thank you so much andy, any chance to meet you at my occupy london lecture, dec 10, 10 am at the tent? Michel On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 9:33 AM, Andy Robinson <[email protected]> wrote:
Hiya,
CC'ing Athina because I think this is very relevant to her current research :-)
I think "premediation" is Grusin's own term, all the search results point to him and I'd never heard the word before. Here it says: "Richard Grusin has coined the term `premediation' to describe the way in which news media and cultural industries map and visualize a plurality of possible futures" (http://sdi.sagepub.com/content/39/2-3/155.abstract) He has a book on the topic, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Premediation-Affect-Mediality-After-11/dp/0230242529 which seems to be about framings of the future in the media.
I think it's using the Hegelian/Marxist concept of mediation and the Deleuzian concept of affect.
Hegelian mediation is defined here: http://www.dkolb.org/sprawlingplaces/gateway/kantoutl/hegelonm.html In Hegelian theory, we don't have direct access to reality, but rather, our relationship to reality is 'mediated' by particular concepts, feelings, relations and practices. So a 'mediation' is something which in constructivist terms, creates a particular social reality, or in realist terms, comes between the self and reality so that reality is experienced in a particular way. It's a bit like Postman and Weingartner's idea of stained-glass windows: we always see the world through particular stained-glass windows; we can change the windows but we can't do without them. So mediation is a bit like conceptualisation, except that it doesn't just transform concepts but the whole way of relating to something. Remediation (in a Hegelian context) is the alteration of mediations through new media or experiences, adding or subtracting existing mediations - the Internet remediated film, film remediated photography and so on.
Deleuzian affect has two implications. Firstly, it is socialised emotion. Whereas emotion is usually viewed as an inner reaction, 'affect' is emotion theorised on something which is actually an impact of the outside, or a relation to the outside (the other 'affects' the self). Secondly, there is a 'zone of affects' which is a field of different possible combinations of ways of feeling, thinking, relating, etc. When we form particular subjectivities, we select from the 'zone of affects' to occupy a particular zone or figure. Affect is roughly coterminous with the Deleuzian virtual and with the 'past' in *Difference and Repetition *(DR). The 'future' in DR consists of the possibility to search the zones of the past (affect/virtual) based on desire, to find another zone to occupy or to try out. Jay Lampert describes the Deleuzian future as like a search engine which searches the 'past' based on terms entered by desire.
So if I'm understanding right, "premediation" is the creation in advance of frames which channel affect and conceptualisation. It creates "mediations" *in advance of* events, which readers/viewers will then apply themselves to the events as they happen. (e.g. counter-terrorism discourse pre-frames terrorism as risk, so when an attack happens, it is experienced as a preventable risk-management failure). Premediation selects particular zones of affect to induce in the audience, and attaches them to future events so they will be activated if/when the events happen. It's basically the creation of a zeitgeist or a field of discourse. Among other things, it determines what is sayable, what kinds of affects can be articulated and so on.
In relation to the Deleuzian view of the future as an open search for new zones of affect, the securitised post-911 premediation by the media / through risk-management and preventionism would seem to be an attempt to close the future. It seeks to ensure that no event can happen which hasn't already been mediated (conceptualised, affectively mapped) in advance. Grusin sees this as a response to the 'media trauma' of the unexpected event of 911.
Occupy is seen as intervening in this sphere of premediation to create other possible futures. It is pointing towards a different world (this is similar to the older idea of "prefiguration" in New Left discourse). It reshapes the field of what is seen as possible or desirable, and fosters particular affective zones, creating a 'counter-mood'. This opens up the future to 'other potential becomings'. In Deleuzian terminology, a 'becoming' is a process of transformation, particularly if it occurs in the direction of active force or liberation. 'Other potential becomings' are other ways of searching the past/virtual/affect based on desires which are not contained in the present frame.
In this article, Grusin analyses both the failure/refusal of Occupy to formulate clear demands, and the expansive nature of the group names (Occupying Wall Street, London Stock Exchange, or entire cities), as examples of premediation: the lack of demands allows them to open zones of affect, and the expansive names point to possible futures. Grusin also calls for the movement to try more systematically to premediate its future - i.e. to define affectively what its future is going to be, in what he sees as a battle for 'control of the narrative' (this is similar to the New Left idea of a battle for hegemony). He's also using the concept of the 'interval', which seems to have a separate intellectual history.
bw Andy
On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 1:37 PM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]>wrote:
hi andy,
could you explain premediation in more easy language?
see http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v014/14.4S.grusin.html
Michel
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