Cultural mediation once worked through latency and obscurity, now through speed.
Evidence
Formerly (and by agreement), these relay agents needed relative obscurity, like a latency period, in relation to their perception of the results of their action-to really work. The relay agent was active because, tirst of a11, he went unnoticed. … Today flash agents are the relay agents who are in tune with the irnplicit violence of contacts between cultures and the lightning speed of techniques of relation. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 841
Categorization
- XREF: The claim that effective mediation requires obscurity and a latency period resonates with Glissant’s ‘detour and ruse’ and with Foucault’s analysis of discourse operating through indirect power. — connects to: Pre-modern cultural influence spread so slowly it could arrive centuries out of date — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 943; Pre-modern cultural diffusion across civilizations took centuries to complete. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 134; Cultural modernity as a whole is a reaction to accelerated time — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 154 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Compressed capital circulation time produces cultural impatience with mediation
#corroborates(0.88) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 23 - Cultural modernity as a whole is a reaction to accelerated time
#qualifies(0.80) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 154 - Modern culture as a whole is a reaction to successive waves of time-space compression
#qualifies(0.80) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 168 - Dramatic conflict overcomes time by condensing past and future into the present instant
#qualifies(0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 118 - Pre-modern cultural influence spread so slowly it could arrive centuries out of date
#expands(0.72) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 943 - Pre-modern cultural diffusion across civilizations took centuries to complete.
#expands(0.72) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 134