Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

What is Ontological Terrorism?

Jason 08

18:33 / 26.07.01

No really, I'm that dumb. Could you please tell me, as briefley as you want what Grant Morrison means.
What is Ontological Terrorism?
Thanks in advance.

Jamieon

08:36 / 27.07.01

Short answer, but I'm sure others will give longer ones quoting key texts and all that jazz:

Anything that attacks the individuals perception of themselves and 'reality'. Deliberate manipulation/reorganization of the "being as such".

big city deserter

10:33 / 27.07.01

I think someone should write an article for the webzine on this subject. Other self confessed Ontological Terrorists are Robert Anton Wilson and Hakim Bey.

Tom Coates

11:14 / 27.07.01

Yeah, I'd be interested in that. In a sense 'Ontological Terrorism' is a postmodern movement based around exposing the cracks in our perception of the world that we don't notice because we are acculturated within it. Ontology is the study of 'being' and ontological terorism therefore is the attack on conceptions of being as something concrete and realistic and THERE. Hallucinogens are an experiential development that undermines our idea of 'what's out there'.

Another perception could be the 'our thoughts make the world' thing - whereby by transforming yourself you can open the world up to be what you want it to be. Magickal practice and post-structuralist / deconstructive philosophy talk about the world as a product of language or as a world being influenced by language...

Blank Faced Avatar

07:01 / 28.07.01

I just read on a Laila thread that the US military has developed Ontological Weaponry; ( for their character assasination squads ). Grenades that explode myths: Acid that eats away at your sense of reality (

), and a type of mortar which can cut the ground away from right under your feet.
But Johnny Alpha once told me how to mix home-made ontological plastique, to attack the foundations of their ethos..

( apologies to Laila, but you know, deep down I just want this all to end up woven seamlessly into one of your superthreads... )

6opow

07:38 / 28.07.01

quote:Originally posted by Tom Coates:
...ontological terorism therefore is the attack on conceptions of being as something concrete and realistic and THERE.

I wonder if this is right. Is ontological terrorism (OT) an anti-realist movement which seeks to install some sort of idealism (i.e., that things only exist in the mind)? I've never thought that OT was getting at the "we could be brains in vats" sortta' thing (even though it does allow for the possibility). I think that OT is more of an attack on our interpretations of what's really out there rather than a denial that there is an external world. Like how RAW picks up on Korzybski's, "A map is not the territory..." thing (second post tonight that I've used this

) where the reality tunnel that we use to navigate through life creates our interpretation of what is out there.

AlexZane

04:27 / 29.07.01

To me, ontological terrorism seems to be a mix of two quotes, one by Foucault about the role of life being to recognise the social and historical constructions that has placed a person into their life situation, and the ontology of being is to break out of this/ move beyond it and the other quote is from Eco about the need for semiotic guerilla warfare/terrorism being to understand the media spin and to break down the myths that constrain us.

Or summat lark that anyroad

Jackie Susann

04:52 / 29.07.01

since km, by way of explaining the phrase, tells mason to look in the dictionary, it seems reasonable to take the phrase literally. rather than shooting and blowing up people and property (banal (?) terrorism) he's going to attack being as such. it isn't that he's denying the existence of a real world, he's saying that's his new target. that's how i'd read it, anyway.

Tom Coates

13:30 / 29.07.01

I don't deny that there is a real world, nor do i think taht ontological terrorism does, but like Baudrillard, the real is at best irelevant to our conceptions of it, and at worst has slowly died. A terrorism of the real seems to me to be precisely about introducing concepts and ideas that undermine our ways of being 'real'. Except of course in the Invisibles, where 'reality' is indeed 'un' and the final actions of the terrorists is to destroy it (or reincorporate it into something 'higher').

z3r0

13:17 / 31.07.01

Random thoughts on this subject:
I have found resources on all sort of theories which only purpose is not to prove a point about certain aspects of reality, but to force your mind to try different perspectives.
Like - and this goes really short cos I'm at work and I don't like typing
a)gravity does not exist, everything is expanding.
b)actions in the present can affect the past (amazing article at Newsweek)
c)real movement does not exist, your navigates through frozen slices of reality, giving you the sensation of movement.
and things like this.
One thing that I sometimes do is, during a trivial conversation with someone, reply with some obscure piece of surrealistic poem (like "The Emperor Of Ice Cream", for instance).
Usually, I get seconds of awkward silence and a blank gaze back.

Math is for suckers!

02:48 / 11.08.01

i think ontological terrorism is more a bombing of peoples ideas of how and why rather than trying to say nothing exists except in the mind. its using metaphysics to change the world by changing peoples perceptions of it

Jason 08

13:24 / 19.08.01

Thanks everyone.
I am now not as stupid as I was 10 seconds ago.
It seems to me I have been a Ontological Terrorist for some time now without even knowing it. Surprise me

Thanks again and let's keep it going.

Add Your Reply