----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- museveni is
known for exerting crowd control by "just killing one or two people" as
a ugandan friend pointed out to me. wade into a crowd, kill a couple of
folks, and everybody quiets down or disperses. this doesn't always
work, but seems to have worked for him in a number of cases...
spectacular, specific disasters, broadly instrumental. genocide works
to alter the world's relationship to history - stops history for an
anti-dramatic period of rest (or a period of concentrating wealth,
disguised as rest, as peace, as utopia). so the scale is larger but the
principle is similar - kill a minority, spectacularly, and the
will-to-change disperses or submits.
performance, on the other hand, strives to humanize the individual,
meaning - moves out from the individual to the plural public - plural
to the point where the constitution of audience (witnesses, listeners)
is a dramatic act itself, meaning - that audience/artists are
co-creators of a collective noun - moving from person to persons, a
human to human(e).
walk out into a crowd and cause a couple of people to listen to each
other, and you are reversing the polarity of genocide. only a polarity
- a magnetic trace...
but the only real (sustainable) antidote to genocide that i have ever
been able to imagine involves the stillness of
listening/self-absenting, versus the stillness of what strejilevich
calls the single, numberless death.
On Thursday, November 6, 2014 3:52 PM, Alan Sondheim <sondh...@panix.com> wrote:
----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
(I sent this to nettime when I started thinking about the
history of the region; I have a number of texts and books
from the late Armand Schwerner, who worked with the
material. I've also been interested in semitic languages
and the history of the early Mid-East. Anyway nettime
refused to present this, calling it 'bog-standard' and
implying the whole area was like this. I beg to disagree;
in any case, here might be something to consider, or it
might be something that's a dead-end.)
The Assyrians publicized their atrocities in reports and
illustrations for propaganda purposes. In the tenth and ninth
centuries BCE, official inscriptions told of cruelty to those
captured. Most were killed or blinded; others were impaled on
stakes around city walls as a warning. The bodies were
mutilated; heads, hands, and even lower lips were cut off so
that counting the dead would be easier. These horrifying
illustrations, texts, and reliefs were designed to frighten the
population into submission.
[...] When surrounding the capital city and shouting to the
people inside failed, the Assyrians' next tactic was to select
one or more small cities to attack, usually ones that could be
easily conquered. Then the Assyrians committed extreme acts of
cruelty to show how the entire region would be treated if the
inhabitants refused to surrender peacefully. Houses were looted
and burned to the round, and the people were murdered, raped,
mutilated, or enslaved - acts all vividly portrayed in the
Assyrian stone reliefs and royal inscriptions in the palaces.
The Assyrian troops regarded looting and rape of a conquered
city as partial compensation. [...]
The annals of Assurnasirpal II vividly described such tactics:
"In strife and conflict I besieged (and) conquered the city. I
felled 3,000 of their fighting men with the sword. I carried off
prisoners, possessions, oxen, (and) cattle from them. I burnt
many captives from them. I captured many troops alive: I cut off
of some their arms (and) hands; I cut off of others their noses,
ears, (and) extremities. I gouged out the eyes of many troops. I
made one pile of the living (and) one of the heads. I hung their
heads on tress around the city. I burnt their adolescent boys
(and) girls. I razed, destroyed, burned (and) consumed the
city."
This type of "psychological" warfare was especially convincing,
and the inhabitants, "overwhelmed by the fearful splendor of the
god Assur," surrendered.
----
From Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat,
Hendrickson, 2008
===================================
Sargon, the ruler of Bel, the priest of Asur, the darling of
Anu and Bel, the mighty king, king of hosts, king of Assyria,
king of the four quarters, the beloved of the great gods
and the mention of his name caused to go forth for the greatest
deeds, the mighty hero girt with terror, who for the overthrow
of the enemy sendeth forth is arms, the valiant warrior,
forgot and trusted in his own strength. Against the kings and
governors whom in Egypt had installed the father who begat me,
to slay, to plunder, and to seize Egypt he marched., Against
them he went in
city which the father who begat me had conquered and to the
border of Assyria had annexed.
I summoned my supreme forces with which Asur and Istar had filled
my ends
the way ...
he summoned his fighting men, With the might of Asur, Istar, and
the great gods, my lords, who go at my side, in the battle on the
broad plain I accomplished the overthrow of his forces.
heard the defeat of his forces.
That city I took; my troops I caused to enter and I stationed
them therein. had conquered
fortified cities, I captured. Their forces in numbers I slew;
their spoil, their possessions, and their cattle I carried off.
Their soldiers escaped and occupied a steep mountain
Of a vulture within the mountain had they set their stronghold,
In three days the warrior overcame the mountain
he cast down the mountain, he destroyed their nest, their host
He shattered, Two hundred of their fighting men I slew with the
sword; their heavy booty like a flock of sheep I carried off;
with their blood I dyed the mountain like crimson wool
their cities I overthrew, I destroyed I burned with fire.
they came to make war against me. I fought them and defeated
them. Their warriors I overthrew with the sword, like Ramman I
rained a deluge upon them, into trenches I heaped them, with the
corpses of their mighty men I filled the broad plain, with the
blood I dyed the mountain like scarlet wool.
The team of his yoke I took from him, a pile of heads over
against his city I set, his cities I overthrew, I destroyed, I
burnt with fire.
mile and female musicians, the whole of his craftsmen, as many
as there were, and the officers of the palace I brought out and
as spoil I reckoned.
I besieged, I captured, I carried off their spoil.
The walls of that temple had fallen in ruins. I was anxious, I
was afraid, I was distressed and my countenance was troubled.
(tablet translations)
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