Re: Can the Left Meme?
On 16 Jun 2017, at 13:25, Gabriella "Biella" Coleman wrote:
Lots of bad bits too. No amount of theory can paper over basic flaws
in analysis.
Thanks for your points below. But I am just not seeing the connection
between your analysis of left vs right language politics and the basic
flaws in the analysis. Could you elaborate?
The analysis seems fine as far as it goes — the problem (IMO, natch)
is that it doesn't go far. For example:
A word, here, about “novelty”: Fascist and racist ideas are, to
be sure, not new . However, these ideas – like a tired consumer
product given Wi-Fi connectivity and a contemporary veneer – have
been repackaged and rebranded by the contemporary Right in ways that
have rendered them as exceptionally novel .
No. The rise of racist and increasingly murderous forces that are
intently and inventively seeking to destabilize and/or hijack civil
institutions internationally isn't 'like' wifi-enabled and rebranded
consumer dreck. That passage is just one example: throughout, the essay
systematically sidesteps the problem of violence in favor of diffuse
aesthetic theory. That's fine — violence is coercive, and its aim is
often to radicalize a situation by displacing other discourses, so the
author may have good reason for his focus. But if anyone needs to
justify or elucidate how they address violence in discussions of
turbo-rightism, I think it's those who'd avoid it not those who'd place
it front and center.
Others (Tilman/Florian) have raised historical examples that might
contradict Matt's arguments and I can't speak for Matt (who maybe will
speak up?) but his piece seems concerned with the contemporary moment
not with making an argument about the whole of the historical left
and transgressive imagery. Some of his own work has even looked at
the transgressive practices of the avant garde artistic left. Nagles
book (http://www.zero-books.net/books/kill-all-normies), which I have
not yet read but am keenly waiting for, traces how the left's recent
obsession with the politics of language purity has helped embolden
certain transgressive strains among conservatives (if I am reading the
reviews corrently), so it's directly relevant to some of the points
Matt makes and the discussion around language.
I appreciate the examples that Tilman and Florian brought up, but
they're marginal. John Heartfield was almost entirely forgotten until an
exhibition at the Kent Gallery in NYC in the early '90s (I still regret
not buying one before it opened). His work was stunning, but —
basically — so what? Various flavors of Situationism, too, had very
limited impact as such in aesthetic circles before Greil Marcus's
"Cowboy Philosopher" essay appeared in Artforum in '86 — at which
point the subject became an academic cottage industry.
Tilman's argument is stated in terms very different from my own, but I
think we mostly agree that leftism as its constituted now is
antithetical to the easy conflation of language and violence. Florian's
argument is much trickier. OT1H, he argues — like a steamroller
'argues' — for a broad historical continuity ("just like," "a 1:1
continuation of," "can be seamlessly applied to"). I agree that Bakhtin
can be very helpful now, but I get impatient when people jump to his
work on Rabelais while somehow ignoring the fact that he was a precise
LITERARY historian/theorist, not an all-purpose pocketknife that takes
apart images too. OT0H, Florian seems to argue that a particular moment
in punk aesthetic is categorically different from current alt-right
meme-mongering whereas Reformation pamphlets are somehow the same. There's
real insight to be found in that gist, as well as in his general points
about how pervasive image/text combinations have been, and the materiality
of their production. But that should be an injunction to discover and
appreciate historical and discursive differences, not to burn it all down
with the "same" match.
Leftoids can "counter-mirror" (IOW, parrot or even ape) rightist
techniques as much as they want, but it won't work very well because
the left has a fundamentally different view of the relationship
between speech and violence. The mainstream left, and even most of
the
radical left at this point, has completely forsworn violence as a
legitimate political strategy.
Agree, many, likely most quarters do reject violence but you seem to
be
deliberately excluding Antifa, which may not be experiencing a surge
of
popularity but they are quite visible now, even featured in the
mainstream news recently thanks to their battles with the Alt-right.
They may not be dominant but they are a long standing radical strain
popular in parts of Europe that have certainly not forsworn violence
as
a legitimate political strategy. The literal punching of Nazi's after
all became both a much beloved viral video and flash point to debate
some of the issues you raise around language and violence.
I said "the mainst
Re: Can the Left Meme?
[I was looking for patterns. The proposition that in the grand scheme of things everything is connected, mixed, gray-shaded, and therefore essentially the same, will not fly until the thermal death of the universe, when everything will be the same (contingent on one's position on the cosmological constant.) We are not there yet, and there are still distinguishable differences.] Two phenomena are very new - several decades - and there is no way that societies have reached any equilibrium regarding these, we are still in the violent transition: 1. Capability of a very small number of people (few dozen?) to kill thousands and millions, within days, without having to go through any social interaction with the rest of own population (note the conspicuous absence of declarations of war since WW2 ... by anyone who matters.) They just decide and go on with it. 2. Capability of a very small number of people (few hundred?) to overwhelm the input bandwidth of the entire planet's population, so that it has more influence on a person than whatever that person's immediate neighbors are saying. This is the age on DoS (and it's not even DDoS.) I think that the left and the right made their bets on these two, and they made different bets. The left relies more on indoctrination, and recently it switched from ideologies (Marxism) to more easily managed identity politics, genderism, environmentalism, global warmingism. The right sticks more to mechanisms that have a gun at their far end, such as debt, free enterprise, multi-tiered legal systems. However, it is the fact that the two are inevitably coalescing into the single entity, and the ensuing gravitational waves are felt all around the place, as everyone struggles to stay above the event horizon. Fun times. On 6/17/17, 08:40, John Hopkins wrote: It could be that in this time of energy glut and technological development, individual speech exacts a minimal overall 'cost' on the (collective, species-wide) evolutionary process. But in the end, word (rationality) and action (violence, reward), as a social/evolutionary process cannot be separated or maintain a separation as you suggest with the left/right dialectic... # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #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:
Re: Hungary: new NGO law passed
On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 12:05:49AM +1000, Zenaan Harkness wrote: > - the ultimate sanctity of NGO's that have no transparency about > their funding, nor their intentions, and notwithstanding their > actions which may well be directly opposed to the interests of the > majority in a given country - e.g. the conservative "we don't want > unlimited refugees from countries where no real vetting can occur" > that is just recently begun to be prosecuted by the UN, e.g.: Ah, found the link I was looking for: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-14/eu-sues-poland-hungary-and-czech-republic-refusing-accept-refugees # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #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:
Re: Hungary: new NGO law passed
On Sat, Jun 17, 2017 at 08:56:46PM +0200, János Sugár wrote: > The Hungarian Parliament passed a new law on non-governmental > organizations today, which is widely thought to attack civil > society in Hungary and has been criticized by the European > Commission. The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ) said it will > apply civil disobedience. Your plug does not mention the rather public (but only for those following the Hungarian debate) stoush between Orban and George Soros. George Soros is widely thought to attack civil society in Hungary and many other countries around the world via the NGO's in the respective countries that he financies through his Open Societies Foundation (may not be exact name sorry). We in the West are well trained in "shouting down" any action which "does not match Western values" which we are well indoctrinated in - "democracy" (for some would say strange values of 'democracy') - open societies (for those who still believe in "democracy" and the endless march of internationalism) - the ultimate sanctity of NGO's that have no transparency about their funding, nor their intentions, and notwithstanding their actions which may well be directly opposed to the interests of the majority in a given country - e.g. the conservative "we don't want unlimited refugees from countries where no real vetting can occur" that is just recently begun to be prosecuted by the UN, e.g.: http://www.barenakedislam.com/2017/06/09/do-it-european-union-threatens-legal-action-against-eastern-european-countries-that-refuse-to-take-in-tens-of-thousands-of-african-muslim-male-invaders-posing-as-refugees/ http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/817289/poland-fight-eu-penalty-european-commission-refusing-refugees-migrant-crisis http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260392/muslim-madness-merkel-daniel-greenfield How's the European Unity working for ya anyway?: http://journal-neo.org/2017/06/04/europe-of-two-speeds-implies-there-s-inferior-members-within-the-union/ We speak rather arrogantly in the West, treating Liberalism as unassailably good, yet the superficiality of our MSM driven discourse rarely acknowledges that the desire for a conservative community is not only a natural and acceptable desire, and widespread across the world, but does not mean that those who express such desires are bigots, and most fundamentally, the hypocritical ignoring of the facts that "global homogeneity" is the opposite of "preserving diversity", that if you don't stand for something, you fall for anything. For too often, a thread, a position, a "certainty" is presented with no heed whatsoever to genuine and real concerns to the contrary. Such gets tiresome. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #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:
Re: e-flux: Galleries Against Gaslighting: how can the UK
Hi all, I am excited by this call for solidarity and action from the UK. It bears strong resemblance with similar cases in recent Dutch history. The so-called Bijlmerramp of 1992, an El Al plane crashed on two flats in Amsterdams migrant ghetto. Also here many undocumented migrants were among the 50 victims. It lead the then mayor of Amsterdam to arrange for an amnesty, calling all migrants to present themselves in order to obtain the necessary papers to make a life, finally. The second case I like to bring to your attention is the Schiphol Fire. In 2005 a detention center for undocumented migrants, due to be deported, caught fire killing 11 inmates, while destroying many lives of the survivors. I have the honor of leading a 10-year long campaign to support the victims and raise the point of the inhumanity of detaining unsuspected humans, based on administrative laws. http://schipholbrand.net/en/ Also here the authorities tried everything to make the victims disappear as fast as possible, whether by deporting or by putting them away in remote prisons or reception centers. I do believe that artists and cultural institutions can play an important role in answering these disasters, annex crimes. They have always played an important role at the events that we have staged, at commemorations, court cases and the like. Let me know if I can be of any help to support your call and work together somehow. And let me inform you about the next act: on the 28th of October in Amsterdam, the 11th yearly commemoration. best wishes Jo van der Spek Migrant 2 Migrant Amsterdam > > The above information needs to be put out to as many sources as > possible. But for pressing demands that can be distributed easily and > succinctly, voices of concerned parties are identifying two key areas: > > Immigration amnesty for everyone affected/nobody to be deported. > There are reports that residents may have had applications for full > residency in process and have had their 20 years evidence of British > residency burned in the fire; this must not be used as an opportunity > to deport. > # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #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:
e-flux: Galleries Against Gaslighting: how can the UK art world
MorganQuaintance16h3 https://conversations.e-flux.com/t/galleries-against-gaslighting-how-can-the-uk-art-world-respond-to-grenfell/6694 Jun 17, 6:04 PM The increased visibility of various forms of discrimination, populism, nationalism, state sanctioned cruelty and bureaucratic indifference, as practiced by world leaders including, but not limited to, Theresa May, Donald Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Rodrigo Duterte, has led to an attitudinal shift in the art world. Politics, hitherto confined to the relative hinterland of socially engaged art, has now become difficult to ignore. That is to say, the matter of where power is vested, how it is being wielded, and who or what is benefiting from this arrangement versus who is subjugated and dispossessed, has moved from the margins and to the twitter feeds, IRL conversations, and psychological concerns of the individuals, collectives and institutions that constitute the art world. The question is how best to respond? In addition to the more widespread and perhaps traditional reflective responses of the symposium or the research based project, must now surely come the unreserved expression of solidarity and the dissemination of information that is empowering and informative for the communities and citizens that participate in, digest or realise the work that artists produce, institutions distribute, and critics of all stripes reflect on. Why should this be done? The art world is one of the few professional spheres that has built up a vast network of contacts (through mailing lists, memberships, regular visitors, education groups, volunteers and specialist publications not as beholden to state agendas as broadsheets, tabloids, and large broadcast media corporations) that constitute a large proportion of the general public. In short, if there is anything that might resemble an unfiltered and uncompromised channel then it should be used. While the recent UK general election was a missed opportunity for this strategy of solidarity and dissemination, all eyes and energies must now be on the disaster that many are identifying as corporate manslaughter; the fire that has engulfed and killed residents of Grenfell tower, and traumatized entire communities in the immediate vicinity of Latimer Road, West London and beyond. The fire, allegedly started by the explosion of a fridge, should have been contained and isolated in the single apartment in which it took place. However, due to what is being described as a perfect storm of architectural and structural negligence perpetrated by developers, the council of Kensington and Chelsea, and the current conservative government who ignored legislation to impose stricter building regulations, the tower bloc containing 128 apartments and at least 500 people, was almost entirely destroyed and left a charred, gutted shell that may still collapse. As the agenda setting media regurgitate and repackage the same reports, coloured by the same cautions and empty gestures towards unbiased reporting, what is happening on the ground is disturbingly familiar to gaslighting. Anyone who has had any dealings with state bureaucracy knows that the strategy employed to exhaust citizens fighting for their rights is one of indifference, misinformation and endless deferment to so called decision makers. Here is what is happening on the ground that I have been able to observe: • The death toll is being downplayed. According to off-the-record sources from the police and fire services the death toll was around 160 people by the 20th floor of the block and rising. • The agenda setting media is being pressured to kick the stats into the long grass: the idea, according to unofficial sources, is to slowly trickle out the real numbers over a period of two weeks, in the hope that attention and outrage will have ‘died down’. • Provisions are not getting to people: all the clothes, food, and material resources are reportedly being held in storage by the council. The reason being the council do not know, and are avoiding, releasing an official tally of who has survived, although some tower residents and residents in surrounding areas have been housed in hotels. • People in temporary hotels are being moved from hotel to hotel: A strategy of displacement and disorientation seems to be being employed by government. Kids and families are stuck in hotel rooms and are stuck in information systems of unpredictability, which is increasing the trauma, and there are no services for counseling. • There is absolutely no support from the council: There is no counseling, no information centres, and no official representative walking around talking to people. What is needed is a 24hr emergency centre on site which will be the central point of focus, and additional hotel rooms that can act as temporary service centers need to be rented at the hotels where former residents are temporarily housed. • Where is Mayor Sadiq Khan?: London’s mayor is not here. People are ca
Hungary: new NGO law passed
The Hungarian Parliament passed a new law on non-governmental organizations today, which is widely thought to attack civil society in Hungary and has been criticized by the European Commission. The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ) said it will apply civil disobedience. The approved law requires groups receiving more than 24,000 euros annually ($26,000) in overseas funding to register as "foreign-supported" and disclose their foreign donors, or face closure. The legislation resembles a law passed in Russia in 2012, which requires NGOs receiving foreign funding to register as "foreign agents." https://bbj.hu/politics/ngo-law-passed-tasz-plans-civil-disobedience_134218 In Anti-Soros Feud, Hungary Adopts Rules on Foreign-Financed Groups https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/world/europe/hungary-law-ngo-soros.html Hungary: NGO law a vicious and calculated assault on civil society https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/06/hungary-ngo-law-a-vicious-and-calculated-assault-on-civil-society/ # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #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:
Re: Can the Left Meme?
Of course, individual and mass conditioning occurs on a pinishment *and* reward basis -- you get access to more 'optimal' partners for reproduction ... when you buy this automobile... Optimized pairing (for the good of the species) is at least as powerful a motivator as the baseball bat. Because it is directly impelled by the 'need' for Life to continue itself into the future. The traditional view is that a person can rationally process the information and make choices, as opposed to being subjected to bodily harm. This is completely false, as the money spent in advertizing, propaganda and info giants proves. With the modern technology, speech is a cheaper and more reliable way to unconditionally condition people. However, this does require technology, usually outside individual's reach. For most people, violence is more effective way for their influence on the world than speech. People are generally rational creatures. The word/action question is complex, and each w/o the other is only a theoretical condition as Vygotsky suggested: "Speech and action are part of one and the same complex psychological function, directed toward the solution of the problem at hand." Rationality somehow has to fit into the sleeve (shall we say) of evolutionary necessity. It cannot exist outside of that unless it is a temporary evolutionary perturbation that will dead-end when the human species destroys itself through its far-from-equilibrium dominance of the physical environment. I'm pretty certain that rationality can't supersede evolutionary 'needs' in the long run. It could be that in this time of energy glut and technological development, individual speech exacts a minimal overall 'cost' on the (collective, species-wide) evolutionary process. But in the end, word (rationality) and action (violence, reward), as a social/evolutionary process cannot be separated or maintain a separation as you suggest with the left/right dialectic... jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #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:
Re: Can the Left Meme?
The question I would ask is, *need the left meme?* Addressing exclusively the word-picture-hahas, the power of memes is I think largely in the condensed arguments they offer; the format of memes force a certain clarity of expression: short, punchy, funny. These features are rewarded in any ~conversation or expression, and images in particular do not well lend themselves to debate. But, in their (d)evolution to common coin, the rhetorical stun effect is fading. To the extant we *expect *memes, they have become rote. *Should the left develop the kind of culture that produces "memes?" *Why now? This is a cultural/rhetorical formation already rapidly ossifying into formulae. To link with Ted's discussion of the Left's general renunciation of *all* violence, I believe this is also changing. It was remarkable to watch the cheers around Richard Spencer getting punched. But then, his politics place him in abrogation of America's generalized and hysterical Zero Tolerance policy towards violence, removing (in their eyes) his common social protections, and turning him into a touchable. I think, though, that this wild social energy is like lightning: it seeks ground. Chaos, disarray, and their stalking-horse nihilism are perhaps necessary precursors for new construction, and I *do *think that the will is developing out there to build a different society, although right now it's largely obscured by conflict. So, how do we anticipate that transpiring, and then -- *does the left need to *"meme"* while guiding the articulation of this new world?* I think not. Popular fascination with the James Comey hearing was a moment of theoretical reintroduction for both the popular barroom Left *and "*good-faith, communitarian rightists" to the significance and functioning of the State's monopoly on violence. This revisitation will develop further, and eventually the puerile little cartoons will all seem quaint, regardless of what happens next. -sam On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 5:16 PM, t byfield wrote: > Lots of bad bits too. No amount of theory can paper over basic flaws in > analysis. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #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:
Re: Can the Left Meme?
On 2017-06-15 05:16 PM, t byfield wrote: > Lots of bad bits too. No amount of theory can paper over basic flaws > in analysis. Thanks for your points below. But I am just not seeing the connection between your analysis of left vs right language politics and the basic flaws in the analysis. Could you elaborate? Others (Tilman/Florian) have raised historical examples that might contradict Matt's arguments and I can't speak for Matt (who maybe will speak up?) but his piece seems concerned with the contemporary moment not with making an argument about the whole of the historical left and transgressive imagery. Some of his own work has even looked at the transgressive practices of the avant garde artistic left. Nagles book (http://www.zero-books.net/books/kill-all-normies), which I have not yet read but am keenly waiting for, traces how the left's recent obsession with the politics of language purity has helped embolden certain transgressive strains among conservatives (if I am reading the reviews corrently), so it's directly relevant to some of the points Matt makes and the discussion around language. > Leftoids can "counter-mirror" (IOW, parrot or even ape) rightist > techniques as much as they want, but it won't work very well because > the left has a fundamentally different view of the relationship > between speech and violence. The mainstream left, and even most of the > radical left at this point, has completely forsworn violence as a > legitimate political strategy. Agree, many, likely most quarters do reject violence but you seem to be deliberately excluding Antifa, which may not be experiencing a surge of popularity but they are quite visible now, even featured in the mainstream news recently thanks to their battles with the Alt-right. They may not be dominant but they are a long standing radical strain popular in parts of Europe that have certainly not forsworn violence as a legitimate political strategy. The literal punching of Nazi's after all became both a much beloved viral video and flash point to debate some of the issues you raise around language and violence. b -- Gabriella Coleman Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy Department of Art History & Communication Studies McGill University 853 Sherbrooke Street West Montreal, PQ H3A 0G5 http://gabriellacoleman.org/ 514-398-8572 # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #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:
Re: Can the Left Meme?
Am 16.06.2017 um 00:31 schrieb Florian Cramer: >Even the visual structure of imageboard memes is a 1:1 continuation of >medieval and Renaissance emblems which consisted of a title (motto) >printed on top, an image (pictura) in the middle and a subtitle >(subscriptio) at the bottom. When emblems fell out of fashion in the >18th century, newspaper caricatures took over their structure. Internet >images memes are just the last part of this media history. "Four thousand years ago the Chimaera can have seemed no more bizarre than any religious, heraldic, or commercial emblem does today. ...Only a small part, however, of the huge, disorganized corpus of Greek mythology, which contains importations from Crete, Egypt, Palestine, Phrygia, Babylonia, and elsewhere, can properly be classified with the Chimaera as true myth. True myth may be defined as the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals, and in many cases recorded pictorially on temple walls, vases, seals, bowls, mirrors, chests, shields, tapestries, and the like. The Chimaera and her fellow calendar-beasts must have figured prominently in these dramatic performances which, with their iconographic and oral records, became the prime authority, or charter, for the religious institutions of each tribe, clan, or city." Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955 Best, André # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #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:
