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Theory Redux series
Series editor: Laurent de Sutter
Published Titles
Mark Alizart, Cryptocommunism
Armen Avanessian, Future Metaphysics
Franco Berardi, The Second Coming
Alfie Bown, The Playstation Dreamworld
Laurent de Sutter, Narcocapitalism
Roberto Esposito, Persons and Things
Graham Harman, Immaterialism
Helen Hester, Xenofeminism
Srećko Horvat, The Radicality of Love
Dominic Pettman, Infinite Distraction
Eloy Fernández Porta, Nomography
Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism
Nomography
On the Invention of Norms Considered as One of the Fine Arts
Eloy Fernández Porta
Translated by Ramsey McGlazer
polity
Copyright © Eloy Fernández Porta, 2021
This English edition © Polity Press, 2021
Polity Press
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4396-0
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Translator’s Note
Throughout this book, Eloy Fernández Porta uses words and phrases in English. These are often taken from the lexicons of corporate culture or the internet; at other times, they point to Porta’s engagement with Anglophone media or index his fluency in the lingua franca of the global art market or the fashion industry. So the reader of the Spanish original comes across references to “infotainment,” the “smartphone,” the “foodie,” and the “fanbase,” to “outsider” art, the “mainstream,” “normcore,” “chaos magic,” and the “unwearable.” This reader is likewise told, in English, to “Enjoy!,” to “Eat well,” to “Do it yourself,” and even, when the author briefly becomes a “cheerleader,” to “Give me an L! Give me an A! Give me a W!,” to spell, “(All together!) LAAAW!”
As that last example indicates, Porta’s English is often parodic, playful, ironic, or absurd. Anglicisms comically interrupt his sinuous Spanish sentences, or they grate jarringly against the words in their immediate vicinity, to ludic effect. They are like bits of ad copy introduced into an otherwise elegant critical discourse, or Doritos served in a dish made by a chef who specializes in haute cuisine.
The effects of Porta’s use of other foreign languages – French to signal sophistication, Latin to send us all to mass or to court – can be captured or at least closely approximated in translation. But there is unfortunately no way to do justice to the author’s use of English in a rendering of his text in English. “There is no remedy to which translation could have recourse here,” Jacques Derrida writes of the “foreign effect” of foreign words used in another context: “No one is to blame; moreover, there is nothing to bring before the bar of translation.”1
Something could have been brought before the bar, of course: the italicization of words and phrases that appeared
