Despues del frenesi

HAce unos quince dias que termine con los examenes de doctorado y el frenesi de leer sin parar. SIgo leyendo sigo con trabajo y no se si algo realmente cambio demaciado, pero si se que al menos cerre por un tiempo esto de leer todo el dia el placer de seguir el hilo de las ideas que se me crucen y me den ganas de seguir, pero tambien las cuentas regresivas de textos. Quede relativamente contenta con lo que logre escribir y la defensa oral fue bien entretenida. Las preguntas rondaron alrededor de que es exactamente el movimiento, como estudiarlo, cual la relacion entre movilidad de algunos e inmovilidad de otros, razones politicas del trabajo, profundidad historica precolonial, que es indigeneidad para mi, que es lo que cambia si cambia la movilidad y que no cambia si no cambia, cual es la relacion con el tiempo, LA verda que finalmente en el dialogo aprendi un monton, despues del trauma de escribir encerrada, en donde tamien calculo que se aprende pero en un estado de frenesi total.

la unica cosa en la que me dejo pensando es lo tremandamente individual que es el proceso, un paso mas a que eso que es el proyecto de uno se transforme en un centro en si mismo. me resulto muy raro en un lugar, por alguna razon mas rponnciado aun que en arg dnde uno es parte de una genealogia mas marcada, habla desde un grupo y hace movidas dentro de avanzadas mas colectivas. y sin embargo la academia arg fragmenta, en lo cotidiano y atrinchera de algun modo en las charlas, mientras que aca los dialogos con todos los puntos de contacto del probelame que uno encare son casi obligatorios y multiples.

Bueno ahora la pregunta es como encarar al campo para seguir pensando y armando algo pero de otra forma. Esa es la pregunta central de estos dias y algo que comprati en mi charla que fue mas dialogo que charla que di el viernes pasado en el learning community del depto.

esta es una entrada que nunca termine y deje abierta con la idea de completar tambien con resumenes de las charlas del congreso de antropo gringo, cosa que no se si pase. voy a seguir con entradas cortas hasta que enganche de vuelta a laburar a traves del blog y esto se transforme en un cuaderno de campo, con informacion no sencible claro.

Twitter and the World Simulation

este tipo es lo mas.

CAT STEVENS ... the wind

para las noches de insmnio. eramos tan hippies.

Comentarios sobre la parte teorica

My decision to focus on the constitution of subjectivities rather than on the making of indigenous identities has been generated by several factors: a) the limitations that many authors have noted regarding the studies that only focus on “identity”, b) an attempt to find an alternative to the unsolved debates over the celebration or critique of indigeneity, c) an interest in being able to discuss what type of subjects are generated in moments in which identity is not fully-articulated, d) an attempt to examine the entanglements in which subjectivities exceed a single dimension. In other words, my starting point is Marisol de la Cadena’s and Orin Starn’s claim that indigeneity is not just a political identity but a field of governmentality, subjectivity, and knowledge, in which "becoming indigenous is always only a possibility negotiated within political fields of culture and history" (2007:13). Why and in which contexts do subjects get constituted as indigenous?
Subjectivity, agency and identity have been at the centre of debates regarding culture and politics. The so-called “politics of identity” helps us understand processes of cultural production of a defined group through the making of a chain of articulated elements that brings together and presents a group as distinct from other groups defined by their contrasts. But this theory does not offer us an alternative for thinking beyond this practice of articulation. The negative definitions of social subjects have stressed modernity’ s construction of an (exterior or interior) ‘other.’ Postcolonial and subaltern scholars have argued that subjects are not a cause constituting their identity but a difference that is an effect of power (Spivak 1988). The literature on the politics of difference proposes, then, a subjectivity that always exceeds any definition, threatens all demarcations, and is never fully articulated. These perspectives offer the possibility of thinking of this “other” beyond an explicit articulation. However, the problem with this definition is that restricts our understanding of the internal social and cultural dynamics within subaltern actors.

De lo que escribi en esta seccion y quedo sin editar este parrafo es el que mas me intereza, despues hay quizas demaciado enfasis en indigeneidad, introduzco parrafo en castellano con algunas ideas mas

De esta critica a la politica de identidad y diferencia aun sigo a Grossberg con su propuesta de la subjetividad como construccion en sucesivas capas que territorializan cada vez mas a los cuerpos. Por otro lado sigo a Briones-Ramos, en su obsecion con los pliegues, a ellas se les suma Grosz y claro todas siguen a Deleuze. Si antes del sujeto estan los cuerpos, los cuerpos no son mas que pliegues del exterior que generan una interioridad. Este exterior es un campo politico por supuesto, pero tambien incluye lo no humano. Para Grossberg entonces primero vienen las maquinarias estratificadoras, que se generan del hecho de que los sujetos surgen dentro de campos espaciales en los cuales tienen distintas posibilidades de acceder a la experiencia. El acceso a differentes experiencias, yo agregar'ia: generadas a partir de la repeticion de practica, se inscriben luego como diferencia de los sujetos. Estas son las maquinarias diferenciadoras. Finalmente la diferencia se territorializa en lugares construidos en la practica y en los desplazamientos.

Como se define la colectividad no es solo en relaciona estas estratificaciones, diferenciaciones y territorializaciones, sino que al final de su texto Grossberg vuleve a Agamben y define a las "comunidades por venir". Ahi tanto sujetos como collectividad se definen solamente por pertenencia, da lugar asi a una configuracion colectiva, que se define en positivo, pero no por iguldad, ni solo como resto, sino por la copresencia. Esto permite pesar configuraciones de diferencia mas alla de ser el "resto" del poder, en las que confluir en un lugar y pararse define un sujeto colectivo y politico.

Bueno dos cosas, tendr'ia que leer a Agamben y lo de los pliegues, pero tambien critica a Grossberg. las etapas de Grossberg y donde el termina situando la accion es algo parcial. Lo que no sigo de Grossberg es que sigue hablando de maquinarias por un lado y formas en que los sujetos habitan y se mueven estrategicamente en un espacio territorializado. Esta reconceptualizacion de la agencia no me convense, si bien esta muy refinada. Lo que no cierra es que haya un territorio por un lado y sujetos que actuan en relacion a ciertos fines. Claculo que aca lo sigo mas a Massumi y su idea de que lo que mueve son afectos que se van desatando mutuamente, que traviezan y movilizan. Mmmmmm pero con esto tampoco iria a algo totalmente antiracionalista, y tampoco dejaria todo librado a un cuerpo que siente intensidades, me da un bastante claustrofobia la verdad. Pensaria un poco mas como las subjetividades son formaciones de multiples, que se agregan y desagregan. Si las ideas con su origen intersubjetivo son un afecto entonces hay cierta resonancia, y hay ciertas formas de porcesar y darles mas impetu o hacerlas morir, creo que hay ambas cosas, un poco de manejo parcial, y bastante de atravesamiento. que es el manejo parcial, probablemente algo asi como una orientacion para el movimiento, algo que no es una certeza de un lugar especifico, pero que si es ir en cierta direccion.

En fin por ahi ando.

proposal

mobility

There has been a tendency to consider movements as either effects of power relations (labour migrations, land dispossession) or as forms of resistance from situations of subordination (modern nomadism and the flaneur as escapes from state discipline). There are some aspects of this movement that are effects of power relations: the definition of state sovereignty over the Chaco, capitalist advance over the region. We can also understand some movements as forms of escape from state control: resettlements, hunting and gathering expeditions. However, in the context of an embrace of “flexibility” as a dominant value of the economy and in the face of an increasing development of technologies of policing movement and controlling access, it would be a reduction to consider movement as only an effect or a form of resistance to power relations.

Subjectivity

Bueno volvi a Grossberg, aunque en un punto me habro, por que trae a discusion todo lo que me intereza. Grossberg ademas especializa la subjetividad y eso es exactamente lo que me intereza. Un punto en el que estoy desde ayer es si poninedolo en dialgo con massumi nos queda que el cuerpo y el movimineto son las fuerzas que se transforman lugo en "sujeto", espacio y lugares. claro es imposible pensar en cuerpos moviendose por algo que no es espacio social, y me quedo pensando si hay cuerpo sin interpelacion (butler y althuser dicen que no), aca me sirve rsossberg de nuevo en pensar que los cuerpos estan en algun lugra que no es posicion de sujeto necesariamente (esto es una critica un poco de mas de massumia grossberg) pero si es posicion que da ciertas posibilidades de movimiento y reposo y cirtas posibilidades y potencia para actuar. por eso mas que lugares sociales esas localizaciones son las trayectorias entrecruzadas de las que habla massey. el sujeto ntonces seria algo secundario que viene de la separacion y la reagrupacion, que en la modernidad ya sabemos mas o menos como opera. en este punto me da nostalgia la nocion de clase que al menos presneta un sujeto colectivo que transforma y actua no como uniformidad pero si como fuerza que se suma. si voy a mantener la nocion de sujeto que no reprodusca la individualidad y la agencia como puntos de partida, necesito algo que me permita esa dimnsion, pero que de posibilidad a comunidad definida por sus miembros prescindibles (deberia leer el agamben que menciona grossberg).


Subjectivity, identity and agency have been central concepts in contemporary debates over the possibilities of transformation and manoeuvre within a given social structure. I follow Grossberg (1996) in his critique up to a certain point at which I diverge. Identity and agency have generally taken for granted modern notions of subjectivity as individual and rational. Agency tends to understand action as a strategy and a negotiation, disregarding the unrational aspects of practice. Identities have stressed what are the mechanisms by which people act together within a given articulated formation, this is within a given system of equivalences that unify in order to be recognized by an exterior. Identities have been criticised as ignoring the inequalities and misunderstandings that also bring people together as well as the internal power relations in any given articulation. Both perspectives take as a starting point an individual modern subject, they collapse it with the notion of identity (sef) and agency and leave no alternative to modernity. Theories based on the negative construction of the other as a necessary movement of modernity, negate any possibility of a constitution of something different than modernity. Difference is the other that threatens form within or from the outside to the order of things. To unpack the three concepts he proposes to understand three levels in the process of individuation: subjectification that results form the positioned body in geopolitical organization of space, self as inscription of difference in the body, agency as the possibilities available to act over space in regards to the power organization of space and difference.
This is why Grossberg proposes to think of subjectivities by the means of alterities. He proposes to think of a positive and spatialized subject, and as the capacity of affecting and being affected. I agree with him but I still consider that is not very clear how he makes this subject into a collective one, and especially how he understands what is before the subject. What comes before the subject for Masumi is movement, bodies and the capacity of affecting and being affected. I consider that Massumi again concentrates too much in the individual body, even when he is making very interesting analysis of politics becoming affective. It does not offer me ways of understanding how a body can become part of a collective bodies and where are the openings for collective subjects.
I consider movement, subjectivity and spatiality as ineviatably embodied. I am interested in describing the directionality, trajectories and speeds of different types of movements, considering what is the intensity of those involved in them and how much they get empowered by them. In this way my project searches to make a contribution to the study of spatiality by engaging to the experience of movement as a not just a hiatus of in betweenness, which fades under the “concrete” definition of places, but as a significant moment of generative practice which can both recreate and transform the configurations of power over space and the unfolding possibilities of subjectivity to vary.

soccer !!

esto fue el finde pasado. el equipo amateur de antropologia sufrio una enormes pero heroica derrota frente a los sociologos. quevachacher,

middterms everywhere

Sedentary metaphysics- Critique to Malkii

No se si esto queda pero fue una noche de hacer una critica a la idea de sedentary metaphysics, para pensar por que me estoy alejando de ese argumento.


The concept of structured mobilities (Grossberg 1992) considers how places are made in tension with one another, as they are shaped through people’s spatial trajectories. I will examine mobility as a bodily spatial practice (Lefebvre 1991, De Certeau 1984), which contests a system of alterity that ascribes indigenous people the status of an internal other of the postcolonial nation-state (Alonso 1994, Ramos 2003). Through a variety of forms of discipline, state agencies have historically tried to “fix” these groups in well-bounded places. From that perspective indigenous mobility is a practice that challenges the “sedentary metaphysics” of the state that assumes that people and social groups are attached to fixed locations (Malkki 1997).
However sedentary metaphysics cannot be considered as the only way in which state constitutes power through and over space. It is also through the control of movement rather than is prevention that state constitutes post disciplinarian forms of power. If movement and displacement of population have been a focus of concern among researchers identifying the effects of the globalization of capital this movements do not necessarily and always contradict the logic of the state and its connection to economy. So if the tension between state and globalization has been considered thoroughly to the point of claiming for the possibility of dissolution of the former (Appadurai), in this context sedentary metaphysics could be regarded both as a reactionary movement and as a logic of a power in dissolution. I want to consider it however as one of the necessary dimensions of the logic and the way nations find their materiality.
At the same time we need to consider that a controlled movement is in the base of the constitution of new forms of power. Deleuze (19xx) proposes that we live in a post disciplinarian society or society of control based on constructing subjects in their relation to things in the word in a way in which there is no sanction but the possibility of moving: always within a given paths and always being monitored. If this type of power is about the control of the flow then sedentarism is not necessarily a logic contributing to shape this form of power but rather what is condensed in the discourse of flow and flexibility, and not in the logic of a positioning and “fixation”.
Sedentary metaphysics can also be complicated through a number of cases in which movement back and forth form the “rural” to the “urban” are not challenging but rather part of state projects, for example of indigenous intellectuals education (Grant 1992: 88), of labour migrations (Gidwani ), or within movements of nationalist intellectuals that rather than threatening the state expand and consolidate it (Anderson) just to mention some cases.
We can link sendentary methaphysiscs with what Grossberg proposes to call the definition of social jurisdictions as an action of machineries territorializing subjects into place. Jurisdictions include not only the places but also the access and connections between them. Jurisdictions define which types of subjectivity (both organized hierarchically and into systems of difference) can access an circulate where, and how much empowered they can become in these movements. With this we can go beyond the mapping of difference in place to consider the way movement gets regulated. However we can critique to Grossberg that stability of this jurisdictions is never at rest. This does not mean that the jurisdictions are negotiated, which in a way they might be, but there is also always unexpected turns that emerge form the encounters in space. There is thus always more complex devises to control the speed of movements and to attempt to canalize them (Virilio). Technologies of control of movement, its canalization and the possibilities of its detention (war) are not the same as redefining jurisdictions. It is in this point that I see power over space operating effectively.