<nettime> Index Online

[McKenzie Wark <mckenziewark@hotmail.com>]

All the signs are there. It's just a case of filtering. Index to this Fabulous
World is an ongoing project of textual filtering. Its premise is that the
information necessary to a critique of class society is not hidden or
falsified, but is there in plain view, on the surfaces of the media. All that
need be added is the concept of class society itself.

Critical theories of media have in the past chosen to critique the appearances
of media in terms of their adequacy as representation. With a sudden rush of
blood to the head, these theories gleefully exposes the inadequacy of the
representations they found in the media. But gradually, this result corroded,
and left critique disillusioned. Media woke up to critique and incorporated it
in a preemptive fashion. Meanwhile critique foundered on an inability to ground
it self outside representation. It found its footings no less susceptible to
critical 'interrogation' as to their representational adequacy.

But what if the sign were not taken as a representation, which can never be
anything but inadequate? What if it were taken, instead, as an index? An index,
as Peirce has it, would be the puff of smoke on the horizon, that leads us to
say to ourselves: "fire". The index does not represent, it differs. Smoke is
not 'like' fire, it is an aspect of it as an event.

This fabulous world of ours, where nothing represents anything, and where
anything that represents is nothing, is nevertheless rich in readable signs
when those signs are taken as an index, an index to the transformation of world
and signfication by class relations. Class relations that we may have every
reason to believe have entered a quite new qualitative phase of transformation.
Where there is smoke there is fire.

Index of this Fabulous World (1.0) is hosted by Fine Art Forum at:

http://www.fineartforum.org/Backissues/Vol_15/faf_v15_n09/text/feature.html

McKenzie Wark

________________________________________________________________

http://www.feelergauge.net/projects/hackermanifesto/version_2.0/
mckenziewark@hotmail.com is a temporary address. Please reply to
mw35@nyu.edu ... we no longer have roots, we have aerials ...
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