biomedia by Eugene Thacker

in Critical Terms for Media Studies

Biomedia require understanding biological "life itself" as both a medium and as a process of mediation.

Against two criticism of biomedia   ?????
1) reductionism
Biomedia ask us to think outside of this either-or, qualitative-quantitative dichotomy. Networks, systems, pathways, and swarms may offer alternative models in this sense
2) instrumentality
solution: emphasis on environment, epigenetics, and autopoietic self-regulation have become central in rethinking the technological aspect of biomedia.

The question regarding reductionism and instrumentality both presume an unproblematic relation between the way we think about "life itself" and the way we talk about it.
the use of language
rethinking  the prior set of metaphors
biomedia ask us to rethink the relation between language and object, metaphor and materiality,

The freudian robot by Lydia Liu

Introduction:
Freudian robot: any networked being that embodies the feedback loop of human-machine simulacra and cannot free her/him/itself from the cybernetic unconscious is Freudian robt
Can human beings be Freudian robot?

Does the logic of reciprocity compel human beings to imitate their machines just as much as the machines are built to resemble them, keeping an infinite feedback loop of simulacra or dopperlganger in place?

Do human beings become masters of their machines, or their slaves?
both wrong    prosethetic argument that the physiological deficiencies of the human species are in need of prosthetic extension through technology   is wrong
because of the transformative role on human and the human-machine entanglement

argues against Haraway
the idea of cyborg or transhumance often obfuscates the political and psychic foundations of human-machine entanglement
the political consequences of an emerging society of Freudian robots

how information theory and digital media reframe the problem of unconscious between human-machine simulacra.
digital writing

chapter 6 the missed rendezvous bet critical theory and cybernetics
Frankfurt school      semantic approach of language
                      language -- consciousness     logicentrism
As an alternative to the philosophy of consciousness, Habermas put forward a theory of communicative action to emphasize intersubjectivity and privilege linguistic philosophy.
His theory of communicative rationality shares the normative stance of pre-World War II theorists of language and meaning. He restaged the battle agains the eruption of irrationality in social interactions by proposing a normative model of communicative action based on a semantic understanding of language.

But telecommunication technologies from telegraph to information technology and satellite communication systems.... are pushing the philosophical consideration of sense and nonsense beyond the realms of semantics, speech act theory, theories of meaning, and all other theoretical models that are premised on the face-to-face verbal communication between a human speaker and a human listener. Taken in a cybernetic register— as Lacan has demonstrated to us — communication is fundamentally schizophrenic.

妇女运动文献

新民主出版社发行   4176.4433

包括从延安、陕甘宁边区到解放区妇女运动的讲话等

妇女生产运动

刘少奇关于农村妇女切实情况的论述

节录恩格斯关于私有制与家庭起源的论述   列宁关于自由恋爱与资产阶级基础

劳动与经济的平等

p 157－158  性生活与社会再生产   性生活过度与社会生产的背离

“革命要求群众要求个人将力量集中起来紧张起来”

中国电视

1958.5.1.  北京电视台（中央电视台前身）第一次发出电视信号
10月、12月上海电视台、哈尔滨电视台建成试播
60年代初 19座电视台建成开播
1958.9 紧急从苏联进口200部电视机
不久 天津712厂仿造苏联的“旗帜”牌生产出第一批黑白电视机  14英寸  “北京”牌
同年7月  上海广播器材厂 第一批黑白电视   显像管为进口货
50年代末  全国有17000台电视机

1972 上海电视机厂 第一台晶体管黑白电视机  “金星”牌 （从电子管时代到晶体管时代）
     同年北京电视台向美国租借了彩色电视制片和播出的全套设备  于次年5月1日面向首都播出彩色电视节目

1983年
1） 3月第十一届全国广播电视工作会议 在北京召开   “四级办电视”政策
       允许市县办电视
（孙玉胜 《十年：从改变电视的语态开始》）
2） 电视节目的改革
新节目  电视系列片 《话说长江》
              电视杂志 《九州方圆》
3） 电视收看的魔力风暴
   《射雕》登陆荧屏
     广东等开播《霍元甲》
日本进口《排球女将》《阿信》
《大众电视》1983年开设 “大众电视金鹰奖”
“星”“腕”
“春节文艺联欢晚会”首次亮相
（马季相声“宇宙牌香烟”     王景愚哑剧《吃鸡》）

个人回忆录中的媒体

葛元煦 《沪游杂记》  对新媒体如 电话、影楼的咏叹
关庚 《我的上世纪— 一个北京平民的私人生活绘本》对听留声机、买电视机
袁念琪 《上海品牌生活》对照相的回忆
陈存仁 《银元时代生活史》对童年“廉价坐”电影

zhang xudong : postmodernism and postsocialist society— historicizing the past

p400
Chinese postmodernism as a social discourse can therefore be considered as a revolt against the modernist and modernization ideology of the New Era (1979-1989); during this time modernism posed as a "new enlightenment" in opposition to Maoism as a form of Chinese feudalism, and thus sealed the legitimacy of Deng's China within the discourse of modernity. Modernity in the context of post-Mao Chinese history has its centrality in economic, bureaucratic, and social rationalization.

p405

But it is precisely in its resistance to the postmodern that the Chinese modern reveals itself not as a totality, but as a differentiated, fragmented, and contradictory experience. Its prolonged discursive and ideological uniformity is not a historical given, but a historical contingency made possible by the persistence of the truly "premodern" elements in Chinese society... and, more recently, by the continued and renewed rivalry between socialism and capitalism, that is,  between the two competing ideological claims on modernity in China in post-cold war years.....(postmodernism) disrupts the demystifies entrenched positions in an interestingly differentiated cultural and social sphere after the disintegration of the reformist consensus among the state, intellectuals, and the masses, and among elite intellectuals themselves.

P 408
(the) modernism-postmodernism turn offers the possibility of a new discursive and ideological framework by which to continue the search for an alternative to the classical blueprint of modernity, namely the free market and liberal democracy.

(my notes:   is it true in reality?   Post-1992 era  marked exactly the acceleration of free market and liberalism)




P 407 With respect to the dialectic between form and content, one may contend that Adorno's thesis, based on his study of European classic music, that each new artistic paradigm contains, in and only in its aesthetic solution of tensions created in the history of form, a solution— or what we call articulation— of the social-moral dilemma of its time, still holds true, although only on an expanded historical horizon, with an added appreciation of the radical Other.

Adorno   Philosophy of Modern Music

horror film, and others in late 1980s and early 1990s

1992年拍摄的《毒吻》改编自1991年出版的哲夫同名新作。1989年的《凶宅美人头》改编自前苏联科幻大师别利亚耶夫名著《陶威尔教授的头颅》。除此之外，还有一些类型交融的作品。比如涉及科幻题材却披着恐怖片兽皮的《幻女》（1993）、警匪悬疑片《蓝煞星》（1989）具有少数民族猎奇趣味的《恐怖的鬼森林》（1987 改编自李迪小说《这里是恐怖的森林》）都或多或少蒙着一层恐怖怪异的光彩。


http://www.douban.com/note/266455999/