Strange Fascination: Bowie and Apophenia

If the ambition of Cracked-Actor-Network-Theory is to use Bowie to explore the conditions of subjectivity in late capitalism, then it must necessarily risk apophenia in its tone and spirit and appear somewhat manic; preposterous even. 

Bowie’s very fluidity in his use of mediums and identities lends itself to being connected to everything that was around him. As he said of himself in the Russell Harty interview (1973): “I find that I’m a person that can take on the guises of different people that I meet. I can switch accents in seconds of meeting somebody—I can adopt their accent. I’ve always found that I collect. I’m a collector. And I’ve always just seemed to collect personalities, ideas.”

Or, a few years later: "Bowie was never meant to be. He's like a Lego kit. I'm convinced I wouldn't like him, because he's too vacuous and undisciplined. There is no definitive David Bowie." (David Bowie on David Bowie, 1976)

So it should come as no surprise to find the Network Society reflected back in him.

Or, in other words, Bowie’s own eclecticism, opportunism and promiscuity will be reflected in a theory that is itself is eclectic, opportunistic and promiscuous. And that both Bowie and our theory capture something of the nature of subjectivity in late capitalism.

Apophenia is the inclination to find patterns and connections in all phenomena regardless of whether they are related or not (what Tyler Viglen calls Spurious Correlations or, when more developed, Conspiracy Theory). 

The ability to observe and create connections is a profoundly human act; consciousness is drawn both to and from pattern. After all, as the phenomenological commonplace observes: consciousness is always consciousness of something. This can be both banal - such as finding faces in clouds or prophecies in tea-leaves – and sublime - such as Stephen Hawking’s description of the universe as a Grand Design in which: “There must be a complete set of laws that, given the state of the universe at a specific time, would specify how the universe would develop from that time forward. These laws should hold everywhere and at all times; otherwise they wouldn’t be laws. There could be no exceptions or miracles. Gods or demons couldn’t intervene in the running of the universe.” (The Grand Design, pg. 137)

Perception rests on observing figure/ ground relationships, and the use of narrative is fundamental for cognition through establishing connections and causes between events. Working between artificial intelligence and psychology, Schankand Abelson claim that narrative systems and “structures called scripts” are essential for the production of “knowledge systems.” Such pattern finding has emerged from an evolutionary wager in which in survival situations the recognition of patterns paid dividends. Better, for example, to assume that a rustle in a patch of grass is a tiger and act accordingly than ignore it and be eaten.

As this project develops further patterns and connections within the Cracked-Actor-Network will be suggested. No doubt some will be spurious.