Category Archives: transformation

camouflage, fake, intensiology, publicness, transformation, visib, visual

Semblance. The uses of fakery

Abstract. News concerning revelations or allegations of counterfeited identities and racial passing unmistakably stir strong feelings in the public. The domain of semblance is a domain of first impressions, certainly, yet these fulfils major cognitive needs and moral evaluations in social life. The article surveys the domain of semblance as a peculiar social interaction space endowed with its own logic, highlighting the entanglements of strategic and emotional, of rational and gratuitous, that contradistinguish it. To theorize adequately the domain of semblance, it is suggested, we need to proceed through at least three moves: first, focus on how semblance work exceeds rational and strategic behaviour; second, consider the intensive regimes associated with becoming-minority through the deployment of desire and emotions; third, besides acts of mimesis (imitation), also consider the existence of processes of méthexis (participation), whereby semblants coalesce not so much through copying a model but through joining environments.

Keywords: passing; faking; appearances; semblants; social epistemology; social interaction

PDF version

 

transformation, urban

Deptford. Ageing in the City

with Caterina Nirta

 

Abstract. In this article, we conduct an applied territoriology of Deptford, a town in south-East London, to highlight the peculiarities of ageing in place in the context of a changing neighbourhood. We look in particular at the intersection of ageing and public space, devising a phenomenological gaze onto places, with an eager ear towards the stories they tell – and sometimes, conceal. An exercise in trans-scalar thinking ensues, whereby large-scale urban trends are illuminated through the mundane and the ephemeral. The neighbourhood emerges as a ‘fold’ of potentially conflicting but actually coexistent turns, whereby an emplaced ‘generational time’ is crafted.

 

Keywords: ethnography of public space; urban ageing; walking as method; urban transformations; London

 >>> draft available upon request

morphogenesis, social manifold, transformation

Imitation, metamorphosis, becoming: A comparative social-theoretical sketch

Happy to join Nidesh Lawtoo’s Mimetic Turn upcoming conference. Especially looking forward to hearing from the distinguished keynotes. On my turn, I’ll be contributing some reflections about

Imitation, metamorphosis, becoming: A comparative social-theoretical sketch

Abstract. In my talk, I would like to address the relation between three notions that share significant similarities, but also exhibit crucial differences: these are Gabriel Tarde’s imitation, Elias Canetti’s transformation (Verwandlung), and Gilles Deleuze’s becoming (devenir). Tarde, whose work spanned the 1890s, is famously associated with the idea that social life is essentially imitative in nature, and although imitation does not truly exhaust his whole conception, it is amply elaborated and variously illustrated throughout his work. Both Canetti, writing in the 1950s, and Deleuze, through the 1960s and 1970s, seem to have subsequently deployed mimetic-like notions in their respective research; at the same time, both have been careful to remark how their conceptions remained distinct from the notion of imitative behaviour. My aim here is thus to compare and analyse these three notions, so as to untangle a little bit their complex, dense relations.

 

+info | https://hiw.kuleuven.be/hua/events/conferences-workshops/mimetic-turn

Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dXJ_Lj9Umg