Masses of Masses

"We are always simultaneously both mass and class, mass and multitude, mass and race, mass and nation; and so on."

Terranova argues that the identification or sub-identification of mass is one of the active categories new communication politics. My reservation around this revolves around the use of the word and as a conjunctive. This conjunctive is of course situated within Deleuze and Gauttari's large discourse on becoming and molar conjunctives. The problem is that earlier in the book Terranova concedes that there is still a very material barrier to involvement in this kind of new media communactive framework. These material barriers rest on the level of access to hardware and a certain amount of media literacy. Now, it would be awfullly presumptive to say that such barriers are wholly determined by the functins of class, race, nation and so on. Yet, it would be dismissive to say that material barriers would not in some way be determined by identifications or sub identifications along classifications of class, race, nation and so on. Thus, I think that the conjunctive and is misleading in that deprivileges the second term in the formulation. I would say rather, that it is mass determined by race, nation, class, gender, and so on. It is still to early in my opinion to jettison those ideological formations in favor of molar becoming. Even if such a line of flight would become the ultimate goal of new politics, there are still many determinations that need to be analyzed before such a flight takes place.

I also found two things particularly interesting.

The first, is the idea of communication and networks as deforming and constructing durations/time/space. It made me think of Kristeva essay, which unfortunately I don't recall the name of, that I read during my undergrad years. The main arguement was that predetermined roles and expectations involved in gender construction also constructed durational feelings differently for men and women. One being linear goal oriented time and the other being circular role oriented time. This along with her mention of Virilio's concept of hypertime leads me to think that we need to also think of new media and communication within a specific function of time. I would say that this could be called maybe something along the lines of a possibility-function. New media and communications explodes the possibility function of time. My brain is a little too addled from turkey to flesh out this arguement in a blog post but I could maybe argue that the implication of this possibility function is that time moves faster. Not only hyper as in all pervasive but hyper as in hyper-duration in terms of speed. Those with access to technology are able to get more done in a shorter amount of time over a longer measure of distance. I think it would be interesting to think this function in its massively divisive engagement. In other words how different levels of material access and literacy create a divide in possibility-functions.

The reference to Massumi's television exeriments with different voiceovers made me recall Zizek's favorite example regarding Levi-Strauss. The example of the village with two subgroups who painted their village in differenet ways depending on their social position within the village. It's interesting to think the idea that even watching media across different platforms and different positions needs to traverse this gap in the real.