Recently I've been branching out from reporting and analysis of religious issues into straight philosophy; the first result of this foray is now available for public consumption at Identity Theory. The essay evolved from a conversation I had with our own Bob 'Baraka' Doto a few months ago. Hyperpraxis is an idea I'd like to explore in more depth at PI--in relation to religion as a practice, as opposed to simply an idea--so I'm interested to hear what people think of the idea.
The ID link takes you to the front page; when my piece moves into the archives, a static version will be available at:
while the article is interesting, i don't really buy into the premise of the whole thing:
hyper-reality rests on the notion (as you pointed out) -- the important notion of the 'static.'
there is no static. all is hyper-real.
the examples hyper-realists use to define static make no sense to me.
take the cross for example. that's static?
sure, it's static if you read the cross as a symbol for christianity. but it stops being static when you flip it over. it stops being static when you peg a jew (non-Jesus) on it (Chaim Potock's novel).
let's take the bald-head example. ok its praxis that nazis, punks and andre agassi all shifted definitions of what is bald.
but just as the cross, generally speaking, represents christianity, bald, generally speaking, represents the absence of hair. in other words, praxis is simiultaneously 'static' -- and the entire premise is gone.
this above critique does not apply to you because of your "looking ahead" section where you say "Hyperpraxis is a new word for a very old practice."
i agree with that.
I would argue that a cross (or any other symbol) when inverted becomes another symbol entirely. What I'm talking about is the use of exactly the same symbol (not inverted, not visually manipulated in any way)to mean vastly different things.
The only exception to this might be when people interacting with the inverted/otherwise visibly manipulated symbol don't realize that the symbol has been so manipulated. Like the swastika; when the Nazis appropriated it from the Buddhists (whom they had mistaken for Aryans), they flipped it over. This is too subtle for most people to pick up on by themselves, however, so the average westerner doesn't see the difference between swastikas painted as sun-symbols on the hands of Buddhist statues and inverted swastikas used by proponents of ethnic cleansing. Which is a shame, really; I feel sorry for the Buddhists.
But yes; hyperpraxis is a term I invented for something that has been around forever and which I thought merited the attention of vocabulary.
Your assumption of the staticness of the cross is really bothering me.
I don't have anything against Christians or Jesus or anybody, it's just as I think about things, I can't think of anything 'static' -- you used two examples of statis things: the cross and the pepsi logo. The logo is not static b/c it could just as effectively be used for anti-globalization reasons.
The religious symbols of other religions - Judaism and Islam -- are both not static. The star of David represents Judaism and also militant Zionism. The crescent of Islam is equally historical Islam and terrorism. Why is the cross special and exempt? (Or are you going to argue that the Star of David and Crescent are also static?) What about when the cross is used in Vampire slayer stories? By Tarantino in Dusk Till Dawn where it is on a gun? After they have gone to a strip club (very un-Christian thing to do).
I mean that the image itself is static, Ali; not the meaning. That's the whole point. The *image* is static, the meaning is fluid and changing.
When the cross is used in a vampire story, the *image* of the cross stays the same (two lines intersecting at a right angle), the meaning is consciously altered. That's the definition of hyperpraxis.
You think I'm saying the *meaning* is static, which is in fact the exact and total opposite of what I said. Give the essay a second read; clearly something didn't click.
i think i need some clarification
the nike logo doesn't change. that image stays the same. yet you used it as an example of something not static.
and besides,
there is no such thing as an imagine as itself
b/c an image is an idea described by a word
meaning,
it's a meaning
"the nike logo doesn't change. that image stays the same. yet you used it as an example of something not static."
That's exactly my point!!! Unchanging image, fluid, changing meaning. The manipulation of the meaning, whether positively or negatively, is hyperpraxis. It sounds like you understand so I'm not sure what we're arguing about.
If an image is the same as a meaning, how come the meaning of an image can change? (As you observe about the nike logo.) You're getting a little metaphysical; I'm talking about an observable, tracable phenomenon. One symbol, many meanings; the mechanics of how those meanings are born and evolve.
I think we might be getting bogged down in idioms. I think you mean something different when you say 'static' than when I say 'static'.
Ah. I get it. You're taking a symbol (image) and its meaning as an indivisible set. Either BOTH are static, or NEITHER is static. I don't think that's true. A crescent moon (one symbol/image) can represent (mean) either Islam or neo-paganism (the crescent having formerly been the symbol of the Greek goddess Diana). It's ONE symbol (image) that has MANY meanings. I'm detaching the symbol (image) from its meaning to talk about how the image and the meaning interact. I'm saying that the meaning of an image can evolve and change while the image itself remains the same (static).
Like red and blue. Red and blue still represent political affiliations in the US; they have not been replaced by green and orange. But the meaning of 'a red' has shifted from 'a liberal', which is what it connoted during the Cold War, to 'a conservative', which is what it connotes today.
I'm a little worried now; did the essay make sense to anyone but the editors at Identity Theory? Or was it totally obscure and confusing?
Willow,
It made more sense after reading your dialogue with Ali, but I think that was because the terminology was new to me.
And, just when is reading coffee grinds going to become a legitimate "intuitive" thingy.
**kiss kiss**
Sammy
Oh good. And I think reading coffee grinds is absolutely a form of intuitive hyperpraxis. :) I used to have a professor who was really good at it.
I'm away for the weekend, but wanted to say that I loved the article. I had a hard time (as I did when we were originally talking about it) figuring out how you intended hyperpraxis to be positive, but now I get it. And it makes total sense to me.
Really really great work and a very important piece to the greater situ-critical tradition. I really am happy to see it.
The shadow side to hyperpraxis was left out however. I know you were pushing the positive first, but I couldn't help but read hyperpraxis as also potentially as honey and razorblade situation where the razor blade is the action and the honey is the nice reinterpretation of it in order to help you swallow it. It's not hard to imagine how hyperpraxis could be used to "reinterpret" blind dogmatism as "challenging one's ego." Know what I mean. Or letting someone kick you in the arse and calling it working on your glutes.
Willow- I'm glad to see your posts here-- you add too much to this not to.
Heidi! Did you make it back alive? Drop me an email and let me know how the rest of your trip was.
heidi,
welcome
you could also create a reader diary (see left sidebar) and tell all of us about your trip
=D
Thanks B. :)
You're right, hyperpraxis is definitely neutral in the extreme. I did try to highlight potentially positive uses since I think the concept of 'hyper' has a bad rap. (To me, the ability to produce and manipulate hyperrealities is a sign of an intellectually advanced society; we've taken this skill in a very materialistic direction, but that hasn't always been the case. Look at the Greeks and the hyperreality of their evolving myth cycle, the culmination of which was the Illiad, which is neither history nor myth. Or the Qur'an; the Qur'an to me is about as perfect a hypersigil as one gets. There's a hadith that says each verse has between 70 and several thousand meanings. People have turned their brains inside out over the possible symbolic meanings of those 3-letter isolations. It wasn't always about branding power and material excess.)
But of course you could take this in a negative direction, and people have. And do. Which is why I think we have to be able to get past "the medium is the message". That's only true when we're passive consumers of information; that passivity is something we can no longer afford.
Qalb/enqilab again; at the heart of all things is the germ of their overthrow.
Ginan Rauf
We must guard against the dangers of hypperreality, the
tendency to substitute the symbolic order for the real.
In modern America the simulation of something that never
really existed might look like the media circulation of
Weapons of Mass destruction in Iraq, a fiction used to
launch a very real and destructive war. It is called deception
and its impact is very real. We should never lose sight of that.
I hope the word truth along with the determination to uncover
it in the real world is never expunged from our vocabularly,
so long as we care about justice and uncovering atrocities
against innocents.
If a country ceases to exist on a map, it doesn't mean that it
necessarily ceases to exist in reality. It means that symbols
have been ideologically manipulated to erase its existence
and narrate history from the perspective of the victors. It
is rendered invisible by those who would keep us from focusing
on what is happening in the real world.
Rather than accepting that as the norm of modern information and
a consumer economy, we should become more attentive to how we
are being duped by the ideological manipulation of symbols.
What I see as a positive practice is someone like Robert Frisk
going to the morgues and counting the bodies of dead civilians,
these may have no existence in hyperreality but in the real world
they can sometimes be retrieved, unearthed and used to obtain
justice.
I see that as being of a different order from rehabilitating symbols
I like the example of the Vagina monologues. That is taking a
symbol that has historically been used to denigrate, and reclaiming
it as a symbol of empowerment.
I am still thinking about the example of Tantawi.
Very interesting article. It shares similarities with some of the ideas of the Russian Formalists, in particle, Viktor Shklovsky’s defamiliarization/ostranenie.
One question: Is the distinction between symbol and meaning that hard and fast? It seems to me that when removed from its context, the symbol changes in spite of its fixedness. The crescent is a case in point. It use to be (and perhaps still is) the symbol of the Byzantine Empire. When the Ottomans sacked Constantinople, they appropriated it as their own, beginning the association of the crescent with Islam. Today, Turkey, as a staunchly secular nation, has the crescent adorning its flag. My point being, when the context changes, and the meaning changes, doesn’t the form also change? In other words, the crescents necessarily will share the same shape (otherwise we wouldn’t call it a crescent), but because each has a different context, with different meanings, wouldn’t the reception, and experience, of the crescent be different? And, if that were the case, wouldn’t that effect the form? The same may be said of the Nike swoosh et al.
Another example. The Qur’an as a written word has a long history. First we have the Kufic script without dialectic marks, written on stones, vellum, etc. Then we have increasingly elaborate scripts, making an image of the word, with its own aesthetics, application, and techniques. Finally, we have the age of the movable type, which again creates a host of different issues related to the printing industry, the transformation of an art into a mass-marketed industry (“get your free copy today!â€Â), etc. Admittedly, the form is the same, inasmuch as the actual letters and words are concerned, but beyond that, isn’t it different? Isn’t the form flexible, to an extent?
Of course, this flexibility is, paradoxically, an inflexible one.
Just a thought.
I knew someone would bring up Tantawi. Like most professional clergymen, he's a little insane about half of the time, but when he's lucid he's fascinating.
Ginan, I'm making crowbar distinctions between politcal realities and literal ones. In the modern world of passports and visas and state-controlled flow of capital (a hyperreality in its own right) if a state disappears on a map, the *people* still exist (as in the case of the Palestinians), but you can't *go* to the country anymore. I have a Jordanian cousin-in-law who is one of the last human beings on earth with a Palestinian passport...yet she can't go to Palestine. It's not on any map, so the world has decided it doesn't exist. The kindest mapmakers refer to it only as a collection of "territories" and the crueler ones deny that the palestinians ever had a state to begin with.
*That* is frightening. That's what I mean by the disappearance of the map in the modern world leads to the disappearance of the territory itself. Denial in a hyperreality is absolute.
Lit Stud (cute handle btw), I'm still thinking about what you said.
Ginan Rauf
And it had to be me.
Willow- but don't forget the statement of a land without a people
for a people without a land. The denial in hyperreality is absolute
but it can be contested, exposed, challenged and the erased names
can be unearthed. The literal denial of a people's existence has
grave political implications. It cannot be disconnected from the
denial of a name, a history and it can end in extermination and
ethnic cleansing. Witness Gaza today and Media coverage. Failure
to contest the denial in hyperreality can amount to relinquishing
the right of re-claiming lost histories, the power of naming. So
of course it is frightening. The question is how does one respond.
Let me quote Harold Pinter:
'' There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what
is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing
is not necessarily either tue or false; it can be both true and
false.''
I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still
apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a
writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen
I must ask What is true? What is false?
The political implications of hyperpraxis are troubling. Take
the example of intuitive hyperpraxis which you define as
marginal. I am not sure given the prevalence of supersititous
practices and the reliance on fortune tells in the Arabo/Muslim
world. Lots of money in this business. Having a hunch that a
friend is about to call because of a particular spread of cards
is different from intuition because it relies on symbols right?
And if these meanings shift, are subject to manipulation does
this not give quacks incredible power, an ability to prey on
the ignorant, the desperate due to the staying power of the
symbol?
My skepticism of course extends to the practice of hyperpraxis
in the hands of a Tantawi. If a commonly accepted symbol can
be endowed with new personal meaning, does this not give
the figure of authority with an outwardly Orthodox appearance
incredible arbitrary, esoteric, elite power ? It behooves me
to think why in an age of rampant deception, abuse of power
and steady corrpution we would want to push the positive side
of hyperpraxis. Think of the possibility of global warming being
read as a sign, a symbol of the rapture and end times.
"Having a hunch that a
friend is about to call because of a particular spread of cards
is different from intuition because it relies on symbols right?
And if these meanings shift, are subject to manipulation does
this not give quacks incredible power, an ability to prey on
the ignorant, the desperate due to the staying power of the
symbol?"
Fascinating. You're right, it absolutely does, and that power would be by its very nature arbitrary; dependent on the will of the individual who controls the symbol-set. (I know what these symbols/images/occurences mean, you don't; you have to come to me in order to figure out what's going on.) That's the establishment of a standing clergy, right there; that's all the impetus they need.
There's another article in that. Maybe you could write it. There were supposed to be safe-guards in Islam to prevent exactly what you're talking about from happening, but they've failed. Why? Because there are tons of sheikhs out there who say that Islam as a symbol set--not as a practice, but as a symbol-set, and I think this is an important distinction--is too difficult for the lay Muslim to understand. So Islam is passing into the hands of professional symbol-readers.
The battle over Ijtihad, then, could be seen as a battle for hyperpraxis--the right to judge, manipulate and interpret Islamic symbology on an individual basis. I think what a lot of progressive Muslims are asking is, can the *meaning* of a static image/symbol evolve over time? Can we bring Islam into the 21st century as a complete and intact symbol-set? Or must the symbols themselves (the headscarf, the act of fasting, ritual purification) be changed?
While you're thinking about it, here's an additional thought.
The symbol of the cross is sometimes ambiguous. The example I have in mind is when a cross registers as the letter “tâ€Â. Here, the symbol hasn’t changed insofar as the shape and dimensions/proportions of “t†and the Christian cross are the same. Yet one is the Holy Cross and the other is a letter in the English alphabetâ€â€two distinct but overlapping (perhaps) things. Again, the symbol doesn’t change much in form, but I can’t see how one could call each respective symbol one and the same thing or that they differ in meaning alone. They don’t. The paradox is at play once more; the form must be different because the context (and hence meaning(s)) is different, yet the form is the same in its visual construction. But if that were the case, then in what sense do we have symbols? Doesn’t the power in symbols lie in its being able to communicate some idea, value, or thing through a characteristic (or static), physical stamp or signature? Also, we have the problem of context: can it ever be truly exhausted or defined, or will there always be new, ever-changing configurations?
It strikes me that my observations are still rough. Let me know if clarification is needed.
Symbols not NeutralÂÂ
I'd also like to add that I'm not so convinced that the symbols themselves are neutral, in that they exist *here* and the meaning sort of hovers around it over *here*. That's something along the lines of the Russian Formalists and the thing in and of itself. It's also VERY Platonic. The ideal floating about somewhere. A fine model, but not one I'm so convinced of yet. It seems to me that at some point the symbols ARE (become) the meanings, the interpetations we give them. Which is to say a cross is something, becomes something, IS something very different to different people. It's not only that it means something different to different people, but that it IS different in and of itself. It is not the same cross.ÂÂ
This is very imporatnt, and explains why people, regardless of their radical hermeneutic/semiotic impulse to re-re-re-investigate the sign, can say "Islam is dead to me" because it has become the dominant meaning. If this person wants to engage the struggle to "reclaim" Islam, that's their perogative, but it really is a move to simply interperate Islam in a way that makes sense. In effect, changing Islam. Because whether we like it or not, the Truth about Islam is very different for very different people each of which is a true and valid experience. Which is to say that it's awfully arrogant to say "Oh, that's not really Islam." Yeah right. It's all of it.
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