Re: Reframing the Creative Question

[Felix Stalder]

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On 2015-03-15 07:03, Brian Holmes wrote:

> I think David is right that the Left should neither ignore the
> "creative class," nor simply heap a now-conventionalized scorn upon
> it. It is urgent to develop an intellectual/artistic culture and a
> "structure of feeling" (as Raymond Williams used to say) that can
> turn people away from narcississtic involvement in the
> middle-management functions of affect manipulation, and toward the
> new solidarities.

> The creative classes have so much affective and intellectual agency
> that they/we could change the world tomorrow - if only it were
> possible to desire that change today.

Hi Brian,

I hear you, I'm totally with you, and a good deal of my work is spent
on that.

Cultural critique can be effective, in the best of all worlds, in the
face of a hegemonic project, that is, as a way of deconstructing and
undermining the cultural consensus that makes the current form of
dominance effective through the manipulation of desire rather through
to the use of repressive force.

But, I increasingly have my doubts. Are the current forms of power
still based on cultural hegemony, that is, on the control of desire
through "soft power"? Sure enough, to a certain degree they are,
and for everyone who has been watching how the German media are
dealing with the Syriza government (in lock-step with the German
government) can see good old "ideological state apparatuses" at work.
It's impressive. And, if that fails, like yesterday in Frankfurt,
there is enough repressive power around to deal with it.

However, it seems to me, that power is increasingly functioning
through non-hegemonic forms, that is, it is no longer seeking some
measure of consensus from those who are governed. I think it was the
Finnish prime minister to said something like "we don't chance policy
based on elections" which is just a somewhat more blunt way of saying
that there is no alternative, whether you like it or not.

Behind this is that power has taken on the form of "network power" (a
notion suggested by David Singh Grewal). It operates through setting
the conditions of interaction, without specifying what interaction is
to take place. Of course, the conditions are biased towards favoring
certain outcomes, but the main thing is that once they are set and
people/firms/governments are interacting within these conditions,
there is no need to enforce them. Since the alternative to abiding to
the rules would be to end the interaction. And this, from the point of
view of a dynamic, flexible system, aka the world today, unthinkable.

Once the conditions are set, the network protocols established, there
is no need to generate consensus anymore, since the choice is between
existence under terms created by others and non-existence. This is why
nobody in their right mind, or with any empathy left, advocates that
Greece exits the Euro. Or, on a smaller scale, why even people who
hate Facebook and everything it stands for, are still using Facebook.

This makes cultural critique somewhat futile, or, at least, it needs
to shift towards another plane.

All the best.

Felix













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Re: Reframing the Creative Question

[John Hopkins]

Hallo Allan -


history. Now, to the point, what is disastrous is to see processes of change
simply in economic terms - as a revolt against neoliberal values, social
conditions - the shallow rhetoric of the Labour Party in the UK is a great,
pathetic, example of this. Cultures of resistance, voices of change, a more
expansive social horizon, do not appear, come into being, as a product of
some creative class but emanate from a more nuanced, multi-dimensional
social reality.


I agree that the rhetoric of the market/economics seems to be a panacea that 
damages potentials of change -- the process would also have to entail embodied, 
internal change in one's own self as well as change in the  momentary, daily, 
and cumulative life-pathway, way-of-going, way-of-being, way-of-doing. I think 
that the general politicization of change also works against a more 
self-controlled and internalized process that I believe is a necessary precursor 
of widely sustainable social change.


Another pessimistic example is in the area of energy use -- try doing a survey 
to see who around you has made hard core changes in their life-style that would 
impact their total energy usage. I find the anecdotal evidence points to the 
situation that very few people are making substantive changes on that daily level...


Cheers,
John

--
++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
grounded on a granite batholith
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++


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double apologies

[Alan Sondheim]

that last post went to the wrong list, I've been getting almost no sleep 
for weeks, apologies -


==
email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 718-813-3285
music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/
current text http://www.alansondheim.org/tc.txt
==


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Re: Reframing the Creative Question

[John Hopkins]

Hallo Allan -


history. Now, to the point, what is disastrous is to see processes of change
simply in economic terms - as a revolt against neoliberal values, social
conditions - the shallow rhetoric of the Labour Party in the UK is a great,
pathetic, example of this. Cultures of resistance, voices of change, a more
expansive social horizon, do not appear, come into being, as a product of
some creative class but emanate from a more nuanced, multi-dimensional
social reality.


I agree that the rhetoric of the market/economics seems to be a panacea that 
damages potentials of change -- the process would also have to entail embodied, 
internal change in one's own self as well as change in the  momentary, daily, 
and cumulative life-pathway, way-of-going, way-of-being, way-of-doing. I think 
that the general politicization of change also works against a more 
self-controlled and internalized process that I believe is a necessary precursor 
of widely sustainable social change.


Another pessimistic example is in the area of energy use -- try doing a survey 
to see who around you has made hard core changes in their life-style that would 
impact their total energy usage. I find the anecdotal evidence points to the 
situation that very few people are making substantive changes on that daily level...


Cheers,
John

--
++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
grounded on a granite batholith
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++


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#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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Chron Higher Ed: Redden: Persona Non Grata

[nettime's_frequent_flyer]

Persona Non Grata

March 18, 2015

By Elizabeth Redden

After a New York University professor who has written critically
of migrant labor issues in the United Arab Emirates was blocked
from boarding a plane to Abu Dhabi, some are asking what the
implications are for N.Y.U.'s branch campus there.

Andrew Ross, a professor of social and cultural analysis at the
New York City campus and president of N.Y.U.'s American
Association of University Professors chapter, was prohibited by
U.A.E. authorities from boarding an Abu Dhabi-bound plane at New
York's Kennedy International Airport on Saturday due to stated
"security reasons" (the media relations office at the U.A.E.
embassy declined to comment on the incident). Ross had been
planning to continue his research on migrant labor issues in the
Emirates over his spring vacation. He was not planning to stop by
the N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi campus while there.

"If someone with my kind of profile and especially my official
position within an A.A.U.P. chapter can be treated this way, what
is the value of the protections that are promised for less
high-profile faculty in Abu Dhabi?" asked Ross, who has been
critical of N.Y.U.'s campus there.

"My passage to and from the U.A.E. is supposed to be protected
and we've been told by our administration that they have
agreements with our Abu Dhabi partners about protecting academic
freedoms and now it turns out that they really don't have that
kind of influence," he said. "They don't really have any say,
ultimately, if the state decides to override those protections."

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Ross's case is the fact that
the prestige of the N.Y.U. campus -- a collaboration between the
university and U.A.E. government officials -- failed to grant
Ross the needed protection to do research in the country. The
university maintains that its Abu Dhabi campus "enjoys full
academic freedom as it exists at N.Y.U. New York."

"I had thought the government would have a little more deference
and respect for an N.Y.U. professor," said Sarah Leah Whitson,
who, as the executive director for Human Rights Watch's Middle
East and North Africa division, has also been refused entry into
the U.A.E. But she said, "If this is the kind of position that
the U.A.E. is going to take against critics of the government,
then I think N.Y.U. professors have a lot to worry about."

"It shouldn't be up to the U.A.E. to decide which views of N.Y.U.
professors are acceptable and which views are not," Whitson said.

A university spokesman, John Beckman, e-mailed a statement saying
that the university "supports the free movement of people and
ideas" and that in five years of operating a campus in Abu Dhabi,
"our faculty and students have experienced zero infringements on
their academic freedom, even when conducting classes about
sensitive topics -- labor, politics or what have you."

"But it is also the case that regardless of where N.Y.U. or any
other university operates, it is the government that controls
visa and immigration policy, and not the university," the
statement said.

Beckman declined to answer follow-up questions on Tuesday.

"While we do not have full information, it is concerning that a
New York University sociologist, Professor Andrew Ross, has been
prevented from entering the United Arab Emirates, particularly
since his scholarly work has included research on U.A.E. labor
practices," said Ann Marie Mauro, the chair of N.Y.U.'s Full-Time
Non-Tenure-Track/Contract Faculty Senators Council. She said via
e-mail that the council "would like to see this situation
resolved as quickly as possible, and has asked the university
administration to keep us updated regarding this issue. The
council has urged the administration to continue its work with
our U.A.E. partners to enable all N.Y.U. community members to
travel freely to and from our N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi campus."

N.Y.U.'s campus in Abu Dhabi has been a subject of controversy,
with concerns about the university's rapid global expansion being
one of the factors at play in a faculty vote of no-confidence in
President John Sexton's leadership in 2013. (Sexton is retiring
as president in 2016.) In addition to persistent questions about
the rhetoric versus the reality when it comes to issues of
academic freedom in the emirates, a New York Times investigation
last year into the harsh working conditions faced by the migrant
laborers who built N.Y.U.'s campus in Abu Dhabi fueled yet
further concerns (and as the Times reported Monday, one of the
journalists who co-authored that investigative piece, Sean
O'Driscoll, has since been expelled from the U.A.E.).

Other Western professors have also been barred from the United
Arab Emirates. Matt Duffy, who as a former journalism professor
at the Abu Dhabi-based (and American-accredited) Zayed University
attempted to delicately promote press freedoms, had his vi