[lit-ideas] Re: Posthuman, Space and Lifejackets
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2010 12:10:33 -0700
Today's news is that someone in one of the rental boats that we used to take
out on Netarts bay--at least this is what I'm parsing from the newspaper
story's few details; it could be that the boat was their own--tried to crab the
lower part of the bay on a falling tide. Motor failed. No back-up. Swept out
to sea and drowned. The ocean is an unforgiving thing. It has long worried me
that the rental companies give very little instruction, and that most people
think that lifejackets are what you store under the seat. We counted, last
time out, only one other boat with people actually wearing lifejackets. Where
hubris and machismo meet is, in postmodern parlance, a dangerous "space."
I've been thinking about contemporary uses of the word "space." In history,
Alain Corbin was one of the early users, circa 1980. He used "lieu," place and
"vide" emptiness. I remember Dennis Winter transforming this language in what
I read at the time to be a stage notion (possible connection with theatre of
the absurd and minimalist staging) and transforming the terms slightly; he used
"site." And now? Rarely are there "boundaries," or "overlaps" or "meeting
points"; everything is a made "space," wherein things "happen." What does this
mean? Well for one thing there's less risk of being caught making causal
connective statements. Instead, actions and actors now move like characters in
Pirandello, apparently without motive.
I've written previously how difficult I find it to make causal connective
statements. Why did France go to war? How did Hitler come to choose eggs for
breakfast? Perhaps I should join in?
What's next? Well, "the Posthuman," apparently and, to quote something from my
e mail today, a return to "boundaries," but boundaries where "the limits of the
human come into play" and so we will now "think about encounters with the
animal and with technology and the machine." Should I apply to give a paper,
do you think? I could tell them the story of two folk drowning off Netarts
Bay, in an "encounter" with all three: the animal, technology and the machine.
And now they're certifiably posthuman.
Carry on.
David Ritchie,
Portland,
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