Jim
You brilliantly ask the right questions. However, in terms of 'spiritual
materialism' you ask questions of 'materialism' but few of 'spirituality.'
Like MATERIALISM (and I'm not sure if this is Marxist or Liberal or
Consumer) is ever - forever - the subject. Place the spiritual under the
same lens - OH NO! There is no sense in 'the sprirtual' but a human response
to material conditions/circumstance. That is - therefore = poetry.
What need of spirit when collectively and individually we are so utterly
broken?
Best wishes, Rupert
http://mallin.blogspot.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Andrews" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2009 8:40 PM
Subject: spiritual materialism
it is commonly observed that a great deal of contemporary art/writing
involves a double sense of 'the material'. the term is understood to refer
not only to the subject matter (the 'standard' understanding in writing) but
also the matter of the media in the piece, the material embodiment of the
piece. it's also commonly observed that the latter awareness of and approach
to composition not solely by ideation, meditation on the subject matter, but
also through operation on the material embodiment, has come to be much more
widely understood as a part of reading than it was a generation ago. when we
encounter work that does not follow the grammars and approaches
traditionally associated with work, we inquire into the methods of
composition, the approach to materiality, and look for relations between
those methods and approaches and the subject matter, or look for the subject
matter in the light of those things. and so read differently, thereby. and
in this way, we now read some literary work in ways that are closer to how
we approach a great deal of visual art.
but what i want to get at is something that isn't so commonly observed, at
the moment, but may be in the next generation. and that's the relation of
awareness of the materiality of writing/art to our ideas of who and what we
are. that's erm awkwardly stated. what i'm trying to get at is this. the
whole emphasis on materiality is involved in a larger movement to explore
how things like ideation, imagination, the spiritual, beauty, truth,
goodness, justice--all our ideals and things normally associated with the
immaterial--operate in the material world.
in this sense, we might say that the whole contemporary awareness of
materiality in art is part of a larger ah spiritual materialism. i googled
that term, after it occurred to me, and i assure you i'm using it in a
different sense than chögyam trungpa, who uses it "to describe mistakes
spiritual seekers commit which turn the pursuit of spiritualism into an ego
building and confusion creating endeavor" (wikipedia). instead, i'm refering
to a relatively common sort of philosophy in which the material substrate of
ideation and even the spiritual is affirmed and its relations with even the
flightiest of fancies are explored. not to denigrate or dismiss things like
spirituality but to explore how they operate materially.
perhaps more evidently, now, this is also related to philosophies of mind in
which the materiality of thought itself is affirmed--as a chemical and
informational process, however emergent--and the brain and the mind that
emerge from its processes are conceived as fully embodied in the material.
so that the idea of being able to create thinking machines (however unlike
us) becomes a real possibility. and we are conceptualized as nature's
(near?) ultimate machines. and machines are conceptualized not as the simple
things we once thought they must be but as often very complex biological
creatures that, nonetheless, are embodied in the material world and are,
therefore, subject to the constraints and possibilities of machines in the
material world.
to wrap it up, we now see the relation between contemporary artistic
emphasis on the materiality of writing/art and the larger moment of
'spiritual materialism'.
ja
http://vispo.com
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