This morning news of the mass shooting in Las Vegas brought me back to the text I was working with yesterday. Boris Groys writes, “Confronted with a world of total design, we can only accept a catastrophe, a state of emergency, a violent rupture in the designed surface, as sufficient reason to believe that we are allowed a view of the reality that lies beneath.” Indeed, no one is questioning the news, no one suspects that the news is fake or spinned in one direction or another. Even Trump has found something uplifting to say. He quoted scripture and reminded us about unity and hope.
If he right though? Is catastrophe the only way to access the authenticity of the world? 58 people are dead, hundreds are injured. Is this the only way to get in touch with reality, to break through the overdesigned surface? Are unity and hope otherwise unattainable? It is a terrible price to pay, but look – CNN and Fox News look the same for a while. The discourse of suspicion is suspended; not for long, not for long.
Hillary Clinton has twitted about the gun control bill. Really, someone wants to make SILENCERS more readily available to the public? Why would you need a silencer, if you’re not a murderer? Or are you a really terrible marksman that keeps missing a deer, but don’t want it to notice? And of course, Fox news have slammed Hillary for her poor knowledge of the firearms. They put the worst ever picture of her on the site. Yes, someone there took time to find it, on the morning like this.
However, right now these are all still side stories. Give them a few hours, and they will dominate the media discourse. Unity and hope will be forgotten; we will be back for the designer's reality. Yet the glimmer of hope, and the memory of unity can live, if we can chose to remember.
If he right though? Is catastrophe the only way to access the authenticity of the world? 58 people are dead, hundreds are injured. Is this the only way to get in touch with reality, to break through the overdesigned surface? Are unity and hope otherwise unattainable? It is a terrible price to pay, but look – CNN and Fox News look the same for a while. The discourse of suspicion is suspended; not for long, not for long.
Hillary Clinton has twitted about the gun control bill. Really, someone wants to make SILENCERS more readily available to the public? Why would you need a silencer, if you’re not a murderer? Or are you a really terrible marksman that keeps missing a deer, but don’t want it to notice? And of course, Fox news have slammed Hillary for her poor knowledge of the firearms. They put the worst ever picture of her on the site. Yes, someone there took time to find it, on the morning like this.
However, right now these are all still side stories. Give them a few hours, and they will dominate the media discourse. Unity and hope will be forgotten; we will be back for the designer's reality. Yet the glimmer of hope, and the memory of unity can live, if we can chose to remember.
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