[Nettime-bold] 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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