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Contribution - Magical Metamorphoses : [ATT] invested with [MET] :

11 May 2015
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Find below another contribution written collectively by the members of GECo (Isabelle Stengers, Didier Debaise, Aline Wiame et Nicolas Prignot), during the Diplomatic Writing Week, (July 2014, École des Mines in Paris). It is entitled Magical Metamorphoses : [ATT] invested with [MET] :

The [ATT] mode needs to be problematized in a way that is not allowed by the brioche from the Kayser bakery.

What is at Stake : first, we must carefully distinguish between passionate involvement and ‘what we hold dear’ in the sense of obligations linked to the course of action that has to be protected. The cartography of Mt Aiguille is not ‘passionately involved’ in the viability of access to it, nor for that matter is the agroecologist with the way plants get together, but they certainly hold them dear; they force them to think, yet if the baker on Place Maubert closed up shop or changed the recipe for the brioche, then frustrations would arise. It is very clear in other respects that our passionate interests are obviously weighing heavily when faced with Gaia; they are especially demanding before a world reduced to consumer accumulation and to the fierce passion for the latest Apple iPad (I want it and ‘the world can go to hell’). It is clear that merchandise has become a preferred vehicle for [MET] beings. This is what makes for the most remarkable advertisements done by contemporary sorcerers. In Middle Ground (Richard White), one of the strengths that the Native American have is that as soon as they receive a cooking pot or a gun in exchange for skins, these goods are given away, and so more are needed, a perpetual need which drives the Whites crazy, who want people to keep what they acquire. The Native American maintain a course of action, which, in fact, protects them from what is driving passionate interests, by giving the goods a multimodal value (not reduced to exchange value/use value). The [ATT] question is also put by those (among the Moderns) whose call for sobriety is part of their limited growth platform. Should we ‘keep our passions in check’ by accepting privations, or rather resist the ‘I’ve paid so we are even’ ploy in a positive mode? For example with CSA (community supported agriculture), consumers are not just attached to the quality of the produce, but, as amateurs, also to the producers and to their practices. They are not consuming a good product; the product is ‘hydra-like’, multimodal; good to think with, to love, to eat the way it is. And so, those who like their brioches, rather than be frustrated by their unavailability, can, as amateurs, take an interest in what is needed to maintain them [REP] in this world.

Please click the following link to access the complete contribution on the English version of the site.

(Kindly translated by Michael Thomas, Timothy Howles and Stephen Muecke)

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