I think Aspiration is a great article, but I would take it a step further. In the article it talks about these, what I would just call, broad cultural forms. Pedagogy is a good way of thinking about it; however, it lacks the emphasis that we can point to specific cultural rites and rituals. This has been the common complaint against GA for a while now, that it doesn't have this "specific" cultural perspective. We can talk and gesture to this fact that we're all on a scene, but what good does that "pedagogy" take us? As you say in the article, we have to be aware of how we cancel ourselves. This was the exact complaint leveraged against a therapeutic(needlessly repetitive) "Christian GA". Of course we must, as you posit, render the imagination productive; but I'm a bit adverse to that type of language. Ironically it seems to evoke some type of declarative fantasy, in my eyes(not that I'm even disagreeing with it). What isn't emphasized is this need for "present-ness". For a bit of a
Our "mimisms" will always be located, and they can be traced as far back as might be necessary to pursue a particular pedagogical project. It may very well be the case that in our gestures and habits we can find traces of the rituals of our forefathers and ancestors. And that would also mean those gestures and habits are inflected by those ancestors having been in certain places, under certain conditions. In fact, that must be the case, even if we can't say in advance to what degree, or with what implications. Any social theory has to be formal at least to the extent that one couldn't make a list of all the different peoples and itemize the precise history of practices that manifests itself today in each of them. But nothing is off the table, and originary thinking should make room for it all, from the nomadic to the rooted or, in Deleuze's terms, the rhizomatic to the arboreal. GA will hopefully get filled in in ways we can't imagine now.
In addition to Sloterdijk, it seems to me there is a massive movement in contemporary social thought towards situating humans directly within the environmental and "mediatic" conditions producing them--to placing us directly inside the machinery, so to speak. This is a very productive movement, and a dramatic turn away from humanism and metaphysics, and I want to join it.
But the pedagogy of and on a scene transforms the scene, and that remains the most fundamental, however the scene is constructed and imagined. Maybe it seems passive or therapeutic, but it's like the years of experimental work that makes the big discoveries possible. Like i've said, I see it as building a kind of social "spine" that can replace the old, crippled one.
Yeah, I mean ill be willing to bend on the transfiguring of the scene. Some of the language I've been playing around with are architecture(arborescents) and infrastructure(rhizomes). Both of which become relevant with that environmental movement you mention. You not only have the focus on the margins, specific infrastructure, but also engagement with architecture and building on it. I personally don't know if sociological language will be that compelling outside of its own discipline, though. I think in some ways we should have this emphasis on building separate mythic infrastructures, but we have enough to also do compelling architectural change as well. As much as building the spine is important, we should already be "planting trees" so to speak.
Architectural and infrastructural language seems to be the most powerful right now among the most interesting theorists, so that's a good way to go. Both architecture and infrastructure involve the generation of scenes--or, perhaps, the setting of scenes.
Let's say that the first thing humans would have built would have been an altar--i.e., a communal center for the sacrificial ritual. For a very long time temples were the most important buildings in the city and the empire. Even today, if you walk through some American towns, you can see the church in the center, which was very likely the first building constructed and always seems to be the one into which the most effort and resources have gone. And more recently, of course, government buildings and monuments in the center.
Buildings should establish the center, and healthy center-periphery relations. They should be "of" the location, referencing historical traditions and foundational events; but they also have to represent the ongoing changes in the relations between the center and positions on the margin. Architecture provides the means by which people see and are seen.
I think, though, that those wanting a are centered order will first become architectural critics and theorists before they will be able to do any actual building.