Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“The maintenance of presence is synonymous with the maintenance of a scene, and so the creation of linguistic and cultural forms derives from the maintenance (which is also the re-creation) of scenes. And the “scenic intentionality” (we could also use the title of one of Gans’s books, the “scenic imagination”) therefore employs all the materials afforded by the scene—its props, furnishings, sceneries, which includes the other players on the scene and oneself. Using the elements of the scene to block a path toward its implosion and forge one towards its enhancement creates a new arrangement and purposing of those elements but in a manner and with consequences well beyond what could have been planned. Even if we speak in terms of scenic design, the more mapped out implementation of scenic intervention simply produces even further reaching implications beyond those which have been “input” to the design. We are building on past presencings to hold mimetic violence further at bay, and we can do so more intentionally (otherwise, why even bother thinking about it?) but never in a way that will free us from continuing to do so. What I want to draw attention to here is the extraordinarily rich field of study of all human activity in its engagements with the world and technology such an approach opens up. Any particular object we study—a text, an institution at a particular stage in its development, a device, historical actions—would be or be the results of stacked presencing, and we would develop ways of distinguishing the potential crisis (and its degree of imminence) constitutive of any intention and the reworking of available materials to fend off that crisis in greater or lesser degree.”

— Adam Katz, The Thing That It Is: Toward a Curriculum for the Officer Class · Jan 3, 2025 · Bouvard Substack