Cross Sections

At irregular intervals, an event takes place which allows the unconscious flows of culture to be explicated, a cross section in the cultural and political timeline. This occurs due to an event being made up of a collection of symbols which summarize these flows, creating a response from any readers of the event wherein they become possessed to study and think about and write on the event, going along with the thought-objects lodged inside them. This produces cultural products, writings, editorials, opinions, etc, which in turn loop around to greater exposure to the event. This cycle eventually burns itself out as it runs of out of new hosts susceptible to infection, giving it a neat period of time wherein it can be said to have occured. At the end of it, the writings produced in this period of time constitute a cross section of the context in which the cycle occured in, thoughtflows being all expressed more explicitly in ways they would never get the chance to normally. Going forward, the passage of these cross sections produces change afterwards. By allowing undercurrents of thought to be explicated through communication, they now seep into entities and machines of society, capital, politics, industry, etc.

It is this lesson, the same that Arendt learned in studying the Dreyfus Affair in The Origins of Totalitarianism, that we must apply diligently in an era when communication has reached a state of ecstatic overheating beyond any experienced previously. In the history of the contemporary far right, Gamergate was the most recent such event and just hours ago, we have witnessed the inciting event for another such cross section to be created. The shooting has within it countless mimetic details, which will implant themselves into the minds of anyone with a platform - the music, the cinematography, the memes, the 8ch post, every word of the manifesto, every element of previous far right violence (Dylan Roof, Charlottesville) is made clear and perfected like never before and made in relation to pre-existing smaller discourses that are now joined in the larger picture of this event.

Going forward for however long the discourse around the shooting lasts, we are about to enter a transitory period which will be revealing and transformative for politics in the future. Unlike many events previous, the discourse around this latest killing will be extreme and massive, but must be studied as the cross section will provide a road map for the coming years.