Reading Massumi, Parables of the Virtual is not easy, but boy (or girl) what joy I feel when I get to some good bits. The words just sound good together like the chatter between old friends who are wearing new clothes (or hats even!).

I enjoyed reading the part at the end of page 16 where he gives this long list of concepts: “affect, sensation, perception, movement, intensity, tendency, habit, law, chaos, recursion…” etc. I like the list because I see affect in them–they are ‘pregnant with possibility’ as my friend S says. And then he writes, “Not all the concepts in this crowd figure in each essay, of course. And when they do come up, it is often to different emphasis, indifferent constellations. Other concepts slip in like uninvited guests…the concepts appear and reappear like a revolving cast of characters, joining forces or interfering with each other in a tumble of abstract intrigues–at times (I admit) barely controlled (Or is it: with miraculous lucidity?” (16-17).
Using “crowd” instead of “list” of concepts instills affect. I can imagine the crowd, jubilant, with beers in hand, spilling a little when they bump into someone or something else. Then, in this frame of mind, when he uses the word “emphasis,” I remember the old joke of putting the wrong em-phasis on the wrong syll-able. I crack up reading and then, am relieved when he says, “I might as well also admit that my rpose has been compared to a black hole” (17). Good, thanks for that. Thanks also for:

The writing tries not only to accept the risk of sprouting deviant, but also to invite it. Take joy in your digressions. Because that is where the unexpected arises. That is the experimental aspect. If you know where you will end up when you begin, nothing has happened in the meantime. You have to be willing to surprise yourself writing things you didn’t think you thought. Letting examples burgeon requires using inattention as a writing tool. You have to let yourself get so caught up in the flow of your writing that it ceases at moments to recognizable to you as your own. This means you have to be prepared for failure. For with inattention comes risk: of silliness or even outbreaks of stupidity. But perhaps in order to write experimentally, you have to be willing to “affirm” even your own stupidity. Embracing one’s own stupidity is not the prevaling academic posture (at least not in the way I mean it here). (18)

This paragraph is so refreshing for me to read. It could just be where I am now, but it give me hope.
Do read all of page 19 and 20 and you’ll get such bits as “The concept will start to deviate under the force. Let it. Then reconnect it to other concepts, drawn from other systems, until a whole new system of connection starts to form. Then, take another exmaple. See what heppens. Follow the new growth. You end up with many buds. Incipient sytems. Leave them that way…” (19) All of this writing is alive and urges me not to take the tougher bits and run them over with my car in an attempt to get them to hold still long enough for me to say something brillliant or worthwhile or surprising about them.
I’m off to read more…more will be written…later.
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