Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.55.0305261526080.15413@panix1.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Dispersion
Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 15:26:23 -0400 (EDT)
Dispersion The spews and emissions of the universe are of fundamental consequence; from plasmas through aerodynamics, particle fields through one-to-many electromagnetic transmitters, dispersion characterizes the world. Objects are temporary at best; objects cohere, disperse, decay, splinter, dissolve, discharge, as in decathexis. What cathects is temporary at best; 'defuge' is a basic process that sloughs attentivity and value. As groups form and dissolve, temporary genidentity structures local flows; one participates, drops out, identifies, decathects, and so forth, from birth to death; after death, the aura of effects transforms and continues, while the name and provenance become increasingly remote. Dispersion occurs on-line and off (Rheingold's Smart Mobs); packet transmission itself is both dispersion and coalescence. If a site does not acknowledge, error messages may be returned to the transmitter, as if they were growing fainter (they do not) with each passing communication, until the time limit is reached; then everything stops. Lost messages constantly float, as do disconnected webpages, dead-ended links, any forms of interruptions within the temporary flows and stases that constitute both inter- and intranets. Writing or programming or producing within these spaces, these paradigms, (which themselves are in flux) is problematic; hardware and software, languages and protocols, die out. There is an apocalyptic air to what can only be labeled _dispersion production,_ an air of disappearance which pervades the work produced; nothing is as permanent as modernism. What remains is the remnants or residue of audience, for whom the work is peripheral; instead, it is the political economy of the structure and state-space of the work, in terms of communality and accessibility, that determines its relative value. Genre, typology, typification, become irrelevant, replaced by situational analysis. What is functional is the occasion and occasioning of speech. And speech is not only _parole,_ momentary enunciation; it parasitizes writing and inscription. Inscriptive production problematizes and occasions dispersion production; dispersion production problematizes and occasions inscriptive production through speech and other communicative acts. We are mistaken to the extent we desire the occasion to override the occasional. The occasional is the kernel (to the extent that the kernel absorbs identity) of infinity; the disappearance of identity is also the disappearance of all products of labor, piecemeal or otherwise. That is why we say, "Nothing matters at all, except you!" "I am nothing without my fans!" "The use-value is replaced by the exchange value!" "You are everything to me!" ___