Arshake is pleased to publish the sixth of seven appointments of an essay on thinking, poetry and writing in the technological era by Brunella Antomarini, Professor of Aethetics and Contemporary Philosophy at the John Cabot University in Rome. The essay originally appeared on the magazine “Smerilliana. Luogo di civiltà poetiche” (Pensiero poesia scrittura in feed back loop, in “Smerilliana”, n.17 2015, pp. 275-90), and it is here relaunched, translated into English.
Part I: Pensiero poesia scrittura in feed back loop [Thinking poetry writing in feedback loop], Arshake, June 7, 2018
Part II: Pensiero poesia scrittura in feed back loop [Thinking poetry writing in feedback loop], Arshake, June 14, 2018
Part III: Pensiero poesia scrittura in feed back loop [Thinking poetry writing in feedback loop], Arshake, June 21, 2018
Part IV: Pensiero poesia scrittura in feed back loop [Thinking poetry writing in feedback loop], Arshake, June 28, 2018
Part V: Pensiero poesia scrittura in feed back loop [Thinking poetry writing in feedback loop], Arshake, July 5, 2018
(…)
But why should one resist and against what? There is a whole tradition that has defined this necessity: resistance to political power, intellectual resistance to ideology, etc. It could work as long as societies were simple, with their centers and peripheries, central processors and politically driven subjects. In contrast, complex societies that contain systems that contain sub-systems, etc., etc. are beyond control and criticism. So now resistance does not consist of proposing theories aimed at fixing society and politics. (The political discourse to which Arendt refers is no longer possible. On social networks, every single user has the solution to all the problems of the planet, so no solution is effective, that is, no solution can be turned into action.) We have a mindset that provides meaning anyway – and that is why we can be so uselessly radical. Thinking in the network resembles the nursery rhyme of Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky. Some verses:
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
There are meaningless words confused with meaningful ones, but as one listens to the whole story, one can find a beginning, a development, and an end. The story can be understood. We could call it a writing technique that by arranging words in a metrical space makes them intelligible because of the structure in which they are arranged. It is as if we possessed a physiological power that replaces the image with the presence (as in Alva Noë’s theory of perception): a presence in continuous metamorphosis, just like the world in its contingency.
If we are acquiring – and increasingly so, from one generation to the next – an increasing speed in making sense of anything; if in challenging understanding meaning always wins over nonsense, then the stakes get higher. For the avant-gardes, this was a matter of revealing the linguistic process. Now, what we do is an emergency, a sub-linguistic fight with things. And the words are things whose teleology is stronger than chance – meaning that no specific agent can be considered their author. Perhaps, the XXI century will have to deal with Lamarck and that unexplained harmony that is more a voluntary symbiosis than a natural selection.
In the act of comprehending a text there is a constant feedback loop that allows us to understand what comes first by virtue of what comes later, rather than the opposite. Forms display a self-regulation that produces more or less meaning depending on where they want to take the reader.
… to be continued…
This is the sixth of seven appointments of an essay on thinking, poetry and writing in the technological era by Brunella Antomarini that originally appeared on the magazine “Smerilliana. Luogo di civiltà poetiche” (Pensiero poesia scrittura in feed back loop, in “Smerilliana”, n.17 2015, pp. 275-90).
Part I: Pensiero poesia scrittura in feed back loop [Thinking poetry writing in feedback loop], Arshake, June 7, 2018
Part II: Pensiero poesia scrittura in feed back loop [Thinking poetry writing in feedback loop], Arshake, June 14, 2018
Part II: Pensiero poesia scrittura in feed back loop [Thinking poetry writing in feedback loop], Arshake, June 21, 2018
Part IV: Pensiero poesia scrittura in feed back loop [Thinking poetry writing in feedback loop], Arshake, June 28, 2018
Part V: Pensiero poesia scrittura in feed back loop [Thinking poetry writing in feedback loop], Arshake, July 5, 2018
“Smerilliana” was first published by Enrico D’Angelo in January 2003, in the Marche region.It initially came out every six months. Later every volume of «Smerilliana» became a place of poetic civilisation, with the addition of the series “Poets of Smerilliana” and “Mosaic”. When it first appeared, Giovanni Raboni cited «Smerilliana» while writing in «Corriere della Sera», calling it the most open-minded and interesting poetry publication on the Italian scene. «Smerilliana» ideally continues the work of the literary biannual magazine «Plural» (founded and directed by D’Angelo in Napoli, between 1986-91), pursuing the pluralist outlook and style of the movement, as defined by the Orientalist Rahim Raza.
