He says that altermodernity is vested in translation and the work that's going to arise will deal with this type of communication where no language holds a larger sway than another.
On page 77 he states, 'It is proving all the more important to crystallize this culture around readable concepts. . . . Altermodernity emerging today is fueled by the flow of bodies, by our cultural wandering . . Ultimately, then, radicant thought amounts to the organization of an exodus.'
However how can there be a 'crystallization of readable concepts'? If what Bourriaud is saying is true, than that means we are in a constant state of flux and change. Like Girl Talk, as soon as one thing is completed, it is dissected and used for another's purpose. Or is Bourriaud hinting that altermodernity, the radicant's mass exodus, the language of translation is going to be the new religion? What other large connection or relationship truly bonds people who have no other form of communication between them than symbols: cross, synagogue, mosque? There will always be some sort of common ground, ie readable concepts whether based in theology, nationality or a mass of radicants.
'The notion of otherness is questionable because it postulates a common ground, which needless to say is Western."(67)
Is Bourriard against a common ground because of it's 'westerness' or its 'otherness'? Is not a 'crystallization of readable concepts' a common ground?
It seems his use of Serge Daney and Victor Segalen and their rejection of the 'other' makes way for a new kind of visual leadership that will lead this mass exodus into some other organized set of rules and imagery. What can be taken from these two sentences:
-'If the codes of the dominant representation of the world are based in abstraction, that is because abstraction is the very language of inevitability.' (59)
-'The fundamental requirement of an ethics of diversity is to travel in order to get back to oneself, to start off "from the real",. . . the context where happenstance caused you to be born, a context whose value is not absolute but circumstantial.' (67)
Does this all come down to inevitability and happenstance? How does this personally identifiable, singular culture of abstraction come about in this globalized economy? We can not turn the tables and erase what globalization has done to this planet. Homogenization has not just begun but has infiltrated, outside of a petri-dish I don't see how Bourriaud's ideal will come about, let alone flourish.
Segalen, 'The source and driving energy of all beauty is difference.' (63) Does this mean it is difference that can be beautiful, or that it is the alternating, unsymmetrical nature of this world that creates space for the beautiful, or both?
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