The reduction of experience to 'a series of pure and unrelated presents' further implies that the 'experience of the present becomes powerfully, overwhelmingly vivid and "material": the world comes before the schizophrenic with heightened intensity, bearing the mysterious and oppressive charge of affect, glowing with hallucinatory energy' {Jameson, 1984b, 120}. The image, the appearance, the spectacle can all be experienced with an intensity {joy or terror} made possible only by their appreciation as pure and unrelated presents in time. So what does it matter 'if the world thereby momentarily loses its depth and threatens to become a glossy skin, a stereoscopic illusion, a rush of filmic images without destiny?' {Jameson, 1984b}. The immediacy of events, the sensationalism of the spectacle {political, scientific, military, as well as those of entertainment}, become the stuff of which consciousness is forged.
( David Harvey )
[ The Condition of ]
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