Hi all, For a little backround ... and backtracking from where this conversation has turned...
( I won't try to speak about the Gramsci thread... I'm too far out of the reader-loop for that. ) Florian and Stewart's talk - TRANSGRESSIONS THEN AND NOW: Does The ‘Alt-Right’ Reenact Counter-Culture? - was part of Disruption Lab's weekend event called Infiltration- Challenging Supremacism. https://www.disruptionlab.org/infiltration I am also looking forward to the archive, b/c it was a very dense and high-speed overview of counterculture practices, and very useful to expand on an analysis of where we are at in the rise of ugly nationalistic trends unfolding all around us... And monday's elections in Sweden seems to rachet up the fascist potentials in yet another EU-member state. For me, it was interesting to zoom in and examine this notion that the alt.right might be seen as co-opting elements of the transgressive arts of the last decades... to fuel their own political power / agendas... And use it to extend a theory that our new accelerating "miscommunications networks" ( weak ties ) are not likely going to be how we get ourselves out of all these slippery digital slopes ! As David writes: > In fact they used the talk to demonstrate that historically these codes are > politically interchangeable. and > In all of this there is an implicit critique of Angela Nagle's influential > position that transgressive tropes and sub-cultures inevitably lead to a > nihilistic fascism.. (by "flogging the dead horse of edginess") ... From this perspective, it was making me think of an article on Yuval Harari's new book : https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/yuval-noah-harari-technology-tyranny/568330/ He writes : " In the second decade of the 21st century, liberalism has begun to lose credibility. Questions about the ability of liberal democracy to provide for the middle class have grown louder; politics have grown more tribal; and in more and more countries, leaders are showing a penchant for demagoguery and autocracy. The causes of this political shift are complex, but they appear to be intertwined with current technological developments. The technology that favored democracy is changing, and as artificial intelligence develops, it might change further. Information technology is continuing to leap forward; biotechnology is beginning to provide a window into our inner lives—our emotions, thoughts, and choices. Together, infotech and biotech will create unprecedented upheavals in human society, eroding human agency and, possibly, subverting human desires. Under such conditions, liberal democracy and free-market economics might become obsolete." ... Harari is a very new discovery for me... and i'm not sure he is useful in terms of giving any tactical strengths to cultures of resistance. In fact, my impression is that he is a bit submissive and fatalitsic to the technodystopian flood at all our doorsteps. But the analysis is often very revealing, and useful for constructing the counterpunches. One could say it may help to see the rising tide of the big white supremacist menace as a symptom of our technologically-dominating communication landscape. The over-mediated, fully spectacularized game that gives the assholes of the world, immense consolidating powers ! Because that's what the tools were designed for ! A control society ! Entrancement ! Military Con/Enter-tainment Complex ! Are we really thinking that the left can out-transgress the original mass-mediated transgressions ( think: 3rd Reich's 1st televised-distribution of the Berlin Olympics, broadcasting as a weapon, and then forced mass media exodus into the irreality of the ubiquitous simulacruous webs, Das Netz ) ! Not enough time to elaborate here, and probably better to keep it short, and just starting the dialogue in this direction... Perhaps the XLterrestrials will try to write a full essay on the entire Disruption Lab program. But we werent there for all of it, so we might have to wait a couple? weeks until the archives are posted. As a teaser, it was interesting to note that in the 2nd session of Sat. night's program, Unicorn Riot presented. Undeniably doing important + valid resistance work, ( video witnessing at Standing Rock, etc. ) nevertheless they demonstrated... with their Dischord Leaks project ... that the left might now be seen as co-opting tools of authoritarian regimes ... by using spycraft to capture the chats of dangerous and fanatical alt.right. A reasonable reaction in the data wars. But seemed relevant to note what the fights are doing to our own digital behaviors. Sorry it was in an inevitable observation, given the juxtapostion of Florian and Stewart's part 1. And it highlighted the descent into the Surveillance Valley swamps ... and we won't easily "culture jam" our way out of it, by flipping the tools ... We might need to think of entirely new practices of detournement... or rather... find the emergency exits from this burning theater of spectacularized oppositions ! respex ! pod On 9/11/18 3:11 PM, nettime-l-requ...@mail.kein.org wrote: > Send nettime-l mailing list submissions to > nettime-l@mail.kein.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > nettime-l-requ...@mail.kein.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > nettime-l-ow...@mail.kein.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of nettime-l digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Quick Review.. (bronac ferran) > 2. Re: Quick Review.. (David Garcia) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2018 14:02:26 +0100 > From: bronac ferran <bron...@gmail.com> > To: David Garcia <d.gar...@new-tactical-research.co.uk> > Cc: a moderated mailing list for net criticism > <nettime-l@mail.kein.org>, Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com> > Subject: Re: <nettime> Quick Review.. > Message-ID: > <caoxxuwbjmmb_qn55uz8jfzwcb85rkyfwdrf8vfdw-kk3n0q...@mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Has Hermann become Friedrich here? > Or is it vice versa? > > On 11 September 2018 at 08:56, David Garcia < > d.gar...@new-tactical-research.co.uk> wrote: > >> Yes thanks Florian- so interesting to read this mangling of Gramsci by >> Yiannopolous. The extraordinary images of him cavorting in a bath of >> pig?s blood in a scandalously naive (or simply cynical) NY Chelsea >> gallery, purportedly >> mourning the lives lost to Islamic fundementalism- he looked for all the >> world like >> a "bargain basement" Herman Nietzsche. This plumbed new depths of >> shock/kitch (is >> that a genre there days- looking at Yiannopolous?s erstwhile friend Lucien >> Wintrich >> photo series Twinks for Trump its beginning to look that way). >> Actually this hides the more serious development that Yiannopolous?s >> tactics have >> re-purposed the venerable Camp sensibility which he cleverly connects with >> Lulz, as >> sharing the ability to be shocking whilst simultaneously using their >> respective modes >> as solvents to neutralize moral indignation. >> >> 1. A couple of asides at the end of last year Wolfgang Streeck wrote a very >> interesting piece for London review of Books called ?You Need a Gun? which >> argued that Gramsci concept of hegemony could not be understood if it were >> seen >> to be coercion free- but that coercion takes many forms with violence as a >> background >> option always available if all else fails. Though there is much that there >> may be much >> that Bannon and the other Gramscian?s of the new American far right get >> wrong but this >> is one aspect they have understood quite well. >> >> 2. This is quite tenuous association but listening to your talk I thought >> of the English Marxist >> philosopher Peter Dews?s book -The Idea of Evil- interrogates a certain >> bias in history >> and political thought that ?people who are pessiistic about human nature >> tend to be >> right wing, while left wing thinkers tend to be optimistic about human >> nature (in Dews?s >> view naively so) in a recent interview Dews declared that he wanted to >> disrupt this >> alignment.. Whilst listening to your talk in Berlin I wondered if there >> was something like an >> exploration of the affective consequences of such a re-alignment in your >> talk and the questions >> that this might ask of us. >> >> Best >> >> David >> >> >> >> >> On 10 Sep 2018, at 23:58, Florian Cramer <flrnc...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Thanks, David - as I said in the discussion in Berlin, Stewart and I ended >> up >> in a weird place where we practically taught the "Alt-Right" its own >> history. >> One shouldn't read too much into its grasp of Gramsci though. This is what >> Milo >> Yiannopolous wrote about him in the original manuscript of his book >> 'Dangerous' (that Simon & Schuster ended up not publishing): >> >> And so, in the 1920s, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci decided that the >> time had come for a new form of revolution -- one based on culture, not >> class. According to Gramsci, the reason why the proletariat had failed to >> rise up was because old, conservative ideas like loyalty to one's country, >> family values, and religion held too much sway in working-class >> communities. >> If that sounds familiar to Obama's comment about guns and religion, that's >> because it should. His line of thinking, as we shall see, is directly >> descended from the ideological tradition of Gramsci. Gramsci argued that >> as a >> precursor to revolution, the old traditions of the west -- or the 'cultural >> hegemony,' as he called it -- would have to be systematically broken down. >> To >> do so, Gramsci argued that "proletarian" intellectuals should seek to >> challenge the dominance of traditionalism in education and the media, and >> create a new revolutionary culture. Gramsci's ideas would prove >> phenomenally >> influential. If you've ever wondered why forced to take diversity or gender >> studies courses at university, or why your professors all seem to hate >> western civilization ... Well ' ..new you knew who to blame Gramsci. >> >> (Because of the lawsuit, the manuscript is publicly available here: >> https://www.dropbox.com/s/bjc0n5dll244o2w/Milo%20Y% >> 20book%20with%20edits.pdf?dl=0 >> ) >> -F >> -- >> blog: https://pod.thing.org/people/13a6057015b90136f896525400cd8561 >> bio: http://floriancramer.nl >> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission >> # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, >> # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets >> # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l >> # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org >> # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: >> >> >> >> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission >> # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, >> # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets >> # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l >> # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org >> # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: >> > >
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