1o6.

" Hayles, ibid., p. 285.

A Hayles, ibid., p. 246. The occasional a.s.sertion by such commentators that this reality is at the same time being "highly contested" is the height of irony, as is the mandatory repeated use of the buzzword "body" in virtually every postmodern work of the 199os.

" 9 Very helpful here is Lorenzo Simpson, Technology, Time, and the Conversations ofModer- nity (New York: Routledge, 1995).

"Mohammed A. Bamyeh, The Ends of Globalization (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2000), p. zoo.

" Scott Lash, Critique of Information (Sage: London, 2002), p. 220.

Lash, ibid., p. 1.

" I. Bluhdorn, "Ecological Modernisation and Post-Ecologist Politics," in G. Spaargaren, A.P.J. Mohl, and F. b.u.t.te], eds., Environment and Global Modernity (Sage: London, 2000).

" Steven Best and Douglas Keller, The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium (Guilford Press: New York, 2001), p. 279.

Feenburg, op. cit., pp 4, 189.

z6 Geoffery Hartman, Scars of the Spirit (Palgrave/Macmillan: New York, 2002), p.137.

17 Bamyeh, op.cit., p. x.

ze See Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management inAmerican Civic Life (University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, 2003).

" Taylor, op.cit., p. 232.

jO Jean-Francois Lyotard, Postmodern Fables (University of Minnesota: Minneapolis, 1997), p. 31.

3' Bruce Wilshire, Fashionable Nihilism: A Critique of a.n.a.lytical Philosophy (SUNY Press: Albany, 2002).

a= Elissa Gootman, "Job Description: Life of the Party" (New York Times, May 30, 2003).

33 Bonnie Rothman Morris, "Lullabies in a Bottle" (New York Times, May 13,2 003).

34 Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Little, Brown: Boston, 1954), p. 153, for example.

31 Todd Gitlin,Media Unlimited (Metropolitan Books: New York, 2002), p.163.

13: WHY PRIMITIVISM?.

Anselm Giap, Guy Debord (Berkeley, 1999), p. 3.

Joseph Wood Krutch, Human Nature and the Human Condition (NewYork,1959), p. 192.

3 J. Raloff, "More Waters Test Positive for Drugs," Science News 157 (April 1, 2000).

4 The dramatic upsurge in health-threatening obesity has occasioned many articles, but exact figures are elusive at this time. 27% of adult Americans suffer depression or anxiety disorders. See "Recognizing the Anxious Face of Depression," G.S. Malhi et al, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases 190, June 2002.

5 S.K. Goldsmith, T.C. Pellner, A.M. Kleinman, W.E. Bunney, eds., Reducing Suicide: A National Imperative (Washington, D.C., 2002) ' Claude Kornoouh, On Interculturalism and Multiculturalism," TELOS no (Winter 1998), p. 133.

Ulrich Beck, Ecological Enlightenment: Essays on the Politics of the Risk Society (Atlantic Highlands, N. J., 1995), p. 37.

'Agnes h.e.l.ler, Can Modernity Survive? (Berkeley, '99o), p. 6o.

9 Michel Houlebecq, Les Particules Elementaires (Paris, 1998). More prosaically, Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge, 2ooo) and Pierre Bordieu, Contre feux: propos pourser- vird la resistance contre 1'invasion neo-liberale (Paris, 1998), especially p. 97, characterize modern society along these lines.

"Michel Foucault, "What is Enlightenment?" in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (NewYork, 1984), PP- 47-48.

" Eric Vogelin, The Collected Works of Eric Vogelin, vol. 5, Modernity Without Restraint (Columbia, MO, 2000), p.105.

"Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC, 1991), P. ix.

"John Zerzan, The Catastrophe of Postmodernism," Future Primitive (New York, 1994).

" Daniel R. White, Postmodern Ecology (Albany, 1998), p. 198. Bordieu referred to the futility of the strident calls of 'postmodern' philosophers for the 'suppression of dualism.' These dualisms deeply rooted in things (structures) and in bodies, do not spring from a simple effect of verbal naming and cannot be abolished by an act of performative magic..."-Pierre Bordieu,Masculine Domination (Stanford, 2001), p. 103.

'S Mike Michael, Reconnecting Culture, Technology and Nature (London, 2000), P. 8. The t.i.tle itself is testimony to the surrender to domination.

6 lain Chambers, Culture After Humanism (London, 2002), pp.122, 41.

'7 Recent t.i.tles in various fields indicate a shift. For example, Calvin O. Schrag and the Task ofPhilosophyAfterPostmodernity, eds. Martin Beck Matustic and William L. McBride (Evanston, IL, 2002) and Family Therapy beyond Postmodernism by Carmel Flaskas (New York, 2002).After Poststructuralism: Writing the Intellectual History of Theory, eds. Tilottama Rajan and Michael J. Driscoll (Toronto, 2002) is haunted by themes of origins and the primitive.

8 Jean-Francois Lyotard, "Domus and the Megalopolis" [which could very legitimately have been called, in anti-postmodernist fashion, From Domus to the Megalopolis"] in The Inhuman: Reflections of Time (Stanford, 1991), p. 200.

" 9 Lyotard, The Inhuman, p. 200, and Postmodern Fables (Minneapolis, 1997), p. 23.

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA, 2ooo).

Hardt and Negri, p. 218.

Claude Kornoouh, "Heidegger on History and Politics as Events," TELOS 120 (Summer 2001), p. 126.

" Oswald Spengler,Man and Technics (Munich, 1931), p. 94.

" Spengler,Man and Technics, p. 69 " Spengler, Fruzeit der Weltgeschichte, #20, p. 9. Quoted in John Farrenkopf, Prophet of Decline (Baton Rouge, 2001), p. 224.

z6 Spengler,Man and Technics, p.103.

" Theodor W. Adorno, Prisms (London, 1967), p. 72.

ze Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York, 1947).

" Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 55.

jO Albrecht Wellmer, Endgames: the Irreconcilable Nature of Modernity (Cambridge, MA, 1998), p. 255.

Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Boston, 1955).

"Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (New York, 1961).

33 Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (NewYork, 1933), p. 249.

11 Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion," The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 21 (London, 1957), P. 15.

31 Important texts include Eleanor Leac.o.c.k and Richard B. Lee, Politics and History in Band Societies (New York, 1982); Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers (Cambridge, 1999); Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago, 1972); Colin Turnbull, The Forest People (New York, 1968); Adrienne Zihlman, et.al., The Evolving Female (Princeton, 1997).

36 M.J. Morwood, et. al., "Fission-track ages of stone tools and fossils on the east Indonesian island of Flores," Nature (12 March 1998), for example.

31 This tendency within an increasingly anarchist-oriented anti-globalization movement is in the ascendant in the U.S. Among a growing number of periodicals are Anarchy, Disorderly Conduct, The Final Days, Green Anarchy, Green Journal, and Species Traitor. Texts include Ch.e.l.lis Glendinning My Name is Ch.e.l.lis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization (Boston, 1994); Derrick Jensen, Culture of Make Believe (New York, 2002); Daniel Quinn, Ishmael (New York, 1995); John Zerzan, Running On Emptiness: the Pathology of Civilization (Los Angeles, 2002).

38 Joel Whitebook, The Problem of Nature in Habermas, " TELOS 40 (Summer, 1979), p. 69.

31 Cornelius Castoriadis, Crossroads in the Labyrinth (Cambridge, MA, 1984), p. 257. Also, Keekok Lee, To De-Industrialize-Is It So Irrational?" in The Politics of Nature, eds.. Andrew Dobson and Paul Lucardie (London, 1993).

"George Grant, Technology and Empire (Toronto, 1969), p. 142. Of course, the situation grows more and more grave, with sudden, dire changes very possible. M. Sheffer, et. al., "Catastrophic Shifts in Ecosystems," Nature (ti October 2001); M. Manion and W.M. Evan on the growing likelihood of disasters, "Technological Catastrophes: their causes and preventions," Technology in Society 24 (2002), pp. 207-224.

" Claude Kornoouh, "Technique et Destin," Krisis 34 (Fall, 2000).

14: SECOND-BEST LIFE: REAL VIRTUALITY.

' Slavoj Zizek, The Plague of Fantasies (NewYork: Verso, 1997), P. 44.

Allucquere Rosanne Stone, Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?" in Michael Benedikt, ed., Cybers.p.a.ce: First Steps (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991).

3 Joseph Hart, "Grief Goes Online" in Utne, April 2007.

'Wade Roush, "Second Earth" in Technology Review, July/August 2007, p. 48.

'Widely circulated books include: Howard Rheingold, Virtual Reality (New York: Summit Books, 1991), Michael Heim, The Metaphysics of VR (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1993), Rudy Rucker, R.U. Sirius, Queen Mu,Mondo 20o0:A User's Guide (New York: Harper-Collins, 1992), Nadia Magnemat Thalmann and Daniel Thalmann, Virtual Worlds and Multimedia (New York: Wiley, 1993), Benjamin Woolley, Virtual Worlds (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992). An excellent corrective is Robert Markley, ed., Virtual Realities and Their Discontents (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

' For his idiosyncratic twist on this, see jean Baudrillard, Forget Foucault (New York: Semiotext, 1987).

' Philip Zai, Get Real: A Philosophical Adventure in Virtual Reality (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), p. 171.

8 Martin Heidegger, "Nietzsche's Word: 'G.o.d is Dead"' in his Off the Beaten Track, translated and edited by Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 191.

I Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, translated and edited by David E. Linge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), p. 71.

' Bill Brown, ed., Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Stephen Melville, ed., The Lure of Things (Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine ClarkArt Inst.i.tute, 2005).

" Brown, op. Cit., p. 12.

"Heinz R. Pagels, The Dreams of Reason: The Computer and the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity (NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 1988).

" Oswald Spengler,Man and Technics, translated by Charles Francis Atkinson (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), p. 94.

"David Gelerntner, Mirror Worlds (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1991), p.34.

" Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, translated by P. Winch (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986),p.56.

15: BREAKING POINT?.

Frank Furedi, Culture of Fear (London: Ca.s.sell, 1997).

' Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Levin, Matthew E. Brashears, "Social Isolation in America"inAmerican Sociological Review, 2006, pp.353-395.

Dr. Kunio Kitamura, quoted in The j.a.pan Times (Reuters, June 23, zoo6). Also, Edwin Karmiol, "Suicide Rate Takes a Worrisome Jump" (Asia Times, August 4, 1999).

4 Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics (New York: Continuum, 1997), p. 267.

5 Val ovic, Digital Mythologies, 2000, p.178.

6 Daniel Downes, Interactive Realism: The Poetics of Cybers.p.a.ce (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2005), p. 144.

Melissa Holbrook Pierson, The Place You Love is Gone (New York: W.W. Norton, 20o6), P. 85).

8 Min Lin, Certainty as a Social Metaphor: The Social and Historical Production of Certainty in China and the West (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), p. 133.

9 Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflections on Time (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 63.

Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (NewYork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), p. 5.

Lyotard, op. Cit., p. 12.

Koert van Mensvoort, Exploring Next Nature (http:www.koert.com) 13 Paul Berkett,Marxism and Ecological Economics: Toward a Red and Green Political Economy (Boston: Brill, 2006), p.328.

'4 Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 99.

'S Adorno, op. Cit., p. 323.

16: FINDING OUR WAY BACK HOME.

Czeslaw Milosz, The Land of Ulro (NewYork: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1985), p.229.

' Earle H. Waugh and K. Dad Prithipaul, eds., Native Religious Traditions, "Mohawk Seminar" (Waterloo, Ontario: Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, 1977), p. 37.