Society of the Spectacle report: our last POBICS seminary

Yesterday in POBICS, we held a new meeting and, among other topics, we discussed one of the best

known books written by Guy Debord: The Society of Spectacle. Here the report, where we tried to answer two main questions: 1) What is a spectacle? and 2) What are images, and what are the role of images in the Debord's sense?

Spectacle is a reversal (the other side) of life, spectacle is a shift where life goes to the re-presentation (in the Simulacrum's sense given by Baudrillard)

Spectacles are dispositiffs, whilst spectacle is power. The second one is not visible but the first ones it does. 

Spectacle is the opposite of dialogue, that is, in spectacle there is not text, neither words or a discursive situation. Instead, spectacle is the inheritor of the weakness of the whole Western philosophical projects, and so, it is an understanding of the activity dominated by the categories of vision.

The spectacle is the conclusion of the everyday reality of the image. The image has nothing to do with our everyday reality, but it (the images that appelas to itself) becomes our reality. It is the maximum output of the spectacle. The spectacle is an image that is the experience itself, an image that refers to itself. And we thinkg that mage epidemics operate in the same way.

Spectacle then, is chiasmus, the separation between art and life. But what separates, is it art or image?

In any case, what is the image? Knowledge, a fragment of it which has lost all reference and is self-referential. Furthermore, it goes in one direction: the eyes (although it can be completed with other sense like ear. The image is more than the world and impose themselves as the only reality. The concept of image given by Debord may have to do with the etymological meaning (portrait, copy, imagination), and therefore does not have to be only visual (eg, a "mental" imaginary or invidividual which is also self-referential and superficial, the sense that if you escavas find the same, nothing else).

Image = knowledge, epistemic cut, which comes to us through one-way (eyes). It is a piece of knowledge, not an image as something that is visual: it is a knowledge that comes to us through the eyes. Baudrillard idea of simulacrum is very similar.

Spectacle as "Trompe l'oeil" (trampantojo in Spanish) = as a simulacrum, in urban planning, capitalism, imaginary ... The spectacle is the moment when the goods have arrived to the total occupation of social life. Not only the relationship the merchandise is not visible but she is the unique we can look: the world you see is its world

Relationship between images as a state of emergency and images - show.

The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images. For instance, romantic love in movies, (how a girl sees her boyfriend for instance), is mediated by the set of images of the Twilight movies, sexism Love Hollywood, etc ... and then, real girls in their daily life applied this romantic-hollywodean images to the relation with her boyfriends. Then, romantic-hollywodean images (a more than the lay meaning of images) mediate in the relation between couples.

The starting point for spectacle is not me, is the "bounce", thanks to a formal structure comes to me.

Spectacle are looking for our alienation. The society of spectacle corresponds to a concrete manufacture of alienation.  Image as spectacular uniqueness.

Espectuacular means "means to see, to witness", that is, mediation by sight, or sight.

What is spectacular time, in relation to time-event (Aion) and linear time (kronos)? It may be a time to start the expropriation of time (sentence #159: "To bring workers to the status of producers and "Free" time-goods, consumer preliminary condition It was the violent expropriation of their time. Return spectacular time has not become possible only from This first stripping producer. "). It would be kairós FREECODE, a bubble or invagination in which an event occurs.

Photo Credit: gwynydd michael

New POBICS Seminary: Guy Debord and Society of the Spectacle

Our next and last seminary for this year will be about the most popular theory of Guy Debord: The Society of Spectacle.

We will close our cycle of seminaries with this lecture because we think it could be an important contribution for our recent image analysis. In this sense, we could compare and counterpouse our classical authors used to analyse images (Deleuze, Gillian Rose...) with an author with another interesting and important theory related with images and society in general.

For everyone who don't know Debord's work, we will post the report about our seminary when we hold it. But meanwhile, you can read a little bio about him and his book, extracted from Wikipedia:

"Debord traces the development of a modern society in which authentic social life has been replaced with its representation: "All that once was directly lived has become mere representation." Debord argues that the history of social life can be understood as "the decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing." This condition, according to Debord, is the "historical moment at which the commodity completes its colonization of social life."

The spectacle is the inverted image of society in which relations between commodities have supplanted relations between people, in which "passive identification with the spectacle supplants genuine activity". "The spectacle is not a collection of images," Debord writes, "rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images."

The seminary will be hold on June 15th at 12:00 at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), in the Social Psychology Department (Martín Baró's room). The entrance es free and open for everyone. 

Photo Credit: Randy Lemoine

Our last seminary: Heidegger and the Question Concerning Technology (and others)

Yesterday we held the seminary we announced about Martin Heidegger. It is possible it would be one

of the last readings we make this course because we have to focus on our papers and congress (next post will be about some very good news we have about it!). 

By the way, the last read we will make is about Giorgio Agamben (we will post it soon). 

For this session, we read "The Question Concerning Technology", "Science and Meditation" and "The thing". Here the seminary about Heidegger with the most interesting comments:

Heidegger introduces the difference between the ontic and the ontological (being): between the object and its essence. The true essence of each object is different from the object itself.

Essence of technology -> to become the world existences: What makes the technique is to convert everything that exists in the world in existences. Existences in Spanish means the existence of something, but also the amount of one thing we have stored (stock).

What is relevant is whether, originally, the title was "the question of technique" or "the question after the technique." (In English is the Question Concerning Technology, but in Spanish is more complex to understand this preposition).

At the end of the text, the technique can be a hazard if it becomes all in existences (including ourselves and if we don't make anymore questions), but we can also save us. The questions are necessary because if we fall into the trap that we can control the world and we know everything, we are abandoning our possibility of freedom, and freedom is the existential condition of life itself. Freedom is achieved precisely asking the questions because them give us the possibility to question how things are.

Freedom is the right question for the unveiling. We are free when we asked for the essence of things, not its ontological being. The thingness of the thing is co-link, to join (the pitcher joins the cuaternity itself, as connections heaven and earth, technical and object, etc).

The thingness of the thing is coligar, join (the jar joins the cuaternidad itself, as connections between heaven and earth, technics and object, etc). Interest in the concept of obstancy. This way of being present for the Romans is called obstancy.

About the sentence "The essence of science is that it is the theory of the real" (p. 34):

-Science: Contemporary Science, embedded from poetry and classical Greek art.

-Real: in Greece: The real fills the region of the effective, that which works. Work means doing (by man or nature), but also bring (a presence) and pro-duce. Reality therefore is what brings-there-front (dassein); the reality, that brought-there-before, in un-hidden and remains unconcealed. Later in Rome, the real becomes result (that is, that which precedes a cause that caused this result is reality) that follows from an act: real is what has been achieved (p. 36). It this way, the real is true, sure, what we take for granted; apparently as mere opposition or mere opinion (but still present in some different way than in Greece. This way of being present for the Romans call obstancia).

-Theory: in Greece, to watch the aspect under which the present appears. Through this vision, to stay fit him watching (p. 37), is the respectful attention to the state of unconcealment of the present, the "the look that selther the truth ". In Modernity: It comes from Rome with contemplatio: separate, divide. The theory is an elaboration of the real; but also prevail however what the presence (as theory Science, provokes the real itself in view of its obstancia). It is a represent that makes sure everything real in your prosecutable obstancy (represent = to keep this in any particular way and no other). Therefore, modern science as a theory of reality, it is not obvious.

Gestell in Heidegger structure site, but now is translated as disposition, the same translation of "agencement" in Deleuze. In Bourdieu so does the habit, which is also a translation available. It is what makes the bring-there-before (brought from far away).

The essence is not infinite, is the en-durance (the recurring endure), which remains when we reveal the essence. Each essence reveals something of the hidden. For example, today, what reveals a PC or a Mac? Heidegger focuses on objects that have a very long duration in history (a pitcher, art ...) but not in recent-creation objects.

In Heidegger, we are caught in classical ontology, he tries to break it but he still stayy within it because his question is the classic question of being. However, in other philosophers focus on the becoming or the difference left the classical ontology. In Heidegger, there is always an essence that remains (in the first computer, in a normallaptop and in a brand-new mac. The Rhine river does not change by putting a dam or a mill. Deleuze says that what we call essence is changing, the eternal return never brings to the same (in the line of Heraclitus). The Rhine river changes by putting a dam or a mill.

Photo Credit: Alex Brown

Next POBICS seminary: Martin Heiddeger & techné

Hi everyone! 

POBICS is here again and in this ocassion we want to announce our next seminary. It will take place on April 26th at 12:30 in the Martín-Baró's room (Psychology Faculty, UAB, Barcelona). Keep in mind this date is next week, and not the present one. This is because this week we have to plan and manage the whole of papers we have sent to congress and journals. 

Furthermore, we are still analyzing the focus group we made at the biginning of this year, and this task is quite slow (anyone needs enough time in order to listen, write and link ideas about the people who are talking along 90 minutes). For this reason, we apologize for not hold a open meeting this week.

If you are interested in the Heidegger seminary, remember it is open and free. We will read three chapters of the book "Coferencias y Artículos": 1) "La Pregunta por la Técnica"; 2) "La Cosa" and 3) "Ciencia y Meditación".

(This chapters are a compilation of different conferences and brief articles that Heidegger wrote).

Photo Credit: Nadya Peek

On the Government of the Living part I. Last seminary by POBICS

Yesterday, in POBICS we held a new seminary. In this case, as we have noticed last week, we read the last book published in Spanish written by Foucault: "Del Gobierno de los Vivos" (On the Government of the Living in English). In this post, we will offer some thoughts, notes and comments about the first part of the book (the second part will take place next wednesday, at 11:00 on Social Psychology Faculty of the UAB, Barcelona. Open and free for you!)

Here the comments:

Government truth = governmentality.

Idea of ​​aleturgia = reflection incorporated about the truth in the notion of ritual. The truth is not only a matter of knowledge, but also it must be complemented by other elements: the ritual of truth.

The proposal of truth is in the complete work of Foucault, and it was very important, but Deleuze not collected it in his course about Foucault.

The truth today has to do with knowledge neither with the ritual of the procedure to reach the truth. Here, there is an epistemic change: now the ritual is assumed to reach the objective knowledge.

The discovery as a way to find the truth in Oedipus, is an interweaving of medicine and law. It is a judicially aleturgia with an a medical (p. 78)

The question of power through demonstrations of the subject for the truth. Deleuze will question us: How subjects are created?

Foucault, here: How really regimes (not true  itself) of true  are created ?, that is, the types of relationships that link the manifestations of truth with its procedures (how they work); and subjects that are its operators, his witnesses and eventually his subjects. The person is not only the subject of truth, but also their witness and their operators (truth not only create subjects, but also has other roles). Normally the emphais is put on the paper that Foucault gives to subjectivity; but what he really wants to do is a story of the power of truth: how truth becomes something that has power, the power of truth. The main mechanism by which the truth is maintained and operates is subjectivity.

Are there truth processes without subjectivity?

 In Christianity, so to speak, we use the truth. In Oedipus (an older historical formation), I do not need to understand the truth (it is owned by the gods who are those who have the truth). Act of truth: the part that touches the subject in aleturgia processes, defined by the role of the subject as a spectator, as operator and as object.

 From Christianity, and especially from the liberalism version of the XX Century, the object of the persnon in the act of truth is more dominant than the other two (witness and subject). It is possible a new truth or way to present the truth in our work? It would not have to do with the classical risk calculation, but it is focuses on the present. We do a role-playing and present a hypothetical future, projected into the future (what we called scenarios).

 And what now...? Are scenario concept out of phase? We want to propose the ecologies of security.

Photo Credit: Stefan Perneborg

Spring is coming! Brief list about our next seminaries

After 10 days of holidays due to Holy Week, POBICS is coming back and we want to offer next

seminaries we will hold. March has been a very busy month, and we have put off each seminary many times. For this reason, we post here our coming meetings:

-Andrés G. Seguel Seminary: Tomorrow (April 1st) is the last day after two more days of seminary. More info about it here.

-Last book published by Foucault (in Spanish): "Del Gobierno de los Vivos". April 6th, 13th and 20th. From 11:00 to 12:30.

-Joint Meeting of the European Society for the History of Human Sciences: This is the first Congress where POBICS will be this summer. You can read more about it here.

-4S/EASST Congress: The big and most expected congress. We have sent 4 contributions and POBICS is taking part from the inside with our leader, Francisco Tirado. You cant read them here, here, here and here!

-II International Anthropology AIBR Congress: In the same way as the last year, POBICS will be in the AIBR Congress with two new contributions. More info here.

Remember, all of them are free and they are open to you, your buddies, colleagues or anyone interested in. We are in Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), at Psychology Faculty, Martín Baró's room (at Social Psychology Department).

See you soon!

Photo Credit: Sarah Barker

New open seminary by Jorge Castillo: Biopolitics, Biosociality, and Governamentality: Socio-Technical Associations in the Health and Illness Government

Next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, our colleague Jorge Castillo, arrived from the Psychology School of the Santiago de Chile's University, will explain some ideas about his current work and research. The title of this seminary is "Biopolitics, Biosociality, and Governamentality: Socio-Technical Associations in the Health and Illness Government". The meeting will be in Spanish, from 16:00 to 20:00, and is open to anyone who wants to come (Martín Baró's Room, Social Psychology Department, UAB).

Here we offer a little abstract about the topics and ideas that Jorge will explain:

The seminary is adressed to researchers whose project is related with the concept of bio-governmentality in order to understand the relationships between a) recent political

institutional formations, b) the development of technologies in biomedical knowledge on various socio-economic scenarios, and c) subjective and personal productions. For this, we propose the three thematic approach, each considering a case study:

Table of Contents.

Day 1 social studies of biomedicine.

a) Science, Technology and Society: semiotic approaches to the study of materials biomedical activities .

b) Micropolitics of normality: a case study of cancer in Barcelona.

Day 2. Evidence-based policy and power as prehension.

a) Modernization and political scenarios.

b) Case Study: power and evidence-based policies.

Day 3. Biogovernmetality.

A) From biopolitics to biosociality.

b) Case study: obligation schemes, somatocracy and acceleration in the system Explicit Guarantees in Health from Chile.


Finally, we offer his main milestones as researcher (in Spanish):


Jorge es psicólogo por la Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Máster en Investigación en Psicología Social y Doctor en Psicología Social por la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, con la tesis “Oncología y ontología, un análisis semiótico-material del cáncer”, que analiza desde la teoría del actor-red, las implicancias de la articulación de tecnologías y prácticas biomédicas en le redefinición del significado socio-material de la enfermedad. Desde marzo de 2013, se desempeña como Profesor Asistente en la Escuela de Psicología de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile.

Sus ámbitos de interés se relacionan con los tipos de gobierno sustentados en procesos de índole biológica, y su relación con prácticas y procedimientos biomédicos. De manera más específica, su labor se ha especializado en realizar descripciones de diagramas biopolíticos y modos contemporáneos de gubernamentalidad.

Actualmente, es investigador principal del proyecto PAI Nº 791220018, relacionado con la 
performatividad de las políticas basadas en la evidencia en Chile, e investigador responsable del proyecto Fondecyt de Iniciación en Investigación Nº 11140590, titulado “Aportes de los Estudios de Ciencia y Tecnología a la comprensión de enfermedades abordadas por la medicina basada en la evidencia: regímenes de subjetivación, corporización y biosocialidad en el GES”, ambos financiados por la Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica de Chile (CONICYT).

Photo Credit: Shawn Campbell

Weekly seminary: Homo Sacer & Giorgio Agamben

This week we have another meeting in order to discuss about the book by Agamben, Homo Sacer. Although the reunion will be this wednesday, in this case we want to talk about it before because in the next post (Thursday), we will announce an important new from POBICS and from part of our big group, STS-b. 

For this reading, we will propose some of this points as key elements to discuss:

• The concept of Ban (Sovereign Ban)
• What is Homo Sacer?
• What are the difference between the biopolitical concept by Foucault and by Agamben?
• The state of exception and the present

In the first place, the ban is the key concept that allows to creating the notion of state of exception. Thus, the ban consists on stablish a relation with that is outside the relationship. In this vein, due to the ban, life can be linked to law thoughout an un-binding, including only by an exclusion. The state of exception in the current days, within the vision of Agamben can be seen practically in each action of our daily life: this zone of indifference and transit between life and zoè, nature and culture; has been imposed and widespread. The current preparedness and biosurveillance logic makes that our zoè emerge where we see a new about Ebola, when we think about vaccinate agains the flu, or when we interact with a new app that alerts us about where is a new outbreak.

The ban is an important and quite interesting concept because it allows to explain several event and situtations in some other fields. For instance, to our current researches, we can talk about the ban relationship between life and biosurveillance: life only would be understood within the exclusion stablished by protocols, laws and the biomedical knowledge. In this vein, the dog Excalibur (the dog that was given death due to the contact with her owner, Teresa Romero) cannot be seen as a murder, but as a bare (or sacred) life. 

About Homo Sacer, the central concept of the book, understood as the person that people have tried for a crime, but it is not lawful for sacrifice. But if someone would kill him, the latter would not be convicted of murder, is the "condition sine qua non" to understand the biopolitical project by Agamben. This concept is quite related with the concept of ban, and it lets us to "generalize" to other species this feature of give death without a punishment of law nor the bad vision of people. The Excalibur dog example is a good illustration about it. Here, we can also bring the thanatopolitics concept by Rose in order to understand better this "skip" from the ethical or political trial. 

Finally, the biopolitical project by Agamben points out that all of our contemporary  political moment is biopolitics: the politics has been substituted by biopolitics, understood as this attempt to reduce life to zoè. Furthermore, the biopolitics tries to make the shift from a state to the state of exception, a permanent situation where the normative law is suspended and the state of exception is become the rule. However, for Foucault, the biopolitics is an "older" concept in the sense that is not "refreshed" with the last events of this decades, and it is explained within the states and their births in the XIX Century. Foucault uses the biopolitics as a control tool, linked to the policy and statistics, and less to law and the classical law.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Thierry Ehrmann

A brief summary about our first POBICS seminar

As I posted the last week, yesterday we held the first session of the seminary about the Foucaultian's course by Deleuze with the first five chapters of the book "El Saber". 

The meeting was so interesting because we achieved to answer several questions about the Foucault's work. The index of the seminary was:

1. What is knowledge?
2. What is archeology? / Why do archeology?
3. What is a file?
4. Four Deleuzian thesis on the components of knowledge
5. Why Foucault is a Kantian?
6. What is a statement? / Criticism of traditional linguistics

During the two hours of the reunion we discussed about this questions, some easier to answer than others. The key idea is around the first question (what is knowledge in Foucault?) and how we can extract a statement. We deduced that extract, in this sense, is a synonymous of "compose" because there isn't a concrete way to operate in order to "catch" the statement from phrases, clauses, sentences or words.

The most important process in order to do this, is summarized in these points:

1. Build a corpus: a set of words, phrases ... where we clear regularities.
2. Where can we look for the corpus? In the foci of power.
3. The foci of power are drawn from the daily practices, not from great authors (this practice is inherited from the School of the Annales)

Along the session, Francisco Tirado drew at the blackboard the graphic you can watch in the blog's image. This represent an example about a sentence: "Yoga is a health practice". He showed this example because in the Deleuze's book is quite difficult to understand or apprehend what is a statement with the illustration he gives.

So we have the sentence "Yoga is a healthy practice" and we have "cut" the sentence:

Yoga: it has been a science, a way of life, not a practice. It never was linked to health, but happiness. Nonetheless,  today we can link it to the practice and health. This is because there is a rule that allows them to join: the imperative of health. The imperative of health is the extracted (or composed) statement of this sentence.

The imperative of health operates in different and heterogeneous systems forming the associated field: in medicine, yoga, day by day, the law ...

There is a particular object, is dispersed, is spoken. It is the boundary of the statement.

The subject is what is left out of the intersection of the heterogeneous systems, such as when we exceed the health imperative till hypochondria.

The concept is the intersection of all areas where health imperative works. What remains amid of the whole intersection.

That's all. We wait for you next week (Wednesday, Social Psychology department of the Autonomous University of Barcelona). We hope too your comments and answers to the questions we have posed. 

PhotoCredit: by my self at the seminary.