Imagined Communities

Posted: October 30th, 2012 | Author: EB | Filed under: RESPONSES-TO READINGS | Comments Off

A nice visualization of some of our imaginary borders >>>

 

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Questions about “Communities”

Posted: September 26th, 2012 | Author: SH | Filed under: RESPONSES-TO READINGS | Comments Off

Hi y’all,

After class today a few of us started talking about “communities” and it helped to articulate some blocs I’ve been having, so I figured I’d open the conversation to the group.  In order to be clear I will organize the following thoughts that came up around four questions:

What, communities?

Who, communities?

Why, communities?  and,

How, communities?

What’s maybe not surprising here is that the seemingly more straightforward term, namely communities (vs. experimental), has turned out to be more demanding terrain, at least for me.

If any of you feel inclined I would love to brainstorm some of these basic questions that we don’t always have time to talk about in class. I’ll also offer my thoughts where I have some.

 

I. WHAT, communities?

What are we each referring to when we say communities/community? Do we have different standards for the term? Where do these understandings come from?

Do we count “a sense of community” as our objective for the class, or are we reserving the term for something more formal? More organized? More lasting? More materially productive? Can communities occur between two people? Can communities be anonymous? What duration do/must communities have to be communities?

 

Can we come up with a list of different kinds of communities? A few of us already discussed at least these:

a) Intentional Communities:
-not given but chosen, with links of affinity around shared and intended goals
-sometimes requiring a element of privilege, necessary for the members to exit their given situation and pursue a preferential alternative

b) Identity based communities
- the convergence of peoples around given and/or chosen materially-based similarities of subjugation (lifestyle, race, class, profession, gender, sexuality, etc.)
- identity is maintained as a force of convergence by way of exclusion: I am this, not that. Or, I am not that, and thus this—an identification of self and/vs. other. Agency is thus provided by the solidarity of sameness and self-sameness (I AM this thing), while also threatening to reduce subjects to one-dimensional or injured states of constitution.

c) Family
-institutionally codified bonds of kinship that support projects of nation-state, survival, and inheritance
-the unit liable for responsibilities of production and reproduction in a neo-liberal, capitalist state
-a model capable of being “queered” through non-kinship bonds of affinity, non-coupled forms of intimacy and care, non-gender-based divisions of labor, and/or communal consumption practices.

More…?

 

II. WHO, communities?

As hinted at by the above examples, the question arises of who is able to be a part of what kinds of communities, who is positioned in what kinds of communities, and who may benefit from what kinds of communities. What meaningful distinctions might we want to make about community that one is rendered a part of through structural oppression, i.e. through a sort of negativity of the conditions of removed of agency, vs. a community that one enters into as a way of seeking the production of some life-world, i.e. an additive or positive form of agency? Is it useful to think in terms of communities of privilege and oppression, of choice and subjugation?  Is this a productive paradigm for our intents/projects?

Further, are there people for whom community- regardless of whether it is chosen or given or necessary- is not available? Or, not even desirable?

Isolation has been historically reveal as a technology for rendering structural oppression opaque; in the case of the gender division of labor, for example, 2^nd wave feminists harnessed the Marxist analysis of false-consciousness and proletariat revolution through consciousness-raising groups which worked by way of simply coming together and sharing personal experiences in order to reveal larger political structures. However, I would want to wonder about people for whom solitude either provides some sort of agency- some safe space, or who are radically incapable of communality- say those suffering from PTSD or “the insane.” In other words, while there are high stakes in resisting the cult of the individual that many theorists would agree is the engine of our late-capitalist, neo-liberal state, the capacity to function in community, i.e. sociality, also operates as a highly normalizing prescriptive.  Which brings me to the next question:

 

III. WHY, communities?

I’ll be brief here, since many of the concerns are involved in the above already.

- community as (political) resistance to individualist consumption and responsibility?
- community as agency/strength in numbers?
- community as visibility and intelligibility? (I am thinking here of both ACT UP and OCCUPY…)
- community as a human necessity: care, concern, security, material support?
- community in order to provide a safe space? A space of affirmation?
- community as a space for becoming? (How, for example, is the development of sexuality dependent on being with others? How is the stylization of comportment flourished upon and fine-tuned in the bodily company of other and for others?)

More…?

 

and finally,

 

IV. HOW, communities?

By this I mean two things:

a)    How might we engage the topic in our class and in the context of art?

b)   How do communities emerge, or what are their conditions of possibility?

 

4a) To be reductive, we could, in the least, engage community as:
- the topic that our project is taking up, i.e. communities in general or specific communities
- Are there artists y’all like that work with communities in this way?

Or

- the media or method of our work, i.e. engaging a gesture of creating communities or a communal situation
- Are there artists y’all like that create (experimental) communities in this way?

4b) How do communities form? What creates a sense of community? What qualities do we associate with community (e.g. trust?, concern?, affinity?, convergence?, exchange?, support?, touch?), and how are these fostered?

Further, would it be possible to engage the topic of communities at this third level of what I might call techniques or technologies of community, within the scope of our class intentions?

 

 

 

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Monochrome Landscape (Green)

Posted: March 28th, 2009 | Author: VF | Filed under: RESPONSES-TO READINGS, Uncategorized | 120 Comments »

Monochrome Landscape (Green) by Laura Kurgar intro by Yates McKee (p. 534)