Hiya all,

I don't want to spoil readings of today's teenagers having no sense of
irresponsibility as it is open, as is readings of control, yet I will
risk some further comments on what I can get from this.

First, control is not a good or evil thing but a divergent series of
problematics. From this questions can then be posed. This is my little
disagreement with Heidegger here in terms of phenomenology and his
reading of Nietzsche where one must step back even further then basic
questions as Heidegger suggests to the setting up of the problematic
series itself. (From memory: Why is he taken so many steps back? To
make a large leap forward. In N, BGE.) This then also opens a critique
of Derrida who following Heidegger sets up language as the basic question
in _Of Grammatology_ which implies language as problematic and which I
argue is a false problem which then obscures what is outside the text
allowing Deconstruction to elide into Hegelian-deconstruction and
transcendent Cartesianism. The corrective is then to re-read _Of
Grammatology_ as a problematic divergent series of control where control
is the problem and hence the basic question is not language as such
but control.

Responsibility is interesting in terms of recent media technologies,
like IT and the Internet. What does interactive media such as this
demand but a response. This analysis of interactive media can be
extended to television also as an interactive medium demanding a
response. (Nothing new in that analysis, BTW.) So to say today's
teenagers have no sense of irresponsibility can mean having no sense of
not having to response to media. Even stopping your children or limiting
and supervising their exposure to such media as some idiotic parental
advice givers say does not diminish this need to respond. Further this
is not just limited to today's teenagers but is cross generational so we
have what is a sort of generational collapse in the traditional
distinctions between generations. Now, in analysing this one could look
to Zizek's Cartesian analysis of cyberspace and in following this
through arrive at a basic dualism which stops thought. That is,
curiosity as needed for thought is killed in the Cartesian dualism of
cyberspace. One is caught in needing to respond and hence in terms of
forces react and in so doing become enslaved by machines. Machinic
enslavement. We are not yet thinking. A Heidegger cry: Only a God can
save us now!

The working title of the next book in the Swindle series I am writing
is: _Swindle Book Two: The New Human God._

I think demographics are interesting and not unimportant but they are
not fundamental. Interesting because they add more dimensions to the
topology of the hypothesis I am suggesting. I'll leave out a discussion
of sense, here, as this involves an aesthetic questioning of the
problematic series of control where the problem is not the sublime
itself but control as moral epistemological problematics. Also, an
alternative analysis which would allow the series to continue and not be
cut short the way the Zizek Cartesianism is in terms of analysing
interactive media would be Foucault who lays out a theory of
statements produced or created in a field of immanence by non-human
agency which also leads to an interesting entanglement with Heidegger
and also leaves open escape routes which Zizek appears to
dismally shut off. I haven't read Foucault for over a decade now but
find myself drifting back to him since the new definition of
epistemology Foucault gives us seems a useful tool to open a way to
fold this Cartesian dead-end back onto Leibniz and lay out a new type
plane which is not properly speaking a transcendental or immanent plane
and both these previous planes must refer to this new plane which
is suggested or anticipated. (I call this new plane a transitional
plane which crosses thresholds, partly in reference to Leibniz.)

Anyways, just some sketched out thoughts. A bit difficult to cover the
analysis in a short email, so apologies if this don't make much sense.
All this, just for a novel? I must crazy.

best wishes

Chris Jones.




--

I should have been a gardener, I don't know why I wasn't. DEREK JARMAN