Identity as Simulacrum.

Simulacrum then...



...and now.

1. Michel Foucault (paraphrase) - Is ones "true self" (identity) really derived from ones sexuality? If so, to what degree? What other factors inform ones identity?

2. Douglas Kellner - "...Identity has been increasingly linked to style, to produce an image, to how one looks. It is as if everyone must have their own look, style, and image to have their own identity, though, paradoxically, many of the models of style and look come from consumer culture, thus individuality is highly mediated in the consumor society of the present."

3. Question - a. Where do images of identity within "consumer culture" originate? b. What is consumer culture?

4. Answer to a: Foucault - "...Rather than a massive censorship, beginning with the verbal proprieties imposed by the Age of Reason, what was involved was a regulated and polymorphous incitement to discourse."

5. Meaning - "We" - individuals within a population - willingly submit the intimate details of our lives to the institutions of power (AKA "... Sociology, applied psychology, cybernetics, and semiology [ect.]..." - Guy Debord). 6. Answer to b: Guy Debord - Consumer culture is the culture of the commodity AKA The Society of the Spectacle.
"...The world at once present and absent that the spectacle holds up to view is the world of the commodity dominating all living experience. The world of the commodity is thus shown for what it is, because its development is identical to people’s estrangement from each other and from everything they produce."

7. Clarification - 1. "The Society of the Spectacle" is image/consumer culture within the economic system of global or late capitalism. 2. Identity, like everything else The Society of the Spectacle produces, is a commodity.

8. Application to Kellner - Kellner differentiates between the modern identity, "...An innate essence which determines what I am..." and postmodern identity, "...that identity is constructed not given, that it is a matter of choice, style, and behavior rather than intrinsic moral or psychological qualities... ...Postmodern identity, then, is constituted theatrically through role playing and image construction..."

9. Question - c.How do these two forms of identity relate to each-other?
Support for c. -Charlie Rose (to David Foster Wallace (41:53)) - "Quit worrying about how you are going to look and just be."
David Foster Wallace (45:16) - "I think postmodernism has run its course... A lot of the schticks of postmodernism - irony, cynicism, irreverence - are now part of whatever it is that's enervating in the culture itself. Burger-King now sells hamburgers with, "You've got to break the rules...""

10. Question (rhetorical) - How can one "just be" when one lives within The Society of the Spectacle?

11. Clarification - Postmodern identity is an image or role that one constructs and preforms. It is based on images or images of roles that one consumes within culture.

12. Jonathan Crary - "... the historically important functions of the human eye are being supplanted by practices in which visual images no longer have any reference to the position of an observer in a 'real,' optically perceived world...".
12a. What is Crary talking about? - The proliferation of digitally created imagery and environments that have never - and could never -exist in the real world (outside of an image).
12b. Why is this relevant?

13. Jean Baudrillard (from Simulacra and Simulation) - "...Today's abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that preceded the territory - precession of simulacra - that engenders the territory..."

14. If the digital images - advertising, photographs, movies, news, television, etc - that have become ubiquitous within our culture (AKA The society of the Spectacle) are overwhelmingly hyperreal (simulacra) and we construct our identities from images taken from culture, are our constructed identities simulacra as well?
14a. What does this mean?
14b. What is the consequence of this?

15. Answer to a and b: Foucault - explains biopower as, "... An explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations..."
15a. Interpretation - The postmodern identity as simulacrum is a a technique of power (here power is synonymous with "The spectacle") for achieving control of populations.

16. Is an identity simulacrum desirable?

I submit that it is not.

16a. To avoid the consumption of simulacrum - ergo, the creation of a simulacrum identity - one must consume imagery that is factual, original, and objective (or self critical). 16b. Rhetorical - How does the consumption of an image relate to an actual experience?

17. Question - What defines imagery that meets the above criteria?
17a. How does one create imagery that is factual, original, and objective (or self critical)?

18. Potential formulae - 1. Lars von Trier - Dogme 98. 2. Roland Barthes - Camera Lucida. 3. Peter Beste - Literary photojournalism.

Locked Down: 'Toons in the Stupermax

My Fellow Gangmericans:
There are a lot of gangs in prison.
That shit be scary.
Both prison and gang people.
      It's funny how they - the prison gang bangers - remind me of cartoons I watched when I was a kid. All these goofy looking guys, covered in ink, committing heinous acts of violence...
I can see the connection.
      The anvils and dynamite in Road-Runner are kind of different than the shankings and gang-rape in Pelican Bay State Prison, but since I played all those violent video games during my formative years, the comedic effect hits my funny bone in the same general area.
YAHTZEE! I frickin' found it.

Addendum 1: A bunch of bullshit I wrote.
Locked Down: Gangs in the Supermax.

     The SHU - Security Housing Unit - is a function of the Supermax prison system designed to contain the "worst of the worst" of felons. Mostly the SHU holds known gang leaders and higher ups in the gang social hierarchy. Prison systems that utilize a SHU facility do so with the specific goal of isolating gang members from interacting with members in the greater prison population as well as those outside of prisons. The only way out of the SHU - aside from parole or death - is to snitch or give up information regarding past or current gang activities.
      The American Radio Works audio documentary Locked Down: Gangs in the Supermax presents a vision of the SHU at Pelican Bay State Prison that does not live up to the stated expectations of what a SHU should be.
In the documentary Michael Montgomery makes the distinction between street gangs that also operate in prison and prison gangs that have moved out onto the streets. In the first segment Montgomery interviewed Armando Frias Jr. about a murder he committed on behalf of the gang Nuestro Familia (NF), a gang that formed in prison and now operates in the outside world. Nuestra Familia is controlled by street bosses and leaders serving time in prison, including some that are currently incarcerated in the SHU system at Pelican Bay.
      Montgomery's interview with Epitacio Cortina - a former NF boss and felon who served time in the SHU - revealed that prison gangs like the NF recruit members primarily in prisons. The education of new recruits takes place behind prison walls with the assumption that members will one day be released back onto the streets where they can continue to carry out the gang's agenda. Cortina elaborated on how senior members serving extended or repeat sentences pass on criminal knowledge,
      "...how to do bank robberies, how to do armored car robberies, how to do home invasions..." as well as knowledge of the different methods, codes, and languages that the gang uses for communication between prison and the street.
      Gangs like Nuestra Familia and The Mexican Mafia that have large portions of their membership inside of prisons enforces solidarity by killing members who snitch or try to leave the gang. The flip side to this is that gang members gain reputation and status for doing their time without rolling over or giving up information on their fellow members. It is also common knowledge that ratting out your people is one of the three ways to get out of confinement in the SHU. With this in mind it is unsurprising to hear testimony from people like Raul Leon who talk about doing a life sentence in the SHU with a casual pride.
      Leon's swagger is given credence by sociologist David Ward when he compares the personality type of a cocksure SHU lifer to that of a military medal of honor winner. Ward's comment on the status that long time SHU inmates receive as, "...the strongest of the strong..." is reminiscent of the SHU's stated objective to house "The worst of the worst". Conflating these two clichés to create criminals that are more hardened, committed, and relentless than they were before entering the system seems to be the ultimate result of the SHU within prisons.
      The "worst of the strongest" paradigm is illustrated by SHU resident David's recollection of what going to prison meant to him as a younger man.
      "...I think that it's hard for normal people to understand, but the way I used to look at prison when I was younger was like it was kind of like college. I had to go there to further myself. If I wanted a career in what I was doing, then I needed to go to prison and make a name for myself in there in order to do so..."
      Montgomery informs the listener that David "apprenticed" under a senior gang member while serving time in the SHU. The use of the word "apprentice" to describe a relationship that david had with another detainee inside of the SHU contains several assumptions and begs several questions. It is assumed that to successfully engage in a master/apprentice relationship that some modicum of communication must take place. If the SHU exists to inhibit inmates - specifically inmates engaging in gang activity - from communicating with each-other, how is it possible for David - the apprentice - to contact anyone, let alone a senior gang member who could further Davids goal of "career membership" within his gang.
      David also commented, "...I always looked at the SHU as like a piece of steel that you could sharpen yourself with [sic]...".
      David is only one inmate and can not represent the entire demographic of SHU detainees with his personal statements of resolve. However David was one of few inmates to be interviewed for this radio documentary and his words and philosophy present a significant point of view to the listener. With David as a specific example of a life-long criminal who has circumvented the SHU's strict policy of isolation and null-communication - specifically between active gang members - and effectively achieved "worst of the strongest" status, I forward that the SHU system of detention does not achieve its stated goals.

Addendum 2: I've refrained myself from making the entirety of all that bullshit I just wrote a link to this video from JSmooth's illdoctrine.com.
The man knows his shit.

Emergent Patterns Within Arbitrary Data Sets