Vanochtend, toen het nog niet zo warm was. 9.45 – 11.55. Heerlijk om weer op de fiets te zitten. Volop genieten. Kanne – sas – St. Pierre – Eben – Halembaye – Hauts de Froidmont – Houtain St. Simeon – Fixhe – Glons (plus de afdaling opnieuw omhoog gereden) – Roclenge – Val-Meer – Herderen – Riemst – Zussen – Zusserdel – Kanne

Ok, I’ll not try to summarize how Latour outlines his idea of Dingpolitik — (that we do not have hard facts, but matters of concern & that it’s about how publics gather around an issue, how an issue is a ‘thing’, not a fact but a gathering together). He uses of course etymology and refers to the Icelandic Thing — the parliament — to describe what a thing is; I’ll not go into the important role of mediation, of deliberation and yes, rhetoric; I’ll just say that I find this redefinition of politics very exciting and very clear. It also makes me pick up the texts that he refers to, specifically Dewey’s The Public and its Problems — Dewey being a favorite of mine ever since I read Art as Experience.

I’ve spent lots of hours in the shady garden in Kanne, going through every page of what N. calls ‘the brick’ (the catalogue). No I did not read every word, but at least I’ve seen every page and I’ve read a good deal of the articles. Sometimes I put a post-it on a page, sometimes with a few words scribbled on it. I’ll go through those ‘bookmarks’, harvesting the quotes…

‘Gathering’ (coming together, collecting): how — I thought — is that connected to the current technology around blogs…. rss (our own, personalized collection), gathering of different bits of content through keywords, using folksonomy; how Technorati (etc.) aggregates content; how even search engines do this. A blog collects bits of writing (and images, and links, and keywords) and people (readers) and other blogs. But the content is also collected, harvested, gathered.

I’m not stating anything new here — I’m trying out the words, and try to think (or visualize even) the different layers of mediation.

When I do this, I’m actually also going back full circle to what is probalby one of Latours many starting points for Making Things Public: the issue network-research of Noortje Marres and Richard Rogers, that lead, in any case for N., also to the rediscovery of Dewey’s ideas about the public, and how publics gather (form) around an issue.

I somehow like to tie that in to current webtechnologies and current practices of online writing too. (Speaking as a blogger, blogs as partial conversations, blogging for oneself, publishing without a public, yet one’s texts are gathered, and most importantly maybe — bringing in rhetorics — the ‘ethos’ of the blogger).

Well, maybe it’s also sort of tying it (‘my thoughts on blogging’) into the politico-philosophical discourse.

Just thinking aloud. // Some quotes then…

“The cognitive deficiency of participants has been hidden for a long time because of the mental architecture of the dome in which the Body Politik was supposed to assemble. We were told that all of us — on entering this dome, this public sphere — had to leave aside in the cloakroom our own attachments, passions and weaknesses. Taking our seat under the transparant crystal of the common good, through action of some mysterious machinery, we woudl then collectively endowed with more acute vision and higher virtue.

(…)

Unfortunately, much like the Tower of Babel, those ‘palaces of reason’ (…) are no longer able to house the isssues they were supposed to gather.”

Remember how ‘messy’ is the world of blogs…

Bruno Latour, ‘From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik’, in Latour & Weibel (eds.) Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy, ZKM / MIT, Cambridge Ma, 2005, p. 30

Oorbeek — the band in which I play the guitar — will be performing here: http://www.muziekgebouw.nl/voorstelling.asp?PageID=2&EventID=17411. That’s next week sunday.

Rumour: there’s a chance that Koichi Makigami will do a guest performance with us.

George “metaphors we live by” Lakoff has a new book, in which — judging from blurbs &c — he analyzes how the Bush-neocons are hijacking the word freedom. Dangerous, because: (quoting now): “Cognitive science has produced a number of dramatic and important results—results that bear centrally on contemporary politics, though in a way that is not immediately obvious. We think with our brains. The concepts we think with are physically instantiated in the synapses and neural circuitry of our brains. Thought is physical. And neural circuits, once established, do not change quickly or easily. Repetition of language has the power to change brains.” Now this might sound ‘too easy’, but it becomes more complex, and this is a book that has to reach out to a large public…

http://www.whosefreedom.com/browse-book/introduction-to-whose-freedom/.

Btw, over here Square vzw — artist organization — has put up a webpage with messages from Libanon — concerning the current Israel – Hezbollah war in Libanon: http://www.squarevzw.be/war/. FYI.

“The foundation of all understanding of sociological theory — that is to say, of all understanding of human life — is that is no static maintenance of perfection is possible. This axiom is rooted in the nature of things. Advance or Decadence are the only choices offered to mankind. The pure conservative is fighting against the essence of the universe. (…) The doctrine is founded upon three metaphysical principles. One principle is that the very essence of real actuality — that is of the complete real — is process.”

Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, The Free Press, NY, 1967 (1931). p. 274.

Browsing amazon, checking if DFW, Delillo, Ballard, Powers, Vollmann have new books coming up, check Pynchon & find this: Untitled, Thomas Pynchon (Hardcover), 5 dec. 2006.

Huh? Probably they’re talking about it already at the Pynchon-list (but I’m not a subscriber anymore).

But the rumour is already part of the wikipedia-entry on TRP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon.

And then I open up multiple tabs with Pynchon-related stuff… euh…

Ah, more Pynchonoid news here: http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/. Seems a synopsis of the novel was posted at Amazon; then deleted. Seems like some people believed the synopsis to’ve been penned by TRP-himself. Or not? Or a hoax? Or – uh – viral marketing? Anyway — see the above blog for info & this paragraph, originally published on Slate: “To be sure, when Mason & Dixon came out nine years ago, the scholars and nuts who compulsively post to the pynchon-l mailing list were on the case in cyberspace. But the new book with the rather coyly withheld title will enter an Internet Age in bloom, which is just too perfect. Labyrinthine structures, shifting identities, abstruse interconnections, funky mail systems—in its delirious maximalism, Pynchon’s work has more than a few affinities with all this fine new technology, and the technology enables Pynchon fans to interact in a wholly Pynchonian way.”

Also coming up: a new Powers (The Echo Maker) and a new Ballard (Kingdom Come).

Oh, and here, a FW-wiki: http://www.finnegansweb.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page. (Login required, I didn’t try nor really check it out). But it seems logical to set up a wiki for annotations to FW.

and because I use the 12” powerbook my writing tools become too hot to use as well. It’s really annoying to write on a laptop that’s burning hot under your hands when outside it’s 34 degrees.

So I stick with books mainly as long as this wheather continues.

Too hot to go for a ride on the bike.

Zaterdagmiddag. Erg warm en superzomerse felle zon. Prachtig door de korenvelden. Later in de middag F & N ophalen van het station voor een weekendje wandelen. Kanne – Eben – Moulin du Broukay – Bassenge – klim – Roclenge – Houtain St. Simeon – Slins – Paifve – Glons – Roclenge – Bassenge – Eben – Kanne

Bruno Latour (ed.) Making Things Public, the how-many-kilo’s-heavy-catalogue of last years ZKM-exhibition; to trace / research the connection between public and publishing, politics and private life, speaking (writing) in public, speaking (writing) for oneself, gathering an issue, forming a public — &c. I’ve read bits of it earlier (especially Noortje Marres’ paper on Dewey and Lippmann), but now I’m reading, well… browsing the whole book.

(Related to Flusser on publishing & thoughts on blogging).

http://makingthingspublic.zkm.de/ & http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10595.

Jeroen Theunissen, Het Einde, latest novel of this younger Flemish writer. Review: http://extra.volkskrant.nl/select/boeken/artikel.php?id=60.

Plus: the deuterocanonical books from the Bible. Why? Just curious. I don’t know them.

Warm, erg warm zomerweer, maar met een frisse noordoostenwind en de koelte op hoogte toch goed om te fietsen. Gisteren een rondje Rurberg, vandaag een tochtje naar Stavelot om de Stockeu te doen. Omdat ik besloot via Malmedy terug te rijden (oei, wat een rotweg) ook nog vanuit Beverce de weg naar de Ferme Libert gereden (een andere top 10 uit de Cotacol). Hier en daar wat extra gereden omdat ik een weg zocht (zoals voorbij Theux), die ik niet vond, of die niet bestond. (Het is toch opvallend hoe verschillend de drie, vier kaarten zijn zo gauw het gaat om de lokale kleine wegen). Kanne – kanaal – Vise – Lorette – Dalhem – Chenestre – Mortier – route cirulation locale – Herve – ri. Soumagne – ri. Petit Rechain – ri. Xhendelesse – Soiron – Pepinster – Theux – Winamplanche – Creppe – Geronstere – La Gleize – Coo – Stavelot – Stockeu – Stavelot – Malmedy – Beverce – Ferme Libert v.v. – Hautes Fagnes – Mont Rigi – Limbourg – Clermont – Froidthier – Val Dieu – Mortroux – Warsage – Gravensvoeren – Moelingen – Lixhe – Lanaye – Kanne