Theory and immediacy are defined by mutually opposed spatial relations to the situation

Evidence

Hegemonically ordained by all these vectors of power, ardently esteemed by all our leading lights, immediacy theory remains glaring in its negation of theory, which ought to be one of the ultimate media of mediation: intercession; thick, slow, strange relay; and hewing out relative autonomy. It ought to be the medium in which we can step back from the merely evident. It ought to be the medium in which we can situate the valorization of immediacy as a historical specificity. It ought to be the medium through which we can perceive the systematic and surprising interrelation of culture (what front-facing cinematography has to do with supply chain logistics, what engaged art has to do with networked algorithms). And it ought to be the medium in which ideas themselves negate their own delimiting determinations, shed their old baggage as mere interpretations, and hit the dialectical jackpot to intervene in the world. Theory effects distance, abstraction, movement away. Immediacy foments intimacy, immersion, the negation of intercession. Theory takes us out of a situation, out of phenomenality, out of ourselves, and into realms of reflection that escalate to include the dislocation of our ineluctable situatedness, conceptualization of our many determinations, and speculation about inexperienced possibilities. Immediacy imbibes the immanent. Theory cultivates and cooks, constituting new nourishment for flourishing. Taking distance and cutting distinctions, lineating formations and daring construction, theory risks something other than absorption or blur. Through its orotund negations, immediacy theory is antitheory. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 252

Categorization

• XREF: Her defense of mediation’s political necessity — theory as distance, abstraction, movement away — is what the reader explicitly wants to articulate. Coordinates with her ‘antitheory’ chapter. — connects to: A position built on denying mediation paradoxically produces direct immediacy and rigid opposition — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 802
• QUESTION: The ‘theory cultivates and cooks’ line begs unpacking — is her defense of mediation grounded in a productive (cooking) rather than only critical model?