BABEL Working Group, after the end....

1st Biennial Meeting of the BABEL Working Group

after the end: medieval studies, the humanities, and the post-catastrophe

Jen Boyle

jboyle@coastal.edu

A Triptych on the After-image of Every-thing

Mediated images (digitized, archived, manipulated, animated, pixilated, networked) saturate our synapses -- from political revolutions stoked by recycled YouTube clips, or the affective “gesture discipline” of military virtual training environments (TacticalIraqi), to the re-mediated and digitized artifacts that re-animate the “thingness” of historical inquiry. The affective image as a “thing” that is both mediated (past) and immediate (now and to come) seemingly signals the end of a representational epoch.  We appear now to be at the end of representation; reproduction now seems synonymous with knowledges, objects and lifeforms.  Yet what does it mean to point to an after-image of representation?  What “time” is this, where/when images are no longer for things/beings but ceaselessly becoming beings/things?   This performance/presentation offers up a multi-modal triptych on potential temporalities to the mediated image:  “in,” “with,” “trans.” This presentation is at once an exploration of the “historical,” the anachronism of the “new” in new media, and the ecstatic intervals made possible by new crossings between technoscience and the humanities.