[D-G] Facts of Life

[charles hubaker]

It was Massumi's phrase "Cherish derelict spaces." These are disappearing from within the American rhizome, due to such things as real estate development and an increase in state violence (surveillance, the hunting of humans, the fascist eye scanning the horizon looking for guilt, etc.). Intensification of the fascist pole would include signs of Kristeva et al's 'narcissistic dementia' which Deleuze would likely term anoedipal. This symptom seems to have intensified, not necessarily in just the young. Madonna's recent Roma concert is an example showing how universal the symptom is manifested. It may be less ethnic and racial than simply a primal hatred of the other, Lacan's fight to the death for pure prestige (while commodities in their decline fuels the scenario). Jean-Clet Martin's Cartography of the Year 1000 mentions all symbols resonating around Pontifical Rome, the 'new' U.S. administration seems also to be placing symbolism over substance with
 its dictatorial liberalism. In searching for resonance twixt narcissistic dementia and the schizoid  and fascist poles, it seems that the symbol gets split in the signifier-signified game something like this: environment: first black U.S. president, genes: first Arab U.S. president. 

Why should genes matter? Not much adoo about it to the Westerner, much more so to the Middle Easterner. For, due to religion, there are quite a few interested in just how closely related to Mohammed they are. Indeed, Matar (Women in Green, Jerusalem) wrote from Austria last June during the primaries to show (warn?) that Obama was to become the first Arab president of the United States. The media suppressed the birth certificate scandal, as well as played the name-game so as to dangle a stick-and-carrot symbolism most traditionally proven to be of value. The Indians would rather die.
Unlike in Thoreau's time, that 'little piece of territory' is becoming more scarce each year. Because it's also a matter of stocking and feeding oneself, these derelict spaces must by default be close to urban infrastructures, just as most architects know that the city rots from the inside to the outside. Similarly, Deleuze-Guattari: 'It is the City that invents agriculture, not the other way around,' brings one back to the Madonna concert's Roma-bashing delirium.