[syndicate] The Spoons Collective

[Nicholas Ruiz]

C'est vraiment--la progresion de la metaphysique du capital.

NRIII

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[syndicate] The Spoons Collective
Date: 	Sun, 28 Nov 2004 02:51:30 -0500 (EST)
From: 	Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com>
To: 	syndicate at anart.no




Spoons


Cybermind and fiction-of-philosophy, now wryting, began in association
with Spoons, and on the Spoons servers. Malgosia Askanas has been the
major force, I believe, in Spoons - which has brilliantly housed a number
of philosophy lists for years.

The fading of the collective is, I think, incredibly sad, and for me, (I
don't speak for anyone else) reflects not only the growth of the somewhat
protective domains of the blogs, but also the increasing turn to the right
wing in the United States, accompanied by an erosion of discourse. This
erosion isn't only found in enclave-building, acerbic commentary, the
usual disunity, but also in a very real exhaustion: how we can talk, and
talk, and talk...

Alan (below forwarded with permission)


Subject: [HAB:] The habermas list - PLEASE READ
To: habermas at lists.village.virginia.edu
Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 12:43:39 -0500 (EST)
From: "malgosia askanas" <ma at panix.com>

Dear All,

This is to let you know that in about two weeks I intend to close down the
habermas list.  This decision is part of a wider set of decisions having
to do with the present circumstances of the Spoon Collective - which, as
you probably know, has been running this list.

The Spoon Collective, of which I am the sole surviving founder, has been
operating continually for over 10 years.  Of the 8 people who currently
constitute it, 3 have been in it basically from the very beginning, and
almost all the others for almost as long.

When the Spoon Collective was originally created, a crucial aspect of its
life was our own passionate involvement in the lists we created or took
over.  As vehicles for bringing into mutual contact and confrontation
thinking people from all over the computerized world - people from
astoundingly different walks of life and with astoundingly different ways
of thinking, but with a shared passion for more accurate perception and
deeper understanding - these lists seemed to us to present a stupendous
potential for evolving new modes of thought and new modes of life.  And it
is essential to note that when we were motivated by a thirst for new modes
of thought and life, it was for _ourselves_ that we wanted them.  Our
project was not about providing a public or academic or political service,
discharging a societal duty, or providing platforms for this or that
political organization or orientation - rather, it was about changing life
- the life we think and live - right at the present moment.

Over the years, however, our relationship with our lists gradually
changed, and we now find our collective endeavor basically reduced to an
indifferent performance of a not-excessively-bothersome piece of labor.
The reasons for this are undoubtedly complex - the first and simplest one,
perhaps, being that the same group of people has been doing the same thing
for 10 years.  If our goal had been less the stability of existing lists
and more the preservation of our own passion, we probably could have done
better.  In any case, we find ourselves a bunch of burnt out and apathetic
bureaucrats.

I personally find thie prolongation of this situation no longer tolerable
or sensical.  As a result, I have (1) announced that I am quitting the
Spoon Collective; (2) decided to close down a number of lists that I have
been responsible for; and (3) declared the end of the Spoon Collective as
a certain historic formation, and stipulated that the name no longer be
used for whatever the present members may undertake in the future.

I, of course, cannot judge the value of any particular list from any
perspective but my own - and neither would I want to.  Only each of you
can decide whether you value this list enough to step in and recreate it
somewhere else.  If any of you wants to do this, I can make available to
you a copy of the subscription list, a tarred and gzipped copy of the
archive, and software support for a smooth transition.  The present list
will stop operating around December 10th.

A number of the other members of Spoon have expressed an interest in
either continuing their present lists or initiating other collective
projects at Virginia.  We very much hope that no matter what develops, the
Spoon archives, which, in large part, constitute an eminently useful and
fascinating resource, can continue to be housed in their present location.
In addition, a copy of the archives is being installed at the domain
driftline.org, where they will soon be accessible over the Web.  If
anybody would like to house additional copies of the full or individual
archives elsewhere, this would of course increase the goodness.


Yours,
-malgosia




-- 

Nicholas Ruiz III
GTA/doctoral student
Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities
Florida State University

205P Dodd Hall, CPO (#1560), Tallahassee, FL 32306
Editor, Kritikos, http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~nr03