Our Futural Mend

The previous post got me thinking about the current state of Dispatx, specifically in relation to the last issue (forthcoming) and the possibility of something 'other' emerging from its ashes. Considering the transitory state the site currently finds itself in - kept ticking over, just barely, through occasional entries by editors - it could be that there is a paradoxical danger of seeing the moribund site as being more fertile than it really is, or in some way misreading its potential. The reason I was thinking about this was that the previous post - with its references to gym shootings and postmortem forgiveness - made me think of a specific piece of writing by Gilles Deleuze. When discussing his thoughts on what he calls "pure immanence", Deleuze makes reference to a scene in Charles Dickens' novel Our Mutual Friend, in which a reviled man is lying on his deathbed. However, the unpopular man's proximity to death reveals to those that attend him some other essential quality, quite apart from his personality, a quality toward which they start to respond with respect and love. Deleuze writes that "between [the man's] life and [the man's] death there is a moment that is no longer anything but a life playing with death. The life of an individual had given way to an impersonal and yet singular life that disengages a pure event freed from the subjectivity and objectivity of what happens. A homo tantum ['only life'] with whom everyone sympathises, and who attains a kind of beatitude (...) a life of pure immanence, neutral, beyond good and evil.” It is perhaps wishful thinking to associate the Dispatx platform, in its current, near-dormant state, with such a potential-laden, un-individuated singularity, but could there be way to think about the potential for something new to emerge from the stalled site in relation to this idea? Can the latent platform be re-thought as a 'diagram' through which material can be modulated and rerouted into unforeseen contexts, uses and forms? In some ways, this would seem to concern a certain kind of 'anonymity' in relation to the site, both as its winds down, and as we wait for the swan song of the final issue to gain momentum. Yet, this stage of the Dispatx story, so to speak, has the potential to be one of the most interesting and productive - what happens when a site draws to a close, yet has the potential and possibility to continue? What role could anonymity have as a basis for a shared community of a different sort? There are innumerable questions that can be asked here. It would also be interesting to note how the singular yet impersonal life of Dickens' dying man contaminates those around him - perhaps we can hope for the same benevolent outpouring of creative sympathy when the site gathers toward its last throes. Contributors might make their way toward the site, not only as a  gesture to what the site has been, but what it might yet turn into.

There are other ways to look at this, of course. If what Deleuze describes through the reference to Dicken's scene - which he goes on to call a life - is subjectless, neutral, preceding all individuation, etc., this could suggest that a Dispatx-related site be thought apart from its current structure; its divisions and 'stratifications'. There could be no theme for the final issue, or it could be that the subject should be theme-less-ness... - yet, with no theme, would we really be faced with the prospect of a generative receptacle, a 'fresh face'  for new expressions to come and play across? Does the site's proximity to death allows its potential to be seen in a clearer light? When Maurice Blanchot claims that death cannot be experienced, that "he who dies is anonymous," he immediately goes on to say that "anonymity is the guise in which the ungraspable, the unlimited, the unsituated is most dangerously affirmed among us." Perhaps, as Dispatx gathers its remaining energies for the generation of new material, it finds itself at such a productive and dangerous juncture - one where it may 'go' in countless different directions, and where it is difficult to get a secure sense of where its potential lies, as well as what its original redeeming qualities might be. This is, then, also the site's risk - it is caught between life and death and, as such, oscillates between varying states of itself: what it is, what it was, what it could have been, what it will end up being, and so on. It is this betweenness that makes it difficult to answer the question as to how to honour a dying man...