I haven't read the book, but your characterization of it (plus other reviews I've read such as LARB) suggest to me that this is (Neo)Marxism-at-work, which is what I'd expect from Verso: i.e., those who disagree are capitalist dupes. I've heard that argument for 30 years, and it would probably be longer but that's as long as I've been in this business.
How do you see it in relation to your own accounting of style in Lingua Fracta and elsewhere?
Also I'd be curious about the notion of immediacy as anthropocentric as there are a lot of calculations happening during that eye blink. Maybe this has to do with the dopamine loop, though as we know there's a difference between an addiction to nicotine (where a drag on a cigarette produces a predictable response) and an addition to gambling or social media (where pulling the lever or refreshing the site does not). The point is that in the latter case there are many things happening.
I think this connects with writing instruction, which is more like a gamble than an inoculation.
Hey, Alex! It's great to see you out and about lately--I hope you're doing well. You're absolutely right about the Marxist bent of Immediacy, and its anthropocentrism, I think. My treatment here of the latter is light, because honestly, there are much better people than I to answer it. I think there's something to the links K poses between these different ideas, but there's also something lost in the linkage. In the case of DH, for example, Jockers, Ramsay, and others were definitely about more than reducing reading to a single scale of activity (and that's just one particular thread of a much more variable 'field').
I wonder too if there isn't some overlap between that point about addiction and the stuff I'm thinking about wrt accountability. I'm thinking specifically of Schull's Addiction by Design, which really looks closely at that latter case of addiction (pulling levers in Vegas). There's something to the idea that addiction (and/or dopamine) is being used inadvertently to mythify screens (eg, the discourse around Haidt's new book), keeping us from interrogating the apparatus around them.
I haven't read the book, but your characterization of it (plus other reviews I've read such as LARB) suggest to me that this is (Neo)Marxism-at-work, which is what I'd expect from Verso: i.e., those who disagree are capitalist dupes. I've heard that argument for 30 years, and it would probably be longer but that's as long as I've been in this business.
How do you see it in relation to your own accounting of style in Lingua Fracta and elsewhere?
Also I'd be curious about the notion of immediacy as anthropocentric as there are a lot of calculations happening during that eye blink. Maybe this has to do with the dopamine loop, though as we know there's a difference between an addiction to nicotine (where a drag on a cigarette produces a predictable response) and an addition to gambling or social media (where pulling the lever or refreshing the site does not). The point is that in the latter case there are many things happening.
I think this connects with writing instruction, which is more like a gamble than an inoculation.
Hey, Alex! It's great to see you out and about lately--I hope you're doing well. You're absolutely right about the Marxist bent of Immediacy, and its anthropocentrism, I think. My treatment here of the latter is light, because honestly, there are much better people than I to answer it. I think there's something to the links K poses between these different ideas, but there's also something lost in the linkage. In the case of DH, for example, Jockers, Ramsay, and others were definitely about more than reducing reading to a single scale of activity (and that's just one particular thread of a much more variable 'field').
I wonder too if there isn't some overlap between that point about addiction and the stuff I'm thinking about wrt accountability. I'm thinking specifically of Schull's Addiction by Design, which really looks closely at that latter case of addiction (pulling levers in Vegas). There's something to the idea that addiction (and/or dopamine) is being used inadvertently to mythify screens (eg, the discourse around Haidt's new book), keeping us from interrogating the apparatus around them.
(Hmm, I need to think about this more!)
cgb
I'm curious what you'll write about this in terms of writing pedagogy. Looking forward to seeing the next post.
It took a while, John, but I finally got there :) https://cgbrooke.substack.com/p/airball