Post on 23-Apr-2023
REFRACTED REMEDIATIONPYNCHON’S BRUSSELS AS LIMINAL MILIEU
Dr Christophe Collard
AAS10 – Adaptation and the MetropolisSchool of Advanced Study, University of London (UK)24-25 September 2015
08-11-2022 1Herhaling titel van presentatie
Pag.
(MOTTO)
“His office and field skills weren’t the worst in the shop, but he knew that what distinguished him was a keen sympathy for the invisible.”
(Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day)
08-11-2022 2AAS10
Pag.
W.H. AUDEN ON BRUSSELS
08-11-2022 3AAS10
Its formula escapes you: it has lostThe certainty that constitutes a thing
(‘Brussels in Winter,’ 1938)
Pag.
T. PYNCHON, AGAINST THE DAY (2006)
08-11-2022 4AAS10
BXL as liminal milieu
‘double refraction’
(heroic) adapt-ability
Productive dynamic: convergence & analogy
Pag.
FRANÇOIS RECANATI (2008)
08-11-2022 5AAS10
Despite being essentially structured, human communication primarily relies on intuitive associations.
adapt-ability as heuristic principle
Pag.
DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER (2007)
08-11-2022 6AAS10
“Thermodynamics is explained by statistical mechanics, but perhaps this idea becomes somewhat clearer when turned around, as follows: Statistical mechanics can be bypassed by talking at the level of termodynamics.”
Pynchon:
Quantum-mechanical dimension = literary
Anarchic character
Pag.
ANDRÉ HELBO (2006)
08-11-2022 7AAS10
Adaptation:
Reciprocal exchange feeding on complex networks of poly-systemic relations, operators, and operative strategies.
Negotiation grounded in analogies
Equivalence- rather than difference-based
Pag.
BELGIUM
“little Belgium once again busy at what she does best, tamely offering her battlefield-ready lowlands to boots, hooves, iron wheels, waiting to be first to go under before a future no one in Europe has the clairvoyance to imagine as an exercise for clerks.”
(Pynchon, Against the Day)
08-11-2022 9AAS10
Pag.
BOLTER & GRUSIN (1999)
08-11-2022 11AAS10
‘mediation of mediation’
Strategic refashioning of pre-existing media under the influence of other media.
‘contamination’ of content
Charismatic strategy
Constructivist cogn. procedure = adaptation
Pag.
PIVOTAL BRUSSELS
08-11-2022 12AAS10
Rudi Laermans (1999):
“The city, its inhabitants, and its varied groups of users are too multiple-sided, too heterogeneous, too opaque to be gathered in a single panoptical glance.”
Pag.
CONCLUSION(S)
08-11-2022 13AAS10
o Adaptation as ‘generative grammar’ (Stam, 2006) on behalf of its adapt-ability
o Constructivist impetus is emancipating
o Antidote to negativity
o “Brussels is a verb” (Laermans)
o Shared reliance on analogies
“journeys towards otherness” (Johnston, 2004)Brussels voted #1 most traffic-congested city in the world
by US traffic information platform INRIX