diff --git a/qt_writings/three/calado_three.docx b/qt_writings/three/calado_three.docx new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dd56e0d Binary files /dev/null and b/qt_writings/three/calado_three.docx differ diff --git a/qt_writings/three/final3.odt b/qt_writings/three/final3.odt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..08fb1dc Binary files /dev/null and b/qt_writings/three/final3.odt differ diff --git a/qt_writings/three/final3.org b/qt_writings/three/final3.org new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8e14582 --- /dev/null +++ b/qt_writings/three/final3.org @@ -0,0 +1,1432 @@ +* three +#+SEQ_TODO: TODO(t) WAITING(w) IN_PROGRESS(p) WAITING(w) FOLLOWUP(f) | CANCELLED(c) DONE(d) + +"Sex, Flesh, Skin: A Media Archaeology of Octavia Butler's /Dawn/ and +Entropy8Zuper!'s /skinonskinonskin/" + +** chapter overview +This paper juxtaposes two unlikely texts--an early hypertext work from +1999, and a science fiction novel from 1987--to unpack the role of +“media” across physiological and technological systems. The early +hypertext work, /skinonskinonskin/, written collectively by the +artist-couple known as Entropy8Zuper!, explores +electronically-mediated desire through a series of digital love poems +that combine hypertext, audio, and Flash media technology. The fiction +novel, Dawn by Octavia Butler, poses a post-apocalyptic scenario where +humans find themselves coerced into sex and procreation with +extraterrestrial colonizers. In these couplings, sexual contact is +routed through an alien intermediary who plugs directly into the human +brain's pleasure centers. Though Butler’s novel and /skinonskinonskin/ +present vastly different narrative worlds and physical formats, I’m +interested in how both texts trouble the boundary between materiality +and abstraction, in one case technological, through computer hardware +and software, and in another physiological, through nervous systems +and brain chemistry. + +In Butler’s novel, I examine how human flesh--the traditional site for +sexual contact between two partners--is bypassed for direct neural +stimulation facilitated by an alien intermediary. By bypassing the +flesh, this method of intercourse dissolves the distinction between +self and other--the root of xenophobia--as well as sense and +thought. Drawing from thinkers in Chicanx Studies and Black Feminist +Studies, I argue that this method creates an ethics based on pleasure +rather than choice or consent. + +Turning to /skinonskinonskin/, I trace the complicated stack of +technologies, including web tools and Flash media, that facilitate the +display and preservation of this work. Borrowing from Media +Archaeology, I analyze how the work's various "screen effects" engages +with its underlying software logics. My overall goal is to explore the +material qualities of media--be they technical or physiological--for +the ways they offers a kind of capacious mode for theorizing new, +queer forms of communication and ethical relations. + +** sex +*** fear +In the novel /Dawn/, the first of the /Xenogenesis/ trilogy by Octavia +Butler, the main character, Lilith Iyapo, is seduced by an alien. The +alien, called "Nikanj," is an ooloi, or third- or neutral-gendered +being. Nikanj coaxes Lilith to join it and her human partner, Joseph: +"'Lie here with us,' it says, 'Why should you be down there by +yourself?,'" an invitation which Lilith cannot resist: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +She thought there could be nothing more seductive than an ooloi +speaking in that particular tone, making that particular +suggestion. She realized she had stood up without meaning to and taken +a step toward the bed. She stopped, stared at the two of +them. Joseph’s breathing now became a gentle snore and he seemed to +sleep comfortably against Nikanj as she had awakened to find him +sleeping comfortably against her many times. She did not pretend +outwardly or to herself that she would resist Nikanj’s invitation—-or +that she wanted to resist it. Nikanj could give her an intimacy with +Joseph that was beyond ordinary human experience. And what it gave, it +also experienced. 306 +#+END_QUOTE +The erotic desire that Lilith experiences is intense enough to make +her temporarily ignore that these aliens, called "Oankali," have +descended upon earth with one goal: to coerce humans to reproduce with +them and create a human-alien species. As ooloi, Nikanj has a special +sexual organ that facilitates a neural connection between a male and +female partner, in this case, between Lilith and Joseph. It makes this +connection by inserting this organ, a "sensory hand," into each +partner's spinal cord, located at the back of the neck. During the sex +act, this organ stimulates each partner's pleasure centers in the +brain and collects genetic information which the Oankali will +eventually suse to engineer a human-alien embryo. + +Despite her eagerness to have sex with Nikanj, Lilith harbors a deep +resistance against the Oankali's intention to procreate with +humanity. Scenes like the one above, in which Lilith surrenders to her +sexual desire, appear in stark contrast to her determination to +escape, conveyed by her invocation to "Learn and run!" which she +repeats up until the last page of the novel. Having barely survived a +nuclear apocalypse only to be "rescued" by the aliens, Lilith, along +with the surviving humans, is being held on the Oankali spaceship in +preparation to do their part in the "gene trade"--that is, to +re-populate the earth with a new human-Oankali species. The Oankali +have given Lilith a special job to be a guide, what she calls a "Judas +goat," to shepherd humans into accepting that humanity will change +forever, that their children will look like "Medusa children" (Butler +87). + +The conflict between various biological drives, such as sex drive +versus the survival drive, speaks to a larger debate among the novel's +critics about the primacy of biological impulses in determining human +behavior. For, even when this sex act appears contained to the mind, +it is always portrayed as something guided by impulses and tendencies +of the body. Donna Haraway and Kitty Dunkley, for example, argue that +the interspecies couplings challenge naturalizing assumptions about +sex, race, and the human/animal divide. Haraway's influential analysis +from /Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern +Science/ (1989), reads this story "as if it were a report from the +primate field in the allotopic space of earth after a nuclear +holocaust" (376). She argues that the inter-species relations +"facilitate revisionings" of "difference, reproduction, and survival" +(Haraway 377). On the other hand, critics like Stephen Barnes, Nancy +Jesser, and Erin Ackerman argue for a biological determinist +reading. Stephen Barnes, who knew Butler personally, emphasizes the +influence of biological research in her writing on human nature, +sharing that Butler was fascinated by what she called "emergent +properties," which begin from small impulses, like the tendency to +categorize something as either similar or different, as the seeds of +complex social behaviors and structures. Nancy Jesser emphasizes the +determinist perspective on sex, arguing that "the plot relentlessly +reinforces certain sociobiological notions of essential and 'natural' +male and female through the concept of biological 'tendency'" (Jesser +41-42). + +Critics from both sides of the debate agree on one point, however: +that sexuality in the text reflects a firmly heterosexual paradigm. +These views are due to the gendered structure of the sex act, which +maintains a male/female coupling, despite the addition of an ooloi +participant. Haraway, for example, asserts that, "Heterosexuality +remains unquestioned, if more complexly mediated. The different social +subjects, the different genders that could emerge from another +embodiment of resistance to compulsory heterosexual reproductive +politics, do not inhabit this /Dawn/" (380). According to this view +Butler's deconstruction of species and sex falls short of affecting +sexuality. + +This chapter argues that the heterosexual paradigm is indeed +disrupted, and it is disrupted by a queer mode of relation which +emerges in the tripartite sexual union enabled by the ooloi figure. +In what follows, I will examine the connection created by this union, +whose linkage of neural pathways between two bodies scrambles the +distinctions between thinking and feeling, a clash of registers that +blends the materiality of the flesh with the abstraction of cognitive +processes. + +This chapter will explore how this clash of registers operates across +two seemingly unrelated domains: Black Feminist Studies and Media +Archaeology Studies. I will examine how each of these domains +theorizes the intersection of physical embodiment with chemical, +conceptual, and/or electrical signaling, reading for sensuality across +medial environments. Finally, I will put these ideas into practice +with a close reading of a work of electronic fiction, +/skinonskinonskin/. My goal is to explore the material qualities of +media--be they technical or physiological--for the ways they offer a +kind of capacious mode for theorizing new, queer forms of +communication and ethical relations. + +To begin this exploration, I first examine a moment of heightened +sensuality from the story, a moment of extreme fear. This moment +occurs when Lilith comes face-to-face with her captors for the first +time. Jhadaya, a male Oankali, meets Lilith in her isolation room. She +initially processes his alien body according to human anatomical terms: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +The lights brightened as she had supposed they would, and what had +seemed to be a tall, slender man was still humanoid, but it had no +nose--no bulge, no nostrils--just flat, gray skin. It was gray all +over--pale gray skin, darker gray hair on its head that grew down +around its eyes and ears and at its throat. There was so much hair +across the eyes that she wondered how the creature could see. The +long, profuse ear hair seemed to grow out of the ears as well as +around them. Above, it joined the eye hair, and below and behind, it +joined the head hair. The island of throat hair seemed to move +slightly, and it occurred to her that that might be where the creature +breathed--a kind of natural tracheostomy. + +Lilith glanced at the humanoid body, wondering how humanlike it really +was. "I don't mean any offense," she said, "but are you male or +female?" + +"It's wrong to assume that I must be a sex you're familiar with," it +said, "but as it happens, I'm male." + +Good. It could become 'he' again. Less awkward. 29 +#+END_QUOTE +Although Jdhaya points out Lilith's mistake for assuming hisq gender, +she nonetheless takes some comfort from being able to call him a "he." +The gender designation, along with a catalogue of mammalian anatomical +features "hair," "eyes," "ears," and "throat," reveals the impulse to +categorize the unknown according to human terms. This small comfort, +however, evaporates when the strangeness of the alien's appearance +exceeds the categories available to her: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +She did not want to be any closer to him. She had not known what held +her back before. Now she was certain it was his alienness, his +difference, his literal unearthliness. She found herself still unable +to take even one more step toward him. + +"Oh god," she whispered. And the hair--the whatever it +was--moved. Some of it seemed to blow toward her as though in a wind, +though there was no stirring of air in the room. + +She frowned, strained to see, to understand. Then, abruptly, she did +understand. She backed away, scrambled around the bed and to the far +wall. When she could go no farther, she stood against the wall, +staring at him. + +Medusa. 30 +#+END_QUOTE +As Lilith attempts to place the alien into familiar categories, she +undergoes a complex physio-cognitive process. First, she uses +anatomical categories to perceive Jhadaya. Then, as his difference +begins to register, she apprehends him on a pre-linguistic, embodied +level, characterized by paralyzing aversion where she is "unable to +take even one more step toward him" (29-30). Then, when Lilith +examines his face more closely, the interval of immobilizing fear ends +abruptly with her "understand[ing]." She expresses her aversion in +figurative language, evocing the mythical figure "Medusa." + +The choice of "Medusa" here is significant. It demonstrates that +Lilith subscribes the unknown in terms of something familiar to the +human imaginary, ableit in the context of myth. Her physio-cognitive +progression from instinctual body movement to intellection suggests a +peculiar wasy that humanity handles the unknown. This can be +attributed to a particular combination of human traits, which the +Oankali call the "human contradiction." Later in this scene, Jhadaya +describes these two traits: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +"You are intelligent," he said. "That's the newer of the two +characteristics, and the one you might have put to work to save +yourselves. You are potentially one of the most intelligent species +we've found, though your focus is different from ours. Still, you had +a good start in the life sciences, and even in genetics." + +"What's the second characteristic? + +"You are hierarchical. That's the older and more entrenched +characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your +most distant ones. It's a terrestrial characteristic. When human +intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence +did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did +not notice it at all..." [...] "That was like ignoring cancer. I +think your people did not realize what a dangerous thing they were +doing." +#+END_QUOTE +According to Jhadaya, the tendency toward hierarchy, to create social +groupings, even to colonize and oppress, descends from an ancient +instinct that once served to sustain, protect, and organize early +human tribes. But when the hierarchical instinct grows unchecked into +the modern world, Jdhaya explains, it creates unjust divisions within +society. + +For Lilith, then, the tendency toward hierarchy first demands that she +place this being on a scale of familiarity. She compares Jhadaya to +what she already knows about other living beings, placing him into a +binary gender system, for example. However, when the hierarchy fails +to subsume his other qualities, like the strange, moving "hair" +growing all over his body, her intelligence steps in to speculate with +an analogy, "Medusa." Here, her mind makes the leap between what she +sees and what she can imagine. The analogy to the Medusa indicates +that this particular type of xenophobia is not just of otherness, but +in the interplay between otherness and similarity. What scares Lilith +is an apparent familiarity of this humanoid, this bipedal, two-limbed +creature, which has an audible language and conscious intelligence is +combined aspects that do not belong to any mammal. "Medusa" marks the +moment when Lilith, who until then has been struggling to place a +strange being within known phenomena, finally settles onto a familiar +designation. Despite his alienness, at that point, Jhadaya becomes +incorporated into an anthropocentric worldview--specifically, into a +fearsome figure that represents monstrous and deadly femininity. + +Criticism on the novel does a good job of situating the tension +between similarity and difference within intersectional +feminism.[fn:1] Here, however, I am interested in this experience of +difference and similarity-in-difference as a physiological response, +and what it can reveal about ethical relations. Here, I draw from +Chicana feminist theorists Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa who +write about the expereince of xenophobia from a sensual +dimension. Moraga, for example, argues that the fear of the other is +heightened by a perceived similarity between the self and +other. Speaking about social hierarchies of oppression, Moraga asserts +that, "it is not really difference the oppressor fears so much as +similarity" (32). However, at the same time that perceived similarity +causes fear, it also offers an opportunity for connection. Moraga, for +example, draws from her sexuality to relate to her mother, who +experienced levels of poverty and colorism that Moraga, as an educated +"guera," was able to avoid: +#+begin_quote +It wasn't until I acknowledged and confronted my own lesbianism in the +flesh that my heartfelt identification with and empathy for my +mother's oppression--due to being poor, uneducated, and Chicana--was +realized. My lesbianism is the avenue through which I have learned the +most about silence and oppression, and it continues to be the most +tactile reminder to me that we are not free human beings. 28-29 +#+end_quote +When difference is a source of "silence and oppression," as it has +been for Moraga's sexuality, finding similarity requires a deeply +sensual process. Here, Moraga's sexuality enables her to make a +connection to other kinds of difference, specifically differences +across skin tone and economic class. This confrontation occurs "in the +flesh," meaning that difference is a felt, sensational phenomenon, a +"tactile reminder" that bridges the gap between self and other. + +Anzaldúa, a Chicana lesbian like Moraga, explores a method for +incorporating difference into identity. Anzaldúa grew up on the +Texas-Mexico border, works to integrate her Aztec, Spanish, and +Mexican backgrounds into a modern Chicana identity. Anzaldúa explains +that surfacing this history and heritage will require "developing a +tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity... learn[ing] +to be an Indian [sic] in Mexican culture, to be a Mexican from an +Anglo point of view" (Anzaldua 78-79). Anzaldúa resurrects latent +aspects of the cultural psyche in the form of the fearsome Aztec +goddess, Coatlicue. Like Medusa, Coatlicue is associated with snakes, +her name translates from Nahuatl into "serpent skirt." As the "Earth +Mother who conceives all celestial beings out of her cavernous womb," +Coatlicue embodies a unity of opposites, the dual forces of life and +death, fertility and destruction (Anzaldua 46). Over time, however, +Anzaldúa explains that this unity has been severed into "pure" and +"impure" aspects. Influenced by a growing patriarchy, Aztec culture +splits Coatlicue into the fertility earth goddess, "Tonantsi," the +puta and into "Coatlalopeuh," the chaste (27). Then, with the arrival +of the Spaniards, the figures are split again, this time into the +Virgin of Guadalupe, the most revered figure of Mexican Cathololicism, +with the negative aspects incorporated into the figures La LLorona and +La Chingada. + +/Coatlicue/ incorporates the originary whole that Anzaldúa aims to +bring into a modern imaginary: "Coatlicue- Cihuacoatl- Tlazolteotl- +Tonantzin- Coatlalopeuh- Guadalupe--they are one" (50). The process by +which Anzaldua accesses and integrates the scattered aspects of +Coatlicue is called the "/Coatlicue/ state." Here, Anzaldua enters +into a trance, a spiritual opening, to confront the pain, shame, and +lonelienss of a severed identity. She explains that, "We need +/Coatlicue/ to slow us up so that the psyche can assimilate previous +experiences and process the changes" (Anzaldua 46). Anzaldua describes +the visual confrontation with /Coatlicue/: +#+begin_quote +Seeing and being seen. Subject and object, I and she. The eye pins +down the object of its gaze, scrutinizes it, judges it. A glance can +freeze us in place; it can "possess" us. It can erect a barrier +against the world. But in a glance also lies awareness, +knowledge. These seemingly contradictory aspects--the act of being +seen, held immobilized by a glance, and "seeing through" an +experience--are symbolized by the underground aspects of /Coatlicue/, +/Cihuacoatl/, /Tlazolteotl/ which cluster in what I call the +/Coatlicue/ state. 42 +#+end_quote +Here, vision is simultaneously a tool for capture, for being "pin[ned] +down" or "immobilized," and a tool of enlightenment, in "awareness, +knowledge." Anzaldua embraces the duality of this kind of vision, and +in what seems to be its paradoxical effect, which is freedom in +possession. Being the object of /Coatlicue/'s gaze both reliquishes +agency and opens a connection, enabling an intimate relation to the +other. + +*** pleasure +Oankali, unlike humans, are attracted to difference. As Jhadaya +explains to Lilith: "We acquire new life, seek it, investigate it, +manipulate it, sort it, use it. We carry the drive to do this in a +minuscule cell within a cell, a tiny organelle within every cell of +our bodies" (84). This essential drive, which powers their "gene +trade," is made possible by that which the humans find most disturbing +about their captors--the tentacle-like organs that sprout from their +bodies. These organs transmit all external sensory information such as +sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste, provide channels for the +immediate sharing of thoughts and feelings in intra-Oankali +communication, and faciliate sex. This sensory capacity puts them into +direct contact with those who are different. As a result, the Oankali +do not fear difference, rather, they crave it. This craving to absorb +difference and incorporate it into new life forms is encoded in their +genetic ancestry. Nikanj, the ooloi child who will eventually become +Lilith's mate, explains to Lilith that "'Six divisions ago, on a +white-sun water world, we lived in great shallow oceans'[...] 'We were +many-bodied and spoke with body lights and color patterns among +ourself and among ourselves" (123). From this ancestry, the current +Oankali inheirited a drive for collectivity. + +This tendency for collective consciousness, distributed among the +beings, singular and plural at once, "ourself and ourselves," +destabilize the an assumption underpinning free will, that of +consent. When Nikanj is an adult, Joseph's genetic material to +impregnate Lilith without her knowledge, much less her consent. It +explains to Lilith that it only gives her what she truly wants, which +is a child, "'You'll have a daughter,' it said. 'And you are ready to +be her mother. You could never have said so. Just as Joseph could +never have invited me into his bed'" (468-9). For the Oankali +cultivating life is the principal factor for decision-making. + +The sex scenes in particular portray a level of sensual pleasure and +connection that makes it difficult to separate concious will from +embodied desire. As Jayna Brown points out, "the pleasurable +experience of sex with the Ooloi is so highly compelling it is +sometimes likened to rape in the text" (105). Not only are humans +seduced into sexual relations by the pheramones that arouse an +overwhelming sexual desire, there is involuntary sterilization, +complicity in human-on-human rape, and more seriously, Nikanj's rape +of Joseph. Joshua Yu Burnett explains that while "the novel's +treatment of the issue [of consent] is both provocative and +troubling," "none of this is meant to suggest that the Oankali are +vicious, brutal rapists" (110, 117). Because their sensory and +communication capacities prevent the Oankali from deception, "they +seem quite genuine in their insistance that human claims of +non-consent belie a deeper, physio-psychological consent" (Burnett +117). Justin Louis Mann's "pessimistic futurist" reading of the novel +points the ways that subjugation and coercion partly revises the human +contradiction.[fn:2] Mann explains that the sexual relationship +between Lilith, Joseph, and Nikanj is crystalized in the image of +Nikanj's "sensory arm" wrapped around Lilith's neck, which she +describes as "an oddly comfortable noose" (Mann 62). Mann points out +that this noose, while drawing from history of subjugation and death, +also evokes comfort, a kind of complacency with the highly pleasurable +sexual experiences which Lilith enjoys with Nikanj. According to Mann, +this complacency replaces the oppression of the human contradiction +with coersion into physical pleasure (Mann 62). + +When Nikanj presents himself to Lilith, one might expect a split +between her sexual desire and her determination to rebel against the +forced interbreeding. But instead, one instead encounters their +conflation, where Lilith welcomes her body's immediate, unconscious +response to Nikanj's invitation. The conflation between embodied +instinct and free will suggests a more fundamental collapse between +physical sensation and mental experience. During the sex act, Lilith +experiences a torrent feelings that leads her to question the +objective reality of her experience. When Nikanj "plugs" into her and +Joseph, she, +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +[I]mmediately recieved Joseph as a blanket of warmth and security, a +compelling, steadying presence. + +She never knew whether she was receiving Nikanj's approximation of +Joseph, a true transmission of what Joseph was feeling, some +combination of truth and approximation, or just a pleasant fiction. + +What was Joseph feeling from her? + +It seemed to her that she had always been with him. She had no +sensation of shifting gears, no "time alone" to contrast with the +present "time together." He had always been there, part of her, +essential. 308-309 +#+END_QUOTE +What Lilith first feels as a physical presence, a "blanket of warmth" +she builds into cognitive interpretation. When she begins to question +the objective truth of her experience, whether Joseph shares in the +same sensations, her doubt soon fades to reassurance. Physical +presence transforms into a mental certainty: "he had always been +there, part of her, essential." + +Meanwhile, Nikanj, who is mediating the experience, becomes +imperceptible to the two of them: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +Nikanj focused on the intensity of their attraction, their union. It +left Lilith no other sensation. It seemed, itself, to vanish. She +sensed only Joseph, felt that he was aware only of her. + +Now their delight in one another ignited and burned. They moved +together, sustaining an impossible intensity, both of them tireless, +perfectly matched, ablaze in sensation, lost in one another. 308-309 +#+END_QUOTE +Their sex dissolves the sense of time, space, and the distance between +Lilith and Joseph, who she felt "was aware only of her." In the midst +of this intensity, the intermediary which makes this fusion possible +fades, leaving Lilith and Jospeh "lost in own another." Afterward, +when Lilith asks if the sex is simulated, Nikanj explains that +although sensory experience is shared between herself and Joseph, +"Intellectually, he made his interpretations and you made yours." To +this, Lilith remarks that she "wouldn't call them intellectual" +(310-311). That Lilith questions whether her mental experiences are +true or not, at the same time that she indicates their sensual nature, +suggests the deep imbrication of the sensual and cognitive registers +during the sex act. The direct neural connection creates a channel +through which embodied sensation and intellectual interpretation can +traffic. + +In human-alien sex, thed fusion between minds surfaces a sensation of +exactly that which their neurological connection bypasses--the +flesh. And paradoxically, in human-to-human sex, the flesh which +facilitates contact also functions as an obstacle, creating the +potential for miscommunication and misunderstanding. While humans must +navigate through the flesh to attain unity, the Oankali bypass it +entirely by routing directly into the brain's pleasure centers, +eliminating the space for physical discomfort and even repulsion. This +immediate connection facilitated by the ooloi offers, as Nikanj +explains, it "a oneness that your people strive for, dream of, but +can't truly attain alone" (359). The pleasures that come from physical +sensation, the feeling of which is heightened in sex, is what enables +the Oankali, to crave, rather than fear, difference. + +The importance of bodily effects and sensations speaks to one critical +debate about the influence of the body, in particular, the influence +of biology, on identity and behavior in the novel. [fn:3] While +critics mostly disagree on whether Butler deconstructs or reinforces +biological categories and essentialist notions of behavior, they do +agree on the primacy of heterosexuality, with Haraway claiming that +"Heterosexuality remains unquestioned, if more complexly mediated" +(380). [fn:4] I would suggest, however, that the bypassing of flesh to +simultaneously invigorate fleshy sensation requires a new +understanding of sexuality, one that disrupts the traditional +boundaries of subjectivity. Here, I draw from Jayna Brown's emphasis +on the flesh and how it opens possibilities for reconceiving +subjectivity. According to Brown, while the senses "individuate us, +demarcate our boundaries," they also "mark the ways our bodies are +open. The body, the self, is porous, receptive, impressionable" (Brown +14). In the novel, this openness to feeling is achieved by re-routing +around the flesh and its senses, the traditional channel for feeling, +in a way that emphasizes that which it bypasses. The effect is to +transform cognitive and conceptual phenomena into physical, sensual +experiences. + +Here, separateness is crucial for enabling connection. While direct +connection can momentarily dissolve the boundaries of the individual, +a distance between self and other energizes sensation and +understanding. For example, when Lilith asks Nikanj to share its +feelings of grief after Joseph's untimely death: "It gave her... a new +color. A totally alien, unique, nameless thing, half seen, half felt +or... tasted. A blaze of something frightening, yet overwhelmingly, +compelling" (Butler 429). Despite their direct neural connection, the +description here derives its expressive power on the quality of +unknowability, using formations of liminality, ("half seen, half +felt," "alien," "a new color"). Within the context of identity +politics, Chicana scholar Norma Alarcón warns against the dangers of +what she calls "ontologiz[ing] difference." The challenge is to +achieve connection without totally subsuming the other into totalizing +and therefore oppressive paradigms of subjectivity. She explains that, +"The desire to translate as totalizing metphorical substitution +without acknowledging the "identity-in-difference," so that one's own +system of signification is not disrupted through a historical concept +whose site of emergence is implicated in our own history, may be +viewed as a desire to dominate, constrain, and contain" (133). Rather +than subsume alienness into familiar structures of knowledge, like the +way that Lilith subsumes Jhadaya's tentacles into the similitude of +the terrifying Medusa, the neural connection sustains the difference +in the other. +a +** flesh +Could the flesh, which poses a problem for intra-human connection, +also offer a solution to this problem? In what follows, I explore two +how two very different fields--Black Feminist Studies and Media +Archaeology--offer critical methods for thinking through +materiality. Black Feminist Studies explores the concept of the flesh +within the context of slavery, while Media Archaeology explores the +materiality of electronic media and processing. Though vastly +different in focus, both areas of inquiry share a similar investment +in reading into surfaces to see how they offer new modes for thinking +and resistance. Their theorizations of materiality, which index a +liminal space where meaning is simultaneously ascribed and obscured, +will become the ground for my analysis of the intersections of +hardware and software in my next and final section, "Skin." + +*** Black Feminist Studies +In Black Feminist Studies, critics like Hortense Spillers, C. Riley +Snorton, and Amber J. Musser read racial and gendered processes, a +"symbolic order" or "American grammar," in Hortense Spillers words, +ascribed to Black bodies since the violences of trans-Atlantic slavery +(68). In her influential essay, "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An +American Grammar Book," Spillers describes the Black body as a stack +of "attentuated meanings, made in excess over time, assigned by a +particular historical order" (65). The "severing of the captive body +from its motive will," creates a what Spillers calls a "stunning +conntradiction (67). Here, the contradiction is between the body's +reduction to materiality, "reduc[ing] to a thing, becoming being for +the captor," and the simultaneous layering of signification, +"becom[ing] the source of an irresistible, destructive sensuality" +(67). First, there is a reduction of the body to its bare +physicality--into flesh--a material substance for labor and +exchange. At the same time, however, this reduction also opens a +possiblity for signification, which aspects of sensuality, +objectificaiton, otherness, and powerlessness can be layered onto the +flesh. Spillers, and thinkers in Black Feminist Studies who build +from flesh as the "zero degree of social conceptualization," call this +simultaneous reduction and accumulation of meaning "pornotroping" +(Spillers 67). The next critical move is to take what has been a +method of reduction, what has been a tool for appropriating the +complexity of real world objects for the purpose of exploitation +toffff instead seek out moments of obfuscation or forclosure which is +in tension with objectification. From the reduction of the Black body +to flesh, Black Feminist Studies reads a resistance that is not quite +empowerment, but which is also not subordination, something slippery, +shifting, which multiplies rather than resolves meaning. + +I begin with the concept of "foreclosure," which Musser explains, +involves "hold[ing] violence and possibility in the same frame" +(12). Pushing against trends in Afropessimism that take the pornotrope +as a foreclosure of Black subjectivity, Musser explores how +foreclosure, the denial of access or knowledge, offers possibilities +for new modes of relation. Attention to the violence of the pornotrope +brings to the surface relations that are in tension with the desire to +dominate, "allow[ing] us to see the radical potential of excess +without flattening the violence at its core" (Musser 9). For example, +a brilliant surface can foreclose access to interiority in a way that +creates multiple registers of interpretation. Musser demonstrates this +"surface effect" in the painting /Origin of the Universe 1/ (2012) by +artist Mickalene Thomas, whose depiction of a female vulva references +French painter Gustave Courbet's /Origine du Monde/ (1866). In +Thomas's piece, the Black and rhinestone-encrusted vulva creates a +brilliant surface as a "formal strategy of producing opacity" (Musser +48). By instrumentalizing the opacity of surface effects, this work +multiplies the potentiality of readings. Here, the foreclosure of +interiority works alongside a more pronounced subtext of +objectification about the commodification of the black female +body. Musser asserts that to the rhinestones function simultaneously +on two registers: first, their flashiness "as a reminder of the long +association between black people and the commodity" (50); and second, +as a brilliance that evokes wetness, suggesting sexual pleasure. Both +possibilities exist not only side-by-side, but are in tension: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +Thinking the rhinestone as a trace or residue of Thomas’s wetness and +excitement allows us to hold violence, excess, and possibility in the +same frame. Even as the source is ambiguous, the idea that rhinestones +might offer a record of pleasure—-pleasure that is firmly constituted +in and of the flesh—-shows us a form of self-possession. This self is +not outside of objectification, but its embellishment and insistence +on the trace of excitement speaks to the centrality of pleasure in +theorizations of self-love. 63 +#+END_QUOTE +The significatory system that commodifies the black vulva exists +alongside a production of pleasure. This surface whose opacity seems +to insist upon itself facilitates a simultaneity of registers, +enabling a movement, or a shift, between one and the other, like a +shifting between frames. This brilliant surface enables one to +apprehend this movement from one frame to another, from "violence", to +"excess," and finally, to "possibility." + +Foreclosing access to interiority creates a state where meaning is +fugitive, where bodies slip in and out of signification. The concept +of fugitivity, or escape, is based on a condition of commodification +where Black bodies have undergone a reduction to exchange value, a +condition that C. Riley Snorton calls the "fungible." Snorton argues +this fungibility of black flesh turns bodies into "malleable matter," +enabling a fugitivity from markers of sex and gender (20). He +illustrates this effect with stories of fugutive slaves, such as of +Harriet Jacobs, whose escape from slavery in 1842 is documented in +/Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl/ (1861). Snorton explains how +the "blackening" of Jacobs's face with charcoal endows her with a +level of "fungibility, thingness" to pass as a man, even deceiving +those who knew her well (Snorton 71). As oppposed to traditional +racial "passing" that assumes a degrees of whiteness, the increase of +blackness further reduces flesh toward a "gender indefiniteness" that +enables escape (56). By undergoing a reduction, black flesh enables an +escape from signification that simultaneously opens significatory +potential. + +This fungibility creates an almost chaotic state in which the black +body becomes suceptible to multiple mappings of meaning and can +therefore slip in and out of signification. Snorton offers up an +example of the daguerrotype, an early photographic technology that +involves using chemicals on silver plates. Snorton explains that +dagguerotype offers "a visual grammar for reading the imbrications of +'race' and 'gender' under captivity" (Snorton 40). It does so by +flipping expectations about surface and depth: here, rather than +perpetuating the idea that depth exists below the surface, the surface +becomes a ground for the layering of depth. Snorton describes the +effect of this this flip as creating an "unmappability" of meaning: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +... the daguerreotype provides a series of lessons about power, and +racial power in particular, as a form in which an image takes on +myriad perspectives because of the interplay of light and dark, both +in the composition of the shot and in the play of light on the +display. That the image does not reside on the surface but floats in +an unmappable elsewhere offers an allegory for race as a procedure +that exceeds the logics of a bodily surface, occuring by way of flesh, +a racial mattering that appears through puncture in the form of a +wound or covered by skin and screened from view. 40 +#+END_QUOTE +The physical material of the image, that is the silvered copper plate +of the daguerreotype, at once solidifies its ground and indexes a +liminal space, what Snorton describes as the "unmappable elsewhere." +The image of the daguerrotype, which changes according to angle and +lighting, evokes the condition of racialization as "a procedure that +exceeds the logics of a bodily surface" while nonetheless adhering to +that surface, "a racial mattering that appears through puncture." +Snorton's curious use of the word "puncture" perhaps revises Roland +Barthes's concept of the "punctum," suggesting instead a lack of +localization or circumscription to a specific point.[fn:5] That the +image resists fixity is crucial for undersanding the way that the +physical registers interact with symbolic ones in the collision of +flesh and racialization. + +With quite different political focus, thinkers in Media Archaeology +offer deep readings of digital media and technological processes to +tease out the role of materiality in as hardware and software stacks +and how they produce seemingly immaterial surface forms. N. Katherine +Hayles, for example, resists assumptions about digital immateriality, +which has been in production since the emergence of computing +technologies in the mid-20th century. Media Studies theorist Friedrich +Kittler famously encapsulates this idea of matterless media: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +The general digitization of channels and information erases the +differences among individual media. Sound and image, voice and text +are reduced to surface effects, known to consumers as interface. Sense +and the senses turn into eyewash. Inside the computers themselves +everything becomes a number: quantity without image, sound or +voice. /Grammophone/ 1 +#+END_QUOTE +Working to unflatten the "surface effects," Hayles's research traces +how "information lost its body," that is, how information processing, +the calculation and manipulation of symbols, displaces the physical +matter upon which it relies. Hayles disarticulates the binary of +information/hardware which, she argues, extends liberal humanist +ideology of mind/matter into the "posthuman," where a dominant, +unmarked rationality is privileged over embodied experience and +especially, embodied difference. Whereas the liberal humanist subject +is characterized by classical mind/body divisions and hierarchies that +posit embodiment as separate from and subordinate to intelligence, in +which the rational mind possesses a body, the postuman is +characterized by informational patterns that inhabit a physical +vessel, such as a body or a machine. According to Hayles, this +progression from possession to inhabitation suggests that the next +move will be to transcend the material realm altogether, as +consciousness can be uploaded to a virtual space where life itself is +infinite. As Hayles explains, "Information, like humanity, cannot +exist apart from embodiment that brings it into being as a material +entity in the world; and embodiment is always instantiated, local, and +specific" ("Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers", 1993, 91). + +*** Media Archaeology Studies +In what follows, I will draw some parallels between Black Feminist +Studies and Media Archaeology. The first parallel has to do with the +concept of displacement, which is related to that of foreclosure. As +Matt Kirschenbaum explains, "Digital inscription is a form of +displacement... remov[ing] digital objects from the channels of direct +human intervention" (86). Kirschenbaum uses the term "forensic +materiality" to refer to the most innaccessible level of computer +hardware, of the hard drive. Here, data is encoded in markings of one +of two (binary) marks on a magnetized surface, a north polarity +signifying "1", or a south polarity signifying "0". Examining these +binary digits, or "bits," through magnetic force microscopy, +Kirschenbaum notes that each one is unique: "The bits themselves prove +strikingly autographic, all of them similar but no two exactly alike, +each displaying idiosyncrasies and imperfections--in much the same way +that conventional letterforms, both typed and handwritten, assume +their own individual personality under extreme magnification" (62) +That electronic data, at its core, corresponds to physical markings +shatters the illusion of digital immateriality, of a stream of code +all the way down. + +To trace the transformations of these physical elements as they travel +up the software stack, Hayles offers the concept of "flickering +signifers." Here, she brings Jacques Lacan's "floating signifier," the +idea that a word does have a stable referent, but "floats" above a +text and attains its meaning through a play of difference against +other words, to illustrate the interplay between the immateriality of +the screen and the materiality of the computer hardware. Rather than +destabilize meaning, the flickering signifier dissolves the illusion +of immateriality by grounding it to physcial signals that move through +the software stack: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +As I write these words on my computer, I see the lights on the video +screen, but for the computer the relevant signifiers are magnetic +tracks on disks. Intervening between what I see and what the computer +reads are the machine code that correlates alphanumeric symbols with +binary digits, the compiler language that correlates these symbols +with higher-level instructions determining how the symbols are to be +manipulated, the processing program that mediates between these +instructions and the commands I give the computer, and so forth. A +signifier on one level becomes a signified on the next... "Virtual +Bodies" 77 +#+END_QUOTE +Hayles's description of this "flexible chain of markers" materializes +the various levels of transformation that digitized inscription must +undergo in order to reach the level of the screen (/Posthuman/ +31). First, physical traces on a magnetic surface are mapped into +low-level machine languages which are illegible to human +readers. Then, these patterns are translated into Assembly languages +that pertain to the computer's Central Processing Unit (CPU), the main +processor that executes instructions, arithmetic, and logic. Finally, +as data moves up the stack, it abstracts into high level programming +languages like Python and JavaScript and their effects on the screen, +which humans interact with in the form of the Graphical User Interface +(GUI). While apparently immaterial text and objects have a "tendency +toward unexpected metamorphoses, attenuations, and dispersions," they +are grounded in a physical reality (Hayles, "Virtual Bodies," 76). + +To challenge the "illusion of immaterial behavior," the illusion that +objects on the screen appear, disappear, and move without a physical +origin, Kirschenbaum offers the concept of "formal materiality" +(11). While forensic materiality consists of physical inscriptions, +such as magnetic traces on hard drives, formal materiality describes +these traces as they are computed up the software stack, through +levels of programming languages toward specific interface effects on +the screen. It describes not only display and appearance, but also the +way that these are deliberately produced to reinforce fluidity and +ephemerality. Kirschenbaum explains that as data moves up the stack, +it is continually refreshed to fix errors and idiosynracies that occur +during transmission. As a result, formal materiality on the screen +"exist[s] as the end product of long traditions and trajectories of +engineering that werer deliberately undertaken to achieve and +implement it (137). He likens this process of data normalization older +technologies like the telegraph that use relay systems to reinforce +signals over long stretches of transmission. As data moves through +electronic processing, signal "reinvigoration," a kind of "allographic +reproduction," refreshes and standardizes it through approximation +rather than exact copying, so that materiality is a "manufactured" +phenomenon (136). + +Although the screen functions as a buffer between the user and the +digital inscription, there is in actuality an inverse relationship +between digital abstraction and tactile manipulation. The higher that +data climbs up the levels of abstraction, the more manipulable it +becomes, a state which Kirschenbaum calls "digital volatility" +(140). For example, by dragging and right clicking on items on the +screen, users can move, duplicate, or delete large quantities of +data. Kirschenbaum explains this "dynamic tension... between +inscription and abstraction, digitality and volitality" makes formal +materiality more susceptible to movement and change than physical +inscription, which remains inaccessible. Perhaps unintuitively, moving +away from inscription is a move toward something that users can handle +and "touch," as anybody who has dragged a file from one folder to +another can confirm. + +Another more subtle force operates in the translation between one +coding language into another--that of torque. Kirschenbaum describes +this force as a "procedural friction or perceived difference... as a +user shifts from one set of software logics to another" +(13). Typically in physics, objects rotate along their pivot point, +where the distributional weight is zero. Torque, however, is +characterized by a rotational movement, combining energy from two +directions: first, from the external force acting upon the object, and +second, from the relation between the point of contact on the object +and its pivot point, or the point along the object where it can be +balanced.[fn:6] Torque therefore measures a force that relies on +distance between the point of contact the object's center. Applied to +data, this term refers to the gap between one signficatory system and +another, such as a machine-level programming language and its a more +abstracted language, or the rendition of the same on the screen, as +data travels up the software stack. + +Each stage of data transformation instantiates a new level of formal +materiality, a flickering signifier that simultaneously depends upon +and obscures the levels of forensic materiality below. Energized by a +sense of volatility in data and by torque between software registers, +this chain of transformations culminates at the screen, where the end +user experiences them as visual and haptic effects. These "screen +effects" of digital media relate to "surface effects" of the flesh in +Black Feminist Studies. Here, critics read methods of resistance, such +as foreclosure and unmappability, from the reduction of the body into +flesh. In foreclosing access to interiority, the reduction to surface +opens the possibility of fugitivity, where meaning escapes into +irresolvable or incongruent registers. In the next section, I will +demonstrate in practice how the concepts of flickering signifiers, +volatility, and torque engage with those of foreclosure, fugitivity, +and unmappability to read the screen effects in a hypermedia literary +work, /skinonskinonskin/. + +** skin + +Now, I turn to /skinonskinonskin/ (1999), a work of "net art" created +by Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, under the collaborative artist +name, /Entropy8Zuper!/. /skin/ documents the inception of Harvey and +Samyn's love affair, which begins in an internet chat room and grows +in an exchange of "digital love letters." ("/skinonskinonskin/" /Net +Art Anthology/). These letters consist of HTML pages (web pages) +containing animated love notes authored using early web tools +software, much of which is now defunct. The /Rhizome.org/'s /Net Art +Anthology/, where the work is preserved with emulator software, +describes it as a "complex portrait of an artistic and romantic +relationship that shows that online intimacy is as deeply felt, +embodied, and full of risk and reward as any other form" +("/skinonskinonskin/"). + +/skin/ takes part in a body electronic work called "Electronic +Literature," which is now practically inaccessible to modern web +browsers and applications. Electronic Literature, which spans several +subgenres, including hypertext fiction, network literature, +interactive fiction, and generative text share a common interest in +exploring digitality as an aesthetic. This work, like many across all +subgenres of Electronic Literature, is inaccessible to modern web +browsers. Though written in HTML (HyperText Markup Language), which +continues to be the default language for the web, this work is +animated by depreciated versions of JavaScript and Flash +software.[fn:7] Besides the outdated code, it also has an +incompatibility with its web platform, the Netscape 4 browser. The +decline of this browser, which was popularized as a platform agnostic +solution at the time (rendering HTML pages on both Harvey's Mac and +Samyn's PC), brought with it the depreciation of certain HTML and +JavaScript elements. Today, the only way to view Flash content in +something like its original context is through plugins or emulators, +like the one hosted on /Rhizome.org/ that enables viewers to read +/skin/ through a Netscape 4 window. + +In what follows, I embark on a close reading of the work's "surface +effects," that is, the appearance and interactivity of objects and +words on the screen, to emphasize how these elements facilitate a +haptic engagement, a sense of touch and movement through the user's +mouse. Throughout, I will turn to the underlying source code, the HTML +and JavaScript code, to examine how the coding layer might influence +the reading of the work's surface effects. To explore programming +structures and interactive elements on the screen, I draw from +concepts in Black Feminist and Media Archaeology Studies, such as +fugitivity and torque, foreclosure and displacement. Reading across +the registers of code and its display surfaces a tension between +communication and control throughout the work. The reduction of +communication to a single channel, for example, a stream of text, +reinforces that text's physicality in a way that opens up new +registers for reading sensation. + +I begin with the "air.html" page, which depicts an animation of two +small figures over a black background. The two figures, which +represent Samyn and Harvey, float in a horizontal, flying position +over a field of a cyber-scape of rolling, green lines. As the user's +curor pans across the screen, it attracts each of the figures toward +it, like a free floating magnet. This illusion of free movement, +however, is deceiving. While the figures slide effortlessly in all +directions, precise movement requires a controlled tactile ability +from the user's mouse. Additionally, while mouse can bring the +individual bodies into contact, but they can never cross each other, +or to the other's side of the screen. Samyn's body remains confined to +the left, while Harvey's is to the right (see GIF #1). + +[GIF] + +The bodies' animation is defined in the source code of the page, in a +series of functions written in JavaScript, the standard language for +defining interactive elements on web pages. Below is an excerpt of one +JavaScript function called ~flyMouse()~: + +#+BEGIN_SOURCE +if ( mouseX < halfW ) + + { + + var mFactor = 0.1; + + var aFactor = 0.01; + + } + +else + + { + + var mFactor = 0.01; + + var aFactor = 0.1; + + }; + +dMove('flyingmL','document.',mLeft + thisXDiff*mFactor,mTop + +thisYDiff*mFactor); + +dMove('flyingaL','document.',aLeft + thisXDiff*aFactor,aTop + thisYDiff*aFactor); +#+END_SOURCE +This ~if statement~ defines the direction and speed of the of the +bodies' movement. An ~if statement~, or "conditional statement," is a +foundational construct in programming that exists in most +languages. It determines the "control flow," or the order of +operations, in a block of code based on whether a specific condition +is true or false, a Boolean construct. The ~If statement~ enables +programmers to write code that makes decisions, so to speak, to +execute the relevant block of code that matches each condition.[fn:8] +Here, the movement of the bodies is conditional on their distance +between the mouse and the original positioning of the bodies on either +side of the screen. Depending on this distance, the magnetic force for +each of the bodies is multiplied against a factor of .1 or .01. This +results in a stronger movement from Samyn's body when the mouse is +near Samyn's original position on the left side of the screen, and a +stronger movement from Harvey's body when the mouse is on the right +half of the screen, Harvey's original position. The conditional +statement is reduces the direction of movement into a simple yes or no +condition. + +The binary nature of this conditional statement--it can be true or it +can be false--creates an animation that is, at its core, about a +multiplicity of movements. The binary structure of the conditional +statement enables movement across all directions of the screeen. There +is something intractable about this multiplicity, about the way that +the figures resist being controlled by the mouse even while are drawn +to it. + +If "air.html" plays with binary movement, another page, +"control.html," plays with lag. The page consists of a monochrome +green image of Harvey's head, which rolls from side to side in the +direction of the user's cursor as it pans over the image. As the +cursor exposes Harvey's face at different angles, it also displays +peices of alt-text, containing words like "go" "believe" "ocean" and +"mind." + +[INSERT GIF] + +The surface of the peice only reveals part of the full message, which +is contained in the source code (see below). The source code reveals +that the animation consists of 23 images, each of which is associated +with a specific alt-text and coordinate. Here is the full message of +the alt-text, contained within the source code: "i believe in it you +created it in my mind my mind cannot let it go the ocean the waves its +a vision." Each of these words and its corresponding image actives +only when the cursor pans over the associated coordinate. Thus the +movement of Harvey's head across the screen is in reality a series of +images whose coordinates have been activated by the mouse and then +super-imposed on the screen. This explains why Harvey's head takes +little jumps from one position to another rather than a smooth +movement from side to side. The effect is to create a slight lag, a +series of fleeting pauses in which Harvey gazes directly to the +viewer. + +#+BEGIN_SOURCE +i + +believe + +in + +it +#+END_SOURCE +While most pages contain an author, title, and date, this one only +contains a title, "you:controlMe." When examining the source code, we +see that this peice is about control, specifically, with control over +the female body. Ostensibly, the code addresses a message for Samyn to +"control" the movement of her face back and forth across the +image. The source code contains the full message and workings of the +animation, creating a haptic effect that is sensual but laggy. The +tactile qualities of this page, in which the user manually turns +Havery's head from one side ot another with the cursor-as-hand, are +further emphasized by the cursor itself, which appears as a pointing +hand. These haptic qualities, along with the foreclosure of the full +message, indicate that full control is not possible. + +Below the overt narrative of surface effects, lies another narrative +within the source code, where hidden messages mix natural with +computer languages to make verbal exhortations of love. On one page, +"breath.html," an animated male torso swells slightly and emits a +breathing sound when the mouse pans over it, a swell and sound that +accelerates with each swipe of the mouse. Below the surface, within +the HTML and JavaScript that defines its movement, are words meant +only for human eyes: a list of "whispers" contain romantic +protestations like "i will love you forever" and "i want to breath +you." Unlike "control.html," these messages never manifest on the +work's surface display: +#+BEGIN_SOURCE +whispers[0] = "breath me"; + +whispers[1] = "i will love you forever"; + +whispers[2] = "skin"; + +whispers[3] = "skin on skin"; + +whispers[4] = "skin on skin on skin"; + +whispers[5] = "implode"; + +whispers[6] = "soft"; + +whispers[7] = "slow"; + +whispers[8] = "can you feel me?"; + +whispers[9] = "touch me"; + +whispers[10] = "one more cigarette"; + +whispers[11] = "i am so open"; + +whispers[12] = "i want to feel you inside of me"; + +whispers[13] = "smoke"; + +whispers[14] = "i want to breathe you"; + +whispers[15] = "we are smoke"; + +whispers[16] = "yesss"; + +whispers[17] = "deeper"; + +whispers[18] = "i am disappearing"; + +whispers[19] = "warm"; +#+END_SOURCE +Turning on the themes of touch and air, this inaccessible layer seems +to extend the sensory affordances of the animation above. In +particular, the numerous references to smoke suggest making visible +that which is invisible. In the way that smoke is air that takes on +opacity, so this stream of pure letters (which includes the work's +title) suggests sensory qualities. + +Computer screens inherently contain a level of foreclosure that masks +inaccessible elements in the source code. This displacement, however, +also opens further channels for communication. An early chatroom +conversation between Samyn and Harvey, published on their website +under the title "Whispering Windows," demonstrates how the limitations +of digital media can bring to the surface a sense of intimacy. The +chat records their frustrated attempts to connect video and sound: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +womanonfire: the sound is a bit distorted with these things + +zuper: (private) yes + +womanonfire: if no one was around me here + +zuper: (private) the image is distorted too + +womanonfire: i would speak to you + +zuper: (private) but that's ok + +womanonfire: yes! + +womanonfire: these are all part of our relationship + +womanonfire: these limitations + +womanonfire: we must + +zuper: (private) 26 letters, no sound, no image + +womanonfire: learn new ways + +zuper: (private) make DHTMLove to me... http://entropy8zuper.org/ +#+END_QUOTE +The limitations of the medium, the "26 letters" of the alphabet and +their appearance on the screen, are the material for "DHTML love." +Despite these limitations of the medium, their effect is to magnify +the tone and syntax of the exchange. Samyn, under the username +/zuper/, writes under a private mode, while Harvey, under +/womanonfire/, uses the public one.[fn:9] When /womanonfire/ tends to +cut her syntax into pithy expressions ("we must") that arrest the flow +of thought and restart it on the next line ("learn new ways"), /zuper/ +responds in "private" mode with gentle reassurance ("but that's okay") +or reinforces /womanonfire/'s message. Even reduced to "26 characters" +on a screen, the conversation reveals a synchronized flow between the +lovers. + +Digital communication collapses aspects that could prohibit an +intimate connection between two people, such as space, cultural +differences, and even race. Even as they struggle with technical +difficulties, Samyn and Harvey revel in the intimacy enabled by this +mode of communication: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +womanonfire: i can just barely make you out + +womanonfire: how fitting + +womanonfire: it sounds so far away but you feel so close + +zuper: yes + +zuper: i am close + +zuper: i don't understand myself + +womanonfire: i will write you a very long letter tonight + +zuper: I'm falling in love with a 160x120 pixel video... + +zuper: Yes please write me a long letter + +womanonfire: it is dificult for me here right now + +zuper: why is it difficult? + +womanonfire: i was just about to write one about this + +womanonfire: because i love you + +zuper: ... + +womanonfire: seems so + +womanonfire: strange + +womanonfire: maybe it is lust + +womanonfire: i cant tell anymore + +zuper: pixellust? + +womanonfire: right + +zuper: I my case only ASCIIlust... +#+END_QUOTE +That /womanonfire/ "can just barely make...out" /zuper/ is "fitting" +because the physical barriers that separate their connection are +considerable. Yet, /zuper/ responds that he feels "so close" despite +his distance, a phenomenon which he "doesn't understand [himself]". +The question of whether their connection is really love, or if it's +lust (or "pixellust"), recalls Lilith's questioning Nikanj about sex, +of whether the feelings she experienced were "real" or not. Like +Lilith's neural connection to Joseph, this connection attains its +strength by bypassing obstacles that could trouble direct +human-to-human contact. In this case, the network connection overcomes +the obstacles of physical space and even of flesh: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +zuper: (private) I realised today that I have never been in love with +somebody who doesn't speak Dutch before. + +womanonfire -> zuper: i have never been in love with someone in +another country before + +zuper: (private) I have never been in love with someone with green +dreadlocks before + +zuper: (private) let alone black skin + +womanonfire -> zuper: yes i hope you wiwll like my skin + +zuper: (private) I already do. + +womanonfire -> zuper: :) http://entropy8zuper.org/ +#+END_QUOTE +The question of race becomes one in a list of other attributes like +hair color or speaking another language. The reduction of their +communication to letters on a screen flattens physical realities that +might otherwise be obstacles to communication and understanding. This +flattening of attributes like hair and skin color severs them from +their location on the physical body, instead transposing them to words +on a screen. Separated from the referent, they flicker in the +"unmappable elsewhere," where they cannot be pinned down. Like the +bypassing of flesh in /Dawn/, the foreclosure of depth paradoxically +creates a flattening effect that reinforces physicality of the +uppermost layer, of the surface, the /skin/. + +In this text, the tension between control and communication echoes the +tension between pleasure and violence in the previous sections. The +tactile qualities of the net art work, where the user can manipulate +objects on the screen with her mouse, is complicated by laggy or +intractable effects created by the parameters and structures of the +underlying code. The displacement of certain elements like hidden +messages in the source code reinforces the levels of digital +materiality that operate throughout the stack with varying degrees of +accessibility. When objects on the screen are in tension with the +signified, the surface itself creates a kind of chaotic environment +where everything becomes skin. This reduction to surface endows flesh +with sensuality. + +Through vastly different means, both /Dawn/ and /skin/ explore a kind +of desire that bypasses the physical body with the effect of +magnifying embodied sensation. In /Dawn/, the gap between bodies +stokes a debilitating fear of the other that is temporarily bridged by +a neural connection. In /skin/, the physical body is also bypassed, +but in this case, for a connection across spatial barriers. Reading +these two texts together enables one to think through materiality +across various contexts, from the physiological, to the technological, +and finally, to the social. The collapse of registers between +mind/body and code/display across these texts offers possibilities for +reading materiality into apparently immateriality, informing how +xenophobia operates through plays between matter and meaning. + +* Works +Ackerman, Erin. + +Alarcón, Norma. "Conjugating Subjects in the Age of Multiculturalism" +/Mapping Multiculturalism/. Avery F. Gordon and Christopher Newfield, +editors. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 127-148. + +Barnes, Stephen. + +Barthes, Roland. /Camera Lucida/. + +Brown, Jayna. + +Butler, Octavia. Dawn. Grand Central Publishing. 1987. + +Dunkley, Kitty. + +Entropy8Zuper!. skinonskinonskin. Rhizome. https://anthology.rhizome.org/skinonskinonskin + +Haraway, Donna. /Primate Visions/. + +Hayles, N. Katherine. "Flickering connectivities in Shelley Jackson's +Patchwork Girl: the Importance of Media-Specific Analysis," 2000. + +Hayles, N. Katherine. Writing Machines. MIT Press, 2002. p. 107. + +Jesser, Nancy. + +Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination. MIT Press +2008. + +Mann, Justin Louis. + +Meltzer, Patricia. + +Moraga, Cherrie. "La Guera", from /Loving in the War Years: Lo que +nunca paso' por sus labios/. + +Musser, Amber Jamilla. /Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown +Jouissance/. NYU Press, +2018. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvwrm5ws. + +Ramirez, Catherine S. + +Sandoval, Chela. "U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of +Oppositional Consciousness in the Postmodern World." + +/skinonskinonskin/ (1999). Rhizome.org /Net Art Anthology/. +https://anthology.rhizome.org/skinonskinonskin + +Snorton, C. Riley. Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. University of +Minnesota Press, 2017. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctt1pwt7dz; + +Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacritics, +vol. 17, no. 2, 1987, pp. 65–81. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/464747 + +* Footnotes + +[fn:1] The criticism from the novel situates this interplay of +similarity and difference within intersectional or "Women of Color" +feminism, particularly in Chela Sandoval's theorization of +"differential consciousness." Using terms that echo in her famous +followup work, "The Cyborg Manifesto," Donna Haraway describes this +text (and Butler's fiction in general) as being "about the monstrous +fear and hope that the child will not, after all, be like the parent" +(Haraway /Primate Visions/ 387). Catherine S. Ramirez builds from both +Haraway and Chela Sandoval to explore the tension between essentialism +and constructedness in the novel, which she calls an example of +"cyborg feminism"--a feminism that explores a strategic tension +between between "affinity and essence, and "plurality and specificity" +(Ramirez 395). Ramirez argues that, by "critiqu[ing] fixed concepts of +race, gender, sexuality and humanity, and, subsequently, 'fictions' of +identity and community" this work displays a "strategic deployment of +essence," that is, the claiming of a subject position for the purpose +of resisting subjectification (Ramirez 375, 395). + +[fn:2] Mann argues that the novel evokes the concept of "pessimistic +futurism," combining the cynicism of afro-pessimism, which associates +blackness with ontological death and the impossibility of black +subjectivity, and the optimism of afro-futurism, which speculates and +potentializes liberatory black subjectivity and futurity. + +[fn:3] As I have mentioned, one group of critics generally maintain +that the novel destabilizes biological categories its associated +assumptions about behavior, while a second argue that the novel +reinforces biological determinist views. The first group emphasizes +the novel's revision of biological determinist views, particularly +when it comes to gender. "Gender," Haraway argues, "is not the +transubstantiation of biological sexual difference," rather, it is +"kind, syntax, relation, genre" (/Primate Visions/ 377). Critics who +build Haraway's reading, like Catherine S. Ramirez and Kitty Dunkley, +explore how Butler deploys aspects of biological identity in a +strategic way. Ramirez explains that Butler strategically deploys +essentialist identity categories, as a tool for "imagining and +mobilizing new subjects and new communities" (395). Within the frame +of humanism, Kitty Dunkley emphasizes Butler's revision the +anthropocentric and patriarchial structures that necessitate essential +notions of gender. An example is the men's fear of the sexual +seduction and penetration by the ooloi, which "threatens to usurp the +men’s position at the pinnacle of a gendered hierarchy" (Dunkley +100). For both Ramirez and Dunkley, the biological "facts" of gender +are deconstructed, rather than reinforced, in the novel. By constrast, +Nancy Jesser centers the role of biological determinism within +Butler's fiction. Jesser boldly asserts that "Genetics is the science +of Butler's fiction. The translation of genotype to phenotype is the +plot" (52). According to Jesser, the novel re-works genetic tendencies +of behavior by deploying feminine traits, like maternal +self-sacrifice, nurture, and relationality, to correct tendencies of +dominance, possessiveness, and aggression typically displayed by the +males (41-42). On this side of the debate, biology is a physical fact +that determines behavior, but can also be re-worked or overcome +through other tendencies. + +[fn:4] There is one exception to this view, from Patricia Meltzer, who argues +that the trilogy, and its third installment specifically, presents a +view of non-normative sexuality which can literally transform bodies +at will. In this book, the human-Oankali constructs evolved the +ability to manipulate organic matter within their own bodies, as +shape-shifting beings who can adapt to their prospective partner's +desires. Drawing from Judith Butler, Meltzer poses a body that is +queer because it is constructed by desire: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +"Butler's concepts here are positioned neither in a biological +essentialism that insists on gender identity (woman) as derivated of a +body's sex (female), nor in a social and/or psychological +constructivism that udnerstands the body's materiality as dominated by +(social) discourse. Instead, desire and sexuality are based in the +body's need for others... the body follows desire. Meltzer 241 +#+END_QUOTE +While other critics point out the disruptions to normativity, like in +those in which the binary is destabilized, upended, where gender roles +are reimagined, here Melzter draws out alternate visions for sex, +gender, and desire altogether. Building from Butler's concept of +performativity, Meltzer defines queerness as resisting the normative +correlation of sex/gender/desire. The failure of easy alignment among +these elements opens up the possibility of imagining how desire can +construct new configurations of sexuality, that are "rooted in the +body's amorphous craving for physical pleasure" (Melzter 236). + +I agree with Meltzer that the sex act is a queer one, but not because +of a desire that literally transform bodies. Rather, the sex act is +queer because of the way that it simultaneously bypasses and +invigorates the flesh. + +[fn:5] As opposed to the "studium," or subject, of a photograph, the +"punctum" is a detail that "pierces" the viewer. See Barthes, /Camera +Lucida/, 27. + +[fn:6] For example, one could balance a twelve-inch ruler by placing +a finger under the sixth inch. By applying some force to the center of +mass, the object would not pivot, but move in a linear direction, +either up or down, or sideways, depending on the direction of the +force. However, if external force was applied along either side of the +center, say at the second inch, the object would pivot. Its direction +would then be determined by its pivot point, whether that be its +center of mass or the point where the object is affixed to another +object, if the ruler were nailed to the wall, for example. In this +case, the ruler would pivot around this point of attachment, and the +force and direction of its pivot would be measured as "torque." + +[fn:7] JavaScript is still in use today, but has updated syntax and +elements which make it incompatible with modern web browsers. Flash, +by contrast, was officially discontinued on December 31st, 2020. An +animation authoring tool that was widely popular in the late 1990s and +early 2000s, Flash originally delivered advanced graphics at a time +when media-rich content traveled slowly over the web. Over the last 10 +years, however, the development of newer, more efficient and secure +animation technologies brought Flash into obsolescence. This +termination made a generation of internet games, net art, and +electronic literature virtually inoperable. + +[fn:8] For example, an email inbox will display unread emails in bold +formatting depending on whether or not that email has been opened by +the user. Behind the scenes, an ~if statement~ checks if the email has +been opened. If it has, the email will render with regular formatting, +but if it has not, it will render in bold formatting. + +[fn:9] If there are others in the chatroom, they have been removed +from the transcript. + +[fn:11] The first function, ~startMove()~, sets a series of timers that +initiate and perpetuate the animation. The second function, +~floatWords()~, loops through the list of words and phrases and passes +individual selections from this list to the next function, +~floatWord()~, which sets the trajectory and timing for their +movement. Within this function, a call to ~rePos()~ repositions the +word in a new location, to begin the cycle anew. + +[fn:10] Hayles's influential text, /How We Became Posthuman: Virtual +Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics/ (2000), lays out +the "waves of cybernetic development," that is, the development of +systems theory among prominant information and communication theorists +like Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Claude Shannon, and Warren +McCulloch (2). + diff --git a/qt_writings/three/final3.org~ b/qt_writings/three/final3.org~ new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5339a89 --- /dev/null +++ b/qt_writings/three/final3.org~ @@ -0,0 +1,1846 @@ +* three +#+SEQ_TODO: TODO(t) WAITING(w) IN_PROGRESS(p) WAITING(w) FOLLOWUP(f) | CANCELLED(c) DONE(d) + +"Sex, Flesh, Skin: A Media Archaeology of Octavia Butler's /Dawn/ and +Entropy8Zuper!'s /skinonskinonskin/" + +** chapter overview +This paper juxtaposes two unlikely texts--an early hypertext work from +1999, and a science fiction novel from 1987--to unpack the role of +“media” across physiological and technological systems. The early +hypertext work, /skinonskinonskin/, written collectively by the +artist-couple known as Entropy8Zuper!, explores +electronically-mediated desire through a series of digital love poems +that combine hypertext, audio, and Flash media technology. The fiction +novel, Dawn by Octavia Butler, poses a post-apocalyptic scenario where +humans find themselves coerced into sex and procreation with +extraterrestrial colonizers. In these couplings, sexual contact is +routed through an alien intermediary who plugs directly into the human +brain's pleasure centers. Though Butler’s novel and /skinonskinonskin/ +present vastly different narrative worlds and physical formats, I’m +interested in how both texts trouble the boundary between materiality +and abstraction, in one case technological, through computer hardware +and software, and in another physiological, through nervous systems +and brain chemistry. + +In Butler’s novel, I examine how human flesh--the traditional site for +sexual contact between two partners--is bypassed for direct neural +stimulation facilitated by an alien intermediary. By bypassing the +flesh, this method of intercourse dissolves the distinction between +self and other--the root of xenophobia--as well as sense and +thought. Drawing from thinkers in Chicanx Studies and Black Feminist +Studies, I argue that this method creates an ethics based on pleasure +rather than choice or consent. + +Turning to /skinonskinonskin/, I trace the complicated stack of +technologies, including web tools and Flash media, that facilitate the +display and preservation of this work. Borrowing from Media +Archaeology, I analyze how the work's various "screen effects" engages +with its underlying software logics. My overall goal is to explore the +material qualities of media--be they technical or physiological--for +the ways they offers a kind of capacious mode for theorizing new, +queer forms of communication and ethical relations. + +** sex +*** section overview +These sections examine human vs Oankali social structures to read the +priortization of sensuality and feeling as a basis for more ethical +relationships. While humans work within hierarchical social systems, +the Oankali use thier physiological capacities to achieve +collectivity. These physiological capacities, which includes creating +direct, neural connections between separate brains, blend cognitive +processes with physical ones, creating a collision of registers. This +collision points to the role of sensuality, particularly the flesh, in +mediating communication and facilitating ethical modes of relation. + +*** fear +In the novel /Dawn/, the first of the /Xenogenesis/ trilogy by Octavia +Butler, the main character, Lilith Iyapo, is seduced by an alien. The +alien, called "Nikanj," is an ooloi, or third- or neutral-gendered +being. Nikanj coaxes Lilith to join it and her human partner, Joseph: +"'Lie here with us,' it says, 'Why should you be down there by +yourself?,'" an invitation which Lilith cannot resist: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +She thought there could be nothing more seductive than an ooloi +speaking in that particular tone, making that particular +suggestion. She realized she had stood up without meaning to and taken +a step toward the bed. She stopped, stared at the two of +them. Joseph’s breathing now became a gentle snore and he seemed to +sleep comfortably against Nikanj as she had awakened to find him +sleeping comfortably against her many times. She did not pretend +outwardly or to herself that she would resist Nikanj’s invitation—-or +that she wanted to resist it. Nikanj could give her an intimacy with +Joseph that was beyond ordinary human experience. And what it gave, it +also experienced. 306 +#+END_QUOTE +The erotic desire that Lilith experiences is intense enough to make +her temporarily ignore that these aliens, called "Oankali," have +descended upon earth with one goal: to coerce humans to reproduce with +them and create a human-alien species. As ooloi, Nikanj has a special +sexual organ that facilitates a neural connection between a male and +female partner, in this case, between Lilith and Joseph. It makes this +connection by inserting this organ, a "sensory hand," into each +partner's spinal cord, located at the back of the neck. During the sex +act, this organ stimulates each partner's pleasure centers in the +brain and collects genetic information which the Oankali will +eventually suse to engineer a human-alien embryo. + +Despite her eagerness to have sex with Nikanj, Lilith harbors a deep +resistance against the Oankali's intention to procreate with +humanity. Scenes like the one above, in which Lilith surrenders to her +sexual desire, appear in stark contrast to her determination to +escape, conveyed by her invocation to "Learn and run!" which she +repeats up until the last page of the novel. Having barely survived a +nuclear apocalypse only to be "rescued" by the aliens, Lilith, along +with the surviving humans, is being held on the Oankali spaceship in +preparation to do their part in the "gene trade"--that is, to +re-populate the earth with a new human-Oankali species. The Oankali +have given Lilith a special job to be a guide, what she calls a "Judas +goat," to shepherd humans into accepting that humanity will change +forever, that their children will look like "Medusa children" (Butler +87). + +The conflict between various biological drives, such as sex drive +versus the survival drive, speaks to a larger debate among the novel's +critics about the primacy of biological impulses in determining human +behavior. For, even when this sex act appears contained to the mind, +it is always portrayed as something guided by impulses and tendencies +of the body. Donna Haraway and Kitty Dunkley, for example, argue that +the interspecies couplings challenge naturalizing assumptions about +sex, race, and the human/animal divide. Haraway's influential analysis +from /Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern +Science/ (1989), reads this story "as if it were a report from the +primate field in the allotopic space of earth after a nuclear +holocaust" (376). She argues that the inter-species relations +"facilitate revisionings" of "difference, reproduction, and survival" +(Haraway 377). On the other hand, critics like Stephen Barnes, Nancy +Jesser, and Erin Ackerman argue for a biological determinist +reading. Stephen Barnes, who knew Butler personally, emphasizes the +influence of biological research in her writing on human nature, +sharing that Butler was fascinated by what she called "emergent +properties," which begin from small impulses, like the tendency to +categorize something as either similar or different, as the seeds of +complex social behaviors and structures. Nancy Jesser emphasizes the +determinist perspective on sex, arguing that "the plot relentlessly +reinforces certain sociobiological notions of essential and 'natural' +male and female through the concept of biological 'tendency'" (Jesser +41-42). + +Critics from both sides of the debate agree on one point, however: +that sexuality in the text reflects a firmly heterosexual paradigm. +These views are due to the gendered structure of the sex act, which +maintains a male/female coupling, despite the addition of an ooloi +participant. Haraway, for example, asserts that, "Heterosexuality +remains unquestioned, if more complexly mediated. The different social +subjects, the different genders that could emerge from another +embodiment of resistance to compulsory heterosexual reproductive +politics, do not inhabit this /Dawn/" (380). According to this view +Butler's deconstruction of species and sex falls short of affecting +sexuality. + +This chapter argues that the heterosexual paradigm is indeed +disrupted, and it is disrupted by a queer mode of relation which +emerges in the tripartite sexual union enabled by the ooloi figure. +In what follows, I will examine the connection created by this union, +whose linkage of neural pathways between two bodies scrambles the +distinctions between thinking and feeling, a clash of registers that +blends the materiality of the flesh with the abstraction of cognitive +processes. + +This chapter will explore how this clash of registers operates across +two seemingly unrelated domains: Black Feminist Studies and Media +Archaeology Studies. I will examine how each of these domains +theorizes the intersection of physical embodiment with chemical, +conceptual, and/or electrical signaling, reading for sensuality across +medial environments. Finally, I will put these ideas into practice +with a close reading of a work of electronic fiction, +/skinonskinonskin/. My goal is to explore the material qualities of +media--be they technical or physiological--for the ways they offer a +kind of capacious mode for theorizing new, queer forms of +communication and ethical relations. + +To begin this exploration, I first examine a moment of heightened +sensuality from the story, a moment of extreme fear. This moment +occurs when Lilith comes face-to-face with her captors for the first +time. Jhadaya, a male Oankali, meets Lilith in her isolation room. She +initially processes his alien body according to human anatomical terms: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +The lights brightened as she had supposed they would, and what had +seemed to be a tall, slender man was still humanoid, but it had no +nose--no bulge, no nostrils--just flat, gray skin. It was gray all +over--pale gray skin, darker gray hair on its head that grew down +around its eyes and ears and at its throat. There was so much hair +across the eyes that she wondered how the creature could see. The +long, profuse ear hair seemed to grow out of the ears as well as +around them. Above, it joined the eye hair, and below and behind, it +joined the head hair. The island of throat hair seemed to move +slightly, and it occurred to her that that might be where the creature +breathed--a kind of natural tracheostomy. + +Lilith glanced at the humanoid body, wondering how humanlike it really +was. "I don't mean any offense," she said, "but are you male or +female?" + +"It's wrong to assume that I must be a sex you're familiar with," it +said, "but as it happens, I'm male." + +Good. It could become 'he' again. Less awkward. 29 +#+END_QUOTE +Although Jdhaya points out Lilith's mistake for assuming hisq gender, +she nonetheless takes some comfort from being able to call him a "he." +The gender designation, along with a catalogue of mammalian anatomical +features "hair," "eyes," "ears," and "throat," reveals the impulse to +categorize the unknown according to human terms. This small comfort, +however, evaporates when the strangeness of the alien's appearance +exceeds the categories available to her: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +She did not want to be any closer to him. She had not known what held +her back before. Now she was certain it was his alienness, his +difference, his literal unearthliness. She found herself still unable +to take even one more step toward him. + +"Oh god," she whispered. And the hair--the whatever it +was--moved. Some of it seemed to blow toward her as though in a wind, +though there was no stirring of air in the room. + +She frowned, strained to see, to understand. Then, abruptly, she did +understand. She backed away, scrambled around the bed and to the far +wall. When she could go no farther, she stood against the wall, +staring at him. + +Medusa. 30 +#+END_QUOTE +As Lilith attempts to place the alien into familiar categories, she +undergoes a complex physio-cognitive process. First, she uses +anatomical categories to perceive Jhadaya. Then, as his difference +begins to register, she apprehends him on a pre-linguistic, embodied +level, characterized by paralyzing aversion where she is "unable to +take even one more step toward him" (29-30). Then, when Lilith +examines his face more closely, the interval of immobilizing fear ends +abruptly with her "understand[ing]." She expresses her aversion in +figurative language, evocing the mythical figure "Medusa." + +The choice of "Medusa" here is significant. It demonstrates that +Lilith subscribes the unknown in terms of something familiar to the +human imaginary, ableit in the context of myth. Her physio-cognitive +progression from instinctual body movement to intellection suggests a +peculiar wasy that humanity handles the unknown. This can be +attributed to a particular combination of human traits, which the +Oankali call the "human contradiction." Later in this scene, Jhadaya +describes these two traits: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +"You are intelligent," he said. "That's the newer of the two +characteristics, and the one you might have put to work to save +yourselves. You are potentially one of the most intelligent species +we've found, though your focus is different from ours. Still, you had +a good start in the life sciences, and even in genetics." + +"What's the second characteristic? + +"You are hierarchical. That's the older and more entrenched +characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your +most distant ones. It's a terrestrial characteristic. When human +intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence +did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did +not notice it at all..." [...] "That was like ignoring cancer. I +think your people did not realize what a dangerous thing they were +doing." +#+END_QUOTE +According to Jhadaya, the tendency toward hierarchy, to create social +groupings, even to colonize and oppress, descends from an ancient +instinct that once served to sustain, protect, and organize early +human tribes. But when the hierarchical instinct grows unchecked into +the modern world, Jdhaya explains, it creates unjust divisions within +society. + +For Lilith, then, the tendency toward hierarchy first demands that she +place this being on a scale of familiarity. She compares Jhadaya to +what she already knows about other living beings, placing him into a +binary gender system, for example. However, when the hierarchy fails +to subsume his other qualities, like the strange, moving "hair" +growing all over his body, her intelligence steps in to speculate with +an analogy, "Medusa." Here, her mind makes the leap between what she +sees and what she can imagine. The analogy to the Medusa indicates +that this particular type of xenophobia is not just of otherness, but +in the interplay between otherness and similarity. What scares Lilith +is an apparent familiarity of this humanoid, this bipedal, two-limbed +creature, which has an audible language and conscious intelligence is +combined aspects that do not belong to any mammal. "Medusa" marks the +moment when Lilith, who until then has been struggling to place a +strange being within known phenomena, finally settles onto a familiar +designation. Despite his alienness, at that point, Jhadaya becomes +incorporated into an anthropocentric worldview--specifically, into a +fearsome figure that represents monstrous and deadly femininity. + +Criticism on the novel does a good job of situating the tension +between similarity and difference within intersectional +feminism.[fn:2] Here, however, I am interested in this experience of +difference and similarity-in-difference as a physiological response, +and what it can reveal about ethical relations. Here, I draw from +Chicana feminist theorists Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa who +write about the expereince of xenophobia from a sensual +dimension. Moraga, for example, argues that the fear of the other is +heightened by a perceived similarity between the self and +other. Speaking about social hierarchies of oppression, Moraga asserts +that, "it is not really difference the oppressor fears so much as +similarity" (32). However, at the same time that perceived similarity +causes fear, it also offers an opportunity for connection. Moraga, for +example, draws from her sexuality to relate to her mother, who +experienced levels of poverty and colorism that Moraga, as an educated +"guera," was able to avoid: +#+begin_quote +It wasn't until I acknowledged and confronted my own lesbianism in the +flesh that my heartfelt identification with and empathy for my +mother's oppression--due to being poor, uneducated, and Chicana--was +realized. My lesbianism is the avenue through which I have learned the +most about silence and oppression, and it continues to be the most +tactile reminder to me that we are not free human beings. 28-29 +#+end_quote +When difference is a source of "silence and oppression," as it has +been for Moraga's sexuality, finding similarity requires a deeply +sensual process. Here, Moraga's sexuality enables her to make a +connection to other kinds of difference, specifically differences +across skin tone and economic class. This confrontation occurs "in the +flesh," meaning that difference is a felt, sensational phenomenon, a +"tactile reminder" that bridges the gap between self and other. + +Anzaldúa, a Chicana lesbian like Moraga, explores a method for +incorporating difference into identity. Anzaldúa grew up on the +Texas-Mexico border, works to integrate her Aztec, Spanish, and +Mexican backgrounds into a modern Chicana identity. Anzaldúa explains +that surfacing this history and heritage will require "developing a +tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity... learn[ing] +to be an Indian [sic] in Mexican culture, to be a Mexican from an +Anglo point of view" (Anzaldua 78-79). Anzaldúa resurrects latent +aspects of the cultural psyche in the form of the fearsome Aztec +goddess, Coatlicue. Like Medusa, Coatlicue is associated with snakes, +her name translates from Nahuatl into "serpent skirt." As the "Earth +Mother who conceives all celestial beings out of her cavernous womb," +Coatlicue embodies a unity of opposites, the dual forces of life and +death, fertility and destruction (Anzaldua 46). Over time, however, +Anzaldúa explains that this unity has been severed into "pure" and +"impure" aspects. Influenced by a growing patriarchy, Aztec culture +splits Coatlicue into the fertility earth goddess, "Tonantsi," the +puta and into "Coatlalopeuh," the chaste (27). Then, with the arrival +of the Spaniards, the figures are split again, this time into the +Virgin of Guadalupe, the most revered figure of Mexican Cathololicism, +with the negative aspects incorporated into the figures La LLorona and +La Chingada. + +/Coatlicue/ incorporates the originary whole that Anzaldúa aims to +bring into a modern imaginary: "Coatlicue- Cihuacoatl- Tlazolteotl- +Tonantzin- Coatlalopeuh- Guadalupe--they are one" (50). The process by +which Anzaldua accesses and integrates the scattered aspects of +Coatlicue is called the "/Coatlicue/ state." Here, Anzaldua enters +into a trance, a spiritual opening, to confront the pain, shame, and +lonelienss of a severed identity. She explains that, "We need +/Coatlicue/ to slow us up so that the psyche can assimilate previous +experiences and process the changes" (Anzaldua 46). Anzaldua describes +the visual confrontation with /Coatlicue/: +#+begin_quote +Seeing and being seen. Subject and object, I and she. The eye pins +down the object of its gaze, scrutinizes it, judges it. A glance can +freeze us in place; it can "possess" us. It can erect a barrier +against the world. But in a glance also lies awareness, +knowledge. These seemingly contradictory aspects--the act of being +seen, held immobilized by a glance, and "seeing through" an +experience--are symbolized by the underground aspects of /Coatlicue/, +/Cihuacoatl/, /Tlazolteotl/ which cluster in what I call the +/Coatlicue/ state. 42 +#+end_quote +Here, vision is simultaneously a tool for capture, for being "pin[ned] +down" or "immobilized," and a tool of enlightenment, in "awareness, +knowledge." Anzaldua embraces the duality of this kind of vision, and +in what seems to be its paradoxical effect, which is freedom in +possession. Being the object of /Coatlicue/'s gaze both reliquishes +agency and opens a connection, enabling an intimate relation to the +other. + +*** pleasure +Oankali, unlike humans, are attracted to difference. As Jhadaya +explains to Lilith: "We acquire new life, seek it, investigate it, +manipulate it, sort it, use it. We carry the drive to do this in a +minuscule cell within a cell, a tiny organelle within every cell of +our bodies" (84). This essential drive, which powers their "gene +trade," is made possible by that which the humans find most disturbing +about their captors--the tentacle-like organs that sprout from their +bodies. These organs transmit all external sensory information such as +sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste, provide channels for the +immediate sharing of thoughts and feelings in intra-Oankali +communication, and faciliate sex. This sensory capacity puts them into +direct contact with those who are different. As a result, the Oankali +do not fear difference, rather, they crave it. This craving to absorb +difference and incorporate it into new life forms is encoded in their +genetic ancestry. Nikanj, the ooloi child who will eventually become +Lilith's mate, explains to Lilith that "'Six divisions ago, on a +white-sun water world, we lived in great shallow oceans'[...] 'We were +many-bodied and spoke with body lights and color patterns among +ourself and among ourselves" (123). From this ancestry, the current +Oankali inheirited a drive for collectivity. + +This tendency for collective consciousness, distributed among the +beings, singular and plural at once, "ourself and ourselves," +destabilize the an assumption underpinning free will, that of +consent. When Nikanj is an adult, Joseph's genetic material to +impregnate Lilith without her knowledge, much less her consent. It +explains to Lilith that it only gives her what she truly wants, which +is a child, "'You'll have a daughter,' it said. 'And you are ready to +be her mother. You could never have said so. Just as Joseph could +never have invited me into his bed'" (468-9). For the Oankali +cultivating life is the principal factor for decision-making. + +The sex scenes in particular portray a level of sensual pleasure and +connection that makes it difficult to separate concious will from +embodied desire. As Jayna Brown points out, "the pleasurable +experience of sex with the Ooloi is so highly compelling it is +sometimes likened to rape in the text" (105). Not only are humans +seduced into sexual relations by the pheramones that arouse an +overwhelming sexual desire, there is involuntary sterilization, +complicity in human-on-human rape, and more seriously, Nikanj's rape +of Joseph. Joshua Yu Burnett explains that while "the novel's +treatment of the issue [of consent] is both provocative and +troubling," "none of this is meant to suggest that the Oankali are +vicious, brutal rapists" (110, 117). Because their sensory and +communication capacities prevent the Oankali from deception, "they +seem quite genuine in their insistance that human claims of +non-consent belie a deeper, physio-psychological consent" (Burnett +117). Justin Louis Mann's "pessimistic futurist" reading of the novel +points the ways that subjugation and coercion partly revises the human +contradiction.[fn:3] Mann explains that the sexual relationship +between Lilith, Joseph, and Nikanj is crystalized in the image of +Nikanj's "sensory arm" wrapped around Lilith's neck, which she +describes as "an oddly comfortable noose" (Mann 62). Mann points out +that this noose, while drawing from history of subjugation and death, +also evokes comfort, a kind of complacency with the highly pleasurable +sexual experiences which Lilith enjoys with Nikanj. According to Mann, +this complacency replaces the oppression of the human contradiction +with coersion into physical pleasure (Mann 62). + +When Nikanj presents himself to Lilith, one might expect a split +between her sexual desire and her determination to rebel against the +forced interbreeding. But instead, one instead encounters their +conflation, where Lilith welcomes her body's immediate, unconscious +response to Nikanj's invitation. The conflation between embodied +instinct and free will suggests a more fundamental collapse between +physical sensation and mental experience. During the sex act, Lilith +experiences a torrent feelings that leads her to question the +objective reality of her experience. When Nikanj "plugs" into her and +Joseph, she, +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +[I]mmediately recieved Joseph as a blanket of warmth and security, a +compelling, steadying presence. + +She never knew whether she was receiving Nikanj's approximation of +Joseph, a true transmission of what Joseph was feeling, some +combination of truth and approximation, or just a pleasant fiction. + +What was Joseph feeling from her? + +It seemed to her that she had always been with him. She had no +sensation of shifting gears, no "time alone" to contrast with the +present "time together." He had always been there, part of her, +essential. 308-309 +#+END_QUOTE +What Lilith first feels as a physical presence, a "blanket of warmth" +she builds into cognitive interpretation. When she begins to question +the objective truth of her experience, whether Joseph shares in the +same sensations, her doubt soon fades to reassurance. Physical +presence transforms into a mental certainty: "he had always been +there, part of her, essential." + +Meanwhile, Nikanj, who is mediating the experience, becomes +imperceptible to the two of them: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +Nikanj focused on the intensity of their attraction, their union. It +left Lilith no other sensation. It seemed, itself, to vanish. She +sensed only Joseph, felt that he was aware only of her. + +Now their delight in one another ignited and burned. They moved +together, sustaining an impossible intensity, both of them tireless, +perfectly matched, ablaze in sensation, lost in one another. 308-309 +#+END_QUOTE +Their sex dissolves the sense of time, space, and the distance between +Lilith and Joseph, who she felt "was aware only of her." In the midst +of this intensity, the intermediary which makes this fusion possible +fades, leaving Lilith and Jospeh "lost in own another." Afterward, +when Lilith asks if the sex is simulated, Nikanj explains that +although sensory experience is shared between herself and Joseph, +"Intellectually, he made his interpretations and you made yours." To +this, Lilith remarks that she "wouldn't call them intellectual" +(310-311). That Lilith questions whether her mental experiences are +true or not, at the same time that she indicates their sensual nature, +suggests the deep imbrication of the sensual and cognitive registers +during the sex act. The direct neural connection creates a channel +through which embodied sensation and intellectual interpretation can +traffic. + +In human-alien sex, thed fusion between minds surfaces a sensation of +exactly that which their neurological connection bypasses--the +flesh. And paradoxically, in human-to-human sex, the flesh which +facilitates contact also functions as an obstacle, creating the +potential for miscommunication and misunderstanding. While humans must +navigate through the flesh to attain unity, the Oankali bypass it +entirely by routing directly into the brain's pleasure centers, +eliminating the space for physical discomfort and even repulsion. This +immediate connection facilitated by the ooloi offers, as Nikanj +explains, it "a oneness that your people strive for, dream of, but +can't truly attain alone" (359). The pleasures that come from physical +sensation, the feeling of which is heightened in sex, is what enables +the Oankali, to crave, rather than fear, difference. + +The importance of bodily effects and sensations speaks to one critical +debate about the influence of the body, in particular, the influence +of biology, on identity and behavior in the novel. [fn:6] While +critics mostly disagree on whether Butler deconstructs or reinforces +biological categories and essentialist notions of behavior, they do +agree on the primacy of heterosexuality, with Haraway claiming that +"Heterosexuality remains unquestioned, if more complexly mediated" +(380). [fn:7] I would suggest, however, that the bypassing of flesh to +simultaneously invigorate fleshy sensation requires a new +understanding of sexuality, one that disrupts the traditional +boundaries of subjectivity. Here, I draw from Jayna Brown's emphasis +on the flesh and how it opens possibilities for reconceiving +subjectivity. According to Brown, while the senses "individuate us, +demarcate our boundaries," they also "mark the ways our bodies are +open. The body, the self, is porous, receptive, impressionable" (Brown +14). In the novel, this openness to feeling is achieved by re-routing +around the flesh and its senses, the traditional channel for feeling, +in a way that emphasizes that which it bypasses. The effect is to +transform cognitive and conceptual phenomena into physical, sensual +experiences. + +Here, separateness is crucial for enabling connection. While direct +connection can momentarily dissolve the boundaries of the individual, +a distance between self and other energizes sensation and +understanding. For example, when Lilith asks Nikanj to share its +feelings of grief after Joseph's untimely death: "It gave her... a new +color. A totally alien, unique, nameless thing, half seen, half felt +or... tasted. A blaze of something frightening, yet overwhelmingly, +compelling" (Butler 429). Despite their direct neural connection, the +description here derives its expressive power on the quality of +unknowability, using formations of liminality, ("half seen, half +felt," "alien," "a new color"). Within the context of identity +politics, Chicana scholar Norma Alarcón warns against the dangers of +what she calls "ontologiz[ing] difference." The challenge is to +achieve connection without totally subsuming the other into totalizing +and therefore oppressive paradigms of subjectivity. She explains that, +"The desire to translate as totalizing metphorical substitution +without acknowledging the "identity-in-difference," so that one's own +system of signification is not disrupted through a historical concept +whose site of emergence is implicated in our own history, may be +viewed as a desire to dominate, constrain, and contain" (133). Rather +than subsume alienness into familiar structures of knowledge, like the +way that Lilith subsumes Jhadaya's tentacles into the similitude of +the terrifying Medusa, the neural connection sustains the difference +in the other. +a +** flesh +Could the flesh, which poses a problem for intra-human connection, +also offer a solution to this problem? In what follows, I explore two +how two very different fields--Black Feminist Studies and Media +Archaeology--offer critical methods for thinking through +materiality. Black Feminist Studies explores the concept of the flesh +within the context of slavery, while Media Archaeology explores the +materiality of electronic media and processing. Though vastly +different in focus, both areas of inquiry share a similar investment +in reading into surfaces to see how they offer new modes for thinking +and resistance. Their theorizations of materiality, which index a +liminal space where meaning is simultaneously ascribed and obscured, +will become the ground for my analysis of the intersections of +hardware and software in my next and final section, "Skin." + +*** Black Feminist Studies +In Black Feminist Studies, critics like Hortense Spillers, C. Riley +Snorton, and Amber J. Musser read racial and gendered processes, a +"symbolic order" or "American grammar," in Hortense Spillers words, +ascribed to Black bodies since the violences of trans-Atlantic slavery +(68). In her influential essay, "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An +American Grammar Book," Spillers describes the Black body as a stack +of "attentuated meanings, made in excess over time, assigned by a +particular historical order" (65). The "severing of the captive body +from its motive will," creates a what Spillers calls a "stunning +conntradiction (67). Here, the contradiction is between the body's +reduction to materiality, "reduc[ing] to a thing, becoming being for +the captor," and the simultaneous layering of signification, +"becom[ing] the source of an irresistible, destructive sensuality" +(67). First, there is a reduction of the body to its bare +physicality--into flesh--a material substance for labor and +exchange. At the same time, however, this reduction also opens a +possiblity for signification, which aspects of sensuality, +objectificaiton, otherness, and powerlessness can be layered onto the +flesh. Spillers, and thinkers in Black Feminist Studies who build +from flesh as the "zero degree of social conceptualization," call this +simultaneous reduction and accumulation of meaning "pornotroping" +(Spillers 67). The next critical move is to take what has been a +method of reduction, what has been a tool for appropriating the +complexity of real world objects for the purpose of exploitation +toffff instead seek out moments of obfuscation or forclosure which is +in tension with objectification. From the reduction of the Black body +to flesh, Black Feminist Studies reads a resistance that is not quite +empowerment, but which is also not subordination, something slippery, +shifting, which multiplies rather than resolves meaning. + +I begin with the concept of "foreclosure," which Musser explains, +involves "hold[ing] violence and possibility in the same frame" +(12). Pushing against trends in Afropessimism that take the pornotrope +as a foreclosure of Black subjectivity, Musser explores how +foreclosure, the denial of access or knowledge, offers possibilities +for new modes of relation. Attention to the violence of the pornotrope +brings to the surface relations that are in tension with the desire to +dominate, "allow[ing] us to see the radical potential of excess +without flattening the violence at its core" (Musser 9). For example, +a brilliant surface can foreclose access to interiority in a way that +creates multiple registers of interpretation. Musser demonstrates this +"surface effect" in the painting /Origin of the Universe 1/ (2012) by +artist Mickalene Thomas, whose depiction of a female vulva references +French painter Gustave Courbet's /Origine du Monde/ (1866). In +Thomas's piece, the Black and rhinestone-encrusted vulva creates a +brilliant surface as a "formal strategy of producing opacity" (Musser +48). By instrumentalizing the opacity of surface effects, this work +multiplies the potentiality of readings. Here, the foreclosure of +interiority works alongside a more pronounced subtext of +objectification about the commodification of the black female +body. Musser asserts that to the rhinestones function simultaneously +on two registers: first, their flashiness "as a reminder of the long +association between black people and the commodity" (50); and second, +as a brilliance that evokes wetness, suggesting sexual pleasure. Both +possibilities exist not only side-by-side, but are in tension: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +Thinking the rhinestone as a trace or residue of Thomas’s wetness and +excitement allows us to hold violence, excess, and possibility in the +same frame. Even as the source is ambiguous, the idea that rhinestones +might offer a record of pleasure—-pleasure that is firmly constituted +in and of the flesh—-shows us a form of self-possession. This self is +not outside of objectification, but its embellishment and insistence +on the trace of excitement speaks to the centrality of pleasure in +theorizations of self-love. 63 +#+END_QUOTE +The significatory system that commodifies the black vulva exists +alongside a production of pleasure. This surface whose opacity seems +to insist upon itself facilitates a simultaneity of registers, +enabling a movement, or a shift, between one and the other, like a +shifting between frames. This brilliant surface enables one to +apprehend this movement from one frame to another, from "violence", to +"excess," and finally, to "possibility." + +Foreclosing access to interiority creates a state where meaning is +fugitive, where bodies slip in and out of signification. The concept +of fugitivity, or escape, is based on a condition of commodification +where Black bodies have undergone a reduction to exchange value, a +condition that C. Riley Snorton calls the "fungible." Snorton argues +this fungibility of black flesh turns bodies into "malleable matter," +enabling a fugitivity from markers of sex and gender (20). He +illustrates this effect with stories of fugutive slaves, such as of +Harriet Jacobs, whose escape from slavery in 1842 is documented in +/Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl/ (1861). Snorton explains how +the "blackening" of Jacobs's face with charcoal endows her with a +level of "fungibility, thingness" to pass as a man, even deceiving +those who knew her well (Snorton 71). As oppposed to traditional +racial "passing" that assumes a degrees of whiteness, the increase of +blackness further reduces flesh toward a "gender indefiniteness" that +enables escape (56). By undergoing a reduction, black flesh enables an +escape from signification that simultaneously opens significatory +potential. + +This fungibility creates an almost chaotic state in which the black +body becomes suceptible to multiple mappings of meaning and can +therefore slip in and out of signification. Snorton offers up an +example of the daguerrotype, an early photographic technology that +involves using chemicals on silver plates. Snorton explains that +dagguerotype offers "a visual grammar for reading the imbrications of +'race' and 'gender' under captivity" (Snorton 40). It does so by +flipping expectations about surface and depth: here, rather than +perpetuating the idea that depth exists below the surface, the surface +becomes a ground for the layering of depth. Snorton describes the +effect of this this flip as creating an "unmappability" of meaning: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +... the daguerreotype provides a series of lessons about power, and +racial power in particular, as a form in which an image takes on +myriad perspectives because of the interplay of light and dark, both +in the composition of the shot and in the play of light on the +display. That the image does not reside on the surface but floats in +an unmappable elsewhere offers an allegory for race as a procedure +that exceeds the logics of a bodily surface, occuring by way of flesh, +a racial mattering that appears through puncture in the form of a +wound or covered by skin and screened from view. 40 +#+END_QUOTE +The physical material of the image, that is the silvered copper plate +of the daguerreotype, at once solidifies its ground and indexes a +liminal space, what Snorton describes as the "unmappable elsewhere." +The image of the daguerrotype, which changes according to angle and +lighting, evokes the condition of racialization as "a procedure that +exceeds the logics of a bodily surface" while nonetheless adhering to +that surface, "a racial mattering that appears through puncture." +Snorton's curious use of the word "puncture" perhaps revises Roland +Barthes's concept of the "punctum," suggesting instead a lack of +localization or circumscription to a specific point.[fn:8] That the +image resists fixity is crucial for undersanding the way that the +physical registers interact with symbolic ones in the collision of +flesh and racialization. + +With quite different political focus, thinkers in Media Archaeology +offer deep readings of digital media and technological processes to +tease out the role of materiality in as hardware and software stacks +and how they produce seemingly immaterial surface forms. N. Katherine +Hayles, for example, resists assumptions about digital immateriality, +which has been in production since the emergence of computing +technologies in the mid-20th century. Media Studies theorist Friedrich +Kittler famously encapsulates this idea of matterless media: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +The general digitization of channels and information erases the +differences among individual media. Sound and image, voice and text +are reduced to surface effects, known to consumers as interface. Sense +and the senses turn into eyewash. Inside the computers themselves +everything becomes a number: quantity without image, sound or +voice. /Grammophone/ 1 +#+END_QUOTE +Working to unflatten the "surface effects," Hayles's research traces +how "information lost its body," that is, how information processing, +the calculation and manipulation of symbols, displaces the physical +matter upon which it relies. Hayles disarticulates the binary of +information/hardware which, she argues, extends liberal humanist +ideology of mind/matter into the "posthuman," where a dominant, +unmarked rationality is privileged over embodied experience and +especially, embodied difference. Whereas the liberal humanist subject +is characterized by classical mind/body divisions and hierarchies that +posit embodiment as separate from and subordinate to intelligence, in +which the rational mind possesses a body, the postuman is +characterized by informational patterns that inhabit a physical +vessel, such as a body or a machine. According to Hayles, this +progression from possession to inhabitation suggests that the next +move will be to transcend the material realm altogether, as +consciousness can be uploaded to a virtual space where life itself is +infinite. As Hayles explains, "Information, like humanity, cannot +exist apart from embodiment that brings it into being as a material +entity in the world; and embodiment is always instantiated, local, and +specific" ("Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers", 1993, 91). + +*** Media Archaeology Studies +In what follows, I will draw some parallels between Black Feminist +Studies and Media Archaeology. The first parallel has to do with the +concept of displacement, which is related to that of foreclosure. As +Matt Kirschenbaum explains, "Digital inscription is a form of +displacement... remov[ing] digital objects from the channels of direct +human intervention" (86). Kirschenbaum uses the term "forensic +materiality" to refer to the most innaccessible level of computer +hardware, of the hard drive. Here, data is encoded in markings of one +of two (binary) marks on a magnetized surface, a north polarity +signifying "1", or a south polarity signifying "0". Examining these +binary digits, or "bits," through magnetic force microscopy, +Kirschenbaum notes that each one is unique: "The bits themselves prove +strikingly autographic, all of them similar but no two exactly alike, +each displaying idiosyncrasies and imperfections--in much the same way +that conventional letterforms, both typed and handwritten, assume +their own individual personality under extreme magnification" (62) +That electronic data, at its core, corresponds to physical markings +shatters the illusion of digital immateriality, of a stream of code +all the way down. + +To trace the transformations of these physical elements as they travel +up the software stack, Hayles offers the concept of "flickering +signifers." Here, she brings Jacques Lacan's "floating signifier," the +idea that a word does have a stable referent, but "floats" above a +text and attains its meaning through a play of difference against +other words, to illustrate the interplay between the immateriality of +the screen and the materiality of the computer hardware. Rather than +destabilize meaning, the flickering signifier dissolves the illusion +of immateriality by grounding it to physcial signals that move through +the software stack: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +As I write these words on my computer, I see the lights on the video +screen, but for the computer the relevant signifiers are magnetic +tracks on disks. Intervening between what I see and what the computer +reads are the machine code that correlates alphanumeric symbols with +binary digits, the compiler language that correlates these symbols +with higher-level instructions determining how the symbols are to be +manipulated, the processing program that mediates between these +instructions and the commands I give the computer, and so forth. A +signifier on one level becomes a signified on the next... "Virtual +Bodies" 77 +#+END_QUOTE +Hayles's description of this "flexible chain of markers" materializes +the various levels of transformation that digitized inscription must +undergo in order to reach the level of the screen (/Posthuman/ +31). First, physical traces on a magnetic surface are mapped into +low-level machine languages which are illegible to human +readers. Then, these patterns are translated into Assembly languages +that pertain to the computer's Central Processing Unit (CPU), the main +processor that executes instructions, arithmetic, and logic. Finally, +as data moves up the stack, it abstracts into high level programming +languages like Python and JavaScript and their effects on the screen, +which humans interact with in the form of the Graphical User Interface +(GUI). While apparently immaterial text and objects have a "tendency +toward unexpected metamorphoses, attenuations, and dispersions," they +are grounded in a physical reality (Hayles, "Virtual Bodies," 76). + +To challenge the "illusion of immaterial behavior," the illusion that +objects on the screen appear, disappear, and move without a physical +origin, Kirschenbaum offers the concept of "formal materiality" +(11). While forensic materiality consists of physical inscriptions, +such as magnetic traces on hard drives, formal materiality describes +these traces as they are computed up the software stack, through +levels of programming languages toward specific interface effects on +the screen. It describes not only display and appearance, but also the +way that these are deliberately produced to reinforce fluidity and +ephemerality. Kirschenbaum explains that as data moves up the stack, +it is continually refreshed to fix errors and idiosynracies that occur +during transmission. As a result, formal materiality on the screen +"exist[s] as the end product of long traditions and trajectories of +engineering that werer deliberately undertaken to achieve and +implement it (137). He likens this process of data normalization older +technologies like the telegraph that use relay systems to reinforce +signals over long stretches of transmission. As data moves through +electronic processing, signal "reinvigoration," a kind of "allographic +reproduction," refreshes and standardizes it through approximation +rather than exact copying, so that materiality is a "manufactured" +phenomenon (136). + +Although the screen functions as a buffer between the user and the +digital inscription, there is in actuality an inverse relationship +between digital abstraction and tactile manipulation. The higher that +data climbs up the levels of abstraction, the more manipulable it +becomes, a state which Kirschenbaum calls "digital volatility" +(140). For example, by dragging and right clicking on items on the +screen, users can move, duplicate, or delete large quantities of +data. Kirschenbaum explains this "dynamic tension... between +inscription and abstraction, digitality and volitality" makes formal +materiality more susceptible to movement and change than physical +inscription, which remains inaccessible. Perhaps unintuitively, moving +away from inscription is a move toward something that users can handle +and "touch," as anybody who has dragged a file from one folder to +another can confirm. + +Another more subtle force operates in the translation between one +coding language into another--that of torque. Kirschenbaum describes +this force as a "procedural friction or perceived difference... as a +user shifts from one set of software logics to another" +(13). Typically in physics, objects rotate along their pivot point, +where the distributional weight is zero. Torque, however, is +characterized by a rotational movement, combining energy from two +directions: first, from the external force acting upon the object, and +second, from the relation between the point of contact on the object +and its pivot point, or the point along the object where it can be +balanced.[fn:4] Torque therefore measures a force that relies on +distance between the point of contact the object's center. Applied to +data, this term refers to the gap between one signficatory system and +another, such as a machine-level programming language and its a more +abstracted language, or the rendition of the same on the screen, as +data travels up the software stack. + +Each stage of data transformation instantiates a formal materiality, a +flickering signifier which simultaneously depends upon and obscures +the levels of forensic materiality below. Energized by a sense of +volatility in data and by torque between software registers, this +chain of transformations culminates at the screen, where the end user +experiences them as visual and haptic effects. These "screen effects" +of digital media relate to "surface effects" of the flesh in Black +Feminist Studies. Here, critics read methods of resistance, such as +foreclosure and unmappability, from the reduction of the body into +flesh. In foreclosing access to interiority, the reduction to surface +opens the possibility of fugitivity, where meaning escapes into +irresolvable or incongruent registers. In the next section, I will +demonstrate in practice how the concepts of flickering signifiers, +volatility, and torque engage with those of foreclosure, fugitivity, +and unmappability to read the screen effects in a hypermedia literary +work, /skinonskinonskin/. + +** skin +*** revision TODOs +**** DONE SKIN: impose new schema + CLOSED: [2023-06-26 Mon 13:46] +There is a tension between control and connection playing through the +work. This tension emerges in "surface effects," like haptics. + +Reading the underlying code deepens the interpretion of surface +effects. Of conceptual objects that elude our manual control. Moving +from one register (conceptual/logical) to another register +(sensual/tactile). + +***** air.html -> multiplicity of movement, intractible movement +- surface effect: challenges tactile ability, objects moving toward + and against like magnets. +- The way the object move on the screen is influenced by the coding + logics below the surface. if/else statement in code reflects duality + of movement (either toward or against) and of the objects (there are + two figures). + - a simple if/else directive. *Conditional statement is a reduction* + of choices, of nuance to an either/or. All movement is defined by + a very simple yes or no condition. *Something that is binary and + very controlled can enable all kinds of movement*. There is an + escape here, something fugitive, in the way that *their bodies + eludes the mouse*. They cannot be caught. +-> Racialization: + - But there is also a reduction here, the two bodies are reduced to + small images, where the differences between them are visible but + minor, in shape and color. + +***** control.html -> lagging movement, uncontrollable +- surface effect: user manually turns Harvey's head, gets bits of alt + text. +- this piece is about control -- it plays with the control of the + female body in the haptics that are sensual but laggy. The haptics + indicate that full control is not possible, there is something + intractible about it. +- there are multiple registers here, from the surface effects to the + code. The underlying code contains the full message. The surface + only shows parts which are incoherent. +- the lack of control results from what's happening at the level of + software. Torque. +- Racialization: intractible control. Most likely by Harvey. + +***** breath.html -> limitations of medium as enabling constraint +- foreclosure of the software and hardware stack can also reinforce + physicality of medium. + - Love notes deliberately hidden in the code, meant to be displaced + and to be discovered. +- compare with dialogue between them in "WHISPERING WINDOWS", which is + limited to just text, but at two different levels (public and + private) and imbued with tone, intimacy, reassurance. + - The limitations of the communication medium facilitate a + sensuality. The limitation reinforces sensuality of the language, + of the utterance and of the tone. + +***** words.html -> flash foreclosure +- Flash media is totally inaccessible, made up of machine code that is + unreadable to human eyes. +- we can engage with it only through abstraction, where objects are + separated into components, into shapes, sounds, and movements. +- What I call a total foreclosure, because underneath is completely + incomprehensible, a bytestream. + +***** reduction of the black body +- One surface effect is to turn depth of real physical objects in the + world into surface. +- Love is expressed in surface forms, "pixellust" or "ASCIIlust" + creating a "home for us" "in the network". +- reduction to surface flattens aspects that might be obstacles in the + real world. Geography, culture, race. +-> this is the unmappable surface, where the signifier floats free of + its referent in the physical world. We cannot locate with precision + the skin color, hair color, country, as expressed on the screen. + +**** DONE SKIN: conclusion + CLOSED: [2023-06-26 Mon 15:50] + + +*** /skinonskinonskin/ +**** intro +Now, I turn to /skinonskinonskin/ (1999), a work of "net art" created +by Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, under their collaborative artist's +name /Entropy8Zuper!/. /skin/ documents the inception of their love +affair, which began in an internet chat room and evolved into a +digital correspondence, or "digital love letters" +("/skinonskinonskin/" /Net Art Anthology/). These letters took the +form of individual web pages, designed by Samyn and Harvey, containing +notes, images, and interative elements using early web tools and +animation software, much of which is now defunct or unsupported. The +Rhizome.org /Net Art Anthology/, where the work is preserved with +emulator software, describes it as a "complex portrait of an artistic +and romantic relationship that shows that online intimacy is as deeply +felt, embodied, and full of risk and reward as any other form" +("/skinonskinonskin/"). + +/skin/ takes part in a body electronic work called "Electronic +Literature," which is now practically inaccessible with modern +technology. Electronic Literature, which spans several subgenres, like +hypertext fiction, network literature, interactive fiction, and +generative text share a common interest in expressing and exploring +digitality as an aesthetic. This work, like many in Electronic +Literature, is inaccessible to modern web browsers. Though most of it +is written in HTML (HyperText Markup Language), which continues to be +the default language for the web, it is animated by depreciated +versions of JavaScript code and now obsolete Flash software. Besides +the outdated code, it also has an incompatibility with platform, the +Netscape 4 browser, which could run on both MAC and PC systems +(rendering pages on both Harvey's Mac and Samyn's PC) at the +time. Netscape's decline in the late 1990s and early 2000s brought +with it the depreciation of HTML and JavaScript elements that +characterized its associated web authoring tools and practices. + +In what follows, I embark on a close reading of the work's "surface +effects," that is, the appearance and interactivity of objects and +words on the screen. I emphasize how these elements facilitate a +haptic engagement, a sense of touch and movement through the user's +mouse. Then, I turn to the underlying source code, the HTML, +JavaScript, and Flash files, to examine how the coding layer, another +level of formal materiality, might influence the reading of the work's +surface effects. Here, I explore how programming concepts and +structures might enhance the reading of visible and interactive +elements on the screen. I find that the different registers of +abstraction across surface effects and code suggest a tension +throughout the work between control and communication. + +**** air.html +First, I examine "air.html" page, which depicts an animation of two +small figures floating in black space. The two figures, which +represent the Samyn and Harvey, float in a horizontal, flying position +over a field of a field of rotating green lines, which evoke a +rolling, cyber-landcape. Each figure can be moved by the cursor as it +pans across the screen, attracting them like magnets. While they slide +effortlessly in all directions, coaxing precise movements from the +figures requires precise mouse manipulations that challange the user's +tactile ability. By using slow movements, the user can bring the +individual bodies into contact, but they can never cross each other, +or cross to the other's side of the screen. Samyn's body remains +confined to the left, while Harvey's is to the right. [SEE GIF] The +initial illusion of free floating, therefore, is deceiving. + +[include gif of air.html] + +This animation is defined in the source code of the page, in a series +of functions written in JavaScript, the standard language for defining +interactive elements on web pages. Below is an excerpt of one +JavaScript function called ~flyMouse()~: + +#+BEGIN_SOURCE +if ( mouseX < halfW ) + + { + + var mFactor = 0.1; + + var aFactor = 0.01; + + } + +else + + { + + var mFactor = 0.01; + + var aFactor = 0.1; + + }; + +... + +dMove('flyingmL','document.',mLeft + thisXDiff*mFactor,mTop + +thisYDiff*mFactor); + +... + +dMove('flyingaL','document.',aLeft + thisXDiff*aFactor,aTop + thisYDiff*aFactor); +#+END_SOURCE +The direction and speed of the bodies' movement hinges on the if/else +statement above. An "if/else" statement, or conditional statement, is +a core construct in programming, which exists across many programming +languages. The conditional statement determines the "control flow," or +the order of operations, in a block of code based on whether a +specific condition is true or whether it is false. Underlying the +if/else statement is the Boolean data type, which can be either ~True~ +or ~False~. Checking whether a condition is ~True~ or ~False~ enables +programmers to write code that makes decisions, so to speak, to +execute the relevant block of code that matches the condition. For +example, an email inbox will display unread emails in bold formatting +depending on whether or not that email has been opened by the +user. Behind the scenes, an if/else statement checks if the email has +been opened, and if it has, the email will render with regular +formatting, and if it has not, it will render in bold formatting. In +the if/else statement on "air.html," the movement of the bodies is +conditional on their distance between the mouse and the original +positioning of the bodies on either side of the screen. Depending on +this distance, the magnetic force for each of the bodies is multiplied +against a factor of .1 or .01. This results in a stronger movement +from Samyn's body when the mouse is near Samyn's original position on +the left side of the screen, and a stronger movement from Harvey's +body when the mouse is on the right half of the screen, near Harvey's +original position. The conditional statement is thus a reduction of +possible choices to an either/or, where all movement depends on a +simple yes or no condition. + +The binary nature of this conditional statement--it can be true or it +can be false, and there are two resulting actions--reflects an +animation that is, at its core, about a dual force. But this dual +force, either attraction or repulsion from the mouse, enables movement +across all directions of the screeen. The binary structure of the +if/else statement, in which bodies move toward and against each other, +thus faciliates a multiplicity of movement. In that movement, there is +something intractible, something fugitive, about the way that the +figures are drawn to but resist being controlled by the mouse. These +figures, which have been reduced to two small pixelated images of +Harvey and Samyn's naked bodies. Here, the movement by the hand and +the oppsitional constraints which the user comes up against, engage +the transformations that take place in the level of code. + +**** control.html +If "air.html" plays with binary movement, another page, +"control.html," plays with lag. The page consists of a monochrome +green image of Harvey's head, which rolls from side to side in the +direction of the user's cursor as it pans over the image. As the +cursor moves, exposing Harvey's face at different angles, it also +displays peices of "alt-text," short for "alternative text," triggers +the displays descriptive text meant to stand in place of the image, +for accessibility reasons and in the case that the image fails to +load. The alt-text here contains words like "go" "believe" "ocean" and +"mind," depending on the cursor's location over the image. The tactile +qualities of this page, in which the user manually turns Havery's head +from one side ot another with the cursor-as-hand, are further +emphasized by the cursor itself, which appears as a pointing hand. + +[INSERT GIF] + +Looking into the source code, a couple of interesting things +emerge. + +#+BEGIN_SOURCE +i + +believe + +in + +it + +you + +created + +it + +in + +my + +mind + +my + +mind + +cannot + +let + +it + +go + +the + + +ocean + +the + +waves + +its + +a + +vision +#+END_SOURCE + +The surface of the peice only reveals part of the full message. First, +while most pages contain an author, title, and date, this one only +contains a title, "you:controlMe." It seems that the page was created +by Harvey addressing a message for Samyn to "control" her by moving +her face back and forth across the image. Second, the source code +reveals that the animation consists of 23 images, each of which is +associated with a specific alt-text and coordinate. Here, the full +message of the alt-text, which is hidden from the screen, appears in a +list like formate: "i believe in it you created it in my mind my mind +cannot let it go the ocean the waves its a vision." Each of these +images and its associated message is tied to a specific coordinate on +the screen's surface, which activates the relevant image and +alt-text. Thus the effect of Harvey's head moving across the screen is +in reality an image that has been activated by the mouse on a specific +coordinate and has been super-imposed on the screen. Rather than +represent a smooth movement from side to side, Harvey's head takes +little jumps from one position to another. The effect is a slight lag, +a series of fleeting pauses that intensify Harvey's direct gaze into +the camera. + +When we examine the source code, we see that this peice is about +control, specifically, with control over the female body. It deploys +layers of foreclosure, where the source code contains the full message +and workings of the animation, to create a haptic effect that is +sensual but laggy. The haptics with the mouse indicate that full +control of Harvey's head and full access to the message is not +possible, there is something intractible about it. What's happening at +the level of code influences this screen effect. + +**** breath.html +Below the overt narrative of surface effects, lies another narrative +within the source code, where hidden messages mix natural language +with computer language to make verbal exhortations of love. On one +page, "breath.html," the surface effects consists of an animated male +torso that swells slightly and emits a breathing sound when the mouse +pans over it, accelerating with each swipe of the mouse. The effect is +sensual, tactile, and auditory. In within the the HTML and JavaScript +that defines the content and animations in the source code are words +meant only for human eyes: a list of "whispers," romantic +protestations like "i will love you forever" and "i want to breath +you." Unlike "control.html," these messages do not manifest directly +on the browser, but only appear in the pages's source code: +#+BEGIN_SOURCE +whispers[0] = "breath me"; + +whispers[1] = "i will love you forever"; + +whispers[2] = "skin"; + +whispers[3] = "skin on skin"; + +whispers[4] = "skin on skin on skin"; + +whispers[5] = "implode"; + +whispers[6] = "soft"; + +whispers[7] = "slow"; + +whispers[8] = "can you feel me?"; + +whispers[9] = "touch me"; + +whispers[10] = "one more cigarette"; + +whispers[11] = "i am so open"; + +whispers[12] = "i want to feel you inside of me"; + +whispers[13] = "smoke"; + +whispers[14] = "i want to breathe you"; + +whispers[15] = "we are smoke"; + +whispers[16] = "yesss"; + +whispers[17] = "deeper"; + +whispers[18] = "i am disappearing"; + +whispers[19] = "warm"; +#+END_SOURCE +Musser describes foreclosure as an overflow of surface effects that +precludes access below the surface. She describes the effect of +foreclosure as encouraging alternative modes of relationality. This +peice not only demonstrates how computer screens inherently contain a +level of foreclosure that masks inaccessible elements in the source +code. It also suggests that displacement opens further channels for +communication. Here, the works title, in the source code. It also +suggests that displacement opens further channels for +communication. Here, the work's title, "skin on skin on skin," is +reserved for the curious user to come and find them in the source +code. + +**** whispering windows +The foreclosure of the surface can open up sensual possibilities for +communication across electronic media. An early chatroom conversation +between Samyn and Harvey, published on their website under the title +"Whispering Windows," uses two modes for communication. Samyn, under +the username /zuper/, writes under a private mode, while Harvey, under +/womanonfire/, uses the public one. If there are others in the +chatroom, they have been removed from the transcript. The chat +records their frustrated attempts to connect video and sound: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +womanonfire: the sound is a bit distorted with these things + +zuper: (private) yes + +womanonfire: if no one was around me here + +zuper: (private) the image is distorted too + +womanonfire: i would speak to you + +zuper: (private) but that's ok + +womanonfire: yes! + +womanonfire: these are all part of our relationship + +womanonfire: these limitations + +womanonfire: we must + +zuper: (private) 26 letters, no sound, no image + +womanonfire: learn new ways + +zuper: (private) make DHTMLove to me... http://entropy8zuper.org/ +#+END_QUOTE +The limitations of the medium, the "26 letters" of the alphabet and +their appearance on the screen, are the only material for "making +love." These limitations, however, work to emphasize a sense of +intimacy between the conversants. /womanonfire/ tends to cut her +syntax into pithy expressions like "these limitations" and "we must" +that arrest her thought and restart it on the next line. /zuper/ +responds in "private" mode with gentle reassurances ("but that's +okay") and encouragement that sustains and reinforces her thoughts +("make DHTML love to me"), and read like a whisper. Reduced to digital +character on a screen, the love affair expresses a strong sense of +intimacy and mutuality. It is because of the limitations of the +medium, that elements like tone and syntax are magnified and able to +portray this level of closeness. + +**** words.html +Some levels of displacement are so removed that they can only be +engaged through abstraction. On example appears on "words.html." This +page, created by Samyn on Valetine's Day, 1999, displays a beating +heart overlaid with phrases that fly in various arcs from the +center. The JavaScript code for this page does reveals the workings of +the animation: first, the phrases, which will arc over and around the +beating heart, are saved into a list format. Then, a series JavaScript +functions accomplishes the following in turn: it selects words from +their position on the list, then calculates their trajectory across +the screen, then the time limit for their movement, and finally resets +their position to restart the loop.[fn:5] Below is an excerpt of the +source code (the function ~floatWord()~) that defines this animation: +#+BEGIN_SOURCE +function floatWord(thisNumber) + +{ + +var randTime = (rand(15) + 5 )*1000; + +var thisRand = rand(4); + +if ( thisRand == 1 ) { +dMoveStraight('wordL'+thisNumber,'document.',-100-rand(100),rand(stageH),randTime,'wordVal'+thisNumber,'rePos(' + +thisNumber + ');',''); } + +else if ( thisRand == 2 ) { +dMoveStraight('wordL'+thisNumber,'document.',rand(stageW),-20-rand(100),randTime,'wordVal'+thisNumber,'',''); } + +else if ( thisRand == 3 ) { +dMoveStraight('wordL'+thisNumber,'document.',stageW + rand(100),rand(stageH),randTime,'wordVal'+thisNumber,'rePos(' + thisNumber + ');',''); } + +else if ( thisRand == 4 ) { +dMoveStraight('wordL'+thisNumber,'document.',rand(stageW),stageH + rand(100),randTime,'wordVal'+thisNumber,'',''); } + +if ( rand(4) == 1 ) { dShow('wordL'+thisNumber,'document.','visible'); }; +}; "words.html" +#+END_SOURCE +JavaScript, a notoriously complex language by today's standards, was +relatively more convoluted in 1999. But even more inaccessible than +the code animating the words is that animating the beating heart. The +visual and sound effect of its beat is created with Flash, an +animation authoring tool that was widely popular in the late 1990s and +early 2000s. Flash gained popularity for its ability to deliver +relatively advanced graphics (such as video and sound) at a time when +media-rich content traveled slowly over the web. Over the last 10 +years, however, the development of newer, more efficient and secure +animation technologies brought Flash into obsolescence. On December +31st, 2020, the software was officially discontinued, though it had +already been functionally replaced with updated versions of HTML and +Javascript that could deliver what Flash offered in much more +flexible, portable, and efficient ways. This termination, however, +made a generation of internet games, net art, and electronic +literature nearly completely inoperable. Today, the only way to view +Flash content in something like its original context is through +plugins or emulators, like the one hosted on /Rhizome.org/ that +enables viewers to read /skin/ through a Netscape 4 window. + +[SEE IMAGE/GIF of BEATING HEART] + +Leaving aside its obsolescence, Flash code is a highly inaccesible +software. This is due to Flash code being a binary code format, unlike +text-based code like HTML and JavaScript, which is human-readable and +renders in the source code of web pages and in text-editor. If a Flash +file is opened in a text editor, it would appear as an +incomprehensible stream of obscure characters and symbols, some of +which the text editor may recognize, and others which the editor would +display as a question mark. For example, the below image displays a +flash file (which usually have an ".swf" or ".fla" extention) that +defines the sound animation of of the heatbeat: + +[IMAGE OF TEXT EDITOR OF OF HEARTBEAT.SWF] + +Because this code is unreadable to the human eye, it requires specific +authoring software to work with it. A "Flash Decompiler" program, for +this purpose, offers an interface for seeing the components of a Flash +file without having to work with the machine code layer. In the below +image of one such program, the file is separated into individual +components like "sounds," "frames," and "scripts," visible on the left +sidebar. The interface here abstracts the machine code so that humans +can make sense of it. For example, one can make changes to the +animation, such as distort the sound of the heartbeat which is +contained within the "frames" component. + +[IMAGE OF FLASH DECOMPILER INTERFACE ON "HEARTBEAT.SWF"] + +The Flash elements throughout this work, which appear on many of its +pages, illustrate the displacement inherent to electronic media. In +order to work with Flash media, abstraction is necessary. Objects on +the screen are separated into components, into shapes, sounds, and +movements. But these components themselves are surface +effects. Immediately beneath them is a bytestream, a torrent of +symbols and characeters that cannot be read with human eyes. The +object can be rendered in with the decompiler is only another kind of +surface effect. This is an example of total foreclosure of formal +materiality of the technological stack, a kind of foreclosure that +points to physicality of the surface. + +**** reduction of the black body +Another surface effect is to turn the depth of real physical objects +in the real world into surface. This especially includes physical +objects or realities that create communicative barriers. In another +online chat, Samyn and Harvey revel in the intimacy that this mode of +communication enablesw, even while struggling with the limitations of +the audio and video and video connection: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +womanonfire: i wonder wht your voice is like + +zuper: my voice? + +zuper: let's try + +zuper: it's weird to talk in a silent office at night + +womanonfire: yes + +womanonfire: i can just barely make you out + +womanonfire: how fitting + +womanonfire: it sounds so far away but you feel so close + +zuper: yes + +zuper: i am close + +zuper: i don't understand myself + +womanonfire: i will write you a very long letter tonight + +zuper: I'm falling in love with a 160x120 pixel video... + +zuper: Yes please write me a long letter + +womanonfire: it is dificult for me here right now + +zuper: why is it difficult? + +womanonfire: i was just about to write one about this + +womanonfire: because i love you + +zuper: ... + +womanonfire: seems so + +womanonfire: strange + +womanonfire: maybe it is lust + +womanonfire: i cant tell anymore + +zuper: pixellust? + +womanonfire: right + +zuper: I my case only ASCIIlust... + +womanonfire: but i want to make a home for us + +womanonfire: in the network +#+END_QUOTE +The relationship between /womanonfire/ and /zuper/ is completely +constrained by restrictions. That /womanonfire/ "can just barely +make...out" /zuper/ is "fitting" because the physical barriers that +separate their connection are considerable. Yet, /zuper/ responds that +he feels "so close" despite his distance, a phenomenon which he +"doesn't understand [himself]". Perhaps the reason can be traced to +the surface effects of their communication, to the objects on the +screen which enable a "pixellust." That they question whether the +connection is really love, or if it's lust reinfoces a magnetic +quality that this physically tenuous connection, which is full of +network lags and failures, can enable. Later on in the conversation, +the strength of their surface connection, which overcomes geography, +seems to overcome additional obstacles like language difference and +race: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +zuper: (private) I realised today that I have never been in love with somebody who doesn't speak Dutch before. + +womanonfire -> zuper: i have never been in love with someone in another country before + +zuper: (private) I have never been in love with someone with green dreadlocks before + +zuper: (private) let alone black skin + +womanonfire -> zuper: yes i hope you wiwll like my skin + +zuper: (private) I already do. + +womanonfire -> zuper: :) http://entropy8zuper.org/ +#+END_QUOTE +The question of race becomes one in a list of other attributes like +hair color or speaking another language. Here, the reduction of their +communication to letters on a screen flattens physical aspects that +would otherwise be obstacles. This flattening of attributes like hair +and skin color severs them from their location on the physical body, +instead transposing them to words on a screen. Separated from the +referent, they flicker atop the highest level of computational +abstraction. Loosened from its physical manifestation, these +attributes reside somewhere like Snorton's "unmappable elsewhere," a +place that cannot be pinned down. This surface effect, that of +reduction, creates a tenuous connection between the signifier and the +signified. This tenuous connection, while buffeted by concerns about +connectivity that plague the chat, is nonetheless made possible by +network technologies. + +**** conclusion +How does race operate on the same register as hair color and language? +Like the bypassing of flesh in "Sex," the foreclosure of depth +paradoxically creates a flattening effect that reinforces physicality +of the uppermost layer, of the surface, the "skin." + +Through vastly different methods, both /Dawn/ and /skin/ explore a +kind of desire that bypasses the physical body with the effect of +magnifying embodied sensation. In /Dawn/, the body proves to be an +obstacle for communication, for the gap between bodies stokes a +debilitating fear of the other that manifests as racialization. This +obstacle is temporarily overcome in the neural connection that the +Oankali facilitate between human partners. In /skin/, the physical +body is also bypassed, but in this case, for a connection across +geographic barriers. Bringing these two texts together enables me to +think through materiality across various contexts, from the +physiological, to the technological, and finally, to the social. The +collapse of mind/body distinction in /Dawn/, and the way this collapse +affects social relations, offers possibilities for reading materiality +into seemingly immaterial media effects in /skin/. These readings, in +turn, off an analogue for understanding how racialization operates +through plays between matter and meaning. + +In the "Sex" section, I examine a sensuality that can only be achieved +by bypassing the flesh. In the scrambling of sense and thought in the +sex scenes, where participants cannot differentiate between physical +sensation and mental experience, everything becomes a physical +phenomenon. This paradox in which sensuality is made possible by the +bypassing of flesh reveals a new ethics that prioritizes pleasure at +the cost of consent. + +In the "Flesh" section, I explore how the reduction of body to flesh, +a process that began during the violences and atrocities of the Middle +Passage, creates an opportunity for rethinking the political potential +of sensuality and the surface. Here, I examine how the concept of the +Pornotrope creates a ground for new theorizations of meaning and +materiality where exploitation and pleasure co-exist. The "surface +effects" from this section include strategies like foreclosure, +fugitivity, and unmappability--strategies in which the Black flesh, +reduced to surface, is imbued with an intractible significatory +potential. + +The theorization of surface effects then becomes a ground for +understanding how physical registers interact with symbolic ones in +the "Skin" section, where I analyze the net art work, +/skinonskinonskin/ (1999). Here, I read surface aesthetics into +multiple layers of formal materiality, such as the computer screen, +but also in programming and machine language logics and structures. My +readings find a tension between control and communication throughout +the work, echoing the tension between pleasure and violence in the +previous sections. The tactile qualities of the net art work, where +the user can manipulate objects on the screen with her mouse, is +complicated by laggy or intractible effects created by the parameters +and structures of the underlying code. The displacement of certain +elements like hidden messages reinforces the levels of formal +materiality that operate throughout the stack with varying degress of +accessibility. At times, total foreclosure precludes access to +subordinate levels of abstraction, where formal materiality gives way +to the forensic level of illegible characters and magnetic traces. In +this state, objects are in tension with the signified, and the surface +itself enables a kind of chaotic state, where everything becomes +skin. This reduction enables racialized flesh to harness the chaos of +significatory possibility. Here, digital objects, distillations of +real world referents, become imbued with expressive potential. + +** unstructured fragments + +**** haptics +Throughout this work, the user engages with HTML and JavaScript code +via haptics on the browser. The source code endows digital "objects" +with properties and methods so that they can become manipulable at the +level of surface. These constructs, which are defined under the hood +of the browser, enable sensual experiences for the user. + +**** foreclosure / displacement +The surface effects of the screen engage elements within the code, +which are inaccessible to the general user, to surface additional +layers of foreclosure. + +This screen surfaces a displacement inherent in all +significatory systems but particularly in machine language systems, +which rely on levels of abstraction in its software stack. + +**** obsolete elements +Due to modernization, the browser languages HTML and JavaScript use +now depreciated elements like ~~ and ~~ to add +animation. Additionally, since Flash technology, a compiled software +that is not "human-readable", has been discontinued, it is very +difficult to find solutions for editing and viewing Flash elements. + +**** Hayles on data traveling up the stack +Hayles points out that, "Precisely because the relation between +signifier and signified at each of these levels is arbitrary, it can +be changed with a single global command" (Hayles, "Virtual Bodies" +77). + +Flickering signifiers bring consideration of "transformations" into +view. though I do think she is underestimating the "matter," "energy" +which goes into it. +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +When a text presents itself as a constantly refreshed image rather +than durable inscription, transformations would occur that would be +unthinkable if matter or energy, rather than informational patterns, +formed the primary basis for the systemic exchanges. This textual +fluidity, which humans learn in their bodies as they interact with the +system, imply that signifiers flicker rather than float. 30 +#+END_QUOTE + +In this movement up the stack, data shifts +between registers and becomes more tangible, a process that is belied +by the fleeting and diaphanous forms that finally emerge on the +computer screen. + +Due to this appearance, the flickering signifier perpetuates a liberal +humanist ideology about the body/mind separation into the posthuman +one of hardware/code. Just as the mind rules the fleshy body, so the +/code/ represents a an insubstantial standard that drives computation. + +Thinking about the illusion of digital materiality on the screen, +N. Katherine Hayles wonders, "Why do we talk and write incessantly +about the 'text,' a term that obscures differences between +technologies of production and implicitly promotes the work as an +immaterial construct?" ("Flickering Connectivities" 2000, +par. 57). + + + + +* Works +Ackerman, Erin. + +Alarcón, Norma. "Conjugating Subjects in the Age of Multiculturalism" +/Mapping Multiculturalism/. Avery F. Gordon and Christopher Newfield, +editors. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 127-148. + +Barnes, Stephen. + +Barthes, Roland. /Camera Lucida/. + +Brown, Jayna. + +Butler, Octavia. Dawn. Grand Central Publishing. 1987. + +Chun, Wendy. Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of +Fiber Optics. 2006. + +Dunkley, Kitty. + +Entropy8Zuper!. skinonskinonskin. Rhizome. https://anthology.rhizome.org/skinonskinonskin + +Haraway, Donna. /Primate Visions/. + +Hayles, N. Katherine. "Flickering connectivities in Shelley Jackson's +Patchwork Girl: the Importance of Media-Specific Analysis," 2000. + +Hayles, N. Katherine. Writing Machines. MIT Press, 2002. p. 107. + +Jesser, Nancy. + +Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination. MIT Press +2008. + +Mann, Justin Louis. + +Moraga, Cherrie. "La Guera", from /Loving in the War Years: Lo que +nunca paso' por sus labios/. + +Musser, Amber Jamilla. /Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown +Jouissance/. NYU Press, +2018. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvwrm5ws. + +Musser, Amber Jamilla. "Surface-Becoming: Lyle Ashton Harris and Brown + Jouissance." /Women & Performance/, vol. 28,. no. 1. February 26, 2018 + https://www.womenandperformance.org/bonus-articles-1/28-1-harris. + +Ramirez, Catherine S. + +Sandoval, Chela. "U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of +Oppositional Consciousness in the Postmodern World." + +Schutte, Ofelia. “Cultural Alterity: Cross-Cultural Communication and +Feminist Theory in North-South Contexts.” /Hypatia/, vol. 13, no. 2, +1998, pp. 53–72. + +/skinonskinonskin/ (1999). Rhizome.org /Net Art Anthology/. +https://anthology.rhizome.org/skinonskinonskin + +Snorton, C. Riley. Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. University of +Minnesota Press, 2017. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctt1pwt7dz; + +Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacritics, +vol. 17, no. 2, 1987, pp. 65–81. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/464747 + +* Footnotes + +[fn:8] As opposed to the "studium," or subject, of a photograph, the +"punctum" is a detail that "pierces" the viewer. See Barthes, /Camera +Lucida/, 27. + +[fn:7] There is one exception to this view, from Patricia Meltzer, who argues +that the trilogy, and its third installment specifically, presents a +view of non-normative sexuality which can literally transform bodies +at will. In this book, the human-Oankali constructs evolved the +ability to manipulate organic matter within their own bodies, as +shape-shifting beings who can adapt to their prospective partner's +desires. Drawing from Judith Butler, Meltzer poses a body that is +queer because it is constructed by desire: +#+BEGIN_QUOTE +"Butler's concepts here are positioned neither in a biological +essentialism that insists on gender identity (woman) as derivated of a +body's sex (female), nor in a social and/or psychological +constructivism that udnerstands the body's materiality as dominated by +(social) discourse. Instead, desire and sexuality are based in the +body's need for others... the body follows desire. Meltzer 241 +#+END_QUOTE +While other critics point out the disruptions to normativity, like in +those in which the binary is destabilized, upended, where gender roles +are reimagined, here Melzter draws out alternate visions for sex, +gender, and desire altogether. Building from Butler's concept of +performativity, Meltzer defines queerness as resisting the normative +correlation of sex/gender/desire. The failure of easy alignment among +these elements opens up the possibility of imagining how desire can +construct new configurations of sexuality, that are "rooted in the +body's amorphous craving for physical pleasure" (Melzter 236). + +I agree with Meltzer that the sex act is a queer one, but not because +of a desire that literally transform bodies. Rather, the sex act is +queer because of the way that it simultaneously bypasses and +invigorates the flesh. + +[fn:6] As I have mentioned, one group of critics generally maintain +that the novel destabilizes biological categories its associated +assumptions about behavior, while a second argue that the novel +reinforces biological determinist views. The first group emphasizes +the novel's revision of biological determinist views, particularly +when it comes to gender. "Gender," Haraway argues, "is not the +transubstantiation of biological sexual difference," rather, it is +"kind, syntax, relation, genre" (/Primate Visions/ 377). Critics who +build Haraway's reading, like Catherine S. Ramirez and Kitty Dunkley, +explore how Butler deploys aspects of biological identity in a +strategic way. Ramirez explains that Butler strategically deploys +essentialist identity categories, as a tool for "imagining and +mobilizing new subjects and new communities" (395). Within the frame +of humanism, Kitty Dunkley emphasizes Butler's revision the +anthropocentric and patriarchial structures that necessitate essential +notions of gender. An example is the men's fear of the sexual +seduction and penetration by the ooloi, which "threatens to usurp the +men’s position at the pinnacle of a gendered hierarchy" (Dunkley +100). For both Ramirez and Dunkley, the biological "facts" of gender +are deconstructed, rather than reinforced, in the novel. By constrast, +Nancy Jesser centers the role of biological determinism within +Butler's fiction. Jesser boldly asserts that "Genetics is the science +of Butler's fiction. The translation of genotype to phenotype is the +plot" (52). According to Jesser, the novel re-works genetic tendencies +of behavior by deploying feminine traits, like maternal +self-sacrifice, nurture, and relationality, to correct tendencies of +dominance, possessiveness, and aggression typically displayed by the +males (41-42). On this side of the debate, biology is a physical fact +that determines behavior, but can also be re-worked or overcome +through other tendencies. + +[fn:3] Mann argues that the novel evokes the concept of "pessimistic +futurism," combining the cynicism of afro-pessimism, which associates +blackness with ontological death and the impossibility of black +subjectivity, and the optimism of afro-futurism, which speculates and +potentializes liberatory black subjectivity and futurity. + +[fn:2] The criticism from the novel situates this interplay of +similarity and difference within intersectional or "Women of Color" +feminism, particularly in Chela Sandoval's theorization of +"differential consciousness." Using terms that echo in her famous +followup work, "The Cyborg Manifesto," Donna Haraway describes this +text (and Butler's fiction in general) as being "about the monstrous +fear and hope that the child will not, after all, be like the parent" +(Haraway /Primate Visions/ 387). Catherine S. Ramirez builds from both +Haraway and Chela Sandoval to explore the tension between essentialism +and constructedness in the novel, which she calls an example of +"cyborg feminism"--a feminism that explores a strategic tension +between between "affinity and essence, and "plurality and specificity" +(Ramirez 395). Ramirez argues that, by "critiqu[ing] fixed concepts of +race, gender, sexuality and humanity, and, subsequently, 'fictions' of +identity and community" this work displays a "strategic deployment of +essence," that is, the claiming of a subject position for the purpose +of resisting subjectification (Ramirez 375, 395). + + +[fn:5] The first function, ~startMove()~, sets a series of timers that +initiate and perpetuate the animation. The second function, +~floatWords()~, loops through the list of words and phrases and passes +individual selections from this list to the next function, +~floatWord()~, which sets the trajectory and timing for their +movement. Within this function, a call to ~rePos()~ repositions the +word in a new location, to begin the cycle anew. + +[fn:4] For example, one could balance a twelve-inch ruler by placing +a finger under the sixth inch. By applying some force to the center of +mass, the object would not pivot, but move in a linear direction, +either up or down, or sideways, depending on the direction of the +force. However, if external force was applied along either side of the +center, say at the second inch, the object would pivot. Its direction +would then be determined by its pivot point, whether that be its +center of mass or the point where the object is affixed to another +object, if the ruler were nailed to the wall, for example. In this +case, the ruler would pivot around this point of attachment, and the +force and direction of its pivot would be measured as "torque." + +[fn:1] Hayles's influential text, /How We Became Posthuman: Virtual +Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics/ (2000), lays out +the "waves of cybernetic development," that is, the development of +systems theory among prominant information and communication theorists +like Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Claude Shannon, and Warren +McCulloch (2). + + + diff --git a/qt_writings/intro/calado_two.docx b/qt_writings/two/calado_two.docx similarity index 100% rename from qt_writings/intro/calado_two.docx rename to qt_writings/two/calado_two.docx