Comments for influxus

Comment on As many worlds as it takes to make a world by LisA

LisA — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 10:04:53 +0000

What’s the ettiquette on quotes without quotation marks, as in with “butter scraped over too much bread”: Bilbo Baggins, LOTR: The Fellowship of The Rings?

Comment on As many worlds as it takes to make a world by Steve

Steve — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 21:38:06 +0000

A remarkable point, the collapse of discrete categories of specialness; and yet, J-L N’s gesture traverses in contrary motion to equalization, the leveling of every feature, reduced to the same. Here, we affirm identities in order to cast off the violence imposed by them, to say one is is just the same as our acknowledgment that the World becomes. In this sense, the idea of autism radically de-compartmentalizes the very institution of diagnosis, overturning not the world (as if there were a world, with multiple variations, all according to the meta-figure) but Worlds, continually in each effort ventured to see ourselves. A perfectly blind vision, a seeing without any(thing) seen.

Comment on Norm & Emergency by influxus

influxus — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 03:14:49 +0000

Hey jackson,

‘course, as you like. It would be great if you could forward or link whatever you put together.

Comment on Norm & Emergency by jackson

jackson — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 03:26:28 +0000

hey im part of a group scar, safer communities are rasical, we are putting togeter a bunch of responses to the tampa2007 bullshit as a zine, i was wonderibg if we could re publish some of yr post
thanks!
x jackson

Comment on Norm & Emergency by The Happy Revolutionary

The Happy Revolutionary — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 06:44:26 +0000

Thanks for the link, and keep up the great blog.

Comment on Norm & Emergency by s0metim3s

s0metim3s — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 12:11:31 +0000

The slip was in the interview I watched. And I think that’s right about the parallels of norm/abnormal.

Comment on Norm & Emergency by influxus

influxus — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 09:04:01 +0000

Az, the parallels you take up with ‘independence’, ‘autonomy’ and an internalisation of the violences of rule-making localities are important ones. I get that Autonomy in protocol documents like “consideration” in contract law is usually about solidifying a particular arrangement of power or authority, in the name of protecting an arbitrary set of preferences (which subsequently become natural and fixed). But pursuing that critique of autonomy, or the self-possession understanding of it anyways, makes me wonder if that means it is impossible to write Indigenous self-determination in any document except precisely as another nation.
So, the best outcome becomes some Terry Dowling-esque idea of handing sovereignty and territory to the Indigenous peoples and that territory becomes a scarce and valuable commodity for some future-tech reason. Which interestingly enough appears to be at least part of the fear motivating Howard.

Comment on Norm & Emergency by influxus

influxus — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 08:28:05 +0000

s0metim3s, I didn’t actually watch, only read, that Pearson interview and was half wondering whose slip that was. The main thrust of what I was saying elsewhere (I don’t want to speak for others) was: Pearson in assuming norms as transparent (but missing) things, continues to split norm/dysfunction along cultural and racial lines. So everything wholesome, the way he draws it, exactly aligns with white myths of national law, institutions and culture. And thereby, precisely because he sets up a history/policy binary he can’t follow the continual logic of dispossession, the withdrawal of land and familiar figues of identities and the substition of a foreign taxonomy, which his solution perpetuates. In some respects even 1965-7 follows this formula.
Thanks for the parsing of Benjamin, after some sleep it makes very clear sense. I’m not sure why my inclination was to separate the conditions of law from its practice. That Phillips piece is excellent, I’ll have to track down his work.
Excuse me if I take some time to digest your draft.

Comment on Norm & Emergency by s0metim3s

s0metim3s — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 05:54:04 +0000

This puts it well.

Comment on Norm & Emergency by az

az — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 01:50:11 +0000

Thanks for this post. It’s difficult to know — has been difficult to know for a long time, in fact — how to think about Noel Pearson’s interventions into indigenous policy. As you show, perhaps the way to think about that stuff is not through the lense of the media, in which Pearson is always overdetermined as the only recognisable Indigenous Authority and as a personality (I guess I’m talking about the charismatic, slightly theological way he has of doing interviews here) but in terms of CYF documents, the complexity of the text.

Another possible take on the Family Responsibilities Commission suggestion is that it imagines the arbitrary political flows internal to indigenous ‘communities’ as the modulating force capable of policing what you’re calling normfare. Ie, less of a way to imagine some kind of ‘independence’ or ‘autonomy’ than a means to internalise the violences of rule-making within the fabric of local sociality. (Or maybe it’s both at the same time.) Even though it comes from the CYF, and not the government in this case, there are parallels here to how governments have been using the chaotic divisions within indigenous communities (family feuds, splits) to negotiate land use for waste dumps, uranium mining etc. I find that scary. Well, I was finding that scary until the news about ’save the children’ broke, and discovered a whole new level of scary.