
Episode 197
Revenge of the Real: Politics for a Post-Pandemic World | Benjamin Bratton

Episode 197
Benjamin Bratton
Revenge of the Real: Politics for a Post-Pandemic World | Benjamin Bratton
summary
In Episode 197 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Benjamin Bratton, professor of visual arts at UC San Diego and the author of “Revenge of the Real: Politics, for a post-pandemic world.”
Bratton’s book explores how our collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates a critical inability on the part of society to govern itself. The pandemic in this sense serves as a sort of non-negotiable reality-check that upends the comfortable illusions of a world that increasingly bears no resemblance to the one we have vacated.
Benjamin raises important questions about not only how we came to find ourselves in our current predicament of mask wars, urban riots, and institutional decay, but also, how we might go about constructing a world that is more representative of reality and the needs of the present moment.
In the overtime, Bratton and Demetri explore what a post-pandemic world might look like and what this means for our conceptions of governance and the individual.
You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Supercast Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 06/28/2021
bio
Benjamin Bratton’s work spans Philosophy, Art, Design and Computer Science. He is Professor of Visual Arts at University of California, San Diego. He is Program Director of The Terraforming program at the Strelka Institute. He is also a Professor of Digital Design at The European Graduate School and Visiting Professor at SCI_Arc (The Southern California Institute of Architecture) and NYU Shanghai.
He is the author of several books, including The Revenge of The Real: Politics for a Post-Pandemic World (Verso Press, 2021. 166 pages), which sees the pandemic as a crisis of governance and argues for a positive biopolitics. It frames the pandemic as a live experiment in comparative governance demonstrating the failures of populism and the need for an epidemiological view of society based on sending, modeling and collective organization. The book examines the complexities of sensing vs. “surveillance”, quarantine urbanism and platform automation, the mask wars and the ethics of the object, and the failures of philosophy to address the biopolitical crisis. It calls for a new politics of rational and equitable infrastructures of knowledge, planning and intervention. See Verso Amazon
In The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty (MIT Press, 2016. 503 pages) Bratton outlines a new geopolitical theory for the age of global computation and algorithmic governance. He proposes that different genres of planetary scale computation –Earth layer, Cloud layer, City layer, Address layer, Interface layer, User layer– can be seen not as so many species evolving on their own, but as forming a coherent whole: an accidental megastructure that is both a computational infrastructure and a new governing architecture. The book plots an expansive interdisciplinary design brief for The Stack-to-Come.
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Deinde dolorem quem maximum? Dic in quovis conventu te omnia facere, ne doleas. Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Vitiosum est enim in dividendo partem in genere numerare.
His singulis copiose responderi solet, sed quae perspicua sunt longa esse non debent. Illud quaero, quid ei, qui in voluptate summum bonum ponat, consentaneum sit dicere. Ut scias me intellegere, primum idem esse dico voluptatem, quod ille don. Vidit Homerus probari fabulam non posse, si cantiunculis tantus irretitus vir teneretur;
Aliter homines, aliter philosophos loqui putas oportere? Theophrastus mediocriterne delectat, cum tractat locos ab Aristotele ante tractatos? Quid est igitur, inquit, quod requiras? Atqui reperies, inquit, in hoc quidem pertinacem; Quae contraria sunt his, malane? Sed quot homines, tot sententiae; Huic ego, si negaret quicquam interesse ad beate vivendum quali uteretur victu, concederem, laudarem etiam; Ego quoque, inquit, didicerim libentius si quid attuleris, quam te reprehenderim.
Magni enim aestimabat pecuniam non modo non contra leges, sed etiam legibus partam. Hi curatione adhibita levantur in dies, valet alter plus cotidie, alter videt. Miserum hominem! Si dolor summum malum est, dici aliter non potest. Quod autem principium officii quaerunt, melius quam Pyrrho; Qui-vere falsone, quaerere mittimus-dicitur oculis se privasse; Hoc unum Aristo tenuit: praeter vitia atque virtutes negavit rem esse ullam aut fugiendam aut expetendam.
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Non ego tecum iam ita iocabor, ut isdem his de rebus, cum L. Verum hoc idem saepe faciamus. Tantum dico, magis fuisse vestrum agere Epicuri diem natalem, quam illius testamento cavere ut ageretur. Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Compensabatur, inquit, cum summis doloribus laetitia. Videsne ut, quibus summa est in voluptate, perspicuum sit quid iis faciendum sit aut non faciendum? Iam illud quale tandem est, bona praeterita non effluere sapienti, mala meminisse non oportere?
Quod cum accidisset ut alter alterum necopinato videremus, surrexit statim. At, illa, ut vobis placet, partem quandam tuetur, reliquam deserit. Qua tu etiam inprudens utebare non numquam. Modo etiam paulum ad dexteram de via declinavi, ut ad Pericli sepulcrum accederem. Mihi enim satis est, ipsis non satis. Sed ad haec, nisi molestum est, habeo quae velim.
Ne in odium veniam, si amicum destitero tueri. Cum sciret confestim esse moriendum eamque mortem ardentiore studio peteret, quam Epicurus voluptatem petendam putat. Sit sane ista voluptas.
Itaque sensibus rationem adiunxit et ratione effecta sensus non reliquit. Itaque nostrum est-quod nostrum dico, artis est-ad ea principia, quae accepimus. Eorum enim est haec querela, qui sibi cari sunt seseque diligunt. Quod eo liquidius faciet, si perspexerit rerum inter eas verborumne sit controversia. Torquatus, is qui consul cum Cn. Huic mori optimum esse propter desperationem sapientiae, illi propter spem vivere. Ut scias me intellegere, primum idem esse dico voluptatem, quod ille don. An ea, quae per vinitorem antea consequebatur, per se ipsa curabit?
intelligence report
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Omnia contraria, quos etiam insanos esse vultis. Morbo gravissimo affectus, exul, orbus, egens, torqueatur eculeo: quem hunc appellas, Zeno? In omni enim arte vel studio vel quavis scientia vel in ipsa virtute optimum quidque rarissimum est. Igitur neque stultorum quisquam beatus neque sapientium non beatus. Cur, nisi quod turpis oratio est?
Quis enim potest ea, quae probabilia videantur ei, non probare? Est, ut dicis, inquit; Ab hoc autem quaedam non melius quam veteres, quaedam omnino relicta. Aliter enim explicari, quod quaeritur, non potest. Primum in nostrane potestate est, quid meminerimus? Portenta haec esse dicit, neque ea ratione ullo modo posse vivi; In quibus doctissimi illi veteres inesse quiddam caeleste et divinum putaverunt. Ratio quidem vestra sic cogit. Sed quid attinet de rebus tam apertis plura requirere?
Eadem nunc mea adversum te oratio est. Quae fere omnia appellantur uno ingenii nomine, easque virtutes qui habent, ingeniosi vocantur. Quid, de quo nulla dissensio est? Quia voluptatem hanc esse sentiunt omnes, quam sensus accipiens movetur et iucunditate quadam perfunditur. Is ita vivebat, ut nulla tam exquisita posset inveniri voluptas, qua non abundaret. Facit igitur Lucius noster prudenter, qui audire de summo bono potissimum velit;
Ergo hoc quidem apparet, nos ad agendum esse natos. Ad corpus diceres pertinere-, sed ea, quae dixi, ad corpusne refers? Inde sermone vario sex illa a Dipylo stadia confecimus. Ne amores quidem sanctos a sapiente alienos esse arbitrantur. Non laboro, inquit, de nomine. Nonne odio multos dignos putamus, qui quodam motu aut statu videntur naturae legem et modum contempsisse? In eo enim positum est id, quod dicimus esse expetendum. Quamquam tu hanc copiosiorem etiam soles dicere. Sed ad illum redeo. Nam si propter voluptatem, quae est ista laus, quae possit e macello peti?
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Illi enim inter se dissentiunt. Nonne videmus quanta perturbatio rerum omnium consequatur, quanta confusio? Quamquam id quidem licebit iis existimare, qui legerint. Atqui reperies, inquit, in hoc quidem pertinacem; Nam si amitti vita beata potest, beata esse non potest. Re mihi non aeque satisfacit, et quidem locis pluribus.
Similiter sensus, cum accessit ad naturam, tuetur illam quidem, sed etiam se tuetur; Scientiam pollicentur, quam non erat mirum sapientiae cupido patria esse cariorem. Sed potestne rerum maior esse dissensio? Si qua in iis corrigere voluit, deteriora fecit. Si qua in iis corrigere voluit, deteriora fecit. Philosophi autem in suis lectulis plerumque moriuntur. At, illa, ut vobis placet, partem quandam tuetur, reliquam deserit. Non dolere, inquam, istud quam vim habeat postea videro;
Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Quae cum dixisset, finem ille. Saepe ab Aristotele, a Theophrasto mirabiliter est laudata per se ipsa rerum scientia; Primum cur ista res digna odio est, nisi quod est turpis? Quid igitur dubitamus in tota eius natura quaerere quid sit effectum? Magni enim aestimabat pecuniam non modo non contra leges, sed etiam legibus partam.
Commoda autem et incommoda in eo genere sunt, quae praeposita et reiecta diximus; Hanc ergo intuens debet institutum illud quasi signum absolvere. Illum mallem levares, quo optimum atque humanissimum virum, Cn. Universa enim illorum ratione cum tota vestra confligendum puto. De malis autem et bonis ab iis animalibus, quae nondum depravata sint, ait optime iudicari. Nec vero intermittunt aut admirationem earum rerum, quae sunt ab antiquis repertae, aut investigationem novarum. Primum cur ista res digna odio est, nisi quod est turpis? Idemne potest esse dies saepius, qui semel fuit? Non est enim vitium in oratione solum, sed etiam in moribus. Nam memini etiam quae nolo, oblivisci non possum quae volo. Atque haec ita iustitiae propria sunt, ut sint virtutum reliquarum communia. Tum Torquatus: Prorsus, inquit, assentior; Scaevolam M.