Farman and Thrift Response
1. I was really struck by Dr. Farman’s discussion of Stone’s work on phone sex, which he opens up to include the (maybe?) more modern phenomenon of sexting. While I agree that phone sex, sexting, and even cybersex rely on the reconstitution of the body from verbal or textual cues (anyone remember the A/S/L? days of the Internet?), I wanted to think a little bit harder about the reconstitution of the body as both a visual, but also something that is present in or takes up space. Using text-only cybersex (meaning that which occurs without a visual or auditory element–no webcam, no microphone/speakers) as a starting point, I wonder how or if the reconstituted body takes up space. By virtue of asking the A[ge]/S[ex]/L[ocation]? question as well as questions about appearance (hair color, weight, etc.) those who engage in these interactions construct a visual image of their online sex partner. Does this image only exist in “mental space” or is it also projected (my brain keeps making this into a hologram for some reason) into the individual’s physical space?
2. Nigel Thrift argues that the mystical, specifically “New Age thinking [,] often stresses grids of power like ley lines, nature goddesses and the like, as well as the importance of particular sites as magical territories able to conjure up communication with the other” (66). While I agree that many spiritual and religious traditions depend on shifting space to place (a place of worship, a place of mystical convergence), I wanted to draw attention to a missed (or maybe even misplaced) connection that might have strengthened this argument had it been utilized. In Conquest, Andrea Smith argues that part of the problem with New Age appropriation of Native American religious and spiritual traditions is precisely the lack of connection with the land. This couples with the removal of Native Americans from their ancestral land to ensure that while religious freedom is extended to Native communities, it is an impossibility due precisely to the necessity of physical presence at a particular place. Having read Smith’s work as well as the work of other Native/Indigenous authors, I admittedly bristled at Thrift’s off-hand discussion of “Western” and “Eastern” practices, as well as the connection bordering on conflation of New Age practices with “Hopi Indian practices” (66).
3. As I read Thrift’s discussion of the “experience economy,” I found myself convinced of his argument that experience is being mediated through technology and also being bought and sold. I also found myself wondering “so what?” The “so what” had less to do with the global flows of goods and capital and more to do with the question of whether or not it was necessarily “good” or “bad” that experience can be mediated this way. Thrift writes “[s]o what we see is bare life laid bare and anatomized, and put together again as saleable, immersive experiences” (73). What seems more problematic to me is the “salable” part, rather than the “anatomized, and put together again” portion. It’s almost as if Thrift presupposes that people should not experience experiences this way, and should go ahead and climb the mountain or walk through the park. But for those who cannot, doesn’t this synthetic, produced set of “kinaesthetic experiences” offer at least some form of access to certain experiences?
Place: Physical, mental, emotional states which can be named and expressed by the conditions that give them meaning
Body: Simultaneously the physical medium through which we experience place but also the way we determine our identity based on the experience of place.