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call for Perforations 11, v. 1.0:

"WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?"

Families, Geneologies, Children: Memory, Trauma, History, Place

Let's think about the word 'homely' for a bit. It is the third and last definition in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, meaning "not good-looking; not attractive; plain; ugly". The first definiton is "originally, (a) of the home; domestic; (b) familiar; intimate; (c) fond of home". Both meanings hover around the concept of the ordinary, the everyday, and even the banal, or, worse than that, the crude and coarse. Apparently, for a vast section of populations in late capitalist, technology-intensive (aren't they virtually synonymous?) countries, a schizoid (and hence ventriloquized by techne) reading of the family and the home is paramount.

The family and the home (in German 'heim') seem to be the site for the most turbulent workings of what we might call a 'technological unconscious'. The most intense struggles of individual memory and trauma now seem to center on and from the 'home'. The family has always been the scene of the ob-scene: the secret. How does that old pop song go? "No one knows what goes on behind closed doors..." Now it seems that everyone does. (it might be good to refer to a moment to Freud's classic essay on the uncanny here wherein he traces 'un-heimlich' -- un-homed, uncanny -- to various doublings, distancings, and sexual fears, primarily of female genitalia. Yeah, he was goofy in some ways but he might have had the right string just the wrong yoyo--or is it the other way 'round?).

So: what happens to the 'family' when there are no more secrets? (can there be bad secrets AND good secrets)? What, in fact, IS a family now? An 'affinity group', a social apparatus for raising children, an inherent sociobiological aspect of the human species, a biological dialectic for the propagation of geist (or in modern terms, DNA)? The internal pressures on and from family life have increased to an, uh, uncanny degree. What role does technology broadly considered play in these familial explosions/implosions of memory, trauma (which meant originally 'wound' -- and...remembering the yoyo...there are two ways to pronounce that), history, secret, kinship, biology, and communication? (All we have to do is mention the automobile, the television, the computer.) The oscillation of intense melancholia and hysteria (now transmuted to 'Borderline Personality Disorder') around the discourse of 'family values' seem to be affective states intimately imbricated with transmissions which a technical infrastructure facilitates (but which perhaps bring other secrets in its wake). In an increasingly para-noid, para-biological age, who needs the family and why? In the increasingly 'fertile ground' of reproductive technology and statist/corporate (non)care-taking, is that tantamount to saying "who needs children and why?" And is that, finally, tantamount to saying, "who needs history?"

Perforations is especially receptive to creative approaches to the themes of families, genealogies, children, memory, trauma, history, place, as they are impinged by technological issues. Any media accepted as long as they can be adapted to a web site.

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