A good friend of mine, Craig Greenman, used to wax utopian about Loyola Beach in Chicago. Loyola Beach, said Craig, was a non-striated space, and he was right. People from all walks of life congregated there. I lived on Morse Avenue at the time, in Roger’s Park, just off Sheridan. It was one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Chicago, with a diverse Indian, Eastern European, Jewish, Hispanic, Muslim, and African-American community. And Loyola Beach? We all congregated there, the poor and the wealthy, the educated and the uneducated, all different groups, religions, economic strata, and ethnicities. The fourth of July was a sight to behold. Fireworks would explode. Everyone would cook out. The air would be filled with smoke from burning fireworks and campfires. Everyone was welcome even though it was Babel, even though we didn’t speak the same language. We all strolled and laughed with one another.
Often I find myself waxing utopian about this community that we’ve formed. I’ve always dreamt of a new Agora, of an empty space where discourse takes place. Will all of this have been anything? What will my encounters with N.Pepperell, Jodi Dean, Lars, K-Punk, Anthony Paul Smith, Infinite Thought or Nina, Aleatorist, Yusef, Orla, PEBird, Scott Eric Kaufmann, Foucault is Dead, Blah-Feme, Dejan, Fido the Yak, Ken Rufo, Dr. X, Susan, and all the others have been about? Here we have a non-striated space where difference in academics, orientations, and backgrounds fall into the shadows and where we speak freely. Will the trace of our speech have been preserved? Will we have done anything at all? Will we have accomplished anything at all? I try to cultivate a cynical and pessimistic attitude in all things, weaving myself as suspicious of all utopian aspirations, yet it is difficult for me not to be enthusiastic about our discourses.
February 25, 2007 at 10:12 am
For so many reasons, the blogosphere is something I feel I was waiting for without knowing it for the whole of my life. I used to feel envious as I read the biographies of thinkers and writers who were part of some community or other – even if wasn’t intellectual in the ordinary sense. I think of Francis Bacon in the Colony Bar, William Burroughs and fellow writers in Tangiers, the gatherings of Duras, Mascolo, Antelme (and once even Lacan) at 5, Rue Saint-Benoit, Bataille writing his Acephale articles with Masson in the other room … But I don’t feel that envy anymore. It’s likely that such overlapping communities, as they exist in the blogosphere, are not visible as such to observers. There is an invisible traffic of emails and meetings. But what a remarkable opportunity!
February 25, 2007 at 11:52 am
I haven’t been to Loyola Beach in Chicago – yet. But it just so happens that my wife and I will be in Chicago this summer around the 4th of July. I’ll check it out and report back whether your nostalgic Agora still exists ;-). But yes, Levi, YOU have created a virtual Agora here, and a cosmopolitan one, at that. We all wouldn’t be here if not for you. I have stacks of print-outs of many of your numerous posts so I can re-read them. You are the perfect blogger: generous, eloquent – depressed and cranky. But best of all: You are frequent.
February 25, 2007 at 4:58 pm
I used to have a girlfriend who lived in Rogers Park. We used to hang out there.
You make an interesting point. Even though I am not an academic, I feel I am part of the community you mention if only through reading and following the discourses. For someone like me on the outside, the community is a valuable source of ideas and references. Being suspect of utopias myself, I feel that people are moving toward a utopian ideal through their blogging.
February 26, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Honor to be in the list. Many thanks. I share many of the senitments but I do lament the very virtual nature of it all. I still long for meat world groupings and often think I would be a better thinker if, say, my friend discard lived near me or Brad, etc. In a way I think of blogging as an emergency measure.
February 26, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Well, I am endlessly fond of these unexpected parallels and how interesting… I lived in West Rogers Park for 10 years… near Touhy and Western. My neighborhood, as you probably know was Orthodox Jewish, Russian immigrant, Hindu/Indian, Pakistani/Islamic and an assortment of others, while on your side of Western… it was Mexican, black and white with a large array of immigrants from everywhere on the planet. I wonder if there is another neighborhood quite like Rogers Park anywhere else in the US?
February 26, 2007 at 11:27 pm
[…] 26th, 2007 · No Comments In a recent post, ‘What Will We Have Been?’, Sinthome reflects on the very nature of the continental philosophy blog assemblage. And as a […]
February 27, 2007 at 3:42 am
for what its worth all of the above have really invigorated me as an artist(and blogger). Sort of free continuing ed.
Keep up the good work – I need you all ! ;)
February 27, 2007 at 4:03 am
HLIB, it seems to me that this is what the whole blog phenomenon should be about: transversality. It should be a cross fertilization between work such as what you’re doing (which I very much appreciate, btw), the social sciences, the hard sciences, theory, literature, various practices of both a political and concrete sort, and so on. As Orla would say, it seems that we have our own Salon of sorts. What I find interesting about the whole phenomenon is the manner in which it forces a sort of encounter with difference. That is, you’re forced to respond outside of your own familiar context, which leads to all sorts of decontextualizations that become fertile in unexpected ways. I find it all to be deeply exciting. I almost wrote a post a month ago in response to your series on the discourse of apocalypse, naming you as a new archivist (reference to Deleuze’s beautiful little book on Foucault), but thought the better of it as I felt you might find it insulting as you were doing much more with your posts and because N.Pepperell did something similar. The point, however, would have been that all sorts of productive connections were being produced as a result of your metacommentary. Sometimes it seems that what’s important to me is simply registering those traces and networks, perpetuating their existence, so that discourses might proliferate even though the outomes of such discourses are themselves uncontrollable– they are aleatory –and there isn’t theoretical unanimity or agreement. Rather, somehow the formation of a space of differences around a common theme, as Foucault is Dead has today noted, that is itself important.
February 27, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Dr. Sinthome, we didn’t know you were so romantic. We like that, so we have dedicated this song to you:
http://parodycentrum.wordpress.com/2007/02/26/serbian-musik-4-doris-dragovic/
Sincerely,
the Cultural Parody Center
February 28, 2007 at 2:33 am
[…] and thoughtful response to Foucault Is Dead’s recent post on communities and my recent post asking what will we have been. There Tolga […]
February 28, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Well I certainly appreciate the kind thoughts and the idea of an archive doesn’t repel me in any way really and I like the Deleuze reference. The reason for such length given on that topic was largely so I could actually see it all together – a map of the discourse in any shape was something I needed to make. It’s a frustration with the medium at times, its ephemrality – the very thing we love about it also can feel limiting. I couldn’t agree more about traces, loops and finding spaces “in between” where more voices can breath.