Lecture at Strelka (Remote)

23 Feb., 2018

Talk on “Distributed Situatedness and Multi-Scalar Mobility,” for the 2018 cohort of The New Normal program at Strelka. 23 February, 2018 @ 12:00.

For the ‘human’ to live up to its ontological reality, the collective battle is that of the transition from inexistence (simply being) to existence (appearing and counting). It is on this plane that we must fight for the coming into (logical) existence of the (universal) human, if this category is to gain political weight. It is only then that we could be said to exist in what we know, where epistemology is augmented beyond a purely propositional realm of simply knowing that, and transitions into knowing how. Without this logical becoming, we will remain bound to the ‘inexistent human,’ a situation of generic humanity that is politically intractable, and ensnared in a quagmire of merely ‘knowing that we know’ the human is a collective category. While the category ‘human’ is politically urgent and ontologically true, it will remain a veil for idealised, ahistorical claims without consequence until it becomes logically manifest — that is, until it appears politically. -Excerpt