By way of the glitch
Beyond repair
There are many ways to respond to a glitch.
A glitch is a rupture on the smooth surface of the ‘working order’: “a passing fault disrupts a system but fails to crash it” (Culp, p.71). It signifies some deeper dysfunction at play. The common response is to ignore it, brush it off, carry on. But sometimes the glitch recurs, or brings about a larger dysfunction. At this point, the end user may panic. They may bring their ‘faulty’ product in for treatment.
The debugger - the digital pathologist - seeks to follow the glitch to its apparent source, in order to purge it. The pathologist is interested in restoring the smooth operation of the machine, of repairing it to ‘working’ capacity, of producing a ‘flawless’ product. The pathologist sees ‘dysfunctional’ divergence as a thing to be purified.
But there are those who relate to the glitch in an entirely different way: the glitch signals a possible exploit. An exploit “replicates the guerrilla strategy of turning something to one’s advantage” (ibid). It is a potential site of disruption, of breakout, of escape. The glitch-exploiter finds joy and creativity in the exploit. The now prolific art of “speedrunning” video games relies on glitch-exploits, enabling players to do extraordinary feats which surprise even the developers. A player hits a segment of a hidden wall with pinpoint accuracy and strikes a line of flight straight through the map. It takes them 18 hours and 1,754 attempts to perfect: acts of sheer experimentation and determination.
The pathologist may see such creativity and hope to stifle it by purging the game of such glitches; he cannot imagine a way of relating that does not go by way of purging. He wants a sterile world of smooth operation. (No alarms, no surprises.) He does not realize that life grows in the cracks.
This is the mode of the despotic psychiatrist, the classical behaviorist, the ‘symptom reduction’ therapist, who see glitches in terms of problems, and only see problems as things to be ‘solved’. Such a way of seeing is blind to otherwise relations to problems. Problems are not just things to be solved. The problem is not ‘resolved’ upon the generation of solutions; problems are endlessly generative, and one thing they generate is solutions (Deleuze, 1990, p.56). Ruptures generate a crack in the wall, a gateway to different potentialities.
Glitches, when exploited, can either break-down or break-through the system. These breakdowns/breakthroughs can be harnessed towards nefarious or revolutionary ends: ransomware which steals from the vulnerable, or DDOS attacks which shut down a fascist network. The glitch is doubtless dangerous: but dangerous to what, to whom, in what way? Andrew Culp writes:
“as the exploit hijacks an already existing system, it turns the already existing power differentials in that system to its advantage so it does not have to introduce its own. The search for new antagonisms in the digital life of the Metropolis must then begin with tracking down glitches and other traces of exploits.” (Culp, p.71)
A praxis of the glitch looks for cracks. It does not fear ruptures, nor relate to them only by grammars of ‘repair’. Sometimes what is cracking is not worth repairing; often repair is impossible. Perhaps ‘repair’ functions as a convenient myth altogether, a “cruel optimism” (Berlant) perpetuated by those in power, who always strive to return a ‘normal working order’.
Kwame Ture says: “’Peace’: that’s the white man’s word.” Repair is, likewise, the language of the liberal, the colonizer, the politician, the analyst. It is not the language of the revolutionary, the guerrilla, the liberationist, the glitch-exploiter. Repair is an altogether different way of relating to the problem. It is extensively bound up with the reinscription of ‘what is/what has been’, and thus a probable vehicle for the self-same reproduction of imperialism and its “colonial object-relations” (Eng, 2016). Those of us committed to creating a post-colonial world need other ways of relating.
A praxis of the glitch works with, rather than against, symptoms and disrepair. It is not just a matter of saying “your symptom is valid”: it has little to do with mere validation or ‘re-cognition’. Such shallow modes of relating can only offer passing nods to difference, and thus offer little in terms of disruption of dominant power (they in fact reinforce the status of the validator and recognizer). It has much more to do with being moved and moving, with being affected and affecting, of harnessing and working with ‘what is’ so that we might break out, break through, disrupt, unsettle, and become otherwise.
(The Wachowski sisters know as well as Alice: “Follow the white rabbit.”)
Cited:
Berlant, Lauren Gail. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822394716.
Culp, Andrew. 2022. A Guerrilla Guide to Refusal. With JSTOR (Organization). University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. 1990. The Logic of Sense. London: Athlone.
Eng, David L. 2016. “Colonial Object Relations.” Social Text 34 (1 (126)): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-3427105.
Ture, Kwame. In Network, Activist News. 2024. “Kwame Ture on the Difference between Peace and Freedom.” Video. YouTube.