nails are definitely not infrastructural, not in any real economic sense. we are all together surrounded by microobjects that are near-commodities, that have to increasingly fight for space in our social world, where our concentration or expectations about them manifests in a metaphysical hot-stew, a battle of the commodities. actually, they, as partial augments, but mostly as still, just accessories, don't infrastructuralize anything. what do they infrastructuralize other than female sexuality as a libidinal current, or in the lyotardian sense, as a social modus that we invest into some or other political realm, with expected dividends (heterosexual assemblage)?

imagine, vinh isn't even talking about nails politically here, so the assumption is even harsher, the proof is bigger. even thats hardly an "infra" version of a structure, its more like a borrowed one. but forget about that. irritating and glamorous? sorry, meticulous? do we realize we are talking about nails here. even when they are queered, or taken as an ultimate form of rigging, they are limited in what they can do. excessive is probably the one thing they are, but even then, they're not the most excessive rig you can have. wigs, tails, dresses, hell, so many things. the problem with the adjective spam is that it's not competing with some of the other concepts we have, like flatmaxxing or appareil. how are they worn, or inspired?

it's obviously true, but it's also a commentary on modernity, since negotiated contact is simultaneous with the negotiated existence of nails themselves. see what we mean? they're not very convincing! when talking about temporary micro-objects, rigging is all that they have, the opposite of lasting consequence (infrastructure). it doesnt necessitate a small discourse, it is great that we are having a large discourse about them.

everything he is saying is secondary to the fact they exist. "it's almost like capital manifest! its almost like this is what this is a symbol of!" yeah because there's nothing you can truly say about, the way in which nails are a causal origin of modernity, other than them being the symptom we all know them to be. you require either the concept to be narratively developed or to shove it through some existing story-reference. you don't just get nails to do stuff, or you get situations where they can be something more, just for a little bit.

the small problem: why does the nail's simultaneous participation in both categories count as neither, rather than both? the essay never establishes that difference. however, vinh isn't saying this for no reason. of course it's neuter, because its janky. and why is it janky? because it's, as vinh says, " a small, unstable proposition about the body under contemporary conditions". maybe vinh would intend this sentence to be about how it shows that the body is unstable when rigged, but truly, the nail is unstable as a rigging supplement, due to modernity. the nail as a commodity.

now of course, vinh falls into a common trap. he tends to view operation as necessarily technologically mediating, in the strict sense of technology as white-collar wear, as in, the digital prosthetics that are sold to us by digital marketing platforms as communication devices. just look at his examples: "in which display and operation are openly fused: wearable interfaces, prosthetic fashion, decorative mobility aids, cybernetic drag rigs, luminous stage costumes". all of these devices are far less ornamental than advertised (actually, none seem to be ornamental, even prosthetic fashion is fashion for the sake of representation), and, even on an operational level, except for the large bright thing which is always operational socially, they aren't particularly operational in the same way that rigging is, when rigging precisely concerns the operations that would delineate the virtual body in all its possible configurations

now, this entire point is kind of arbitrary. like yeah, but so what? it's not like in some certain sense vinh in fact is not talking about nails as if they could belong to a complex term in the expanded field (semiotic square). but the reality is he's not talking about nails at all. or about the jankspace. and thats two crucial failures. to interrogate the jankspace, you need to really envision an environment where it can exist. kronic's decision to make it a feeling is a failure, her decision to connect it to so seamlessly to the concept of a junkspace - another conceptual failpoint, and the third failure, to not operationalize what constitutes a jankspace to a categorical degree of precision, even if working backwards from immanent examples. because nails, be it as they are, not entirely accessorial or operational (apparently useless) do have a non-janky quality in queer spaces. is it not more accurate to say that, a drag queen that has become a de-transitioned plumber, half way through taking off the prosthetic nails on their first two fingers, but forced to wait for their other three (for the glue to fall off so they can remove it) is that not more janky than fully operational drag nails?

you cannot possibly say that the ornamentum can be functional "acrylic, gel, chrome powder, rhinestone: these materials gather around the fingertip in a compact assemblage", then give the least functional possible explanation of it when you later mention that a fully operational assemblage can only be something like prosthetic wear. prosthetic wear and its aluminium or plastic coating leaves little traces, is hardly created for the primary purpose of being ornamental, leaves little to the senses, but it could mediate a queer social layer. problem is, it's a rig but on it's own its not a space. let's figure out how it can be a space, then apply a semiotic square on it.

"a big reason that the manicure transaction works the way it does—as safe, inexpensive carnality—is because it is a relationship among women... i’d be lying if i didn’t note that there is a class and race overtone to the new york manicure experience: the manicurists are small ladies who speak loudly in korean to one another; the clients are yuppyish, mainly white, and talk too loudly into cell phones to other yuppyish, mainly white people." says jennifer baumgardner. i never would have found this excerpt if it wasn't for miliann kang, who responds to this quote in the most aggressively annoying feminist manner possible, mad at baumgardner for her otherwise fair observation that bodily physiognomy and cultural fetishism plays into labour, by being mad at her for "not considering the other side".

because feminist discourses (and this will be relevant in a minute), what they ultimately do, is try to fight libidinality by presupposing that the labored subject needs to be alienated from his own struggle. the only way to not feel burdened by your work is to have it be segmented. in a perfect world, labour isn't something that doesn't happen, it's just something that happens in a way where the person that enters into the salon first passes through a portal that turns them asian. then they get their pedicure done, and the entire libidinal field is neutralized, not deterritorialized, just emptied of possibility. satisfied that she's touching your hair? a robot does that part. you still get to see her hands, but actually, she sprays disgusting ink on them. oh, but you're not allowed to see it, you may get death-drive satisfaction. you're just told that's what happens. whatever you need for the modus to function.

she argues it depends on the status of the woman, the subject-object ratio. but in the case of the manicurist, the degree of separation between the maternal figure and the subject who experiences the labour done to their body, is the degree of fetishization that serves the "service of libidinal commodification" (the space itself is the commodity) that allows the jankiness inherent in the woman's body to protrude as an object, that becomes virtualized as it is integrated into the sphere of maternality that is synonymous with a latent aspect of care in the procedure. the more abstract the physical gesture, the more libidinal satisfaction can emerge out of the difference between the objet petite a in its latent (pulsional) drive, and the actual labour that is almost activated as a result of that, not to mention, then later paired with the purifying spirits of the practice itself (essentially, purify yourself from jankiness, the worker purifies the labour process as contained in the delimitation of the physical touch, the concealment of the practice, and then, the virtualization proceeds from this instance, downstream from the social situation).

not to mention, every touch is a service today, because it requires an imperative (patriarchal) question of fundamental uncaredness. nails are, in many ways, augments meant to technicalize (operationalize, as noted earlier) this exchange. when you possess nails, as prosthetics, they obfuscate the human aspect of the hand, but junky-fy it by putting it in a queer field (where every distinction is now visible, since the naturalized human body is equivocated to a forced deterritorialization even when it isnt). so in this instance you get, a female discourse, because the nails serve as augments, but then they also augment the aspect of differentiation that makes the "queering" of touch possible as a differential experience (the differentiality isnt in the fragmentation of the subjectivity inherent in the body, but is the death of the subject within the body, which inherently feminizes it). this is precisely what i meant earlier when i said that nails are a discourse for female sexuality as a libidinal current.

consider in our instance, a possible semiotic square: 1) care + not-exchange: maternal or familial intimacy. 2) exchange + not-care: impersonal, routinized service. 3) care + exchange: the manicure as purchased intimacy. 4) not-care + not-exchange: contact that belongs to neither socially recognized relation. of course this problematizes the discourse in a different way, because its not so much that the labour reading would lead to the idea that manicure salon offers an unfalsifiable relation. that is the reading of labour that makes it this paragonical evil force.