Avatar Emergency. Gregory L. Ulmer
of well-being.
3 Joke
Attitude
Concept avatar learns from bachelor machines informed by fumisme. The Allegory of Prudence does not require a certain attitude, but counsels on attitude formation as such, advising me on how attitude “turns out.” “The biolinguistic conditions of so-called ‘evil’ are the same biolinguistic conditions that animate ‘virtue,’“ Paolo Virno says. “They both feed off the uncertainty experienced in the face of ‘that which can be different from the way it is’ [Aristotle’s ethics]” (Virno, Multitude Between 21 ). The axis of Aesthetic Reason (of pleasure-pain, or joy-sadness) supplements Practical Reason at this contingent moment of choice. It answers the question: what is the measure guiding decision? Agamben states the question within the frame of a philosophical tradition, represented by Spinoza.
The Irreparable is that things are just as they are, in this or that mode, consigned without remedy to their way of being. States of things are irreparable, whatever they may be: sad or happy, atrocious or blessed. How you are, how the world is—that is the Irreparable . . . According to Spinoza the two forms of the irreparable, confidence or safety (securitas) and despair (desperatio), are identical from this point of view. What is essential is only that every cause of doubt has been removed, that things are certainly and definitively thus; it does not matter whether this brings joy or sadness. As a state of things, heaven is perfectly equivalent to hell even though it has the opposite sign. (But if we could feel confident in despair, or desperate in confidence, then we would be able to perceive in the state of things a margin, a limbo that cannot be contained within it). The root of all pure joy and sadness is that the world is as it is. Joy or sadness that arises because the world is not what it seems or what we want it to be is impure or provisional. But in the highest degree of their purity, in the so be it said to the world when every legitimate cause of doubt and hope has been removed, sadness and joy refer not to negative or positive qualities, but to a pure being-thus without any attributes. (The Coming Community 90)
Electracy is the apparatus of joy/sadness, hence our concern with augmented attitude. Agamben is glossing the “consolation” of philosophy, the contingent relationship between how the world is and our attitude within that world. Wisdom proposes that we work on our attitude rather than on the world, with the recommended answer to the transcendental question of stand (at least up to modernity) being ataraxy (suppression of desire). In electracy this pair is not an either-or, since attitude now is ontological (world-creating). Avatar emergency concerns precisely the relation between attitude and action. We take up this question of stand, orientation, direction (attitude) anew, appropriating as a relay for the inference procedure of flash reason (conduction) in electracy the stand-up routine as a practice of concept avatar. We are learning how to play with avatar, in the persona of wiseacre. “Attitude is the heartbeat of an act,” advises one handbook of the craft.
Material cannot be emotionally neutral. Your subject matter has to disgust you, pain you, thrill you, because audiences don’t respond to words, they respond to feelings. Every piece of material has a specific attitude, such as “I’m worried about . . .” or “I love . . .” or “I’m angry about . . .” This Margaret Smith piece comes out of how she feels about her manager: “I hate my manager. He’s always giving me advice like ‘Wear red lipstick up there. Look pretty.’ What if I’m not funny and it’s coming out of these big old red lips? It’s like being a crummy outfielder with a paiseley mitt.” (Carter 18)
Prudence involves attitude. The attempt to learn something about attitude from the tradition of the wise fool is further indication of what separates concept avatar from philosophy, in that Deleuze and Guattari reject the entire history of the sages, whose figures they say remain within a transcendental metaphysics. Heuretics uses our sources as relays, not to recommend them literally. We have something to learn about attitude adjustment (about orientation) from the sages. Take for example this report of an incident involving a Yogi, a Priest, and a Sufi. It is an example of persona and anecdote.
Nasrudin put on a Sufi robe and decided to make a pious journey. On his way he met a priest and a yogi, and they decided to team up together. When they got to a village the others asked him to seek donations while they carried out their devotions. Nasrudin collected some money and bought halwa with it. He suggested that they divide the food, but the others, who were not yet hungry enough, said that it should be postponed until night. They continued on their way; and when night fell Nasrudin asked for the first portion “because I was the means of getting the food.” The others disagreed: the priest on the grounds that he represented a properly organized hierarchical body, and should therefore have preference; the yogi because he ate only once in three days and should therefore have more.
Finally they decided to sleep. In the morning, the one who related the best dream should have first choice of the halwa. In the morning, the priest said: “in my dream I saw the founder of my religion, who made a sign of benediction, singling me out as especially blessed.” The others were impressed, but the Yogi said: “I dreamt that I visited Nirvana, and was utterly absorbed into nothing.” They turned to the Mulla. “I dreamt that I saw the Sufi teacher Khidr, who appears only to the most sanctified. He said ”Nasrudin, eat the halwa—now!” And of course I had to obey. (Shah 75)
9/11—20/20
There is an arresting statement deep within the 9/11 Commission Report, that makes explicit an organizing theme, suggesting an opening for attitude adjustment, or reorientation. “It is therefore crucial to find a way of routinizing, even bureaucratizing the exercise of imagination” (344). The immediate context is concern that security experts had not foreseen the scenario of the hijack attacks, despite many contextual signals. The comment is made in a chapter entitled “Foresight—And Hindsight,” in which imagination is listed, along with policy, capabilities, and management, as the four categories of failure demonstrated by the surprise attack. We may be witnessing the creation of an addition to the list of oxymoron jokes: military intelligence, jumbo shrimp, bureaucratic imagination. Scenario of a bureaucratized imagination: You: “I need an idea, now!” It: “Take a number!” or “Please hold while I transfer your call.”
The wording in the Report suggests a misunderstanding about imagination, as if it were a way to eliminate surprise, when the reality is just the opposite: the function of the imagination is to enhance “surprisability” (the capacity for surprise). “In composing this narrative, we have tried to remember that we write with the benefit and the handicap of hindsight. Hindsight can sometimes see the past clearly—with 20/20 vision. But the path of what happened is so brightly lit that it places everything else more deeply into shadow” (339). We are reminded of Kierkegaard’s observation, that life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Here is our singularity as sequence: the intersection of the aphorism of thought and the anecdote of life. The point in our context is to propose that the Report’s observation about the value of imagination applies not only to strategic planners but to citizens in general. To admit this truth is already a proposal for a transvaluation of values. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security created the Analytic Red Cell Unit, in which such authors as Brad Thor (who claims Glenn Beck is his Oprah Winfrey), and Brad Meltzer, both specializing in thrillers, consulted on various disaster scenarios. Why don’t they consult with the EmerAgency?
Mythology
Edith Hamilton provides convenient summaries of Greek mythology. The aspect of the story of Prometheus (Foresight), Epimetheus (Hindsight), and Pandora (Disaster), to be noted in our context of image metaphysics is the role of prank, joke, trick, governing relationships among the characters. Prometheus first tricked Zeus over the matter of animal sacrifice.
Prometheus had not only stolen fire for men; he had also arranged that they should get the best part of any animal sacrificed and the gods the worst. He cut up a great ox and wrapped the good eatable parts in the hide, disguising them further by piling entrails on top. Beside this heap he put another of all the bones, dressed up with cunning and covered with shining fat, and bade Zeus choose between them. Zeus took up the white fat and was angry when he saw the bones craftily tricked out. (Hamilton 70)
A case of originary fumisme. Spin and sting: the ways of the