>> mind the __ GAP* ?

*generally advanced performance   

... the de- and re-translation that is part of the process of auto-translation might enable an active "cinematographic performance" that may ultimately open up a critical space beyond the dominant discourses. (Sutton, 1999, refering to Guattari (1977).)
.....
There is an active, almost performative, dimension to this process of repetition in translation, in difference; an emphasis on re-narration as part of a process of translation or re-writing, a process of transformation. ( Paul Sutton in an pdf abstract )

Forward movement in life is achieved through a backward movement in memory, but one that is more than a simple regression. In place of the blocked nostalgia or nausea of the perpetual return, the past is transformed in such processes as "working through" and "deferred action". This is what must be involved in Bhabha's "performance that is iterative and interrogative--a repetition that is initiatory, instating a differential history that will not return to the power of the Same." This is what must be included in Gilroy's "redemptive critique of the present in the light of the viatl memories of the slave past."
(In/Different Spaces, Burgin 1996, p. 273)

...the title "Black Atlantic" was taken of your theory work of the same name of 1993. It named a transkulturellen area, in which black history and present can be located. How is the "Black Atlantic" characterised?
Paul Gilroy: My intention was to tear culture history from its close relationship with nations and to bring the history of black intellectual - yes, they exsist! - into a differenciated relationship to the splendiest evolvements of European history of ideas. The actual provocation of the book probably was established through the fact that culture was no more in accordance with its latin origins, as the word agricultura meant in it, as a sedentary and natively rooted phenomenon.
From this traditional ecology of affiliation I tried to break away and dive into an environment, which remains in constant flow. The medium water can be found on one hand in steadily new mixing conditions, on the other hand as an extremely sustainable substance, which also forms the majority of our body.
Nevertheless it was never intended to use this fluid conception of culture as an play-off of the sea against the territory of land. I rather wanted to show, how the oceanic shapes the mainland. Therefore I speak of the Black Atlantic as a "negative continent", which forces us to take a look at the connecting and traffic routes of the black Diaspora.
Thus is the Black Atlantic historically and geographically established as a clearly defined area?
Yes, but it is as well part of our imagination. One for example must just think of which member states meanwhile form the so-called transatlantic alliance. The Black Atlantic is real, imaginary and symbolic all at the same time. ...
taz

The self imagination as colonized city is part of the melancholic and victimizing discourse we just spoke about. The ambition to extend Berlin toward a postcolonial area demands a clear break with its historical integration into the European context. The imaginative effort to manage this definitly cannot be the affair of black intellectual, it is alone yours. There are already many people living here, who offer their own stories as an interpretative assistance. And by the way how far are we here from the place of the conference of Congo 1885, which carried out the geopolitical re-organization of the colonial area? Everything is just around the corner.

Das Selbstbild als kolonisierte Stadt ist sicher Teil des melancholischen Opfer-Diskurses, von dem wir eben sprachen. Der Ehrgeiz, Berlin in Richtung eines postkolonialen Raumes weiterzudenken, bedeutet einen klaren Bruch mit seiner historischen Einbindung in den europ&aeuml;ischen Kontext. Doch die imaginative Anstrengung, ebendies zu bewerkstelligen, ist sicher nicht die Angelegenheit schwarzer Intellektuellen, sondern ganz allein eure. Es leben ja bereits viele Menschen hier, die ihre eigenen Geschichten sozusagen als Interpretationshilfen anbieten. Wie weit entfernt sind wir denn hier vom Ort der Kongo-Konferenz 1885, welche die geopolitische Neuordnung des kolonialen Raumes vollzog? Es liegt doch alles um die Ecke.

Terms of cultural engagement, whether antagonistic or affiliative, are produced performatively. The representation of difference must not be hastily read as the reflection of pre-given ethnic or cultural traits set in the fixed tablet of tradition. The social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective, is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation. (2)
It is in this sense that the boundary becomes the place from which something begins its presencing in a movement not dissimilar to the ambulant, ambivalent articulation of the beyond that I have drawn out: 'Always and ever differently the bridge escorts the lingering and hastening ways of men to and fro, so that they may get to other banks....The bridge gathers as a passage that crosses.' ...
via

From the standpoint of 2003, post-dotcom crash and 9/11, the scope of virtuality and cyberspace seems much reduced. The identification of the Internet (including email, usenet groups, chatrooms, IRC, WWW, MUDS/MOOs, etc) with the virtual has become weaker and more unstable. In the main, notions of the virtual look like exaggerated representations of certain relational potentials of computer-mediated communication. As more recent studies of new media have shown, the identities, relations, politics and ontologies associated with new media are not radically different but intimately interconnected with older media, older institutions and older forms of sociality.
If the equation between new media and virtuality was mistaken or 'just' hype, what scope for an analysis of virtuality in relation to new media remains? Over the last decade or so, an alternative notion of the virtual has established itself and continues to extend its scope and relevance. The concept of virtuality associated with Gilles Deleuze's thought, and recently elaborated in (Shields, 2003; Grosz, 1999; Delanda, 2002; Massumi, 2002 in order of increasing difficulty) heads in a different direction. This version of the virtual designates something real that exists as a multiplicity.
...entire pdf form MacKenzie

... [That is, on-line chat] interaction is a uniquely disembodied experience. Traditionaly conceptions of selfhood as that which is contained or affixed to physical body are deeply problematic and will not hold empirical muster in the online context. ... In the digital social world of [on-line chat] environments, the body is transformed into pure symbol in the process of social interaction. ..
... selves and and social worlds emerge entirely in a process of dislocated and disembodied communication ....Cyberself: The Emergence of Self in On-Line Chat, DENNIS WASKUL, MARK DOUGLASS, 1998

The types of socio-cultural theory and method most often used within the human-computer interaction community include ecological or systems approaches, ethnomethodology and phenomenology. It is not coincidental that all these ways of thinking are ontologically and epistemologically compatible with the general principles of cybernetics - among other things, it makes translation between (and enrollment among) the necessary players much easier.

On the other hand, studies in science, technology and society, as well as cultural studies, critical theory and continental philosophy, including feminist theory, have challenged these ways of understanding human (and human-computer) interaction. Researchers like Donna Haraway, Manuel de Landa, Bruno Latour, and Lucy Suchman have been instrumental in these critiques of technoscience - ... comment via

A self emerges in the process of interaction. Important to this process are both symbolic meanings and the structure of interaction. That is, meaning and the form of interaction are symbiotically wed in the process of communication. In this process, a sense of self is constructed, maintained, and transformed. Hence, any investigation of self necessitates examination of both meaning and form ..
.. On-line interaction is situated in "virtual space" - a socially constructed context that cannot be explained or reduced to its technological components alone, nor can it be readily described using the same terms of physicality widely implemented in the world of matter....
excerpt from: Cyberself: The Emergence of Self in On-Line Chat, DENNIS WASKUL, MARK DOUGLASS, 1998

Warfare, Bourne observed, exercised a psychological effect on the nation wholly salutary to the state and the classes that ran it. It regimented life and terrorized dissenters, granting the state new powers to punish citizens for the mildest divergences from orthodoxy. Wilson's lofty rhetoric about a world made safe for democracy was merely filigree on his dangerous idealism of the state. Inevitably, the democratic principles he so fervently boosted came into conflict with the state's need for power. Just as inevitably, Bourne wrote, Wilson decided "that it is the naiver democratic values that must be sacrificed." ...

...War, Hardt and Negri write, is no longer concerned merely with conventional strategic objectives but with "producing and reproducing all aspects of social life." What is the "war on drugs," for example, with its concept of zero tolerance, other than a bid for social control? What is the "war on terrorism," with its embedded technologies of surveillance, other than a means to discipline civil society? ... more