christian allan bertelsen

identity politics – discourse – deconstruction – semiotics – psychoanalysis – feminism – spatial analysis

as it stands thus far, i am open’s only yellowknife correspondent/editor. the research that i am currently carrying on with addresses questions of identity constitution and social cohesion as they pertain to arrivées (immigrants) and the complicated societies they choose to reside in. (included below is an image of an installation that has inspired me in this regard along with an excerpt of my research)

my relationship to open in fact stems from my friendship with one of it’s creators: risa dickens. i had the pleasure of both meeting and collaborating with her in my m.a.; i think we got along so well because we share a passion for gardening; and this is what i appreciate most about my role here at open, it’s like cultivating naturally creative and fertile soils. the beautiful part of it is that all that i am called upon to do is add water and tend to a myriad of rhizomes that never required my planting.

Integration…
If considered as a means of ontological communication for a moment, then it can certainly be seen as a way of expressing the self. When someone calls on an Other to integrate, s/he is simultaneously and unavoidably imparting a message about her/himself. Especially when it becomes quite clear that the arduous labor of integration is to be primarily carried out by the arrivée. For such an anlage constitutes an incredibly non-dialectical relationship where “instead of seeing […] [the arrivée] as a bridge toward a syncretic possibility, […] [the Quebec government] uses [her/him] as a mirror that reflects the colonialist’s self-image” (JanMohamed 19). When viewed, scrutinized and judged solely from a Quebec cultural perspective, the arrivée’s self becomes eclipsed. What’s more, integration arrogantly places the expectation that the arrivée model her/himself—in some measure—upon a québécois self. Herein lies integration’s ethical transgression, it fails to adequately recognize that the Other’s autonomy must be taken as a sine qua non for social cohesion to be a possibility. And this stems from the fact that integration is an approach to social cohesion that is to some extent modeled upon a misunderstanding of communication, one that inexorably seeks to reduplicate the self. But if this re-engendering of the self is ultimately impossible, where does that leave the arrivée? Well, it leaves her/him on the outside. As Elspeth Probyn argues “outside belonging operates now not as a substantive claim but as a manner of being” (8). Continuing on, she explains that:

[…] the desire that individuals have to belong, a tenacious and fragile desire that is, I think, increasingly performed in the knowledge of the impossibility of ever really and truly belonging, along with the fear that the stability of belonging and the sanctity of belongings are forever past. [Probyn 8.]

Probyn importantly cites the fragility of desire in this regard. When thought of in alignment with integration, it becomes rather crucial that we understand how this ethic, concept and goal might impact an arrivée’s desire, how it might work towards stifling it, or, alternatively, not work hard enough at eliciting it. The ethical predisposition of integration along with so much of the government and academic discourses that represent it, all miss one fundamental point: “the other, not the self, should be the center of whatever “communication” might mean” (Peters 265), which is to say that integration has, for some time now, only been articulated by québécois academics or bureaucrats—in other words, by the self.

by Risa Dickens.

Part 1.
Editing Openness: Lessons from Open Source.

I’m really glad Christian drew the issue of edited openness into the comments about space and scale which followed his recent post from Yellowknife.
Personally, I think a lot about how public spaces can become healthy ecosystems, instead of slipping towards inequality or control. I am half of the team that’s spent the past month building Indyish, and some of every day for the past two years building Open. And I am the one who most often edits our Openness.

Building Open is an idea that bumps up against every one else’s ideas about what Openness is or should be. Building this site and evolving it has challenged my own thinking-through of the processes developed in the open source community (the subject of my MA thesis, still in draft form). And that was sort of the original intention.

Often, questions ethical and practical that I’ve encountered here have sent me back to open source, looking for suggestions.

Open source development has played out in as many different ways as there are different, successful open source companies. For Open Journal I have been following the templates created by Open Source leaders like Linus Torvalds- the genius coder and “benevolent dictator for life” behind Linux, the kernel of the central open source operating system. (Linux sits at the heart of most open source-enabled innovations, including the Apache servers that run most of the Internet and the small computers that coordinate the self assembly of the floating blimps in Julien’s arty robotics.)

The collaborative process that built Linux is layered and complex now, but it still boils down to this:

Anyone is welcome to submit bits that they think will work. Linus Torvalds, recognized for having built the entire first draft of the kernel on his own, and for having made a beautiful and smart thing, has final say on what goes in and what doesn’t, and what needs fixing for it to work.

Decisions are resolved pragmatically- does this work well, logically, efficiently, does it work well over time, does it scale, does it allow for and enable growth..?

If a contributor fundamentally disagrees with the decisions being made by Torvalds, they are welcome to attempt to fork the code. “Forking” is to take all the openly available material from the Linux code (which is all the Linux code) and build it in whatever new direction you like, and see if you can get people to work on it with you. Forking is an essential function in the ecosystem that is Open Source. And it’s something we’re open to as well, because our interest is always in building and being part of healthy ecosystems.

The importance of the right to fork makes sense when you think about the open source system on an extra-large scale. (And thanks again the Christian, for drawing our attention to differences in scale.)

Thinking about open source requires a kind of sliding scale- one that can see the individual creative spark alongside the enormity of the network.

Open source is bigger than any one project, (and many projects, like operating systems, are massive in size); it’s bigger than giant networks of projects like Sourceforge; bigger than the legal and business realms of open source and things like Creative Commons; bigger than it’s subtle role in enormous battles like the ones playing out in the music and motion picture industries. Open source is big, and so this question about scale is huge because it points to how hard it’s going to be to build things that will survive the size of the open source network. Not to mention how hard it can be to know which directions will prove right in the long run.

Will a choice continue to seem smart as it gets applied to increasingly various scenarios, in all kinds of chaotic and tugging contexts? Will a system stay quick and light across the infinite variations of software and hardware?

Will an idea that seems brilliant to me in my bubble of books continue to be meaningful when it’s read against knowledge from other disciplines? Or will I then hear in it what I couldn’t before: the repetition of super-sized buzz words, beneath which I have hidden my secret confusion.

Sometimes I think people do this: bury big haunting questions in fascinating twists of words.
Sometimes I think this is the result of individuals or groups believing they should build an operating-system-sized theory on their own.
Challenging this misconception is, in part, the idea behind OpenJournal.

Part 2:
Our Working Philosophy.

As I wrote in the copy for Indyish, I’m interested in editors. I think everyone needs an editor- every idea needs to get shaken up by other perspectives and also needs to get reworked a few times by its original fashioner. Good, complex things don’t get built by one person in one try. As Torvalds pointed out, it generally takes one set of eyes to see the spark of a new idea, or to correctly identify the crux of a problem that needs solving, and another set of eyes to solve it. An organized but open network is necessary to connect the eyes and minds that together can solve problems. People, I think, flip back and forth between both sides of this job all the time, but wherever they are on that road they still need those other perspectives to bounce off of.

I want Open to provide the time and space for theories to be considered, tempered, and reworked. And I want the people behind Open to get to play whatever useful role we can in that process. And if at any time someone would like to fork the theory we’re working on, or would like to post an unedited version of their writing on their own website, or would like the entire history of the edits we’ve made together to be published alongside their final version, then Open would be super into that.

Part 3:
Why Edit?

Because we are trying to bring out the best in each other’s theory and writing.

Open is not just a blog- it’s not a group diary where anything goes. If there were no spaces like that- if it were impossible to get access to your own space for publishing on the web- then we would have felt the need to provide that. But Blogger, Myspace, and the Mac version of blogging tools – not to mention free and open source systems like Wordpress- answer that need bountifully.

So instead, at Open, we’re building theory collaboratively. And a project that big needs a project manager. And that’s been me.

Part 4.
The Flaw in Systems.

I stand by my edits and by the careful and continuously evolving thought that’s gone into Open so far. And in general, people seem to find the fact that an editor will look at their work to be quite reassuring- it allows them to take chances. And we love that. But it means that there’s always more editing to be done. And so it seems there’s a flaw in the system. And it’s a flaw linux encountered eventually as well.

Linus Torvalds is fricken smart but he isn’t perfect. (nobody is, hence the title of my thesis: “no one knows everything.”) At one point in the now-nearly-mythic linux history, Torvalds made some mistakes and got tired and defensive.

But actually, maybe this wasn’t a flaw. Maybe it was just the rumblings of a system getting bigger and approaching a phase transition. And maybe we’ve reached this kind of a stage with Open as well.

There is something different about Yellowknife. Having come from Montreal, one immediately notices it. The difference in scale is just one of those things that stands out. However that which initially drew my attention was, more precisely, the peculiarity of Yellowknife’s alleys. Indeed, their peculiarity can be said to operate on both of the noun’s semantic foundations. On one level these alleys seem, to an outsider from a more concentrated urban space, strange or unusual in their excessive width and perceptibility. And on another level, these alleys are peculiar by dint of this distinctiveness, for they differ from our general conception of what an alley normally is. I am reminded of Foucault’s concepts of the panopticon (circumambient surveillance) and heterotopia (somewhat dystopian spaces of resistance). Their relationship with the peculiarity of these alleys is such that I feel the need to ask: how might these concepts (panopticon, heterotopia) serve to articulate the peculiarity that I feel these alleys have about them? In fact, both Yellowknife’s alleys and Foucault’s concept of heterotopia have, in their own right, goaded me to think of them—long after they were out of sight. Which is to say that I have, in some sense, been haunted by both of them.

The alley between 49th and 48th Street. Yellowknife. Personal photograph by author. 22 Oct, 2005.

II

And yet from another angle, these alleys can be said to defer insofar as they constitute spaces of delay. Spaces of loitering, unproductivity or prolonged congregation. Indeed, these spaces actively postpone. They put certain social norms in abeyance. The alley is a space that affords socially unacceptable forms of behavior: drunkenness, drug consumption, lewd acts, illicit transactions. Acts which, in the openness and inherently public space of the street, would normally warrant reprisals.

The remnants of time spent in the alley. Yellowknife. Personal photograph by author. 22 Oct, 2005.

III

Part of what makes these alleys so very peculiar is that they are all part of Yellowknife’s downtown core. They are, on some level, a product of urban planning. And to this end I am reminded of an insight that Walter Benjamin shares in The Arcades Project when explains how:

The true goal of Haussmann’s projects was to secure the city against civil war. He wanted to make the erection of barricades in the streets of Paris impossible for all time. With the same end in mind, Louis Philippe had already introduced wooden paving. Nevertheless, barricades had played a considerable role in the February Revolution. Engels studied the tactics of barricade fighting. Haussmann seeks to forestall such combat in two ways. Widening the streets will make the erection of barricades impossible, and new streets will connect the barracks in straight lines with the workers’ districts. Contemporaries christened the operation “strategic embellishment.” (23)

What kind of prescience lies behind these alleys? Was their peculiar width and perceptibility deliberate or simply contingent? What does the distinct quality of these alleys bespeak? What can the history of Yellowknife’s urban development tell us?

The alley between 49th and 48th Street—looking towards Le Frolic. Yellowknife. Personal photograph by author. 22 Oct, 2005.

IV

Space is productive. A geographic location can have a formative influence. The north, by virtue of its remoteness, begs a particular awareness to things. And energy consumption is just one of those things that people from the north pay more attention to. They have to, it’s a precious resource. One might call it a geographically derived sensibility. Moreover, one can also remark a distinct interest in energy-saving technologies.

The recent completion of the new federal building on Franklin street (in downtown Yellowknife?) attests to this. Writes Lisa Scotts:

John Droog, PCL Constructors area manager, pointed out the $2 million south-facing solar wall will provide 10 per cent of the building’s energy needs.

The wall is only one of many features that will make it easy on the environment and a pleasant place to work as well.

Low volume air circulation will provide more consistent temperatures, natural light through windows that actually open will also be utilized.

[…] Grey water collected on the roof and ground water will flush it toilets. (Internet)

Knowing that we tend to respond to our environments in some way or another, I wonder what kind of response Yellowknife’s alleys elicit?

Suspension. Yellowknife. Personal photograph by author. 23 Oct, 2005.

V

Many of the people who find their way to these alleys are of aboriginal descent. And so the blurring—or utter collapse—between metaphor and empirical reality seems provocatively peculiar here. For within these back alley interstices, in these viewable margins, many people consort. In these in-between spaces or amid these peripheral zones members of the First Nations have, in the history of the city of Yellowknife, both socially and traditionally found themselves. This bespeaks a problematic perpetuation: a recursively skewed social anlage.

I want to investigate how it is that social hierarchies tend to be reproduced in Yellowknife’s urban spaces. It seems important to retrace the lines that extend from a society’s ills to its social services. How do Yellowknife’s social services relate (in a per capita comparison) with those of other urban centers? What insights might there be to glean from such figures and forms of governmental response?

Bibliography

Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999.

Foucault, Michel. “Space, Knowledge and Power [1982].” Power. Ed. James D. Faubion. New York: New Press, 1998. 349-64.

—. “Different Spaces [1984].” Trans. Robert Hurley. Power. Ed. James D. Faubion. New York: New Press, 1998. 175-85. [Also known as “Of Other Spaces”]

Genocchio, Benjamin. “Discourse, Discontinuity, Difference.” Postmodern Cities and Spaces. Eds. Sophie Watson and Katherine Gibson. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995.

Raven, Andrew. “Solar Panels Could Reduce Power Costs.” Northern News Services September 16 2005: Internet.

Scott, Lisa. “Building Breaks Northern Frontiers.” Northern News Services June 17 2005: Internet.

To read everything we’ve got on Yellowknife.
To read everything we’ve published by Christian Bertelsen.

To read everything we’ve got on Yellowknife.
To read everything we’ve published by Christian Bertelsen.

“The failure of communication, (…) allows precisely for the bursting open of pity, generosity, and love. Such failure invites us to find ways to discover others besides knowing. Communication breakdown is thus a salutary check on the hubris of the ego. Communication, if taken as the reduplication of the self (or its thoughts) in the other, deserves to crash, for such an understanding is in essence a pogrom against the distinctness of human beings” (John Durham Peters 21).

(thanks to Christian for contributing this quote as a comment. i felt it wanted its own post)

We got into the ‘knife this past monday. I guess you could say we’ve hit
the ground running. My wife started work the very next day, and I, in the
interim (before finding a job), began working at her mother’s store.

Thus far, I have been struck by the little things. For instance, when I went
out for breakfast this morning I came across some graffiti that had been
etched into the bathroom wall above the urinal. It read: “Steve + RP” (with
a heart carved around it). I had to chuckle. With Yellowknife only having a
population of 18 000, it is almost bereft of the anonymity common to most
urban forms of graffiti. Steve, we know who you are…

***

With regards to ‘the little things,’ I was particularly confronted by the
differences in scale. We live downtown–which is to say that nearly
everything is a 2 to 5 minute walk from our home. Magnification. Walking is
de rigueur here.

There are many aboriginals who hang out on street corners drinking and
chatting. And with regards to scale, in montreal things like this are more
diffuse, however here, they seem to line public space. Complicity lurks at
every corner. Unfortunately as with most routinized spaces, people here
get used to it.

***

In my continual acts of encountering, I am reminded of a careful suggestion
that my friend Neil Balan once made in a conference sometime ago regarding
the ethics of travel. Sure I have chosen to make Yellowknife home for the
next few years, but the novelty of my arrival is such that I am, in a many
ways, a foreigner who is but travelling here. As such there is a very real
ethics to these travelling encounters. A prescience that needs to undergird
any opening of oneself… I have been carrying myself with a welcoming smile
most of the time.

***

While waiting for the bank to open, an elderly aboriginal gentleman came sat
beside me and asked what time it was. “9:21 am, 9 minutes too early,” I
responded. Silently nodding, he shook my hand and was off. This interaction
didn’t seem to be overly superintended by a concern for status.

***

Today I was again confronted with my own complicity; which is to say that I
am a part of a set of social, cultural and economic forms and practices that
have been imposed upon Others without recognition of their autonomy and that
have particularly corrosive effects. To wit, while working at the store (a
gift and convenience shop) with my wife, Ngan, an aboriginal man came
in–around 35 minutes before closing time–and tried to buy hairspray. Ngan
looked at me with reticence in her eyes. I found myself frozen before this
rather complicated ethical dilemma. Luckily for us her mother saw what was
going and intervened. She said very abruptly: “I don’t want to sell this to
you. Go now. Get out of my store!” I guess we should of clued into it all
with the fact that the fellow was wearing a ballcap and was perhaps planning
his night. (You see, her mother has to be careful who she sells hairspray to
because some men drink it as a stimulant). But nevertheless, I was–and
still am–troubled by the ethics of intervention here. Double bind. A
damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t scenario. If only we could remedy
the structure that begets this kind of tragedy. The disappointed fellow
turned and left and in his wake a pungent waft of alcohol could be smelt.

This is a culmination and an accumulation. Mostly, it is a conversation, a shared attempt at agreement and consent. It serves as a map, but it also serves as a mark for the terminal event of a collaborative generation and production. It is a text and we have written on it, and as a text, it has written on us. This emerged far before we arranged its compilation, before we orchestrated it. We induced it, yet it induced itself because, in our conversation, something was always slipping and escaping. We knew we would have to follow the route of writing and encounter its constituents: imitating, mediating, absorbing, reforming. It took longer than we had initially thought, and in its duration, we learned about momentum, about energy loaded in an endeavour, in the promise of inertia. Once it’s moving, keep your feet going…

So we clambered up plateaus, across gaps and through spaces, tangled with ideas, and settled on a fashioning, a this here, and in choosing a shape, gave it some momentum to take flight. Lift is essential. Then: one line, one pathway, one arc away from this assembly we have made, taking the advice of some of the more wild mediators who have connected lines and made maps. These assembled bundles of intensities are compelling, and in my induction—in the predetermined circumstance of these self-enforced collaborations—I am repeatedly struck by my repetitive recourse to writing. Shocked, even. Generating pages of text, scribbles, hypergraphia and writing always writing, folding inward the bundles of these substantial thinkings and doings and knowings and transcribing my fragmented little events of encounter to letters, transfiguring and perhaps transducing them. I have made these thoughts and concepts matter in that I deem them deserving of script, of being written to become something for me, for me to become with them. Yet, I have literally made them matter, made them a text and a substance, borrowed the recourse to writing that these others I have encountered have also done, these others who I am inclined toward and responsible to. This responsibility is an ability to generate a timely response that is both appropriate and just. The writing, my writing, our re-writing, is a technology that binds us to expectations about what one does with this kind of thing, while allowing for a fiddling manipulation by making words into matter and plugging into these thoughts and intensities. This writing, for me, is a music, an anti-memory, that makes things visible to me, allowing me to cut ties and re-tie, to choose what sutures I will staple through my thinking and doing skins. In making matter, I make a map. “Don’t plot points, always make a map.”i So, with writing a map and reading it, a flow is continued and the circuit stays open.

Open, hopefully to such an extent that in this moment of collaboration, in this confluence of thought, writing and speaking, we can share some of the thoughts and concepts that have either in one way or another made something work for us or perhaps affected us; that is, to have opened new sensations or perceptions for us in the body. From another perspective, this experience that we have shared has of course not only exposed us to new thoughts and concepts, but it has also made us encounter new questions; new questions from which we have undoubtedly begotten many of our own. Questions have a way of concatenating with one another and creating productive flows. “It is the question that drives us.”ii Right on. Very much in the same way, weekly readings have provided us with a recrudescence of thought, thinking and questioning, you might say that our impetus has been maintained by a succession of perpetually regenerative second-winds. Of course, we have not sought to master these texts, knowing that this would be a foolish endeavour to begin with, instead we have taken a capriciously concentrated approach to these works, we sought to deterritorialize them and reterritorialize them elsewhere. And this is indeed what we are trying to do here. Part of my interest in our collaboration, is motivated by a Bruno Latour piece that I recently read in Harper’s Magazine. He
questioned if it was possible for critique to explode anew rather than implode upon itself, that is, if people like
ourselves could generate “more ideas than we have received.”iii I believe that at present we stand before a particularly exciting conjunction of time, space and intellectual surroundings. You have mentioned the desire for openness—to keep these circuits open. With the online journal known by the same name and principle, we can see that there is a shared structure of feeling. Contingent conjunctions such as these are exciting for just that reason: the aleatory nature of their coming together. The American ragmatist John Dewey spoke of liberty and said that it “is that secure release and fulfillment of personal potentialities which take place only in rich and manifold association with others.”iv This is how I’d like to think of our collaboration.

“Matter”. We have made and are making these thoughts, ideas and intensities into matter – a physical form – and, in addition, we always ask ourselves ‘how does this matter?’ or in the appropriated phrasing of another, “how does it work for you?”v when we encounter the matter that has become from another. When we ask questions of this sort, what are we asking? We want to find the points of connection, the moments at which our subjectivity meets with the matter, the body, of another’s text as it becomes a part of our own and moves us forward, up and across. My text comes from me and yet holds me within it, just as your text comes from and encases you, even if only for a moment. Just as we fear the boundaries of our bodies, our physical selves and meet their transgression with abject, so too we fear the boundaries of our textual matter. We assert our limits and say, ‘this is the body of my text’. It is a body, it has a form and it has a subjectivity, the one which effected its becoming and upon whose becoming it has also had an impact. But what of its flesh? Can it have flesh? Can it be without? Caputo says that flesh is the body stripped of being and sense, distinct from the body, it exists in a space that is prior or external to cognition, prior to any potential act of writing which necessarily involves “being and sense”vi. The reduction of the body to mere flesh requires recourse to pure affect. In the space
of feeling without cognition, affect without reason, here alone do we escape our subjectivity. But the text is always subjective, we have already shown this to be so, and this is how we can say that it is a body, it has being, it has sense, it speaks of intentionality. Is it then, necessarily a body without flesh? While the body may be stripped away, reduced to flesh via torture, sleep or sex, the flesh can never be fully stripped from the body. The body always brings with it the knowledge of its fleshy-ness and this flesh becomes embedded in the text, even if it is hidden from our view.

The pragmatics of material bodies, of words and flesh, is the plateau we’re grappling with in order to move across it. In the little immanent micro-events of reading and writing, there is a grappling with the sutures fixed by custodial values to the connections made, some learned as sensationally performed (‘Oh, that Butler’), some demanding a careful mental dredging (‘What should I understand with this Massumi piece?’) that is the extension of a difficult and extended encounter with a machine that does something. “Does it work and how does it work? How does it work for you?”vii The point is getting tangled up with this, getting entangled to rely on a power-geometryviii of thinking that doesn’t undervalue the formations of living bodies materialized and contained by power but appropriately maps our virtual interaction and co-ordination with a capitalized and programmatic tradition
(Theory). Anne Norton writes of the bloodrite of the post-structuralistsix as a challenge to the Law, the Word, the Text, and the privilege of closure afforded to those in a position or location of power (codification of politicized speech, naturalized, and subsequently depoliticized, becoming hegemonic), those who can speak Truth to legitimize and make knowledge scientific in an ordering and operational function. Our assemblage here is an exercise in power, its practice implicit in writing and thinking and generating, but buttressed by the institutional sponsorship and the brand-name logo (Theory), a Logos, stamped and affixed to an endeavour. And yet, I still follow Norton and her bloody mess of writing and thinking, with the refusal to close the body from its bleeding as a powerful thing, leaving a body of words open to maintain and glow with an intensity or tone that defies capture, or at least squirms and bulges uncomfortably on the shelf of an archive or in the pages of a catalogue. So, as I write I make amends with what I offer and muster, a guilty apology because I am confessing, wondering and probably not doing perhaps what I should be doing, swept up in the thinking but hoping ridiculously that my inclinations are good enough. If that which bleeds and leaks is open, why am I declaring my openness, the self-held legitimate form of doing in this perpetual Event that we write? What is—or becomes—‘correct’? The correct is blocked like a scene played out in a performance, blocked by the assignment of blockages. The blockages create corrective pathways and establish a prevention, preventing the ‘can’ of something to go any way, and precluding the possibility of refusing the correct ‘knowing for sure’. I have learned this, allowed this to fester and function. But how do I feel my method is becoming, as something that refuses organization, that defies the coherence of an organism, that is perhaps the messy flesh of Norton (and Longhurst and Caputo and Grosz) and the body without organs that Artaud realized? This is the paradox: we are organized, but there is a shred of trying, our trying to defy and fly, to take molecular flight from this organized way without giving up the handling of pens and keys and words and reading, an attempt at allowing openness with an autonomy to stand on its own. Openness is disorienting, but it invites an encounter without a being, a becoming becoming. Maybe this could be “…intensive: something comes through or it doesn’t. There’s nothing to explain, nothing to understand, nothing to interpret.”x Maybe this is the way to have a conversation: to attempt to become open so as to get things moving, to let it bleed a bit.

but it huurrrtss…

Any direction, any opening, embrace the mess. As with “rhizome”, “wave”, “map”, again we pillage the discourse of others. We must maintain the open wound and let the matter of foreign words get in. “Flesh” and “blood” we say, but surely flesh and blood do not belong to paper and ink? To biology, to ‘nature’, to horror even. We lurk in the shadows and seize the words that we want. We take flesh, we take blood, we take them from the scientist’s lab, or mother nature’s womb or from splatter film gore. We give new meaning, make new pathways and in so doing we find that they have fit, somehow these words have been accepted and find place here though they were stolen from somewhere else. And we must not hide behind the other words that we have learned that make it easier for us to accept and place these words, we cannot simply cry “metaphor!” and run from the implications. It is not that we have found a word that covers a hole
satisfactorily, the words themselves have been transformed by their contact with our conversation and it becomes. This is not easy and requires militant defense. This process of finding and thieving is not taken lightly by those from whom we steal. When we find new words and use them to open wounds and let them bleed, we open wounds elsewhere too – in the discourses of science, say and they may find that they are also unable to heal. But perhaps they do not share in our discursive masochism, they do not want their boundaries broken, their blood spilled. Because it hurts.

But still we have not answered the question. How can flesh and blood work for us in communication, in writing, in reading? Verbal communication, fine. Body language and gesture, surely. But the written word? Clearly flesh and blood do not belong here, they are not the Right Words, and yet…We cannot see how these stolen words can belong because we continue to believe that we are always thinking first with our minds, with our ‘selves’, even with our hearts – with these things that live inside our bodies – within the boundaries. But it is the skin that knows first. This is not metaphor. “Intensity is embodied in purely autonomic reactions most directly manifested in the skin.”xi When we touch skin it is transformed, autonomic reactions kick in – here we have physical intensity. But intensity functions “differentially in relation” to languagexii too and as a text is transformed by its reader as its flesh is revealed, it too transforms and the flesh of the reader herself manifests this affect as it is reminded of its own fleshy-ness, of its own trouble maintaining boundaries.

And it is this recognition of language—not all language but certain kinds of language—that is,
particular compositions of words, carefully crafted phrases, and eloquently expressed thoughts have the ability to elicit those autonomic responses, to affect the reader. If it makes you shiver, it is working. Perhaps part of what we are interested in here is bridging—in the moments when it is possible—the disjuncture between qualities and intensities, because of course “there is no correspondence or conformity between qualities and intensity.”xiii With that said, I guess with this brigandage, and with all these incisions and sutures, we are interested in addressing the flesh—breaching the boundaries that keep it out of reach—affecting it and perhaps even stimulating synesthetic responses. Sure this is lofty, but it is something of import nevertheless. One of the things that we all share is our affiliation to writing. And returning to what was said, there are of course certain expectations placed on those who write. Again this is further laden by the institutional support which, in our case, is inextricably linked to this theoretical endeavour. Of course, this little project of ours is expressly predicated upon opening up the body, keeping it open, letting it bleed, and letting that bleeding be productive, but part of what we are also beholden to do, is first “be loving in our recklessness,”xiv and second be lovely in the way that we do it; to write in a such way as to elicit and not just express. I broach this because we mustn’t—as so many of the custodians of knowledge coming before us have—forget that “matter-of-factness dampens intensity.”xv This is not to say that bodies of knowledge—ours, or those stolen from our victims—need to be made transparent, no, the struggle is part of the fun. Rumination leads to nourishment. Because of course, in the words of a particularly astute servant of thought, we are “obliged to question common sense, interrogate its tacit presumptions and provoke new ways of looking at a familiar world.”xvi (‘Oh, that Butler.’). Nevertheless, throughout these philosophically minded pursuits we should not leave intensity or affective writing by the wayside. Though we can certainly create bodies without organs, let us not obfuscate the flesh of our bodies. Writing, in fact, is not dissimilar to the open body that we are assembling or the process of its becoming. This openness we seek, and that we perpetuate with every cut, slash and tear of the body is not so different from how we learn to write—how we are always learning to write. Learning to write is much like a continual flight. A movement that follows a multitude of lines and vectors, some of which produce more drag than others. And each trajectory that is followed leaves us with something that we did not possess before. Knowledge, words, phrases, and feelings have this way of accruing, sometimes accumulating so discreetly as to elude our notice… that is until the moment of recognition. A moment that matters; a moment that has a way of once again fashioning more matter and creating something to be plugged into.

Indeed, plugging into, or literally, actually feeling the intensity or the heat or force-field or micro-environment around a body, off someone else’s, some other’s body. What we want is in parts haptic: that is, perceptual, visual, but close enough to touch, to handle. We want an image of thought on a plane that consistently reassures us we are accomplishing something, something more than hiding behind contrived words and prefacing statements with the goodness of our intentions to deprive the custodians of our words the petty pleasures of control and regulation, by becoming irreverent and unruly, by being reckless vultures. We want that Deleuze breathing air through Spinoza and the immanence of things, a thing that, in changing an ‘a’ to an ‘i’ (immanent), intensifies, amplifies, and multiplies with added proximity, always near-by. Yet, I detect uncertainty, anxiety, uneasiness with the prospects of hiding behind pretty words and mixing metaphors, despite our best intentions, despite the sensorial and aesthetic revelry ongoing in the space of affect that is the recurring whatness we suppose, which we feel ourselves. I detect, recognize, interpret (no no no) a necessity, a need to be affective, to have an effect, to matter, to touch, to really touch, but to have to tackle the layers or distances or times across the multiple proximities that we struggle to keep close, to try and fix so the effort is easy, the labour much less. I detect some kind of feeling, some inability, some driving motivation or obligation to release, to move this elsewhere, to be idealistic enough to really think that this thinking can continue to change, can continue to touch flesh, to really touch life, to be “infinitely responsible”xvii, to be ethical in the sense of becoming open to others, recognizing the needs of others and sympathizing and being compassionate enough to step out from behind the carapace of words thrown together. Inclination. Inclined.

Obligation. As Michael Payne reminds us, Sartre knew that in literature, in both the writing and the reading, we are “condemned to be free.”xviii And now as we thieve and murder (all writing is theft, all reading is murder) we are free too take what we wish, say what we like, we have the power to take meaning, to change meaning, to make meaning. But with this comes responsibility – if it has flesh and a body, then it must also have a face and as Levinas tells us the face commands that we be responsible for another prior to that other’s address. As the text is unfettered and let loose from the bounds of traditional discipline, as we explore and revel in the excess, we must also know that as long as the text keeps going (which it can, into infinity) so too must our responsibility. We must know our place. We must know that the text will not stop. We cannot call this an ethical problem because we cannot know the text’s bounds for it has none, none that will hold in any case, and to talk ethics we need something to build that talk around, something with edges and straight lines and corners, not the permeable, fluid, leaking, squelching, squirming flesh that lives between the real and the imagined and transforms them both. As Caputo says,

Obligation…is a kind of skandalon for ethics, which makes ethics blush, which ethics must reject or expel in order to maintain its good name, for ethics is “philosophy,” a certain episteme. Ethics contains obligation, but that is its undoing (deconstruction).xix

When we see the face, contact the flesh of the other, we are faced with the topography of our obligation. So too it is with the text as it is other, as it bleeds and leaks and is fleshy even as it refuses to abandon its body, its being and sense, we know that we are obliged. We cannot ignore its screams, its tortured pleas. Though it bleeds and suffers and calls to us for help, it too may heal and nourish us, soothing our cries, tending our wounds. Its flesh meeting with ours we identify with the blood and mess, we understand that we are not alone, that our flesh may unite and comfort us. The flesh reminds us that we will die and while we may mourn ourselves, we must also celebrate the one thing that we all share. For it is in the space of this sharing that the marginalized meets the oppressor and neither one can deny their sameness, the mutual experience of the flesh.

Does touch constitute contact? You can direct and address a touch, but words address by themselves, ghostly, escaping, decaying, but still stubbornly resonant. The echo of words bleed and leak (The words that come out are shit, eh, these silly organs of mine?); the edifice of writing as the locus of hegemony and power, the violent fixing of naming, always leaks. The skin feels first. What do we know, though, afterward? How do we feel the word and the touch it brings? Arrange it on an idexical register, where this touch means that, easily? Do we think about it, make it an object refined? Paradoxical problem and solution: we cannot stop thinking, but we shouldn’t stop thinking either. What is the function of this feeling and can we afford to pat ourselves on the back for exploding this thing, for still fulfilling the demands of a programmatic pathway we knew would culminate with this kind of encounter, this modified collaboration? This bulges, is not streamlined, and this thisness is a release—for us, at least—of the energy inherent of the encounters and co-ordinations and emergences, caught up in percepts, in affects

Percepts aren’t perceptions, they’re packets of sensations and relations that live on independently of whomever experiences them….Affects aren’t feelings, they’re becomings that spill over beyond whoever lives through them (thereby becoming someone else…xx

And yet, what have I opened? Have I created the threat of perpetual emergency? I calculate the risk, my object, the risk that comes in stating or speaking or feeling, still swayed by the feedback of value and the arbitrary end. Being selfishly open to myself, to my colleagues, to the mediators I value and hold in high standing? Letting my nomadic little machine mind run wild while compiling stroking assemblies, thinking all the while that the fluidity of my massing of words can defy? Can perform magic, can transform and do things? Massumi argues that boundaries are less solid physical things than they are filters, permeable membranes that do not exclude (negative) but prioritize and productively induce certain emergencesxxi. My point is simply that the only prioritized matter, the flesh that leaks into this, is ours, is elegantly ours. And despite some of the treasured advice I have received, the guilt still kicks in, a blockage that produces sedimentation rather than encouraging movement. I feel the pull of accomplishment, of necessity, of a task to be finished, yet intellectually realize the need for the autonomy of affects, to engage and differentiate with the sensing and doing of thought, and the application of its knowledge seized. And yet to bring what I have come to know, after thinking, to attempt to hold it and concretize it comes with the subsequent knowledge that it slips underneath or through without a scrutineering touch or feel or glance or smell. Sometimes it escapes my own response. But still I am left with the fact that knowing, the science of harnessing the affects, reeks. It does stink. It sneaks, invisible, without a relay, like hydrogen sulfide gas, industrial disease extraordinaire, beyond smell, which is only visible by the dropping of people in its fallout zone, its viral quality visible too late. I fear I can’t smell the reek, yet the words continue to do their little things.

And, of course, in this discussion of writing, collaboration and bodies that matter, identifying a fall-out zone is no easy task. Any endeavour to investigate the symptoms, signs or traces of our productivity is problematic to say the least. Amid such scrutiny, one must realize that nary a fallen body will be found. And I worry about that. I worry because there are expectations. The expectation that we demonstrate what we have accrued, and in so doing, reveal how this might be applied or made to work. Whatever the case there is the obligation to do, to become, to move or to make things move, moving always moving. Stasis is sterile. From another perspective, I am equally concerned with ensuring that the machine we are constructing or this body of organs that we assembling—or allowing to assemble itself (as words and ideas often do)—cannot be a fleshless body, that is, that it not be something insubstantial, instead, that it becomes something that can get up and move, and not merely be a corpus that collapses upon itself. To this extent, I am also preoccupied with not allowing ourselves to be sheltered by these words and metaphors. I do not want
to merely cry “metaphor!” and flee. That is not in my character. Part of what has facilitated this plane of thought—or thoughts—is the encounters we’ve had and the interactions we’ve shared. Our discussions have given rise to and provided me with concepts or distracted reflections that have really moved me or created things that I can move. That being said, I am truly sorry about the fact that I cannot fully impart or demonstrate all that has been productive about this collaboration. I cannot do so because ideas, concepts and notions are at times incredibly surreptitious… they often need a proxy to signify—or reveal themselves—at all. I do not have a Geiger Counter on hand, but I can assure you—these thoughts are radioactive. They are a form of energy. They afford the possibility of transduction, of opening something, making it work and perhaps remaining open for other use. Openness has been a leitmotif in this project from its very inception. In fact, the reading list was the product of a confluence of three intellectual desires all concerned with poststructuralist thought. Yet at the same time, openness has also been a raison d’être for each of us while grappling with these rhizomes of thought.
During the encounters, our discussions and reflections were always predicated upon a founding principle of
openness—ours was always an ethic of willingness. Not only were we obliged to recognize the face of our
colleague, but we were also—naturally, and of our own accord—interested in both hearing and fleshing out one another’s ideas, questions and critiques. Each utterance and every stammering was welcome. And yet, openness was productive in another sense. Each week consisted not only in the grappling with these custodians’ words, but with fiddling with these theoretical pieces of Lego and seeing how they might fit with the work we were conducting elsewhere. In this way, we were essentially helping one another to open things that may have previously been closed to us. This has carried forth to the editing process as well. This has not been an easy machine to assemble. For reasons previously mentioned, we have struggled between wide horizons, expectations, obligations, and considerations. We have even edited this together. Having altered our own portions of this body, along with each other’s. Thus we have all touched, and touched up, one another’s bodies. It is in this way that these bodies are as much mine as they are yours; hopefully in time they can be someone else’s as well. Returning to my inability to fully express the worth of this project, it can be said that this stems from my having come across a multitude of ideas, concepts and notions through a number of different encounters (all of which are a result of this course) and for that reason I have necessarily left with something more than I originally came with. Some of these insights that I have garnered will only reveal themselves once a proxy makes itself available, once there is an object of inquiry which summons their use, makes them work and thereby renders them visible. As such, it is obvious that some of this will remain completely unknown or intransmissible within the space of this collaboration. Then, one might be inclined to ask: what have we done here? Well, for one thing, this collaboration should not be taken as a confession of our having done something, or of our having been productive, though I won’t deny that we have. Nevertheless, to only see this collaboration along those lines would be to miss the beauty of these encounters. It would overlook the potential of this machine of thought. Though this collaboration ostensibly ends with the conclusion of this text, it has proven to be an encounter which will continue to distend in particular ways for each of us for quite some time. Indeed, any concluding sentence—along with the period that brings it to a full-stop—serves as nothing more than a tenuous lid at most. For when the written word or delivered utterance is released, no one may predict how that thought, energy, or matter gets channeled, shaped or made to matter. More often than not one can rest assured that an end is never necessarily the end…

So, we leave ourselves with ends unfurled; fluids, machines, desiring words and words, with an image of thought that should and ought. We have assembled a territory, a geography. Yet, the only flesh I see is mine and I feel badly. I can afford to perform ‘situational ethics’, can become pragmatic about my own lines of flight to other things, to a serial of tragic submissions, but who cannot? John Schad writes about life after Theory, about life as something theorizing must inevitably answer to, about life as something that emerges in the disinterested, distracted moments of engagement with ideas and thoughts and texts. Jean-François Lyotard has written that the task is to allude to something which can be conceived but cannot be presented (the postmodern sublime), to be aware of the differends that defy recuperation by forces we are at once both complicit with and critical of.xxii Deleuze writes that “non-oedipal love is pretty hard”xxiii, like pure forgiveness without reciprocal gains. Kim Sawchuk has advised us that our interventions massively alter, despite their seemingly small scale, the course of the things and processes and events in a kind of Heisenberg Uncertainty way. John Durham Peters offers that the touch of the hand may be the best we can do, the encounter as the comfort of coordination. There is some certainty as to the affective
parameters of the offering we generate here, the subject of the ‘we’ that precludes and makes obvious our selfish, inward turns. But the question remains: whose hands are we touching, and with what scrutiny? What comfort are we providing? With this, then, there is hazy denial along with the suspicious and sneaky contention that there is no blood on our hands.

Yours, In Theory,

Christian, Heather, and Neil

 Hydrogen sulfide is detectable only in low concentrations. It is undetectable in high concentrations by smell, but visible by way of the bodies it inhabits, colonizes, and subsequently kills. The smell goes away as the intensity increases, yet the affect is amplified. I thank Peter van Wyck and his visceral conceptualization of a semiotic relay in this regard. See Van Wyck, “Highway of the Atom”, Topia 7, 2002.

i Deleuze and Guattari. “Introduction: Rhizome,” A Thousand Plateaus. B. Massumi (trans.) Minneapolis: University of Minnesotta Press, 1987. 24.

ii Wachowski, Andy & Larry Wachowski. The Matrix. Warner Bros, 1999.

iii Latour, Bruno. “The Last Critique.” Harper’s Magazine. April 2004:20.

iv Dewey, John. “The Search of the Great Community [1927].” The Essential Dewey: Pragmatism, Education, Democracy. Ed. Larry A. Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander. Vol. 1. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. 295.

v Deleuze, Gilles. “Letter to a Harsh Critic,” Negotiations 1972-1990. Martin Joughin (trans.) New York: Columbia University Press, 1990, 8.

vi Caputo, John D. Against Ethics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. 196.

vii Deleuze, “Letter to a Harsh Critic,” 7.

viii Poached from Doreen Massey, “Power-geometry and a Progressive Politics of Place,” Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change, Jon Bird et. Al (eds.) London: Routledge, 1993, 59-69. Massey refers to place, which I have folded into a Deleuzian place of thinking.

ix Norton, Anne. Bloodrites of the Poststructuralists: Word, Flesh, and Revolution. London: Routledge, 2002. Norton establishes a dialectical and often atonimic relationship between the both themes and actual materials of flesh and blood, and the written word, especially where the word is taken to be representative as codified law and symbolic Law. Norton traces the shifts, specifically in times of revolution, where the body and blood are displaced and brought into order by the rhetorical and physical power of the word in what is a poetic account of the political power .She develops a historical trajectory of the emergence of the word as a violent and privileged form of closure, whereas the body that bleeds is a mark of openness, and as such, the target for disciplinary and regulating discourses. For Norton, the privilege of closure through the word takes on a distinctly patriarchal and phallocentric cultural value, yet this privilege is exploded by post-structuralist developments in cultural and critical theory, where closure itself is openly exposed, revelaed as an immanent and ideological effect of the structure of discourse.

x Deleuze, ‘Letter to a Harsh Critic’, 7.

xi Massumi, Brian. “The Autonomy of Affect,” Movement, Affect, Sensation: Parables for the Virtual. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. 25.

xii Massumi. “The Autonomy of Affect,” 25.

xiii Massumi. “The Autonomy of Affect,” 24.

xiv This advice was put forward by professor Peter C. Van Wyck during a meeting held with him on the 28th of January 2004.

xv Massumi. “The Autonomy of Affect,” 25.

xvi Butler, Judith. A quote culled from an article in an unidentified issue of the Montreal Gazette.

xvii Jacques Derrida, quoted in Schad, John. “Epilogue: Coming back to ‘life’: ‘Leavis
spells pianos’,” Life After Theory. J. Schad and M. Payne. New York: Continuum, 2003. 181.

xviii Schad, 183.

xix Caputo, 5.

xx Deleuze, Gilles. “On Philosophy,” Negotiations 1972-1990, trans. Martin Joughin, New York: Columbia University Press, 137.

xxi Massumi, Brian. “Everywhere You Want To Be: Introduction to Fear,” The Politics of Everyday Fear.
Brian Massumi (ed.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. 22.

xxiiLyotard, Jean-François. “Answering the Questions: What is Postmodernism,” The Continental Philosophy Reader. Richard Kearney and Mara Rainwater (eds.) London: Routledge, 1996. 437.

xxiii Deleuze. “Letter to a Harsh Critic,” 10.

18

“Damen und Herren, guten Abend und begrüßen […]” thundered a voice from the loudspeakers. The open-roof stadium, which seemed to extend beyond the limits of one’s vision, was nearly full. There might have been an insignificant number of vacant seats in the blue section, but they were sure to be filled by their respective owners any minute now.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening and welcome to Munich’s OlympiaStadion for the first leg of this evening’s Champion’s League Quarterfinal match-up between FC Real Madrid and FC BAYERN MÜNCHEN […]” translated the announcer as he customarily does. The interest in this encounter between two European superpowers extended far beyond the borders of Spain and Germany, these two teams have made a global name for themselves; FC Real Madrid was, admittedly, the more popular of the two though. Tonight, however, they were underdogs. You see Real are never underdogs. No matter where they play. They have a contingent teeming with so much talent that the home and away binary is often unimportant. Nevertheless, this was Munich and thus a different story all together.

There was a great bustle amid the Olympiastadion this evening. Filled to the brim with Bayern fans, this stadium could not accurately be described as a mere arena, no, this was a seething caldron, white-hot. This beautifully symmetrical structure, replete with calculated lines and arches, was specifically designed to house and contain these acrid structures of feelings, but such emotions are, of course, unruly.

“The startling line-up for Bayern will consist of Kahn, Sagnol, Kuffour, Kovac, Lizarazu – Demichelis, Hargreaves, Ballack, Zé Roberto, Pizarro, Makaay. Real will field Casillas, Salgado, Helguera, Raul Bravo, Roberto Carlos, Beckham, Guti, Figo, Raul, Zidane, Ronaldo […]” the Bayern supporter’s chants and cries did their very best to muffle the segment announcing Real’s starting eleven. From the ground level of the kick-off spot, the sight that one could behold was truly magnanimous. The intensity of the stadium lights whitened out the edges of all that which was caught in their rays, thereby giving each object, person or blade of grass an auratic quality. That which was soon to unfold before the spectators was to do so upon a canvas constituted by a particular time and space… one that—regardless of the result—was not to be forgotten any time soon.

At this point, 17 of the 21 spectators, or interlocutors rather, were comfortably in their seats. Zygmunt Bauman had taken up the responsibility of reserving the tickets and finding a suitable seating arrangement. In fact, it appeared as though he took the task a little too seriously because he was personally offended at the thought of four of his colleagues potentially being late for kick-off. This wasn’t because he was an avid soccer fan, no, this was simply because Bauman was a stickler like that. Getting a ticket for this match proved to be exceptionally difficult, nevertheless, Bauman—having prepared adequately in advance—succeeded in securing two rows, one of ten and another of eleven just behind. In the first row, starting from the left, John Dewey, Michael Payne and Georges Rousseau were marveling at the atmosphere in this arena, it was first time that any of them had a seen a European soccer match; Dewey was particularly impressed and thought to himself: you’d think this was a world series game! Seated next to them were Joanne Sharp, Paul Routledge, Chris Philo and Ronan Paddison—all of whom were content to wait until
kick-off in silence. Continuing towards the end of the row, Brian Massumi and Paul Virilio were busy catching up, while Robyn Longhurst dismally looked on. She was desperately craving a German pretzel, but knew she shouldn’t. In the second row, from right to left this time, Peter van Wyck—an ecology of calm1—sat with legs crossed calmly observing the pre-game spectacle while at once eavesdropping on Virilio and Massumi. Come on, he was fellow Montrealer—naturally he was curious. The seat immediately next to van Wyck was vacant and once Kim Sawchuk came into view it was clear why. Moving left, Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, Linda Hutcheon and Andrew Parker sat abreast of one another. And though one might be led to think that they’d have a lot to say between them, they were remarkably sullen. Next there was Steve Shaviro who, flanked by true gloom to his left and a fidgety Bauman to his far right, felt as though he had really won the lottery. And as fitting a time as any, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Michel Foucault came strolling in, sharing a few laughs.

“Hello Zygmunt!” Foucault exclaimed cheerily.

He knew this would irritate Bauman even more.

The two teams kicked-off before the trio had the time to find their seats. Real immediately took possession. Raul swiftly passed the ball back to Beckham without so much as a glance. When you’re that good, you don’t look, you feel. Instead of customarily passing back to the defense, Beckham offensively made a first-time through ball to Zidane on the left side. Real wanted to set the tone from the very start. This was going to be a game of total football; if Bayern wanted to win an utter besetzung was required. Zidane saw an opening towards the center and proceeded to capitalize on it. Bayern quickly closed down his space. Three men to each man, don’t let them control the ball. Those were the coach’s instructions. Zidane, knowing and feeling the flow, blindly released the ball forward and down the left. Roberto Carlos—already running—latched on to it at breakneck speed. Though short, his powerful limbs carried him at such speeds that, given two steps, he could often lose his opponent completely. Sagnol, have defended against Roberto Carlos many times before, knew what to expect. The interception course was set. Perfectly timed in fact. Sagnol slide-tackled and got nothing but ball. The flow had effectively been broken. And the clock read 01:03.

“Okay I believe that now we can finally begin,” Bauman said glaring at the tardy trio. None of them looked particularly concerned.

“First I would like thank Deleuze for the great idea of moving out of the class and conducting our discussion elsewhere.”

“Next time we should have the discussion while playing,” Deleuze retorted with a blank expression.

“Okay…” Bauman could never tell if he was joking.

“Who would like to start?” he continued.

“Okay then, what topic should we delve into first?” speaking to fight the silence.

Butler was unimpressed. Not so much with Bauman—though that too—but, rather, with the world of football—matches like these. The fact that football—and footballing culture—was rooted in patriarchy and served to perpetuate it, annoyed her. Just last month, Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, claimed that to increase the popularity of women’s soccer the uniform should be transformed into to something more sexy.

“How about structure?” Butler offered, spontaneously breaking the silence.

“Did you have anything in particular in mind?” responded Sawchuk while scribbling on her yellow pad of paper.

“Well, I was just reflecting how it is structures such as these (pointing to the field) that feminists such as myself have primarily been interested in dismantling. I use the word dismantle to emphasize the lengthy nature of the struggle that we have been involved with. You see, these structures engender problematic sedimentations of thought. In this particular case, we can see sedimentations of thought that have influenced directly, or obliquely, conceptions of malehood, heteronormativity, etc.,” Butler replied while at once realizing that she no longer cared to elaborate any further.

“Yes, I see how this may be of concern because it is within the interstices of habit—thus within structures, such as communities for instance—that thinking is secreted,”2 Dewey added agreeingly.

“Well, it might be important for us to consider how there has been positive change within a structure such as football. Take David Beckham there on the field for instance. He seems to present himself as a fulcrum for such change—” began Sawchuk.

“—Yes in fact—” Parker eagerly interjected “—I have co-authored a book with Ellis Cashmore—on just that subject—entitled “One David Beckham…?” Celebrity, Masculinity and the Socceratti, in which, we attempt to limn how David Beckham is a media icon who occupies a number of different, and salient, iconographic positions. For instance, he is renown for his footballing abilities and has a number of football fans as a result. As well, he models, thus by dint of the exposure he accrues with that he has developed a number of adoring fans—many of which are women. However, and this is important, Beckham has also developed legions of gay fans that he positively acknowledges. Add to that, the fact that he remains a committed father and husband.” This was right up his alley, so he was more than happy to elaborate further.

“So essentially, while it might be said that he serves to perpetuate a certain heteronormativity by virtue of his marriage and family, he nonetheless succeeds in commingling a number of identities and copular
presuppositions—and in that way challenging them as well. That is why he is such an intriguing icon, because he challenges and commensurates conventions in a way that one might of once thought impossible. Beckham’s appeal resonates, at times transgressively, across a number of different communities. Always changing himself, Beckham is truly an icon of alterity,” concluded Parker.

“Yes but I feel it important to draw attention to the fact that, Beckham is the icon that he is only by virtue of the privileged economic position that his skills—or his looks rather—afford him,” broached Bauman with the aim of redirecting the conversation.

“From the perspective of the work I did on community, figures such as David Beckham are problematic. Beckham is a reification of the jet-setter, the individual who has no use for community. To truly be an icon, you must be capable of traversing space with ease. The icon has no rooted community. I am not so sure that he should be deified. Instead, I am concerned with the disservice that such people do to the old notion of community. To wit, the effects of late capitalism are such that the individual—in a society of risk—sees him or herself better served by securing the greatest amount of personal prosperity and autonomy.3 Thus, to this end community is nothing more than an anchor—a tedious obstacle—that offers nothing more than the potential of threat or undue drag. Nevertheless, the crux of society lies in the imperative link between both the individual and his or her community; it has been here where sociality has been wrought,” concluded Bauman.

John Dewey, having looked skeptically at him throughout, finally had a chance to retort. “Bauman, dear sir, you seem to imply that membership to a community brings with it necessary attenuation of one’s autonomy and potentiality. I must underline, that community, as I describe it, is not a miasmal entity, it is instead the social space where a greater autonomy and potentiality is possible. For experience is, of course, public.”

Finding himself closed down on the right wing, Figo looked to pass. Beckham, having read the play, moved up to offer himself as a possibility. Figo released a sharp pass and Ballack simultaneously rushed to intervene. Realizing that he wouldn’t be able to intercept in time, Ballack lunged with one leg extended. It was an act of desperation and he knew it. He didn’t care. Missing the ball entirely, Ballack’s heel broadsided Beckham’s ankle swiftly knocking him off his feet; Beckham saw it coming—in a sport like this you have too. Just prior to the point of contact, Beckham had prepared himself by remaining light on his feet. If he hadn’t taken that precaution, a tackle like that could have broken his ankle. But how did this come about? Rewind.

At 05:38 after kickoff, Beckham and Ballack were tussling in midfield. Ballack despised Beckham. To him, Beckham wasn’t a footballer he was a media spectacle. Sagnol, picking out Ballack, released a long aerial pass. Both Beckham and Ballack rose to meet it. Ballack placed his arm over Beckham’s shoulder and used it as leverage. This irritated Beckham, so he retaliated by elbowing him just under the rib cage. Being 1.89 meters—that’s 6’2”—Ballack generally won most aerial battles. This encounter was no different. After heading the ball onto the path of his teammate, Ballack made sure that all 1.89 meters of him came down on Beckham. This brought about a silent scowl from the Real star; mute, put explicit nonetheless. Ballack stared back and, pointing with his index, distinctly uttered “Pass auf!” (Watch out!). Pause. This was the moment in which the threat had been begotten.

Now back to the crushing tackle, the event. The referee immediately reached for his pocket, the only question was whether it would be a red or yellow card. Red would effectively end Ballack’s game, whereas yellow would serve as a strong caution. The referee had to be quick about this. A crowd of quarrelsome players had already encircled the two individuals; one shove could spell mayhem. Fingers emerged with a yellow card in hand. Ballack disagreed and voiced it. Shut up, just shut up. One wrong word could magnetically bring out a red. The referee decided to be kind and pay no attention to his complaints. Beckham initially had to limp but then immediately realized that he could shake it off and carry on. The clock read 32:27.

“The soccer field is space that allows for a multiplicity of threat. It provides fertile ground for
it—nurtures it even. For instance, there is a persistent threat of injury on this soccer field. You never know when it will strike,” Massumi finally said though still concentrating.

Virilio seized upon Massumi’s moment of thought. “Bayern’s counterattacking style reveals that they’re playing in such a way as to anticipate the threat—or accident—of Real scoring and taking the lead. Thus, threat serves as something to work against, it is productive.”4

“I wonder if we are not overlooking the role of risk in all of this,” inquired van Wyck in order to problematize the flow of conversation.

“How do you mean?” a puzzled Bauman asked.

“Well, I think there is a necessary distinction to be made between risk and threat… Risk is
quantifiable. Risk eclipses ethical decision-making. But threat, on the other hand, is more diffuse. It is almost like fear, only fear has an object.”5

“Well,” Deleuze began, “would you agree that, as a result of the manifold and shifting vectors which are perpetually constituting themselves on the field, both risk and threat are—and can be—present? For instance, the threat of being scored on is constantly present throughout the entire game, however, we have to concede that there are moments of risk in which the threat is both heightened and far more discernible, right? Hmm—look at the structure of play on the field right now for example.”

Guti, recognizing that a good twenty feet had opened up directly in front of him, decided to run the ball up.
Demichelis sensed the urgency of immediately closing down this nascent flow. It would be a gamble. If he failed to close Guti down, then he would be leaving a clear path on goal and Real don’t miss opportunities—or gifts—such as those. However, if he didn’t intervene, then Guti would find himself in a position to either take the shot, or choose from three individuals who were themselves in mouthwatering scoring positions. It was mathematics. You were constantly doing math on the field: calculating probabilities, risks, margins of error, opponents’ rates, speeds, etc. Some problems were more abstract than others. This one, however, was relatively straightforward. Demichelis deduced that interception was the best possible option. He sprinted forward keeping his legs apart—being as wide as possible. This forced Guti to pass quicker than he had intended. Feeling it, Demichelis extended his left foot and was able to get a piece of it. The deflection fell kindly to Kovac who, without hesitation, passed to Zé Roberto on the left wing. Normally, the silky Brazilian would relish the opportunity to run the ball forward, weaving in and out of midfielders and defenders, but not this time. Prior to having received the pass he had surveyed his team’s positioning and noted that Hargreaves was completely unmarked on the right wing. Drawing a number of Real’s midfielders and defenders with him, he darted towards the left touchline and made a precise cross to Hargreaves. It was about ratios. In normal circumstances, you had twenty-two players on the field. The trick was to mete out the most efficient allocation of your team’s resources. By the same token, you would have to do your very best to skew the opponent’s apportioning. Hence after chesting down the cross, Hargreaves found himself with plenty of space. This was dangerous for Real. Makaay busied himself with stretching the defence, while Ballack sought to occupy the open space deep on the left wing. It was three on two. This was risk. You could calculate the danger. Cutting into the center, Hargreaves made haste in heading directly on goal. One team’s opportunity is another’s risk. The thing that unites these diametrically opposed moments is their ephemeral nature. Seeing that Makaay was positioned in front of a two meter gap between Real’s two defenders, Hargreaves released a pass while continuing to run on goal. Encrypted in the pass was a message and Makaay was acutely aware of it. Give and go. Makaay controlled it beautifully and laid it back onto Hargreaves’ path. Meeting the ball just on the edge of the penalty area, Hargreaves wound up and shot low and to the left. Raul Bravo stretched to deflect it, but Hargreaves had intelligently placed it under him. Casillas—seeing it late—remarkably dove in time to turn it around his right post. This was risk. Real were lucky to emerge unscathed.

“This was a classic example of risk. It was indeed calculable. On the other hand, someone like Zidane can often pose a threat from distance—even when it is seemingly impossible. I think that Peter makes an important distinction—would agree with my illustration Peter?” inquired Deleuze.

“Yes,” van Wyck said after a moment of thought.

Then came the half time whistle. Overall, Bayern were the better team. With an intelligent blend of all-out defense and swift counterattack, Bayern where able to do the impossible, hold and threaten Real.

***

Bayern emerged from the tunnel with a resolute air of calm. They had controlled the match thus far, now, in the second half, they were beholden to convert their convincing possession into a goal; total concentration was demanded, one lapse could be fatal. Stifle their desire with your collective poise. The coach was explicit.

Pizarro nudged the ball towards Makaay who blindly one-timed it to Ballack. The conductor. It was he who brought the strings into harmony with one another. At first, the crescendo began softly: a swift and graceful pass to Hargreaves on the right. The loudness gradually rose: Hargreaves constantly picking up speed along the touchline. Still rising: Hargreaves centered without breaking his stride. It began to culminate: Makaay rising concomitantly with the cross. The musical climax: Makaay connecting squarely with the cross and redirecting high and to the far left corner. Thereafter the cello note dissipates: only a foot wide, the ball screams by the post heading out of play. The note finally comes to an end: as the ball stops rolling several meters behind the net. Bayern continued where they have left off. The clock read 46:37.

“For the second half, I think that we should try to focus on the individual as much as possible,” Bauman suggested.

“In the arc of post-structuralist thought one of the things that is most salient is the fact that there is a concerted effort on the part of theory and theorists to resituate the individual at fore, to recognize their agency and effectivity amid the structures that they find themselves imbricated within. Confirmation of such a course change is echoed by Sharp et al. in their mapping out the later part of Foucault’s work,”6 he continued.

“Indeed,” Foucault confirmed. Turning towards Joanne Sharp, Paul Routledge, Chris Philo and Ronan Paddison, he continued:

“You were particularly interested in my focusing upon the individual. In my third volume of The History of Sexuality, I have suggested that “in a political space where the political structure of the city and the laws with which it is endowed have unquestionably lost some of their importance, although they have not ceased to exist for all that, and where the decisive elements reside more and more in men, in their decisions, in the manner in which they bring their authority to bear, in the wisdom they manifest in the interplay of equilibria and transactions, it appears that the art of governing oneself becomes a crucial political factor,”7

“Indeed. Foucault, dear sir, I find your focus on the individual, and the important role that they play, to be very much in accord with some of the considerations that my pragmatic approach was predicated upon. I have argued that “pragmatism and instrumental experience bring into prominence the importance of the individual. It is he who is the carrier of creative thought, the author of action, and of its application.”8 Thus, in that respect we agree. However, one of the nuances that distinguishes our work is the fact that you take a multitude of structures—as in epistemic and discursive—into account far more than I. This is not to say that I have completely neglected them, rather, it is just that I have chosen to focus more specifically on the structures of education because I have been chiefly concerned with seeing that individuals get all the tools that they need to carry out their creative thought in the most effective manner possible,” Dewey offered agreeingly.

“Well, to speak to what Foucault brought up earlier—that is with regards to his later privileging of the individual. Part of our goal in fleshing out entanglements of power was a) to further develop how power can be reconsidered vis-à-vis geography, but as well, b) to problematize the conception of power and it’s functioning. For instance, in further fleshing out the dynamics of power we sought to problematize things like de Certeau’s conception of strategies and tactics. In our work, we specifically take issue with simple binaries. De Certeau writes, strategy “postulates a place that can be delimited as its own and serve as the base from which relations with an exteriority composed of targets or threats (customers or competitors, enemies, the country surrounding the city, objectives and objects of research, etc.) can be managed,”9 whereas with a tactic he explains that it “is a calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus, […] [and it has] a mobility that must accept the chance offerings of the moment, and seize on the wing the possibilities that offer themselves at any given moment;”10 essentially tactics are “a clever utilization of time.”11 Thus, for de Certeau, strategies operate primarily in the realm of the spatial and tactics in that of the temporal. Our challenge to this becomes manifest when we highlight how “the word power comes from the Latin word potere, meaning ‘to be able’. In this sense, power should not be viewed solely as an attribute of the dominant, expressed as coercion or political control, since it is also present in the ability to resist,”12 therefore it is also present in the weak and the individual. Thus, part of what we were trying to do was to redress the weak and individual’s positioning within entanglements of power. Because realistically speaking, the weak are of course capable of strategizing.” Sharp spoke for the four of them.

“Who is the weak and the powerful with these two teams?” inquired George Rousseau.

“Both of these teams are considered superpowers, however, the book makers and coaches alike would probably agree that Real—due to their all-star lineup—are the most powerful team in Europe,” Bauman explained.

“Nevertheless, recognition of that power is important too. Take for example our match here. Bayern—though they thoroughly respect Real—are not by any means daunted by the formidable power of their opponent, instead they are busying themselves with playing a solid defensive and attacking game. You see there are gradients to recognition. Had Bayern been completely awed by Real, then that recognition of superiority, would have lent Real a significant degree of power over them. Naturally this could have had an adverse effect on their performance,” Sharp furthered.

After musing over Sharp’s critique of de Certeau, Longhurst—addressing Sharp, Routledge, Philo and Paddison—added:

“And I think that what your examination of power entanglements also does, is that it dispels the notion of power, or the powerful, as being easily represented through the metaphor of the body. We seem to forget far too often that the bodies of power that we speak of are not whole bodies by any means; they are fragmented13 and, at times, almost tenuously held together. Though we would like to think that we have come a long way from totalizing forms of thought, they nevertheless seem to tarry with respect to our conceptions of bodies of power. In part, what my work seeks to do is to problematize the way the body is represented. Thus in theory, the metaphoric body is far too often conceived as being a clean, airtight container, when in actual fact this is never the case. I question the quixotic use of the body. The body is often that which “breaks its boundaries—urinates, bleeds, vomits, farts, engulfs tampons, objects of sexual desire, ejaculates and gives birth. The reason this is significant is that the messiness of bodies is often conceptualised as feminised and as such is Othered.”14

“That is one of the reasons why we have sought recourse to the apposite metaphor of the hermaphrodite is because it “does not imply or refer back to a lost unity […], [and] neither are its separations and nonidentities the result of lack or prohibition,”15 Shaviro confidently offered.

“I have read your article and am familiar with your work, on page 78, you write: “the hermaphrodite requires a third party (the insect) so that the female part may be fertilized, or so that the male part may fertilize,”16 I would underline that it is nevertheless problematic that the women must forever be acted upon and not have the agency to act herself,”17 Butler—citing by memory—caustically replied.

“I find it important to extend Longhurst’s insight that only the cleanliest, whole,
airtight—essentially male bodies which get invoked. First, Payne would you agree that this occurrence is very much in keeping with a general phallogocentrism of academic discourse?” Sawchuk asked him.

“Of course,” responded Payne. He felt that he really no part to play in this discussion.

“Okay then…” she said while crossing something off her yellow pad of paper. Sawchuk turned to Longhurst.

“Second, I believe that, though you are right to point out that the male is always naturally invoked when the body is named, there is another reason for the eschewal of the “fluid, volatile, messy, leaky bodies”18 in academic discourse that I would have liked to see you explore a little further. This avoidance also occurs because the porous and leaky body implies the dissolution and decomposition generally attributed to death; of course, as always death is that which we don’t speak about. In fact, one can locate this in your text, when you lament that “one of the downsides of social constructionism though is that is [sic] can render the body incorporeal, fleshless, fluidless, little more than a linguistic territory. The materiality of bodies becomes reduced to systems of signification."19 In this passage we witness how your speech contiguously addresses an attenuation of life—you are hovering around the mention of death. And just as it has been said that there has been a death of the author, so too has there been a death of the body, only you are very careful to strictly address it at a metonymical remove—you seem reticent about confronting the subject of death,” Sawchuk mentioned while furiously jotting and doodling on her pad.

“The reason why I bring this up, is because I find that same tension can be felt in my article, in that
“biotourism is the fantasy that one can voyage into the interior space of the body without intervening in its life processes, with silent footsteps, without leaving a trace,”20 essentially, without bringing about
death,” Sawchuk concluded.

“That is certainly something that I don’t address in too much detail in that article, but I must admit that I did notice the tension too,” agreed Longhurst.

Sitting just behind Sawchuk, was a woman who appeared to have been following the entire conversation up until this point. She leaned forward to speak.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation here—I am Sherene Razack, I teach at OISE in Toronto,” she exclaimed.

There was an instant reaction from some of the interlocutors who had heard of her before.

“May I join this discussion?” she asked.

“By all means,” Bauman said most graciously.

“I have recently read your article Robyn, and one of the most salient parts—and something we could have easily glanced over, is your mention of Dorn’s warning that “we must not take ‘flight from the messiness of disability into myth and metaphor.’”21 I believe he makes an important caution when he warns how the “feminist poststructuralist work on shifting locations, fluid and multiple identities and nomadic forms of thought is underpinned by ableist assumptions” (Ibid). Some poststructuralist thought presupposes that the individual actor has a certain ability, a certain mobility, a certain intelligence, etc. Is it not possible that some of these notions somewhat neglect the fact that some individuals cannot partake in becoming, nomadology, etc. because they are constrained and confined by complex and interlocking forms of oppression? In short, is not possible that we donot all possess the same space to maneuver? It is for reasons such as these that I am reticent about fully embracing some of poststructuralism’s concepts. I feel that one of the potential dangers of invoking their notions, is that
we can far too easily operate on the presupposition that there is an equal potential for becoming, nomadology, etc. amongst the actors that we are speaking about—and that such a presupposition masks the specific power relations that engender particular forms of constraint that circumscribe and individuate potential. I am well aware that the theorists who beget these notions are themselves completely cognizant that the subject we theorize about is always already imbricated within a network of relations and that their ideas are conceived of with that in mind, however, we mustn’t forget the disjuncture between saying and being.22 Or, as I have said in my book Looking White People in the Eye: “How much of a choice is it to flee poverty and starvation in lands ravaged by a global economy dominated by the First World? Who is ultimately responsible for such flight?”23 posed Razack.

Deleuze turned directly towards her before beginning to speak.

“Well, as I am certainly one the culprits you target—however obliquely—in your critique, I feel it necessary to speak to you and respond to your qualms and queries. I submit though that the things that we have advanced in our plateaus is really not so exclusive and rigid as you have just intimated—” Guattari decided to interject.

“—Yes, we believe that one may use these ideas in the ways that are beneficial to them. In fact whether one was to find a number of useful things or even nothing at all in their plateaus, we have created them in order to encourage creativity—and certainly not to disseminate rigid concepts which serve to preclude one’s becoming—” Deleuze continued where Guattari had left off.

“—Nevertheless, with that said, I do believe you make an important methodological point of
consideration; one that should remind the user of such concepts that it would be a fallacy to assume that their
subjects of inquiry all possess the same point of departure. Therefore, a certain analytical rigour is of course
required on the part of the theorist,” Deleuze responded ever so calmly.

“Sherene, I found—I mean we found—it particularly intriguing when you spoke of ‘complex and interlocking forms of oppression,’ because this resonates with our argument about how “resistance in one place may therefore be complicit with domination in another.”24 In this respect, we truly find the work of Arjun Appadurai and Doreen Massey to be useful in the disinterring and expounding of the salient corollaries that occur as a result of positioning, space and exterior flows and influences. Additionally, this is a point that brings the disjunctures between North American feminism and the internationally peripheral feminist fractions to the fore. It reveals that if the third wave of feminism is going to strengthen and develop in an innovatively fruitful manner, then such disjunctures will need to be bridged.” Joanne Sharp said, again speaking for the four of them.

“Yes indeed. Part of my primary concerns is fleshing out how some subjects can simultaneously occupy positions of oppression and empowerment within the spheres of education and the law—thus as you pointed understanding one’s positioning is imperative,” Razack responded in complete accord.

“Something that we all seem to be hovering around is that many of the analyses are marked by a theoretical reticence—or by theory that balkingly operates on a certain level of generality; this is, of course, intentional. It is indicative of the general post-structuralist approach: walk softly and be parsimonious about the generalizations you make. This cautiousness should not be construed as a lack of confidence in making assertions, rather, it stems from a heighten wisdom, one that recognizes that plurality and contingency severely challenge the formulation of theory; it is by no means an uncertainty, rather, it is a honed awareness. Moreover, with this level of theoretical generality, it is incumbent upon the academic, social activist and individual to thereafter put a greater emphasis on doing rather than merely saying; talk is cheap. If these kinds of analyses are not pragmatically applied, or considered during application, then there is the potential of rendering such works useless or tenuous in their rigour. Indeed, this potential danger is echoed by Joanne et al. when they warn that “there is a danger in what is too often the metaphorical nature of space-talk about ‘margins’, ‘decentrings’ and so on, without a concomitant concern with the related issue of the material manifestation of spaces wherein domination and resistance are outworked,”25 Hutcheon posited.

It was at this point that Ballack, who had been successfully orchestrating a number of forays in the Real’s half, lost possession to Zidane. Never failing to make the most pivotal of passes, Zidane immediately played an acute throughball to Rinaldo who was already running on goal. Kuffour had succeeded in closely marking him for the entire game, however, this time around Rinaldo’s speed and tricky footwork graced him the smallest of openings just on the left side of goal. Taking full of advantage of this fleeting instance, Rinaldo toe-poked the ball to the far right corner. Unfortunately, he didn’t connect with the ball well enough to give it the force it needed to get past the keeper. Thus, Kahn easily smothered the ball. Bouncing the ball while waiting for his teammates to get into opportune positions, Kahn yelled some words of encouragement. The captain was expected to rally his troops.

The clearance found its way to Ballack who managed to nod it down for Hargreaves on the right. Hargreaves immediately passed it on to Pizarro who was open further down the line. Up until this point Pizarro had been having a disappointing game, only one shot on goal. For a Bayern Munich striker this was completely
unacceptable—embarrassing even. But things were about to change. Managing to outpace Helguera ever so slightly, Pizarro delivered a pin-point cross to Makaay—who in Helguera’s absence—had no trouble in heading this gift into the top-left corner. This beautiful play—a chance encounter of two separate vectors—engendered the pandemonium that followed. The polyphony within the Olympiastadion succeeded in doing the impossible, rising to an even greater intensity. Every Bayern player—both on the field and on the bench—was now gunning for Makaay. Euphoria. They needed to touch the man who had just written history, the man who had just scored on Real Madrid. Makaay ran straight for the president of the club and embraced him. Prior to the match, he had told Makaay that would score against Real, this was a way of showing thanks. At this point, during the chaos of a goal, the referee allowed a substitution to be made. Pizarro would be making way for Santa Cruz. This didn’t matter though, Pizarro knew he had done his part. And the clock read 75:04, fifteen minutes away from history.

“One of the flagrant goals of post-structuralism—at least as exemplified through the work Deleuze and Guattari—is a desire to readdress and thereafter redress human subjectivity and agency. Desire, it would appear, is a chief concern of theirs. Fearful of imposed structures, they posit the rhizome as means of aiding and abetting the flow of desire; without perniciously directing, controlling or circumscribing it.26 Flow is important. Desire is a flow that exists a priori to the subject-object. Streaming, rushing, unfolding, developing—becoming. Within a movement of lines, it does happen, from time to time, that they might coalesce and culminate into producing something like the goal we have just seen; Makaay and his teammates were propelled by a flow of desire. Indeed, desire appears to be one of the most important elements of an individual’s existence. While desire is understood as being incredibly elusive in that it cannot be represented or completely grasped, it would seem that there are, and have been, persistent efforts to define and control it. For reasons such as these—and surely others—desire is one of the cornerstones of Gilles and Félix’s work; for them desire is sacrosanct,” Foucault being the first to speak after this cataclysmic moment.

“I cherish desire as well. It is central to both the individual and the group’s development. I have said that “symbols in turn depend upon and promote communication. The results of conjoint experience are considered and transmitted. Events cannot be passed from one to another, but meanings may be shared by means of signs. Want and impulses are then attached to common meanings. They are thereby transformed into desires and purposes, which, since they implicate a common or mutually understood meaning, present new ties, converting a conjoint activity into a community of interest and endeavor,””27 Dewey offered for consideration. He had never read any of Deleuze and Guattari’s work, so this was detective work; he listened closely for any points of commonality or difference, these fragments would yield an adumbrative—and hopefully working—map of their thought.

Many of the other interlocutors were now intensely following the game. With Bayern taking the lead, Real were given a new impetus to fight. These were tense moments. Somehow having the lead was far more stressful than working to get it. The game was in their hands and the multiplicity of songs and chants coming from the crowd buttressed it.

Salgado was standing on the right touchline near the center half. Real had a throw-in. He was surveying the field to choose who he’d throw to. As it happened, Figo sprinted forward offering him a target. Salgado recognized this and released at once. Figo, chesting the ball down and turning simultaneously, had decided he was going to run on goal. Demichelis wagered a slidetackle, but immediately realized that he shouldn’t of. Figo had been diving the entire game. He was just one of those players who would dive at the slightest moment of contact. If you do it from time to time it’s a tactic, but when you set out with the express goal of eliciting either free kicks or cards against your opponent it’s a strategy. And sure enough the referee called this one. Demichelis silently shook his head. Kovac glanced at him—they both knew that this was ridiculous. Figo was still on the ground clutching his ankle in ‘agony’; he often impressed himself with his acting abilities; it was consoling to know that he had other talents to draw upon after retirement. Beckham and Roberto Carlo were already conferring with one another about how they would execute this free kick. Bayern were only mildly nervous: first, the free kick was forty-five yards out; and second, Kahn was in nets. There was one reason to worry though, Beckham. He was widely considered to be the finest free kick taker in the world. A number of teams had seen score lines dramatically change as a result of his masterful strokes. Beckham had the uncanny ability of combining speed, movement and accuracy in every kick. Thus, not only would the keeper be troubled by the pinpoint and accelerated nature of the kick, but Beckham would curve the ball in such a way that it would belie its true trajectory. Everyone had taken their positions. Kahn yelled at his human-wall to move slightly to the right. Now they were ready. The referee surveyed the field one last time to ensure that everything was in order, and then blew the whistle to take the free kick. Both Beckham and Roberto Carlos began sprinting to the ball—teams often did this to confuse the keeper. Everyone waited for Roberto Carlos to run over the ball and let Beckham take it. Surprisingly Roberto Carlos made full contact—it was indeed he who would take this one. The human-wall jumped in unison, bracing themselves for impact. However, Roberto Carlos has chosen to shot low and to the right. The ball innocuously slipped underneath the coordinated leap. Though a little surprised, this was nothing that Kahn couldn’t handle; and so he dove low and to his left. But then in a moment of complete terror, Kahn saw their victory slip from his grasp. In diving he had extended his left arm for stability and had hoped to hug the ball with his right. Unfortunately, what occurred instead, was that he ended up deflecting the kick into his own net just underneath his left armpit. A solemn silence set upon the Olympiastadion; what had been a bastion of sound up until this point, was now a mute and precariously vulnerable structure. An Achilles’ heel had been found. It wasn’t his most powerful shot, but it nonetheless accomplished its task. Roberto Carlos, with his usual arrogance, nodded as he received thanks, hugs and pats from his teammates. Kahn was truly alone. No sympathy could change the fact that he had single-handedly let his team down. And the clock read 82:14.

“It would appear as though poststructuralist thought—especially in its awareness of aleatory
circumstances—affords a recognition of the erratic and irrational propensity that is part and parcel of being human. The subject is not always a rational one.” Foucault voiced, realizing that many of his colleagues were still in shock.

Sawchuk shaking her head as if to get out of a trance, glanced over at Longhurst who was still very much wrapped up the events that had just transpired. So Sawchuk chose to address the group instead.

“I find that Longhurst’s article leavens some of the themes that I have been reflecting upon for some time. It is this disavowal of the full gamut of human nature—specifically that which consists of the erratic, irrational, unclean, ‘in between’ spaces, etc. which are complicated and for that reason often avoided entirely. As Longhurst makes us realize, our body testifies to the fact that we leak, we are at times irrational, erratic, in between, in error, etc.,”28 she remarked.

“I sometimes believe that it is for reasons such as these, that has been a confluence between communications and biology research,” Foucault mused aloud. Sharp waited to see if he was going to continue that thought; when he didn’t, she began:

“It is particularly important to keep in mind when mapping out the power dynamics of any space, that the potential for resistance is always already present, it merely needs to be uncovered. Obviously this is easier said then done. It certainly appears as though much of that which is of concern within analyses of power is the illumination of or an attempt to limn—however adumbratively—its dynamics, networks and more precisely, the spaces in between. In fact, the elucidation of those spaces in between is often that which feminism is chiefly concerned with; for it is amid those spaces that the seed of resistance is planted; it is within and through those spaces—which potentially offer Cixousian sorties—that jouissance can manifest, circulate, and claim as one’s own. We have argued that it is truly in the “obscure corners, the hidden spaces in the alleys and forests away from the scaffold, where rebelliousness of all kinds—countless resistant thoughts and acts—could ferment.”29 With respect the Kahn’s mishap, his role and location—that is being the keeper in Bayern’s goal—underscores a duality of power, but one that is reversed. Power demonstrates itself in the saves that he makes, however, the ever present vulnerability of the goal reveals itself as well—especially in cases such as these. Power lends itself to both the oppressor and the oppressed in manifold ways. But the point is that power does lend itself.”

“Power is always lent to us; more than we know. We are always within its web. We are fulcrums of power. It acts upon us, and we in turn help it carry itself out,” Foucault added.

“Because of Kahn’s mishap, Bayern run the risk of breaking with their tradition,” remarked Bauman.

“What tradition is that? inquired Longhurst without taking her eyes off the field.

“Never having lost to Real at home,” offered Guattari.

“Accident and tradition as two dimensions of time are not contradictory, you know,”30 Massumi pointed out. He continued: “In fact, it might be argued that football clubs like Bayern and Real have—on numerous occasions—built their respective traditions upon accidental results.”

“Sorry to change the subject, but I was interested in talking about your concept of heterotopias before we conclude here,” Rousseau finally said, speaking to Foucault.

“Well, to speak effectively of heterotopias we would need a working example or a locus of inquiry,” responded Foucault.

“I find Les ailes des modes could be construed as a heterotopia of compensation. Why? Well, it is a site of aesthetic perfection, a space that is ordered, arranged and polished. A place whereby one can behold, move through and purchase equally aestheticized elements; it is a space where the seeing, circulating within and consumption of aesthetically perfected elements compensates for the fragmented, chaotic and incomplete nature of our lives and ourselves.31 It is a space that Benjamin would find very intriguing,” Massumi said thinking aloud.

“I think that works but I am not so sure that everyone here is familiar with this locus,” van Wyck responded.

“Okay I think I have it, the team’s locker room is somewhat like a heterotopia of deviation in that houses male forms of behaviour that—had they become manifest elsewhere—might be construed as deviant, homosexual, etc.” Rousseau offered unconfidently.

“This is a somewhat forced association in that I explicate heterotopias of deviation as “those in which individuals whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm are placed,”32 soccer players are not as a rule placed and forced to live within such a site. Nevertheless, the fact the locker room affords unconventional forms of male interaction is a salient and interesting point. I should like to discuss it with you further later on,” Foucault responded, clearly intrigued.

Even two minutes into overtime, Bayern were still pressing forward in waves, hoping to recuperate the win. At this point Real were satiated with a draw, they knew that they had been lucky today. The score line indicated an ostensible parity between the two teams, but for those who had seen the match it was clear that Real had been completely outplayed.

“Well, I would like to thank everyone for their attendance and valuable participation. I believe we succeeded in effectively trying to understand each other and further flesh out one another’s thoughts. Have yourselves a good night.” Bauman concluded.

“Oh wait, I nearly forgot! For those of you who have not paid me yet—such as Michel…” Bauman began, realizing that he had already gone. “Where did he go?” a concerned Bauman asked.

And with the final whistle, the game ended 1-1. The primal accident had nearly been averted. In games such as these threat looms large. Threat is equivocal by nature. You can never really know what threat holds in store. Now that the threat had made good on itself, the impetus was set for the return leg in Madrid. The event of the accident had completely redefined Bayern’s second-leg strategy. They were no longer going to Madrid looking to keep the scores nil, nil. Now they had to score—earlier than later—if they wanted to advance to the next round. And, of course, the threat of Real getting the early goal was already in the minds of each Bayern player.

Turning towards Massumi and van Wyck, Virilio concluded: “Kahn’s accident, that moment of contingency, is in fact the catalyst for that which is about to follow. Thus, the die has been cast.”33

Bibliography

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Deleuze, Gilles and Claire Parnet. “A Conversation: What Is It? What Is It For?” Trans. B. Habberjam H. Tomlinson. Dialogues. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977. pp. 1-35.

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—. “The Search of the Great Community [1927].” The Essential Dewey: Pragmatism, Education, Democracy. Ed. Larry A. Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander. Vol. 1. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. pp. 293-306.

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Rousseau, Georges. “No Sex Please, We’re American: Erotophobia, Liberation, and Cultural History.” Cultural History after Foucault. Ed. John Neubauer. New York: Walter de Gruyter Inc., 1999. pp. 3-36.

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Shaviro, Steve. “Appendix: Deleuze and Guattari’s Theory of Sexuality.” Out of Bounds: The Cinematic Body. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. pp. 66-79.

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Notes

1 The term an ecology of calm, stems from my conversation with Neil Balan, on March 2, 2004 at 10:41 am, on the corner of Girouard and Sherbrooke West, in which he offered this incredibly apposite description of Dr. Peter van Wyck.

2 Dewey, John. “The Search of the Great Community [1927].” The Essential Dewey: Pragmatism, Education, Democracy. Ed. Larry A. Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander. Vol. 1. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. pp.
299.

3 Bauman, Zygmunt. “Two Sources of Communalism.” Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity, 2001. pp. 60.

4 Virilio, Paul. “The Primal Accident.” The Politics of Everyday Fear. Ed. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. pp. 215.

5 These insights come from our fourth week’s discussion (Narratives of Failure and Crisis) which was chaired by Dr. Peter van Wyck.

6 Sharp, Joanne P., Paul Routledge, Chris Philo and Ronan Paddison. “Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance.” Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance. Ed. Sharp et al. London: Routledge, 2000. pp. 18.

7 Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: The Care of the Self. Vol. III. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986a, pp. 89.

8 Dewey, John. “The Development of American Pragmatism [1925].” The Essential Dewey: Pragmatism, Education, Democracy. Ed. Larry A. Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander. Vol. 1. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. pp. 12.

9 de Certeau, Michel. “Making-Do: Uses and Tactics.” Trans. Steven Rendall. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. pp. 36.

10 Ibid. pp. 37.

11 Ibid. pp. 38-39.

12 Sharp, Joanne P., Paul Routledge, Chris Philo and Ronan Paddison. “Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance.” Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance. Ed. Sharp et al. London: Routledge, 2000. pp. 3.

13 Ibid, pp. 22.

14 Longhurst, Robyn. “Corporeographies.” Bodies: Fluid Boundaries. New York: Routledge, 2001. pp. 23.

15 Shaviro, Steve. “Appendix: Deleuze and Guattari’s Theory of Sexuality.” Out of Bounds: The Cinematic Body. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. pp. 77.

16 Ibid, pp. 78.

17 This critique has to be credited to Heather Neville, who pointed it out to both Neil Balan and I during our discussion of week two’s readings (Gettin’ in the Groove: The Structures of Sexual).

18 Longhurst, Robyn. “Corporeographies.” Bodies: Fluid Boundaries. New York: Routledge, 2001. pp. 23.

19 Ibid, pp. 23.

20 Sawchuk, Kim. “Biotourism, Fantastic Voyage, and Sublime Inner Space.” Wild Science: Reading Feminism. Ed. Janine Marchessault and Kim Sawchuk. New York: Routledge, 2000. pp. 21.

21 Ibid, pp. 24.

22 Razack, Sherene H. Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. pp. 24.

23 Ibid, pp. 28.

24 Sharp, Joanne P., Paul Routledge, Chris Philo and Ronan Paddison. “Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance.” Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance. Ed. Sharp et al. London: Routledge, 2000. pp. 24.

25 Ibid, pp. 27.

26 Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. “Rhizome.” Trans. Brian Massumi. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. pp. 14.

27 Dewey, John. “The Search of the Great Community [1927].” The Essential Dewey: Pragmatism, Education, Democracy. Ed. Larry A. Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander. Vol. 1. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. pp. 296.

28 Longhurst, Robyn. “Corporeographies.” Bodies: Fluid Boundaries. New York: Routledge, 2001. pp. 30.

29 Sharp, Joanne P., Paul Routledge, Chris Philo and Ronan Paddison. “Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance.” Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance. Ed. Sharp et al. London: Routledge, 2000. pp. 13.

30 Massumi, Brian. “Everywhere You Want to Be: Introduction to Fear.” The Politics of Everyday Fear. Ed. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. pp. 7.

31 Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics. Spring, (1986): 27.

32 Ibid, pp. 25.

33 Virilio, Paul. “The Primal Accident.” The Politics of Everyday Fear. Ed. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. pp. 217.