Nomography. Eloy Fernández Porta
Читать онлайн книгу.
Srećko Horvat, The Radicality of Love
Dominic Pettman, Infinite Distraction
Eloy Fernández Porta, Nomography
Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism
Nomography
On the Invention of Norms Considered as One of the Fine Arts
Eloy Fernández Porta
Translated by Ramsey McGlazer
polity
Copyright © Eloy Fernández Porta, 2021
This English edition © Polity Press, 2021
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
101 Station Landing
Suite 300
Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4396-0
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Translator’s Note
Throughout this book, Eloy Fernández Porta uses words and phrases in English. These are often taken from the lexicons of corporate culture or the internet; at other times, they point to Porta’s engagement with Anglophone media or index his fluency in the lingua franca of the global art market or the fashion industry. So the reader of the Spanish original comes across references to “infotainment,” the “smartphone,” the “foodie,” and the “fanbase,” to “outsider” art, the “mainstream,” “normcore,” “chaos magic,” and the “unwearable.” This reader is likewise told, in English, to “Enjoy!,” to “Eat well,” to “Do it yourself,” and even, when the author briefly becomes a “cheerleader,” to “Give me an L! Give me an A! Give me a W!,” to spell, “(All together!) LAAAW!”
As that last example indicates, Porta’s English is often parodic, playful, ironic, or absurd. Anglicisms comically interrupt his sinuous Spanish sentences, or they grate jarringly against the words in their immediate vicinity, to ludic effect. They are like bits of ad copy introduced into an otherwise elegant critical discourse, or Doritos served in a dish made by a chef who specializes in haute cuisine.
The effects of Porta’s use of other foreign languages – French to signal sophistication, Latin to send us all to mass or to court – can be captured or at least closely approximated in translation. But there is unfortunately no way to do justice to the author’s use of English in a rendering of his text in English. “There is no remedy to which translation could have recourse here,” Jacques Derrida writes of the “foreign effect” of foreign words used in another context: “No one is to blame; moreover, there is nothing to bring before the bar of translation.”1
Something could have been brought before the bar, of course: the italicization of words and phrases that appeared in English in the original, for instance. But this would have risked confusion, since throughout the text Porta uses italics to other ends. I have therefore left these words and phrases unmarked, although this means domesticating Porta’s prose, depriving it of some of its multilingual richness and polyphonic playfulness. All references to brand names, fashion designers, films, television programs, musicians, and YouTube sensations have also been retained, even when these might not be familiar to readers of the English. I trust that this will not prevent these readers from complying with Porta’s injunction to “Enjoy!”
Notes
1 1. Jacques Derrida, “Shibboleth: For Paul Celan,” trans. Joshua Wilner and Thomas Dutoit, in Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan, ed. Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen, New York: Fordham University Press, 2005, 30.
Grey Alert, Blue Pill
What if the truly enjoyable act were not transgressing a norm but inventing it? What if creativity consisted in pronouncing a law, under the pretext of violating it? What if it turned out that you, who say you prefer the exceptions, only spoke of these because they allow you to imagine the rules?
In these pages, we will explore these disquieting possibilities. Let us see where their convulsions lead us.
Nomography: A collective act in which a regulating principle is generated in spontaneous, unforeseen ways, in and through the gestures of a reactive imagination. // A procedure distinctive to an age in which public and private normativity is directly produced by the digital citizenry, while institutions lose their power, become a mere executive branch, or abstain from these deliberations. // A global psychological plague in which the condition known as normotic is depathologized and becomes a part of mental health. // A result of the combined actions of aesthetic, juridical, and popular forces. // A form of possession. A perverse desire that organizes personal temperaments, implements forms of order, and creates a common pressure to take distance from heterodoxy. // A form of fanaticism in which the community takes shape as a horde and affirms its collective identity as a norm-horde. // A metamorphosis of the social body in which it becomes a regulating force.
“Am I normal?” At a central moment in Masters of Sex, the television series, patients of all ages, shot in a sequence of close-ups, look at the camera with varying degrees of discomfort, repeating this question. With each repetition, the spectator feels more interpellated, more like he or she is being given the third degree, more like a culprit. Are you normal?
There are some who have responded to this question – which we could also call The Question – with resigned good humor. “I’m just a regular everyday normal guy / Nothin’ special ’bout me, motherfucker / … If you wanna mess with me, I think you probably can / Because I’m not confident, and I’m weak for a man … / And I don’t have many friends that would back me up. / My friend Steve would, but he doesn’t look very tough.” “Everyday Normal Guy” (2009), a song by the Canadian rapper and comedian Jon Lajoie that meticulously parodies the self-celebration proper to hip-hop lyrics, has received more than thirty-nine million views on YouTube. This is more than many songs recorded by full-fledged hip-hop stars, including those who declare in rhyme that they are something special. And if you mess with them …
In the fashion show for Balenciaga’s Fall–Winter 2017 line, the designer Demna Gvasalia dressed the models in simple navy blue