Home » Birds of Theory » Aeolian Inquiries » COERCIVICS: AN INTRODUCTION II (some relevant quotations)

COERCIVICS: AN INTRODUCTION II (some relevant quotations)

“I now feel it might be worth expressing those possibilities that are other than ‘received understandings’; perhaps other than the language of conventional ‘positions’ which have thus far constituted the manifest contentions of sociopolitical scenography. If only to register the fulfilment of any ‘social responsibility’ that subscribers of the partisan are wont to demand.

 

(“Towards A Critique of NewColonial Manifestation – Introduction” by Artxell Knaphni – Sunday, December 09, 2012 http://visionfiction.theotechne.com/WordPress/?page_id=238)

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“”Necessity”, they say, “is the mother of invention”, but is it the mother of fresh understandings beyond the novel technical object, and its secret demands on thought? Or does only an empty and contextless rush of expediency prevail, its animating logics forgotten, in a ‘stampediency’ driven by dreams of unlimited convenience?

 

The easy and unquestioned transactions of ‘Necessity’ have often been the pretext for countless structures of social and political coercion, all of which have their alibi in various images of ‘Necessity’. ‘Vested interests’ use the opportunistic proximities of power to enable disingenuous constructions of administrative necessity favouring only themselves. The desire to secure such convenient forms of distribution, as it were, exercises considerable ideological constraint on the general culture, on its interpretations, practices and world-views. Management of reaction to these constraints is easily achieved through tactical delimitation, around intuitive, issue-based polarities.”

 

(“Aeolian Inquiry: Quest(ion)s of the Whirlwind” by Artxell Knaphni – Thursday, July 16, 2015 http://visionfiction.theotechne.com/WordPress/?p=844)

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“The ideology of war, what I seem to be calling the ‘philosophy of coercion’, is not merely limited to the battlefield, but is quite possibly constitutive of the ‘human’ imaginary, the ‘human’ self-image. This constitution is constructed and maintained. And it is a cultural administration that so perpetually constructs and engages in such incessant maintenance.”

 

(“Culture and Coercion 1” by Artxell Knaphni – Saturday, December 29, 2012 http://visionfiction.theotechne.com/WordPress/?p=555)

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“If it is a development of the sovereign state, then it has to be considered as the product of warfare. Whether its constituents were commandeered through explicit conquests, or rallied to the banner of a prevailing force that could provide protection, the underlying impetus would’ve been the threat of war, and perhaps internal disorder.

 

And it is this culture, of destructive contentions, that I am calling ‘coercion’.

 

And, arguably, this ‘coercion’ permeates all modern cultures, nationalistic or otherwise, all the time.”

 

(“Culture and Coercion 3” by Artxell Knaphni – Thursday, January 03, 2013 http://visionfiction.theotechne.com/WordPress/?p=566)

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“This statement reflects a certain type of individual. An individual with cultural kapital sufficient to exceed having to fall back on mere national privilege. And, wherever national privilege exists, it is often as a result of geopolitical coercion.”

 

(“Culture and Coercion 3” by Artxell Knaphni – Thursday, January 03, 2013 http://visionfiction.theotechne.com/WordPress/?p=566)

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“For me, the notion of ‘Reality’ has always been an ‘idealisation’, & it has never only been singular, except as the consensual mirage of unity that various thinkings celebrate, through various monistic apprehensions. But notice, a ‘mirage’ is nevertheless an event, a constrained ‘effect’, a necessary structural moment. One can reduce it to various forms of supervenience, using empirical, theoretical, aesthetic vocabularies; but these differential positionings, too, are supervenient ‘metaphysical’ operations, always issuing from some cave of conceptual enclosure, as it were; the slums of imagined ‘sureness’ constituting ‘Knowledge’ with a big ‘K’; which invariably turn out to be yet another consensual coercion, another do-be-us invitation to inhabit the same set of theoretical limitations; limitations constituting yet another mechanism, another production line, of dogma production; of fetishised conceptual circulations forever in search of (an) ultimate expediency.”

 

(“Phil Zero So Fee: The Real, I Deal, is So Free!” by Artxell Knaphni – Saturday, April 25, 2015 http://visionfiction.theotechne.com/WordPress/?p=804)

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“All its existential references have turned into calculable, Cartesian points, any self it might produce would only be an empty, gratuitous, combinatorial gesture. The tools through which it continues to manipulate others have ironised its very essence. The astringent demands with which it castigates others, the corollary of its mentality of ‘dogmatic expression’, exclude it from the holistic and unquantifiable mysteries that could lead to creative regeneration. Circulating within its economics of banal certitude, it has become a global network of infernal necessities, a generalised coercion, a colonisation of ever increasing intensity.”

 

(“Responses 2” by Artxell Knaphni – Tuesday, December 11, 2012 http://visionfiction.theotechne.com/WordPress/?p=269)

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“Philosophers are coerced into producing vast amounts of rubbish, & then fall into infighting over its dubious merits. (innocuous noises concerning clarity & obscurity are a big favourite). The coercion is towards quantity, not quality. It isn’t possible to do anything worthwhile under the duress of such a ‘professional’ demand. So most fall into the silent agreement of pretending that the copious trivia of their output is ‘philosophical work’.
Unable to let go of a ‘career’ already invested in, grumbling sets in. In danger of disappearing in the deluge of their own output, desperate overtures are made to other disciplines, or public life, seeking a spurious relevance. But secretly, they are looking for shelter from the self-imposed, Tantalean tasks of turgidity they erroneously imagine are necessary in attaining the brilliance they covet as a corollary of career advancement.”

 

(“The Anxious Superpositions of Wisdom, When Philosophy Is Quantified” by Artxell Knaphni – Monday, June 29, 2015 http://visionfiction.theotechne.com/WordPress/?p=835)

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