The Commodification of Ignorance
n inuendo, repetition and raw assertion coupled with a ‘blatant disregard for the facts’. Muirhead and Rosenblum contrast this new mode with the more established classic conspiracy theories which retain the armature of reasoned research, elaborate detective work and the detailed evidence gathering required to uncover the hidden truth below the surface. The new conspiracists dispense with these niceties. 6. Origins of Agnotology Study and reflection on the nature of knowledge has ancient pedigree encompassed by a familiar term, epistemology. Until relatively recently however the study of ignorance has not been so fortunate. This omission was eventually remedied by the introduction of the neologism ‘agnotology’. This term which combines the Greek agnosis (‘not knowing’ e.g. agnostic) with ontology, was coined by linguistic researcher, Ian Boal, when historian of science Richard Proctor asked him to identify or generate a suitable candidate. This was no academic game. Proctor’s insistence that a new term was required came off the back of the decades spent researching the tobacco industry’s malign and sophisticated campaign to obscure the medical evidence for the harmful effects of smoking. Proctor’s research culminated in the publication of The Golden Holocaust, a monumental and damning account of big tobacco’s industrial scale corporate crime. Beyond its intrinsic importance the book acts as a handbook in recognising similar tactics currently being undertaken by the fossil fuel industry in their efforts to create phoney controversy around the evidence for man-made climate change. The nature of the tactics uncovered by the book is shockingly captured in an internal memo circulated in 1969 by the Brown & Williamson tobacco company. The key section is: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” Proctor goes on to ask “what evil geniuses came up with the scheme to associate the continued manufacture of cigarettes with prudence, using the call for more research to slow the threat of regulation, but it must rank as one of the greatest triumphs of American corporate connivance? ” 7. New Circles of Ignorance These new realist movements are not restricted to the visual arts. The literary scholar, Toral Gajarawala has written an insightful analysis of so-called ‘Finance Fiction’, a genre of novel that emerged after the financial crash of 2008. Notable examples are Zia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, John Lanchester’s Capital and Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. Though analytical and data rich these fictions go beyond the straightforwardly evidential, as Gajarawala points out that, “for all the information these novels provide, their ultimate achievement is to draw a circle around our ignorance. Yes, it makes much of the raw data of experience, but only in order to direct our attention to the full range of our illiteracy.” Towards the end of the article Gajarawala reminds us that the early modern realists were not just by-standers. Artists like Courbet and “novelists like Dreiser and Zola were committed socialists’ naturalism was a political project as much as an investigative or an aesthetic one.” “Who” she asks, “are their counterparts today?" David Garcia. June 2022 # 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: irregular ukraine linklist
>PLEASE ADD some more *diverse* and irregular materials to expand the >perspectives, and also regarding the multiple aggressors and profiteers >of our disturbingly not-so-new gruesome little proxy WW3 simulations ! >We might actually need a little more light shed on the varieties of >warmongering anti-horizons, in order to get back on track with >strategies to fight for international solidarity - and negotiate peace - > on our one and only inhabitable planet ! Time to Re-learn the Habit of Fear Again Boris Johnson is busy cos-playing Churchill again, running around the world and committing the UK to go to the aid of Finland if attacked by Russia and is clearly delighted by its intention to join NATO So re-enforcing Putin's narrative of an expansionary NATO. All the while with Biden ramping up the marshal rhetoric. As civilians we have the right to expressions of extreme outrage but for statesmen and women this language is self-indulgent and serves no useful purpose. In fact anything other than the search for peace and the avoidance of WW3 is bullshit. As a child of the cold war and I was 11 years old during the Cuban Missile crisis. I was frankly terrified and remember getting up every morning to read the headlines of my father's newspaper before he got hold of it. The doomsday movies of the time had a gritty realism that make today's apocalyptic offerings look empty as though the appropriate level of terror has drained away in the intervening decades. We have un-learned the habit of real fear to learn what is at stake again. As Edward Luce pointed out in the FT . ( 29/04/2022) "The concept of mutually assured destruction, which took hold after 1962, is that each side has a clear window on the other’s routines and thinking. Most of the information-sharing that was put in place has been abandoned in the past decade. Putin has closed down cold war protocols and even accused Russian nuclear scientists who want to meet their US counterparts of being spies. This means the two adversaries, which account for 90 per cent of the world’s warheads, are far more ignorant of each other’s signalling than they were in the 1970s and 1980s."- Ignorance, in this situation, is not bliss- I was therefore pleased that there was some recognition of the dangers of not being scared enough In this long read in this morning's Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/12/forgetting-the-apocalypse-why-our-nuclear-fears-faded-and-why-thats-dangerous David Garcia # 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:
Fake News: The Commodification of Ignorance
Medienkultur A-Z: Fake News. Thu, 07.04.2022, 18:00–19:30 Factcheck on «Fake News» is a conversation with artist David Garcia, Dutch curator Annet Dekker, Swiss journalist Daniel Ryser and Ukrainian activist Kateryna Botanova. After an introduction David Garcia’s introduction *The Commodification of Ignorance* the invited guests and the audience will explore and critique these ideas. The introduction will argue that it is the *politicisation* of science and technical expertise that has given rise to what is sometimes called the epistemic turn in politics. It is the political logic that today governs the void that was once dominated by the ideological clash of left and right. It is a supreme irony that it is this cult of knowledge that drives the proliferation of Its opposite, junk-data and sub-prime facts, where conspiracy cult leaders can confidently urge their followers ‘to do their own research’ in a media landscape in which *ignorance* has become a commodity more precious than gold. HEK (House of Electronic Arts) Freilager-Platz 9 CH-4142 Münchenstein / Basel and Zoom https://www.hek.ch/en/program/events/medienkultur-a-z-fake-news # 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: The War to come ...
Apologies for the broken link to George Monbiot article. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/02/russian-propaganda-anti-imperialist-left-vladimir-putin Best David From: Henk Borgdorff Date: Sunday, 20 March 2022 at 21:39 To: David Garcia Subject: Re: The War to come ... Hi David, The link is broken. Can you send the correct one? All best from Amsterdam, Henk Borgdorfg Sent from my mobile phone. Plaese excuse any typos. Op 20 mrt. 2022 om 22:11 heeft David Garcia het volgende geschreven: Ted Byfield Internationalism is an absolutely legitimate leftist stance too: anti-imperialist I'm seeing here and elsewhere seems to be, more than anything else, not just intellectually isolationist in its >origins but practically isolationist in its consequences. And when it consigns other differently minded leftoids to oblivion as it does to Ukrainian thinkers, it isn't clear to me what's left of its >leftism at all. But let's shed that label for now. What positive vision is this anti-imperialist grounded in? What constructive change is it proposing? And how does telling others they can't >possibly understand what you're saying lead in that direction? --- Many of the contradictions and predicaments faced by left you point to are echoed in an excellent piece by George Monbiot https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/02/russian-propaganda-anti-imperialist-left-vladimir-putin # 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: # 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: # 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: The War to come ...
Ted Byfield >Internationalism is an absolutely legitimate leftist stance too: >anti-imperialist I'm seeing here and elsewhere seems to be, more than anything >else, not just intellectually isolationist in its >origins but practically >isolationist in its consequences. And when it consigns other differently >minded leftoids to oblivion as it does to Ukrainian thinkers, it isn't clear >to me what's left of its >leftism at all. But let's shed that label for now. >What positive vision is this anti-imperialist grounded in? What constructive >change is it proposing? And how does telling others they can't >possibly >understand what you're saying lead in that direction? --- Many of the contradictions and predicaments faced by left you point to are echoed in an excellent piece by George Monbiot https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/02/russian-propaganda-anti-imperialist-left-vladimir-putin # 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: # 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:
A new avant-garde of Public Truth
Discussions querying the authenticity of the FSB dissident source do actually matter. And comes back to Brian Holmes intervention on the 26th of Feb in which he argued that we should celebrate the fact that in the run up to the war instead of trying to strategically manage the truth, the US and Britain instead “basically made their intelligence public as it came in. And the intelligence was spot on. What a weird feeling: trustable intelligence. Compare what happened before the Iraq War. It's nowhere near the same circumstances, but still, positive.” Brian concluded with the rallying cry: “Truth is a culture, but an almost dead one. I think it could be the basis of a new avant-garde.” So taking Brian’s position on board I do think that caring about the authenticity of the FSB document matters on many many levels that go beyond Ted’s suggestion that authentic sources are as trivial as “asking about its provenance, as if it were an artwork or last will and testament.” Particularly given the reports of recent arrests of Sergey Beseda head of Foreign intelligence and Anatoly Belyukh, his deputy.. all of which suggests that the search for scapegoats has already begun. # 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: FSB 'dissident' voice
The similarities between Grozev's description of the 'FSB dissident' case in
the Youtube seminar and the contents of the text posted are so
strong and the dates so close as to require (as a minimum) some clarification.
David Garcia
On 13/03/2022, 23:51, "thresholdpeople" wrote:
That interview with Grozev is from March 2, and the tweets are from March
5, facebook post from March 4.
The letter mentioned in the interview might be a different one?
--- Original Message ---
On Sunday, March 13th, 2022 at 6:50 PM, Felix Stalder
wrote:
> David,
>
> thanks for pointing this out. Quite strange, because this is the same
>
> person from bellingcat who shared the text in the first place, including
>
> some background how he checked the authenticity. Now he does not even
>
> mention this when discounting the document and how the media fell for it.
>
> Felix
>
> On 13.03.22 20:10, David Garcia wrote:
>
> > I might be confused but I wonder if this statement at about 37 min into
> >
> > this youtube seminar given by Christo Grozev calls the veracity of this
> >
> > FSB dissident into question ?
> >
> >
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/calendar/insights-bellingcat-russias-ukraine-ambitions
> >
> >
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/calendar/insights-bellingcat-russias-ukraine-ambitions
> >
> > I remember reading a less rough translation of this text by Igor Sushko
> >
> > which he posted as a twitter thread which I saw as a re-tweet from
> >
> > Felix. I remember thinking
> >
> > that it was too good to be true. But as I was informed the source was
> >
> > Bellingcat this gave me hope that it might be accurate. It looks like I
> >
> > was right to be sceptical.
> >
> > --
> >
> > Greetings nettimers after an absence of oh, two decades.
> >
> > I've been following a bit the last couple weeks of posts on Ukraine and
> >
> > related subjects and there's much to meditate on. And thanks to Ted
> >
> > Byfield for pointing me in the general direction of this discussion.
> >
> > I wanted to call your attention to a rather remarkable document that
> >
> > Christo Grozev (of Bellingcat) dropped last Saturday, seemingly written
> >
> > by an FSB 'dissident' (to the extent that such a term can be used in
> >
> > that context):
> >
> > https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500196510054637569
> >
> > https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500196510054637569
> >
> > Here's the rough-and-ready English translation:
> >
> > https://pastebin.com/2agMRGmd https://pastebin.com/2agMRGmd
> >
> > ...and there's a German translation in the twitter thread. Weirdly, the
> >
> > 'voice' of the author immediately reminded me of the Scientist character
> >
> > in Tarkovsky's /Stalker/. You know the one, he smuggled a portable nuke
> >
> > into The Zone.
> >
> > stinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact:
> >
> > nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in
> >
> > Subject:
> >
> > # 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:
>
> --
>
> | || http://felix.openflows.com |
>
> | Open PGP | http://felix.openflows.com/pgp.txt |
>
> # 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:
# distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing lis
Re: FSB 'dissident' voice
I might be confused but I wonder if this statement at about 37 min into this youtube seminar given by Christo Grozev calls the veracity of this FSB dissident into question ? https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/calendar/insights-bellingcat-russias-ukraine-ambitions I remember reading a less rough translation of this text by Igor Sushko which he posted as a twitter thread which I saw as a re-tweet from Felix. I remember thinking that it was too good to be true. But as I was informed the source was Bellingcat this gave me hope that it might be accurate. It looks like I was right to be sceptical. -- Greetings nettimers after an absence of oh, two decades. I've been following a bit the last couple weeks of posts on Ukraine and related subjects and there's much to meditate on. And thanks to Ted Byfield for pointing me in the general direction of this discussion. I wanted to call your attention to a rather remarkable document that Christo Grozev (of Bellingcat) dropped last Saturday, seemingly written by an FSB 'dissident' (to the extent that such a term can be used in that context): https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500196510054637569 Here's the rough-and-ready English translation: https://pastebin.com/2agMRGmd ...and there's a German translation in the twitter thread. Weirdly, the 'voice' of the author immediately reminded me of the Scientist character in Tarkovsky's Stalker. You know the one, he smuggled a portable nuke into The Zone. stinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: # 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: The War to come ...
A missing element in most discussions here and elsewhere is a grasp of the material foundations that underpin The moving parts of geo-politics, particularly factors relating to the control of energy resources. A notable exception is Helen Thompson who's recently published Dis-order: Hard Times in the 21st Century, couldn't be timelier. "The Casandra of Cambridge's bleakly authoritative guide to the overlapping fault lines - monetary - energy and political fracturing our fragile world" In an article just published in the New Statesman she brings her deep knowledge of these issues directly to the catastrophe in Ukraine. Original to: https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/03/profits-from-fossil-fuel-energy-power-russias-war-machine-and-ukraine-suffers --- 'Profits from Russia's Fossil Fuel Energy Power Russia's War Machine and Ukraine Suffers' The West's Failure to Comprehend Russia's Geopolitical Power in the Age of nuclear weapons Has Resulted in Tragedy By Helen Thompson Nobody really believed that history ended in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall or in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But given the previous eight decades of bloody catastrophes, the peacefulness of those events had such a phantasmagorical quality that they seemed to arrive from beyond the 20th century. The American diplomat George F Kennan, who formulated Washington’s containment strategy towards the Soviet Union, remarked in 1995 that in modern international history, it was “hard to think of any event more strange and startling, and at first glance inexplicable, than the sudden and total disintegration and disappearance… of the great power known successively as the Russian empire and then the Soviet Union”. Now, as Russia’s army shells Ukrainian cities, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians flee westwards, the history of that period is revealing itself as part of a longer continuum. The narrative that prevailed about the West’s triumph in the Cold War – that it was down to the superiority of democracy as an idea and system of government – was not entirely misplaced when explaining the 1989 uprisings in eastern Europe (even if it disregarded the role of nationalism and religion in those rebellions). But the geopolitical causes of the Soviet Union’s fall were ignored. From the early 1970s to the late 1980s, the Soviet Union was the world’s largest oil producer. The Soviet crisis began when Saudi Arabia crashed oil prices in 1986 to increase Riyadh’s market share. Tumbling oil prices wrecked the Soviet state’s finances, making food imports dependent on Western credit. Within less than two years, the Soviet Union was withdrawing from its military adventure in Afghanistan and a Popular Front was demanding independence in Estonia. A year later, Mikhail Gorbachev offered no resistance to the revolts in eastern Europe. The age of Soviet energy power was marked by an expansion of Soviet martial force and political influence in mainland south-east Asia, Afghanistan, southern Africa, Ethiopia, and South Yemen. During these years, the Soviet Union also became a significant exporter of gas to west European countries. By the early 1980s, officials in the Reagan administration were convinced that it was hard currency earnings from these sales that allowed the Soviet Union to project military power abroad. They also predicted that the absence of that money would have decisive strategic consequences. But the collapse of the Soviet Union did not end Russian power. Since Russia retained nuclear weapons, any military response by Nato to future Russian aggression still risked unconscionable escalation. When energy prices rose prodigiously in the 2000s, Vladimir Putin was able to restore Russia’s geopolitical power with an enormous bonus: China’s need for foreign oil and gas created a huge new market for Russian energy exports. By the early 2010s, Moscow’s state coffers had been refilled with energy revenues, making Russia an expansive force once again. Meanwhile, its energy power has weakened the West’s capacity to respond to its aggression abroad. Some European countries, such as Germany, have left themselves little choice but to buy Russian gas. Through its alliance with Saudi Arabia since 2016, Russia has also acquired significant control over oil prices. While the volume of Russian oil exports has fallen since the invasion and import bans have been announced, the Russian oil that is being sold is trading at around $130 a barrel, more than two-and-a-half times the price when Russia intervened in Syria in September 2015. To assume, as Barack Obama’s administration did, that because the Russian economy is based on energy Moscow can’t exercise serious power spectacularly misunderstands a key lesson of 20th-century history: the production and control of energy resources create geopolitical power. Regarding Ukraine, the
Re: nettime-l Digest, Vol 173, Issue 13
Brian Holmes wrote: Thanks for this - I am totally curious about Chinese society and haven't been there for a long time. Actually, more recommendations would be cool. I like this regular journal/digest https://www.neican.org/china-scholarship-digest-7/ Also the political economist Helen Thompson has deep historical understanding of China’s evolving place in the wider geo-political sphere which I am sure will be fleshed out in her imminent tome, Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century, which will guarantee you many a sleepless night in all the best and worst senses. David Garcia # 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: The Meaning of Boris Johnson
Joseph Rabie wrote: Concerning... A new and intense awareness of mutual dependency and the collective agency of which we are capable was the great revelation of the pandemic and our only hope of survival. This is not new, it has always been the case in times of disaster. This has been very much the case in wartime, in the solidarity shown by the people in accepting material, and even mortal, sacrifices, however just or unjust the cause. Actually Joseph I think quite a lot is new… going as far back as November 2020 I wrote post which pointed to the proposition that before the pandemic if anyone had suggested that under conditions, other than war, that wealthy technologically advanced states were capable of shutting down 80% of the global economy, furloughing large swathes of the workforce along with 1.4 billion students as well as bringing mass air transportation to a grinding halt, the proposition would not just have been dismissed. As the usually sober and measured political economist Helen Thomas declared “We have to face up to the fact that we have been through something, as a world,.. that in some sense was beyond our imaginations in the west at the beginning of this year.” The appearance of this degree of agency led the other participant in the discussion, Adam Tooze to declare this to be -THE shock discovery of 2020- “hands down, flat out, the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened in modern economic history.” http://new-tactical-research.co.uk/blog/the-unthinkable-has-to-be-thought-sean-cubitt/ Re-reading this article reminds me that at the time Brian was already deploying the concept of an eco-state.. David Garcia # 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: The Meaning of Boris Johnson
Many thanks Brian and Patrice… When Johnson came on TV as head of state and did
not advise but ‘instructed’ me, my family and the rest of the country to ‘lock
down’ I experienced the actual fact and reality of state power as never before.
Much as I despise Johnson and all his works I supported this use of state power
as a uniquely powerful means of supporting the value of mutual dependency over
the value of individual freedom, (this was very difficult for Johnson as a
libertarian Tory as we now realise in the wake of partygate). A new and intense
awareness of mutual dependency and the collective agency of which we are
capable was the great revelation of the pandemic and our only hope of survival.
But the debate over state power and where we might seek to draw the line goes
well beyond traji/comic Johnson sideshow. Anyone claiming, as Patrice, does
that the state is merely an impotent “conveyer belt” steered by corporate
forces has to explain the effectiveness of Xi Jinping’s Hobbesian Chinese state
in reigning in their own corporate giants. The last 18 months has seen Xi
cracking the whip and imprisoning (and doing anything else required) to
re-assert state sovereignty over corporate hubris. This even extends to
legislating time allowed to kids for gaming not to mention tinkering with the
education policy as Xi has decided that the tech and finance sectors are
sucking too many talented graduates away from more tangible forms of
manufacturing.
Some European/western political actors are looking with envy at the perceived
effectiveness of the Chinese (and other proactive Sth East Asian states) in
their forthright nation-wide actions in containing Covid. The likelihood is
that this is just a foretaste of an increasingly loud debate over the limits
and role state power will play as the climate crunch really starts to bite.
This is when we will return to the earlier postings on this thread that spoke
about the science wars.
David Garcia
From: patrice riemens
Date: Saturday, 12 February 2022 at 08:51
To: , David Garcia
Cc: "nettim...@kein.org"
Subject: Re: The Meaning of Boris Johnson
Aloha,
Let me (allow me to) take Brian's rejoinder as an opportunity to address
David's and his argument in face of the (dangerous) shenanigans in 10, Clowning
Street (-Marina Hyde, TG) ... and beyond.
There is absolutely no doubt that Boris Johnson is a very 'special' character
and political animal (Rory Stewart too, btw - but then in a positive sense),
but as David says, his clowneries are froth while 'his administration is less
of an outlier than it appears' - and this with deadly consequences.
I however do differ with David where he ascribe the current
political-ideological imbroglio to the 'return of the state' as a consequence
of the pandemic. According to me, to put it bluntly, nothing of the such has
happened. The state has become more impotent than ever, and it are the
corporate forces which have and are steering the decision-making process, with
the state as mere conveyor belt. There is no confusion there, and even if it
appears to happen more by default than by design, it is still entirely
deliberate.We have truly and wholesomely entered the era of 'govcorp' where the
administrative apparatus is merely, albeit indispensable, exo-squeleton of
global corporate governance, with, in accordance with the spirit of the times,
'hyper' - and hyper rich - individuals at the helm. Welcome to neo-feudalism.
I am afraid that is such a dispensation, clowns like Boris Johnson, and his
exceptionally 'gifted' motley crew ('Jakey' Rees-Mogg, 'Mad Nad' -ine Dorries,
& the many such) are mere props (the extent to which they are conscious of it
is unclear) in the tragedy which are embroiled in for quite a while: that of
post-politics, that is a system where the powers are not what they look and are
not located where they seem to be, and the ongoings take, for the people at
large, every appearance of a puzzle palace. I think this is one of the reason
for populism: desperately trying to make sense where it has vanished from the
political scene (which has vanished too in the process) .
& With regard to Brian's derive of the unhappy pranksters towards a military
expedient: he is completely right, while at the same time, to parakeet Jean
Marie Le Pen's totally infame dismissal of the Shoah as a footnote, it is,
'ontologically speaking', a mere side-show. Even though, with a war in Europe
at our doorstep, we might very well die in it for real.
Yeah, it's a fine mess indeed.
Cheers all the same , and happy week-end
On 02/11/2022 9:17 PM Brian Holmes wrote:
David, your second paragraph sums up a really complex situation in a few words,
thank you.
It's fairly easy to understand how right-wing populists raise the anger of the
people. They do it with fear, born largely of their own m
The Meaning of Boris Johnson
Old friend of nettime Patrice Riemens recently mailed to ask me how I felt about the weird/surreal state of the UK political scene. This maybe of interest to some if not I will no doubt be corrected. - Rory Stuart, one of the old-style Tories purged by Johnson and Cummings has created a fabulous taxonomy to illustrate Johnson’s gifts “as the most accomplished liar in British public life –perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister,” “He has” according to Stuart ”mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie – which may inadvertently be true.” But despite all of this it is just about possible to argue that Johnson has read the runes better than many other Tories and that much of the weirdness of UK politics is to some extent froth. His administration is perhaps less of an outlier than it appears. He is a man of few fixed ideological beliefs which is how (like Merkle) he has held together a coalition with contradictory ideologies.. The ‘greased piglet’ is hard to pin down. Like many countries and regions, Johnson has had to respond to the biggest change brought about by the pandemic which has been to accelerate a shift in favour of a greater role for the state. Including the nation state in part because of the pandemic pressure to close boarders. Unlike other Tories Johnson is at ease with this along with other aspects of an interventionist state, despite frequently pretending otherwise.. The return of the nation state is part of what is becoming a more geo-politically charged world which includes a new awareness of the entanglement of supply chain pressures with questions of security and risk (e.g. Russian pipeline). The newly empowered state is also a consequence of the eye-watering amount of borrowing required to keep our economies from flat-lining. So even for Tories on the right of the party any return to the old fiscal narrative will be pretty much impossible. And Johnson has been quicker to recognise this than other Tories. Despite Thatcherite nostalgia there can be no going back to the Cameron Osbourne response to the 2008 crisis. Johnson’s conservatism recognises that there can be no return to small state with low taxes conservatism. His claims to NetZero ambitions means that world has gone..(But of course he often has to pretend otherwise) The post-covid mad Johnsonian UK has the appearance of a hyper-weird outlier. But wipe the froth of the Johnson Cappuccino and he maybe less of an outlier than it first appears. David Garcia # 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: CfP: Critical reflections on pandemic politics: left-wing, feminist and anti-racist critiques
.. The commodification of ignorance .. In his uncharacteristically angry book ‘Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climate Regime’, Bruno Latour describes Ignorance on the part of the public as a “precious commodity” justifying immense investments. And in a useful footnote he points to the great manual on the active production of ignorance in the case of the tobacco industry being Robert Procter’s Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2011). David Garcia From: on behalf of Sean Cubitt Date: Saturday, 22 January 2022 at 00:25 To: "nettime-l@mail.kein.org" Subject: Re: CfP: Critical reflections on pandemic politics: left-wing, feminist and anti-racist critiques some notes from a manuscript on Truth I've been working on: the problem seems to be one of inadequate distrust The problem with neo-populists is not that they distrust the media but that they trust them too much (and trust the wrong media). They do not seem to distrust advertising, software, fiction and the twitter feeds of billionaires. Their trust makes them angry, and the amplifications of their trusted media mobilise anger as hatred. ‘Freedom’ as war cry allows isolated, fearful and therefore combative people to feel they follow a common purpose, never noticing the paradox that following is unfree. On the other side, ‘trusting the science’ is as dubious as trusting the Lord: both have a sorry record of condoning and causing genocide and ecocide from the Inquisition to Hiroshima. This is why methodical distrust is essential, why we need the analytic aspect of consideration of – to consider where we are, what we can do and what effects our actions might take, informed by consideration for – caring, nurturing, loving (the alien): considering the consequences of truth statements, practices or performances of truth. Truth is a practice, but so is untruth, and they cannot be distinguished by whether they are successful or not, by whatever measure we apply. The natural, social and human sciences no longer pretend to possess absolute truth. It is in general a hallmark of neo-populist, not to say neo-fascist politicians and political movements to claim that they do. They proclaim their one true God, the alternate fact, that trumps all collective wisdom that says there is no single truth and no single place to interpret it from. Truth is not whole, stable, coherent, universal or eternal: truth is performed. There is much more to say about the dispersed subjectivity of the network condition and the in-built tendency to managerialism (we should be translating 'cybernetes' as 'manager') in the no-longer humancyborg corporations that manage networks; about the epidemic of anxiety and bewilderment and the anger they breed. Etcetera. Seán Cubitt | He/Him Professor of Screen Studies School of Culture and Communication W104 John Medley Building University of Melbourne Grattan Street Victoria 3010 AUSTRALIA scub...@unimelb.edu.au New Book: Anecdotal Evidence https://global.oup.com/academic/product/anecdotal-evidence-9780190065720?lang=en=au# Latest from the Lambert Nagle writing partnership https://books2read.com/u/4NXA1W From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org on behalf of nettime-l-requ...@mail.kein.org Sent: Friday, 21 January 2022 7:53 pm To: nettime-l@mail.kein.org Subject: nettime-l Digest, Vol 172, Issue 22 Send nettime-l mailing list submissions to nettime-l@mail.kein.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/BLL_C1WZKqhM3NlQJtLV6TF?domain=mx.kein.org 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: CfP: Critical reflections on pandemic politics: left-wing, feminist and anti-racist critiques (hans christian voigt) 2. Re: CfP: Critical reflections on pandemic politics: left-wing, feminist and anti-racist critiques (Ana Teixeira Pinto) 3. Re: CfP: Critical reflections on pandemic politics: left-wing, feminist and anti-racist critiques (Ana Teixeira Pinto) 4. Re: CfP: Critical reflections on pandemic politics: left-wing, feminist and anti-racist critiques (Hoofd, I.M. (Ingrid)) -- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2022 19:10:26 +0200 From: hans christian voigt To: "nettim...@kein.org" Subject: Re: CfP: Critical reflections on pandemic politics: left-wing, feminist and anti-racist critiques Message-ID: <98ba5664-8a22-42a0-a57c-bada5bbcd...@gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain;
Re: CfP: Critical reflections on pandemic politics: left-wing, feminist and anti-racist critiques
There are certainly important questions to be asked about the ways in which the science is being framed and sometimes manipulated at a time when ‘knowledge’ is increasingly being seen as central in what we take democratic politics to be. Boris Johnson’s original attachment to the ‘herd immunity’ (famously declaring let the bodies pile high) was being justified at the time as “guided by the science”. Richard Horton, the editor of the respected medical journal the Lancet, worried that “the relationship between the scientific advisers and politicians in the early phase of the epidemic was strangely collusive”. And James Wilsdon, (professor of research policy at Sheffield University) has been arguing for some time that “The entire science advisory system feels as if it has been fundamentally – perhaps fatally – compromised by the pandemic.” I don’t know how the data was communicated in the Netherlands but I certainly shared Wilsdon’s discomfort that from the very first moment I saw those press conferences “with Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, the Government Chief Scientific Advisor, flanking the Prime Minister” [like a pair of praetorian guards] “which rang all sorts of alarm bells, in terms of lines of accountability and the blurring of the distinction between advice and decision-making.”. These questions will only increase in importance as we move into a new political phase where the science behind of net zero target will become the new frontline of politics.. David Garcia From: on behalf of "Hoofd, I.M. (Ingrid)" Date: Thursday, 20 January 2022 at 12:07 To: "nettim...@kein.org" Subject: Re: CfP: Critical reflections on pandemic politics: left-wing, feminist and anti-racist critiques Your knee-jerk response is an excellent example of elitist and false-oppositional ‘left’ thinking that has completely fallen for the government and big-pharma propaganda, and forgets to think critically about power structures, knowing very well that right-wing and left-wing, while also entertaining huge differences, are not pure opposites. Baudet would be proud of you; he can rake in the spoils. Cheers, Ingrid. From: Florian Cramer Sent: Thursday, 20 January 2022 13:00 To: Hoofd, I.M. (Ingrid) Cc: nettim...@kein.org Subject: Re: CfP: Critical reflections on pandemic politics: left-wing, feminist and anti-racist critiques - Government propaganda and censorship around lockdown and vaccination [...] - The role of mass and social media in anti- or pro-lockdown or vaccine propaganda, political polarization and forms of media virality (eg. via covid-19 memes) [...] - Mandatory vaccine rollouts as assaults to the feminist appeal to bodily autonomy [...] - Ethical considerations regarding mass experimentation, moral shaming and lateral citizen surveillance [...] - Teleological and theological narratives of science as salvation (eg. via vaccinations) All beautiful examples of a "Querfront" discourse where extreme right positions are packaged in left-wing rhetoric. Not a single point, however, on minorities and vulnerable people and communities endangered by anti-vaccer egoism, and neo-Darwinist politics - for example in the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands, of "herd immunity" through survival of the fittest. You should invite Dutch experts Willem Engel and Thierry Baudet as keynote speakers. -F # 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: # 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:
Mockism
Please give a listen to the Youtube piece attached to this link by the very very interesting artist Micheal O'Connell AKA Mockism https://uillinn-mocksim.blogspot.com/2021/12/solstice-post-out-with-old-in-with-new.html?fbclid=IwAR3bRoLjn_9iK70tGxym2zRwHZWV9sp-ee18akxwTzPzMpK-BMMOSC4w1Rs David Garcia # 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: Social media and mass mobilization in Chile's presidential election
Felix wrote.. "Being a social movement candidate, the mobilization of many different groups as active players in the campaign played a large role, and this mobilization was largely done over social media, with videos, hashtags, and memes. This is not to suggest that Boric is a social media candidate, he clearly is one of social movements, but it is still helpful to counter the somewhat self-defeating attitude that social media amplify only "fake news" and the far right." .. I strongly agree. When we hear media activism routinely dismissed as ‘communicative capitalism’s perfect lure’ in which ‘subjects feel themselves to be active, even as their every action reinforces the status quo.’ (Jodie Dean) Or theorists such as Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams depicting similar initiatives disparagingly as ‘folk politics’ targeting the tactics of withdrawal, resistance, localism: arguing tactics and strategies that were precious and capable of transforming collective power into transformational gains have now been drained of effectiveness.” Are in danger of persuading us to leave a vacuum that is then gratefully filled by reactionary forces happy to occupy old and new social media spaces unchallenged. David Garcia # 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:
The Jersey Assembly
The Jersey Assembly Last week the Island of Jersey, a self-governing (so-called) ‘crown dependency’ of Britain, approved the principal of assisted dying on the Island. Although there are still obstacles, it was a momentous decision with implications for the whole of Britain where assisted dying is still illegal. This was big news in the UK but what was less well covered was the fact that the debate in Jersey’s parliament was called in response to 78% of a citizens’ jury, ruling in favour of changing the law. The Jersey example is just the latest of a gathering wave of citizen’s assemblies addressing a wide spectrum of contentious political questions from constitutional change in Iceland and Canada, to abortion in Ireland and to reaching Net Zero in France and the UK + many other examples. The ways in which Citizens’ juries are recruited and work have become increasingly sophisticated. Deliberative methods with important and well received on-line aspects and richly developed partnership with stake-holders and experts now have a rich history. There is an accumulation of cases showing that this movement is far more than a utopian fad. But that is how it is treated. Although not a panacea they do offer a vision beyond the hyperpartizan politics that is challenging liberal democracy around the world. To an extent we can see this as recasting “the traditional relationship of power between experts and citizens.. democratising expertise..” (Fishkin 2000) But what is so striking fact about the Jersey example was that although the parliamentary decision was extensively covered in the British news media the crucial role of the citizenry was barely mentioned. I am not suggesting a conscious conspiracy but I am beginning to wonder whether there is not a strong unconscious bias against the emergence of participatory deliberative democracy ? Are political journalists and commentators so addicted to conflict as the default setting for democratic politics that alternatives seem well just to ‘bloodless’, and so barely worth discussing as.. its just not *real* politics? Is bias the political equivalent of the old journalistic adage “if it bleeds it leads”? The current political climate where, as William Davis put it “crisis in knowledge and the crisis in politics is one and the same thing” is leading many to ask: whether it might be time to give up on the task of deciding on more or less valid contributions to public knowledge. This arises in the main because we are not sure what we mean by ‘public knowledge’ any more. Where do facts go to become public facts? (other than the courts, elections or focus groups). It is at least worth debating whether or not it is in citizens’ assemblies that knowledge and politics meet in the most generative way. And if there is any truth in this why this movement is still so far below the public radar? David Garcia # 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: notes on cancel culture
Rather than disappearing entirely down the rabbit hole of definitions and interpretations, uses and misuses of the term “cancel culture” I wanted to risk returning to Garry Hall’s earlier cautionary remarks about my uncritical use of "terms and concepts like ‘argument’, ‘careful judgement’, ‘knowledge’, ‘democracy’, ‘public’ as datum points in this way is itself a form of affective politics that ‘“precedes debate, precedes argument, precedes speech”’? In which he suggested that that it "Might too, be a ‘decisionism’, “an acting out or performance of some prior act of identification”’ Gary reminds us of Chantal Mouffe’s questioning of what it is to be political, when its "a political decision always takes place in an "undecidable terrain” in which as Gary argues "social relations are not fixed or natural, but rather the product of hegemonic articulations: that is, of contingent yet temporary decisions involving power and conflict.” The question I want to ask is, what happens to politics if it no longer involves deciding on more or less valid contributions to public knowledge ? Thats not a request for a narrow positivist empiricism or a wish to return to established epistemic hierarchies. It means instead establishing (in the words of digital sociologist Noortje Marres) "a central role in public life for experimental facts: statements whose truth value is unstable”. I think this takes us to spaces that include but go beyond the power question alone and the endless recursive loop of asking: but whose in charge? And the insistence that first of all we must choose a “side”. Come on Us or Them ? Whether this should be default or primary register of our political discourse in the face of complex existential problems is the position I wanted to question. # 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: notes on cancel culture
The usual example from the UK is Germain Greer’s views on transgender issues prompting Cardiff University’s Women’s Society to disinvite her from speaking. And the National Union of Students adopting a similar policy of ’no-platforming’ feminist writer Julie Bindel also for expressing views interpreted as transphobic. The term has now greatly expanded its reach and been adopted by a host of right wing commentators who feel aggrieved for being called out on any subject. Like "snow-flake” and "virtue signalling” and “political correctness” it has been added to the box of rhetorical weapons the right use to complain about, mock and otherwise attempt to shut down criticism. On 14 Aug 2020, at 20:34, Alice Sparkly Kat wrote: > Can folks clarify what they mean by cancel culture and provide actual > examples? What are you talking about when you talk about cancel culture's > "chilling effects"? Are you talking about all white spaces that want to > awkwardly talk about race without having done any learning or work not know > what to say? Are you saying that celebrities with global influence such as > Shane Dawson would be more radical if we all gave them more support? Are you > talking about someone you know? > > Last time I checked, it's not illegal to make problematic statements. It > doesn't get you incarcerated. It doesn't get you killed. Sometimes, public > figures with a lot of wealth and influence see their follower count go down > when they do something problematic. Are the people opposing cancel culture > saying that these public figures are entitled to support from people who > experience their statements as violent? When you are opposed to what you call > cancel culture, are you saying that people who speak out against what they > are experiencing as violence should not talk in the name of "discourse"? How > is that democratic? > > On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 3:14 PM David Garcia > wrote: > Thanks Gary, > > for critically pulling me up on an un-problemtized use of a variety of > liberal bromides. Particularly telling is your last point about the danger of > unwittingly putting myself at odds with the legitimate rage of oppressed > groups whose tactics have been pilloried by both liberals and the right under > the generalised rubric of "cancel culture". I am sorry Alice Yang you are > absolutely right I accept I was not paying enough attention to the context > and struggles within which term is used and mis-used. (including the Harpers > Magazine letter) > > Best > > David > > > > > > > David, > > Thanks for your post on William Davies’s recent contributions to the London > Review of Books. Enjoyed it. > > The mention of Carl Schmitt brings to mind another critic of liberalism, > Chantal Mouffe, and her philosophy of hegemony and antagonism, itself greatly > influenced by Schmitt’s account of the friend/enemy relation. For Mouffe, the > political is a decision that is always ‘taken in an undecidable terrain’. > This is because social relations are not fixed or natural, but rather the > product of hegemonic articulations: that is, of contingent yet temporary > decisions involving power and conflict. (Which has the advantage that these > hegemonic articulations can be disarticulated, transformed and rearticulated > as a result of struggle between opponents.) > > Now, I realize this may seem a rather counter-intuitive question to ask - > particularly for readers of the London Review of Books! But I do worry, is > there a risk that using terms and concepts like ‘argument’, ‘careful > judgement’, ‘knowledge’, ‘democracy’, ‘public’ as datum points in this way is > itself a form of affective politics that ‘“precedes debate, precedes > argument, precedes speech”’? Might it, too, be a ‘decisionism’, “an acting > out or performance of some prior act of identification”’ - one in which the > question of what it is to be political, especially in relation to ‘cancel > culture’, is not taken in an undecidable terrain, but is rather decided in > advance of intellectual questioning? > > Here’s a less subtle (and less philosophical) version of the concern that’s > troubling me and that I'm not expressing as well as I'd like: How do we as > ‘net critics’ avoid coming across - especially to certain of those > progressive or marginalized voices who may have found themselves associated > with cancel culture - as merely activist/artist/geek versions of the liberal > signatories to the Letter on Justice and Open Debate that appeared in > Harper’s Magazine at the beginning of July and that Geert also refers to in > his piece on cancel culture? > > Cheers, Gary > # distributed via :
Re: notes on cancel culture
Thanks Gary, for critically pulling me up on an un-problemtized use of a variety of liberal bromides. Particularly telling is your last point about the danger of unwittingly putting myself at odds with the legitimate rage of oppressed groups whose tactics have been pilloried by both liberals and the right under the generalised rubric of "cancel culture". I am sorry Alice Yang you are absolutely right I accept I was not paying enough attention to the context and struggles within which term is used and mis-used. (including the Harpers Magazine letter) Best David David, Thanks for your post on William Davies’s recent contributions to the London Review of Books. Enjoyed it. The mention of Carl Schmitt brings to mind another critic of liberalism, Chantal Mouffe, and her philosophy of hegemony and antagonism, itself greatly influenced by Schmitt’s account of the friend/enemy relation. For Mouffe, the political is a decision that is always ‘taken in an undecidable terrain’. This is because social relations are not fixed or natural, but rather the product of hegemonic articulations: that is, of contingent yet temporary decisions involving power and conflict. (Which has the advantage that these hegemonic articulations can be disarticulated, transformed and rearticulated as a result of struggle between opponents.) Now, I realize this may seem a rather counter-intuitive question to ask - particularly for readers of the London Review of Books! But I do worry, is there a risk that using terms and concepts like ‘argument’, ‘careful judgement’, ‘knowledge’, ‘democracy’, ‘public’ as datum points in this way is itself a form of affective politics that ‘“precedes debate, precedes argument, precedes speech”’? Might it, too, be a ‘decisionism’, “an acting out or performance of some prior act of identification”’ - one in which the question of what it is to be political, especially in relation to ‘cancel culture’, is not taken in an undecidable terrain, but is rather decided in advance of intellectual questioning? Here’s a less subtle (and less philosophical) version of the concern that’s troubling me and that I'm not expressing as well as I'd like: How do we as ‘net critics’ avoid coming across - especially to certain of those progressive or marginalized voices who may have found themselves associated with cancel culture - as merely activist/artist/geek versions of the liberal signatories to the Letter on Justice and Open Debate that appeared in Harper’s Magazine at the beginning of July and that Geert also refers to in his piece on cancel culture? Cheers, Gary # 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: notes on cancel culture
The whole world Cancel culture gets an even more sinister twist than usual when put through the filter of the title of a recent article by William Davies entitled “Who am I Prepared to Kill? In which he explores aspects of Nazi Jurist and philosopher Carl Schmitt influential reduction of politics down to the base distinction between friend and enemy and ultimately realised in the grim question "who am I prepared to kill and who am i prepared to die for?”. Some see this distinction as the foundation of populism. In a podcast (link below) Davies further develops this theme describing a politics that is worse than simple ‘factionalism’ which he characterises in terms of extreme forms of cultural identification where existential identification becomes the very foundation of political difference. "And this political difference is expressed through an acting out or performance of some prior act of identification”. An affective politics of this kind that "precedes debate, precedes argument, precedes speech” In this extreme Schmittian landscape cancel culture is the only logical outcome. In this world in which politics has no space left for the epistemic, in place of argument we are reduced to the decisionism of picking a side. Not much space left for the careful judgement between rival truth claims. Given this reality I am puzzled that the extensive knowledge and work and examples of successful forms of experimental inclusive deliberative democracy such as citizens assemblies and sortition has gained such little interest or traction. Why is that? Without such formations there is no possibility of a knowledge democracy in which citizens, stake holders and experts deliberate on the issues of public concern..And all we are left with is a slide towards a Hobbsian war of all against all. Maybe politics like journalism now finds itself unable to shake off the old adage ‘if it bleeds it leads’. Is there democratic life beyond the fog of war? I am imagining some kind of curatorial landing zone in which Evidential Realists join forces with Dialogical artists of the "social turn” to forge some kind of transitional bridge to a less toxic public sphere. Any thoughts? David Garcia https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/lrb-conversations/press-the-red-button?utm_source=LRB+icymi_medium=email_campaign=20200802+icymi_content=ukrw_subs_icymi# 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: notes on cancel culture
Right wing scaremongering about ‘cancel culture’ is identity politics for privileged commentators who have learned well how to play the victim card. Is it even possible to imagine a space beyond our current moronic inferno which boils everything down to one or other existential tribal identification as the primary foundation of all political difference. What would a deliberative alternative actually look like? # 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: discussing zoom fatigue
Hi Geert, Micheal et al, I am exploring the possibilities to work across platforms in a scenario where the lecturer can be present to the live audience for Q but deliver a pre-recorded with illustrations using a camera and moving around if necessary. You deliver this from your shared desk top function then revert to normal zoom for discussion. However some early experiments showed that the reception of the sound quality was very poor. I am still experimenting with this. It would be great to hear if lecturers out there in nettime land have been exploring these cross platform options. In terms of look and feel Dave Beech a Reader at Chelsea has been releasing a series of IMHO exemplary lectures. I asked him how he performed the talk so seamlessly and he revealed that he uses an app called teleprompter which is a mini auto cue that he uses on his phone. Here is a good example not only for the lecture style but also a good example of making the subject resonate with current circumstances: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjBb1psf3eA=1s=IwAR1EUiTUC-XVKh7VUAeWxz_GYnkik5V-GbPUB213LHHdG_AWFpcIC9vj-u8 David Garcia # 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: the solution to zoom fatigue
Hi Geert et al, sorry if this is boringly pragmatic but I have found this checklist for holding successful Zoom Webinars to be very handy. It comes from the very interesting Quentin Stafford-Fraser’s blog Satus-Q https://statusq.org/archives/2020/07/05/9701/ Best David # 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: the necropolitics of the BLM uprising?
Many Thanks Steve, and great to see the list being used in this way again. I’m looking for clarification on whether I am right on a distinction that I think you are making. Sorry if I am being stupid: Is a key distinction between 1. an uprising to resist oppression in which (CAE) argue sacrifice of the innocent is acceptable and 2. the concept of a ‘just war’ (e.g. the Bush/Blaire Middle East wars) in which, innocent deaths are completely unacceptable ? If so are there any circumstances in which CAE would support a state military action or intervention other that as defenders (e.g. WW2). Would it for example be acceptable for a state to intervene to prevent genocide? Would that fall under the category of a ‘just war’ which CAE could never endorse ? David Garcia On 9 Jun 2020, at 02:15, ku...@mx.kein.org wrote: > > uprising is a tactic that can be called upon to resist oppression, and > the sacrifice of the innocent in this case is acceptable? > > > > Unlike with biopolitics, we believe we cannot make an appeal to justice. > One cannot argue for the "just" killing of innocent people. This debate > of just killing of the innocent is centuries old in the guise of can > there be a just war? CAE tends to fall on the side of "No, there can't > be a just war.” # 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:
Hiding behind the Virus
In a twitter discussion with a Brexiter I suggested that we would soon know whether the Brexit decision had been a wrong or right as the consequences unfold, his response was highly instructive "Don’t think there’s a right or wrong, the country will just be run in a different way, given what’s happened with covid any judgements on the success or otherwise of Brexit are a long time off to be in any way meaningful.” This is the perfect insight into the Brexit mindset of Johnson and the other charlatans. By refusing to ask for an extension to the December deadline they calculate that the disaster of Brexit will be camouflaged behind the even bigger disaster of Covid, shifting all hint of blame on to the Virus. It may just work… Cynicism unbound... # 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:
Fauci's early plague years
Fauci’s Plague Years Dr. Anthony Fauci has become something of a hero in the US. And with good reason as he may be all that stands between Trump and catastrophe in the US. But to see him standing next to Trump on the podium is to be reminded that in a former life he was also one of the primary targets for ACT UP the formidable AIDS grass roots campaigning group. Those attacks on Fauci culminated when 1500 activists marching to his office waving "Fuck You Fauci" banners and throwing smoke bombs.. Attacking the agency for denying patients access to clinical drug trials. For many activists he is still seen as a key culprit in delaying the roll out of PCP Prophylaxis back in the late eighties and early 90s. This history was brought home to me vividly in a recent BBC radio profile on Fauci which featured HIV AIDS activist Peter Staley describing how the protests "put a fire under his feet”…” and seemed to do the trick as “within a few moths the executive committee of the AIDS clinical trials group met with Tony and they caved at that point”.. “So” claims Staley "it was that demonstration that broke the log jam.” Staley pays Fauci a tribute, describing how “unlike every other member of the US government he invited us to meet with him right away… he also had zero homophobia unlike all of our targets at the time”. Fauci not only listened he also changed his mind. But too late for many activists of whom a significant number to this day see him as complicit in many hundreds of unnecessary deaths. But Staley tells another side of this story which explains why this activist counts Fauci as a friend. Its worth quoting his words in full “During the worst AIDS years hundreds of dying gay men filled up nearly every hospital room at the National Institute for Health Clinical hospital and Tony Fauci was their physician. he lost hundreds and hundreds of patients. The amount of loss that he witnessed is extraordinary. and what I have come to know through my friendship with TonyIs that the scars that I carry from the plague years are scars he carries to. I’ve cried with Tony and he is the man for this moment.. Maybe Fauci learned something from the communicative genius of ACT UP as during the 2013 Ebola out break he went out of his way to dispel American fears by publicly hugging Nina Fam a US nurse infected after caring for a dying patient when she was considered free of the virus and discharged from hospital. A well known English writer and activist put things in perspective for me recently when he warned that this was not "the moment to visit old battle fields unless there is something to be learned from them and applied to the current emergency” adding that “our righteous anger about all those who died dreadful and largely avoidable deaths from PCP should not be used to undermine Dr Fauci’s potential role in saving lives in the COVID 19 scandal in the USA.” So can anything be learned and applied from the plague years to the current emergency? Is it too early for activism and even rage ? What would COVID 19 activism even look like? One thing we learned was that Fauci was that rare thing a scientist willing to listen to those outside of the hierarchies of power. And even entertain the idea that expertise might be found anywhere. The implication of this conclusion is that if we are to prevent the fleet-footed populist demagogues from capiatlising on the aftermath of the crisis with more lies, blame and gas-lighting we will need to begin by fundamentally recasting the relationship between the political class, experts and citizens. David Garcia # 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: coronavirus questions
On 12 Mar 2020, at 08:21, sebast...@rolux.org wrote: > > But also: > > - What is the perspective on coronavirus seen from where you are? What > are the most interesting or surprising narratives that are emerging > in your neighborhoods or communities? > > - Given that social media just adds another layer of unhealthy virality > to the current situation, what forms of communication and care are > being invented or rediscovered locally? The sudden reduction (actually the absence) of handshakes and embraces with acquaintnces and friends feels very sad. The whole range of physical and social contact suddenly gone. But this serves to highlight the importance of these small acts of social solidarity. Will there be a spike in the birthrate when the epidemic subsides.? A mini-Co19 baby boom On the comedic side the fact of telling yourself not to cough in confined spaces like trains or elevators in case you cause a minor panic has the weird effect of actually making you want to cough (is there a scientific name for this phenomenon..?) # 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:
The Quiet Hegemon
The Brussels - The Quiet Hegemon A review in yesterday’s (28th of Jan) FT of The Brussels effect: How the `european Rules the World Anu Bradford’s. The "Brussels Effect" explains how after the UK leaves the EU this week we will soon discover that we have not left at all. As almost every global company complies with EU standards or is shut out of a gigantic market of well off consumers. Whatever Johnson claims the UK will also comply because our companies will. "what if decisions that drove globalisation were not made in televised meetings between world leaders at Davos, but quietly by technical compliance officers in anonymous corporate office buildings ? What if American protectionist bluster and China’s steely nationalist defiance were largely a side show? In sector after sector it has set the rules for the world economy.. “the Brussels effect”already powerful in industries like chemicals and cars.[…] Often spreads through market forces.. as companies adopt rules as the price of participating in the huge EU market. Then impose these rules accross their global business to minimise the cost of running separate compliance regimes.” (Alan Beatie FT Jan 287th P20) A technologically complex world is governed by trade and regulation and Brexiters' idea of sovereignty is sooo 19th century but without the leverage of empire. The EU is a quietly spoken economic super power shaping the world economy through its regulatory regimes. The only difference for UK is that we will no longer be helping to shape those rules. Which is a pity as the EU is by no means benign. Welcome to the world of sovereign impotence. David Garcia # 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:
Populist anger is ‘a gift wrapped in barbed w
In the immediate aftermath of the UK election result Iain Dunt, journalist and angry voice of Liberalism, when asked whether “The campaign is definitive proof that you don’t need to in any way adhere to the truth in campaigning you can just refuse to be scrutinised not do interviews and just steam on through” ? After a long pause..and a deep sigh Dunt replied: “Yeah it is… that doesn’t have to remain the case..that is something we fight.. but what has happened is that, that technique has been vindicated. He (Johnson) avoided scrutiny, he wouldn’t do interviews, he lied relentlessly and he tried to smear and destroy and tarnish the reputation of those who tried to hold him to account. So now in the future people will look at this (people over-seas and in other parties) will look and think THAT WORKS, and he Dominik Cummings and everyone around him will think that works so we’ll keep on doing it. So yes its been vindicated for now.. our challenge our task is to defeat it and that is one of the stories of the next 5 years of our lives.” Dunt is right and every one on the left complaining about BBC bias will look back on it nostalgically as Johnson eviscerates it. He has already declared his government is boycotting the BBC flagship Today program. But what Dunt’s militant liberalism misses is that the technocratic verities of ‘experts’ guiding us with evidence towards legitimate truth claims have been discredited. The endless fact checking that flooded the election did nothing to reverse a generalised epistemic cynicism as political parties even began creating their own fake fact checking sites. Its not primarily the quality of the evidence that matters its how (and how fast) they circulate. Many people who voted for Johnson’s had already priced his lies into market place of wild assertion and spin. In a landscape of lies, they reasoned, you may as well opt for the apex predator. As David van Reybrouk the Flemish advocate of deliberative democracy through citizens’ assemblies recently declared “Populist anger is ‘a gift wrapped in barbed wire. Its people shouting please let us be involved’ ”. David Garcia # 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:
The L Word the F Word and Contemporary UK Politics
If Law and Policy Blog sounds like a boring read think again. Alan Green, David Alan Green is one of the most astute commentators on politics that is UK centered but with implications that are important for us all. https://davidallengreen.com/2019/12/the-l-word-the-f-word-and-contemporary-uk-politics/ -- In a few days there will be a general election in the United Kingdom. This post is not about the possible election result - that is still uncertain and it may even come down to voting intentions which are as yet not settled. This post is instead about two words that should have had more impact on the campaign, and current politics generally, but have not. One word begins with L, the other with F. * The L word The first word is "lie". Some commentators in the United Kingdom aver that more should be done to confront politicians with their lies. Peter Oborne, a journalist of immense integrity, has even sought to document and expose each lie of the current prime minister (the estimable website is here). This is essential work: nothing in this post should be taken to mean that recording each lie is not important. But it is not enough. This is because many politicians now do not care about being called a liar, or even be shown to be one. Such a reaction is a cost of political business for them - and some even relish that they "trigger" such a response as some perverse form of valediction. The ultimate problem is not that many politicians lie. The ultimate problem is far more worrying and far more difficult to resolve. The ultimate problem is that many voters want to be lied to. These voters may pretend otherwise, claiming that they want "honest politicians". In reality, such voters just want politicians to say what the voters want to hear. There is therefore an incentive for politicians to lie. Until and unless many voters can be made to care about being lied to, every fine and worthy effort in exposing the lies is (at least in the short-term) futile - a public good but not enough to effect immediate change. There are many political lies: small lies, forgettable lies, lies that take longer to expose than any mortal attention span. But the biggest lie in the current general election - a lie that may determine the outcome - is "Get Brexit Done". Brexit cannot be "done" without years of intense effort and attention. Entire international relationships have to be rebuilt from scratch; entire areas of law and policy have to be reconstructed; entire social and economic patterns of behaviour have to be re-worked. And all this in addition to the making of actual decisions about what we want those relationships, laws, policies, and social and economic patterns of behaviour to be. And all that in turn against the intractable problem of fitting in a Brexit policy within the framework of the relationship between the United Kingdom and Ireland. Brexit cannot be "got done" by mere exhortation. It is a lie but a lie many want to believe and cannot be dissuaded from believing by mere arguments, logic or evidence. And by the time many voters will come to care that they were lied to, Brexit will be too long gone for any voter choice to make much difference. * The F word The second word - the F word - I will not type. It is a word which has lost its traction when it needed to to still have traction. The word describes the 1920s and 1930s manifestation of populist nationalist authoritarianism, a political phenomenon that despite the heady optimism of democratic campaigners has never been too far away. Complacently, some believed that the thing had gone away with the end of the second world war, or with the transitions to democracy of Spain and Portugal. The thing, however, is always there. What happened in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany and Italy and elsewhere was always just one set of manifestations of the thing. Populist nationalist authoritarianism has more purchase on voters than many conservatives, liberals and socialists realise. It is the politics of easy answers. In the United Kingdom there are those in favour of Brexit who routinely trash the (independent) courts, the (independent) civil service and diplomatic service, the universities, the broadcasters, even the supremacy of parliament. This populist disdain for independent institutions is unhealthy. The threat of the "will of the people" is used as intimidation. Coupled with nationalistic rhetoric (on immigration and Brexit generally) and authoritarian hostility to legal checks on government (contempt for human rights), you have all the ingredients of the thing described by the F word. But if you call this thing by its name, it now has little or no effect. People will yawn and shrug and pay no real attention. And because what we have before us is not visually the same as the 1920s
Re: Morales Longa, Vita Brevis
Perhaps the opposite kind of equally insidious political appeal is the suduction of those who have mastered the art of 'getting away with it'. A famous example is the image of Boris Johnson as London Mayor in the run up to the Olympics stuck on a wire suspended high in the air ridiculously waving two union flags. With any other politician this would have been a PR disaster but for Johnson the image has come signify his impunity, his apparent capacity to defy political gravity. The best description of his style is comes from his erstwhile rival David Cameron who called him the “greased piglet that manages to slip through other people’s hands where mere mortals fail” The psychoanalyst and essayist Adam Philips argues that "whatever else, getting away with things is always a pleasure, however brief. We like to do it ourselves and we like to hear of other people who do it. We are impressed even when we are appalled.. " Although very different in style Trump (also Berlosconi) share this rogue male appeal that speaks to a collective fascination for individuals who “get away with it”.. those who seem to be able to break the rules with impunity (“..pro cake and pro eating it”). Paradoxically all the examples that spring to mind come from the right of the political spectrum. But there is no real paradox as what we see here is the new and radical split conservatism writ large. “stopping people gettting away something […] the restoration of prior authority is conservative. But getting away with something is also conservative of the status quo in so far as it is not an attempt to change the law but to elude it. … They would need to keep the world as it is, not to go on rebelling against it but to go on cheating it.” Adam Phllips (Missing Out.. In Praise of the Unlived Life) Is this another way of defining neo-liberalism..? # 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:
The leader thing...
Charisma vs anti Charisma Short Preamble Some vigilant nettimers might have noticed that the dis-United Kigdom is in the early stages of a general election. And you may even have noticed that proceedings were kicked off with two bare faced lies. The first was in the opening lines of Johnson's initial salvo from outside the Number 10 bully pulpit, in which he declared that this was an election he did not want. Nonsense. He has been begging for this election for months. He actually sought Parliament’s approval for an election on three separate occasions before it was granted. Like Trump (and Corbyn for that matter) campaigning is when he is happiest. Second bare faced lie is his claim that the election was forced on him by a Parliament seeking to block his deal for exiting the EU. But his bill had been passed and granted a second reading by Parliament! The only thing Parliament blocked was the ridiculous three day time table that would have enabled Johnson to steam roller the most important bill in UK’s recent history through without proper scrutiny. Thus it was not the deal per se that was rejected but Johnson’s desire to avoid the scrutiny that might have revealed the leakiness of the vessel onto which we are being invited to set sail. The Beef I recognise that the above is just a bit of local colore of little interest to the list. But the reason I am prepared to risk some disaproval is that there is an aspect of the contest that may be of wider interest; the question of leadership. For me a fascinating aspect of this contest is the stark contrast between the two main leadership offers on the table.. Theresa May, was a painfully shy career bureaucrat who believed she could campaign in the same way she governed as an exercise in detailed preparation and control. This worked for her as a minister and later as PM. But from the moment the 2017 campaign kicked off it was clear that this was an approach implodes at first contact with the rough and tumble of a modern election campaign where the acceleration of unpredictable events is the rule not the exception. In contrast the chaotic space that maximises opportunities for obfuscation and displacement is where Johnson is in his element. People are making great play of the early Tory gaffs and disasters are already creating extreme turbulence. But Johnson relishes turbulence like a kid on a roller coaster the bumpier the better. The main point is (and by this he stands or falls) Johnson just LOVES being Prime Minister. Many (like May and Gordon Brown) long for high office only to discover that they are not really front of house performers. Time and again ambition trumps self knowledge. But this is not the case with Johnson. During his short but troubled tenure stuffed with failures to numerous to list, the alpha narcisist looks supremely happy in the job. In the depths of his being he knows this is where he belongs and this self belief (Etonian entitlement some might call it) communicates itself to followers and (I fear) voters who often respond to someone who offers themselves for a job they look comfortable in. In the old sporting cliche “he/she didnt (or did) want it enough!”. So on the surface this diagnosis should be terminal for Corbyn and Labour. Just as Johnson has spent a lifetime seeking the throne, Corbyn never (until very late in life) sought leadership. Indeed he must wake up every morning astonished (perhaps even horrified) to find himself occupying this position. He is someone in the midst of a personality cult who not only avoids but despises the tricks and tropes of personality based charismatic leadership. But what should give us heart is that this is precisely the fucking point. And it was powerfuly made in his under reported but well made opening address, in which he contrasted himself with his opponent and the conservatives on just these grounds. “I was inot born to rule” arguing that he is only “seeking power in order to share power” that “the good leader holds open the door that others might walk through in the future”. This places what the nature of leadership and by inference government at the very heart of this campaign. The question is will we have the maturity to accept the challenge that is being offered for a very different “experimental” kind of governance. The many years of Corbyn’s political life along with the accidental nature of his original candidacy to lead the Labour party lend credance to these claims and mean we can dare to use the dangerous word authenticity in the case of both Corbyn and Johnson. What you see is likely to be what you will get. But with radically different destinations. David Garcia 08/11/2019 # 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
Some open questions.. some leading questions
- What Would a Knowledge Democracy Look Like - The workshop The War on Knowledge on Thursday 17th of October in Brighton’s Digital Festival. The workshop is an attempt to help flesh out questions that are around issues variously described as the "epistemic crisis” the “post truth era" the “digital tailspin” and “dark epistemology”. Preparation for the workshop generated quite a number of questioned that featured that I tried to address in an article I posted about a week ago. But for the purposes of Thursday I have sought to boil things down to a list of questions and throw them open to Nettime hoping for some some thoughts to be dropped in the “bowl". Just for info the workshop will be led by Marc Tuters and Emillie de Keulenaar of the Amsterdam based research group OiLab who have investigated the dark corners of the internet and tracked and analysed the emergence of alternative knowledge regimes. The event will also enlivened by the presence of scholars and artists from across the region (and beyond) we will also be joined by members of the Forensic Architecture group. The ideal outcome of the workshop would be to flesh out some fresh answers to the question: what would a *knowledge democracy* look like? Here are a bunch of related questions that might need to taken into account along the way: * The internet is frequently blamed for the epistemological crisis. Given that a general erosion of trust in science and its institutions and has been in train for decades to what extent can today’s version of the internet be legitimately asked to shoulder so much of the blame? * Are the tactics of far right populist movements the cause of the epistemic trouble we are in or rather an aggravating and contributory symptom? Where are the correlations that demonstrate that the internet represents a significant 'step change' in the epistemic trouble we are in ? * Can we be more precise about the relationship between the hyper polarisation of today’s politics and the knowledge question? * What other elements that need to be factored in? * Are these problems simply (as analytic philosophers might argue) problems of language, logic or perception or has the nature of how we discover (or construct) facts and truth claims fundamentally changed ? * Can the pursuit of knowledge be reduced to "various competing realities, past and present, each trying to impose its own set of values, beliefs and behaviors.” ? Doesn’t the reiteration of this post-structuralist trope play into the hands of the far right who denounce all inconvenient evidence as ‘fake news’.? * Are today’s facts more provisional and dynamic.? And if so what would that mean for how we organise society and do our politics. * If we accept that scientists and other technocratic authority figures"can’t have their facts back” (Maares) as there is "no norm to return to” then must we give up on the task deciding on more or less valid contributions to public knowledge ? * Can we evaluate the rival claims of re-establishing a relationship between citizen participation and expert knowledge e.g. “open verification” “citizens assemblies” etc ? * Is the day to day relationship between knowledge, power and the citizenry actually often quite banal as it falls under the expanding province of quasi judicial regulatory regimes and their systems. The -expertocracies- and technocracies largely inaccessible to public scrutiny or accountability? * How can this essential regime be respecified? * If the above is the case would it be useful to de-dramatise the case studies and the language of crisis, war, dark, tailspin etc or is this terminology appropriate descriptors of current conditions? (I include the name of the workshop in this critical question.) * If arriving at public facts can only happen in the public domain where are the frontiers of invention for collective action to transform the public domain and make it fit for a 21st century democracy: a knowledge democracy ? -More questions most welcome- Thanks David Garcia # 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:
Supplement and correction
Dear Nettimers any one on the list who found the piece posted on Evidentiary Realism useful should take a look at this piece by Eyal Weizman https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/becoming-digital/248062/open-verification/ In a supportive mail Weizman who leads Forensic Architecture he pointed me to the fact that he had addressed related problems in the this transcription of a talk delivered to the European Cultural Foundation and published here in e-flux on the process and principles of open-verificationand in the era of what he calls dark epistomology. Its well worth reading. He also pointed out an error in my piece. Forensic Architecture’s submission on the NSU case was actually was made to a Citizen Tribunal not to the Parliamentary Commission. https://forensic-architecture.org/programme/events/tribunal-unravelling-the-nsu-complex David Garcia# 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: Moving On- Beyond the Evidence..The Rise of Evidentiary Realism
Hi Simona, yes I see your point. And I very much respect the work you have done with the illegal art practitioners. And I understand the link you are making. I am happy to reflect and re-draft the article on my blog to better reflect reality.. that is after all the good thing about nettime’s ancient but valuable method of “collaborative text filtering”.. But I do think that there is a difference in emphasis between Illegal art and what I wanted speak about in this text. The purpose of the article was to examine and question whether the Evidentiary art movement has the power to confront wider epistemic (knowledge) crisis that is being exploited by the far right. I further wanted to link this movement to opportunities to help build an inclusive ‘knowledge democracy’ by locating where knowledge and power actually connect in the regulatory regimes that are outside of the formal public realm. I also wanted to highlight some of my doubts about what could be seen as the dangers of a rather narrow empiricism that could be seen as embedded within that movement Correct me if I am wrong but that seems a bit different to the important tactical combative approach of the illegal art that you have championed for a long time. Important but different.. But definitely I need to think further and harder to see if I really am missing something.. which is likely. Best David On 4 Oct 2019, at 12:03, Simona Lodi wrote: > >> Brian, David, >> >> I was the first who has spoken about illegal art. You could call it as you >> like - but it is illegal art. I did it many years a go and my text was >> published in English in the 2012-13 in a book edited by Geert. >> >> ciao, >> >> Simona >> >> Il 01/10/19 18:59, Brian Holmes ha scritto: >>> David, congratulations. You have done it. >>> >>> I am too busy working on my own version of evidentiary art to do more than >>> speed read your text, but when I get a breath I will do it justice and >>> respond with a little less of a one-note drone than John Young. It is clear >>> to me that you have tied together a vast complex of images and ideas in >>> order to name - in Paulo Cirio's terms, as it should be - the first major >>> new aesthetic movement of this old decade, a movement which will likely >>> become hegemonic over the next 5 years. Tatiana Bazichelli deserves great >>> credit here too, and you give it, one gets no sense of self-aggrandizement >>> from your text. As it should be. >>> >>> Interestingly, it's often like that. The new thing is recognized at the end >>> of the decade. That's what it means to make history. First it's done, then >>> it's written. >>> >>> We are still waiting for the ecological or earth-systems complement to >>> Evidentiary Art. But now there is a milestone to show that a significant >>> new movement is possible. Others will emerge from the turbulence. >>> >>> Congratulations again, >>> >>> Brian > > -- > Simona Lodi > art critic & indipendent curator > # 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: From "call out" to "call in"
Hi Alice Sparkly Kat, I totally agree with you and see that my little text squib missed the important stuff. thanks for the very detailed and timely correction.. David On 1 Oct 2019, at 14:50, Alice Sparkly Kat wrote: > call in culture isn't meant to replace call out culture. call in culture is > for members of your community who you already trust to exercise > accountability. it's for talking through power structures within a group of > people who already have committed relationships to one another. for example, > if someone within a group of women voices an opinion that's misogynist, > someone might take her aside and call her in, asking her to understand why > her internalized views might be harmful to others and herself. if it's the > same group of women but a cis woman says something transmisogynist, you can't > call her in privately without betraying the trust of the trans members of the > group. > > call out culture is for those with active and oppressive power over you. > racism and sexism are public institutions and addressing them as private > dramas within individual relationships will not work. when someone is > reinforcing the racial privilege they already have, upholding sexism, being > transmisogynist, the right tactic isn't to pull the oppressor aside > privately. to do so is DANGEROUS and puts all of the vulnerability and danger > in the person of the oppressed group. if someone has been acting really shady > sexually, abusing their power etc, for example, they need to be called out > publicly. it's not up to someone who was subjected to harassment to pull that > person aside, talk to them privately to protect their reputation, while > actively putting their body at risk. to think that call in culture is more > compassionate than call out culture relies on assuming the goodwill of the > oppressor (that they didn't mean to assault someone, they were just playing > around) and the malevolence of the complainer (that they're petty or jealous > and trying to take someone's career away out of spite). > > call out culture and call in culture are meant to exist side by side. call in > culture isn't supposed to replace call out culture or be a better > alternative.most of the time, when you try to "call in" a white person they > get fragile really quickly. if they are your boss, you will suffer economic > consequences. if they're part of your friend group, you suffer being > ostracized. call out culture makes the issue known because oppression is > something that every member of your group must have some accountability over. > oppression isn't private business between individuals. > > On Tue, Oct 1, 2019 at 7:14 AM David Garcia > wrote: > In a wokshop I attended the other day on the growing prevalence of the > polerisation or hyperpartzan nature of public > discourse a guy who self identified as gay spoke up and described how since > the Brexit vote he was aware of an increased > hostility. But, certainly in the context of the workshop he was working on > the basis of “good faith” which meant that although > vigilance about our language and attitudes need to remain in place we might > also be cautious about “calling out” as > in public deniciation of what might be inadvertent infringements of > progressive norms. Instead he advocated what he > called “call in culture”. In which when something is said that we find > offensive or simply wrong we might have a policy of > replacing the public call out with taking the individual to one side and > letting them know how we feel.. I think this goes on > anyway but giving it a name, “call in” seemed useful. > > > # 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: > > > -- > website | IG | twitter # 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:
From "call out" to "call in"
In a wokshop I attended the other day on the growing prevalence of the polerisation or hyperpartzan nature of public discourse a guy who self identified as gay spoke up and described how since the Brexit vote he was aware of an increased hostility. But, certainly in the context of the workshop he was working on the basis of “good faith” which meant that although vigilance about our language and attitudes need to remain in place we might also be cautious about “calling out” as in public deniciation of what might be inadvertent infringements of progressive norms. Instead he advocated what he called “call in culture”. In which when something is said that we find offensive or simply wrong we might have a policy of replacing the public call out with taking the individual to one side and letting them know how we feel.. I think this goes on anyway but giving it a name, “call in” seemed useful. # 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: Moving On- Beyond the Evidence..The Rise of Evidentiary Realism
A short follow up on from the earlier posting on Evidentiary Realism as today there is a review of the remarkable work of Lawrence Abu Hamden’s work in today’s Guardian to coincide with his show as part of this year’s Turner Prize shortlisted artists. Abu Hamden is a frequent contributor to Forensic Architecture’s investigative installations as well as having a rich independant practice. His work that focuses on sound (and silence) has some of the most powerful emotional impact of the ‘evidential movement’. Whilst working alongside an architect to draw on sound memories of former blind folded prisoners to build picture of the prison traslating 3D imaging that forms the centre piece of the Amnesty report. https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/saydnaya https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/oct/01/silence-or-death-turner-finalist-lawrence-abu-hamdan-on-recreating-a-horrific-syrian-jail David Garcia # 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:
Moving On- Beyond the Evidence..The Rise of Evidentiary Realism
- Beyond the Evidence - The Rise and Rise of Evidentiary Realism http://new-tactical-research.co.uk/blog/beyond-the-evidence-2/ At a time when right wing populist demagogues routinely denounce experts and expertise a movement of interdisciplinary artists and researchers has emerged whose work is unapologetically generations with some who have been active for decades but the current climate has seen them crystalize into something like a movement that artist/curator Paolo Cirio has dubbed “Evidentiary Realism”. What follows is an attempt give these practices a wider critical context and speculate on how these efforts could be seen as part of a broadly based drive towards a “knowledge democracy” “The internet for all its benefits, has led to an epistemological crisis of unprecedented scale, facilitating the international rise of demagogues and reactionary populists” Mark O’Connell [New Statesman July 2019] What is striking in this quotation is that Mark O’Connell has chosen to characterize our current predicament not as political or cultural or economic or even ecological but as “epistemological”, a crisis of knowledge. Moreover one of the aggravating symptoms of this crisis is the way the a new breed of far right populists have bypassed traditional forms of propaganda, focusing on forms of misinformation that go beyond simple deception, operating instead through establishing "grey areas” or "zones of uncertainty” in which well established norms on subjects such as climate change, migration, poverty, race and sexual identity are not so much rebuffed through competing narratives but systematically called into question through tactics of obfuscation, irony, deniability, displacement and distraction. This is not simply about deception or the struggle between competing narratives, it is a battle for the social mind within the context of a war on knowledge itself. The claim that we are in the midst of a campaign that is explicitly anti-knowledege is reinforced by the words of numerous high profile figures. We have Farage’s frequent attacks on Universities, Michael Gove’s infamous assertion that “we've had enough of experts”. There is the Trumpian use of the term "alternative facts" and Boris Johnson’s systematic avoidance of scrutiny by either journalists and more recently by parliament. It is in this anti-knowledge, populist climate that an art movement has emerged based on the foregrounding of fact, evidence and knowledge in both style and its substance. -Evidently Art- ”There is a new way of understanding our times.. a new wave of realism, a new wave of artists who are engaged in political issues. “Evidential Realism” is the realism of today… “ These are the words spoken by artist Paolo Cirio in a recent BBC radio documentary , ‘Evidently Art’. An art movement that emphasises evidence or "art as evidence” was initially articulated by the curator Tatiana Bazzachelli in 2016. The ideas were further developed in 2017 with greater emphasis on various forms of knowledge infrastructures, by the artist and curator Paolo Cirio in a publication and exhibition that introduced the term “Evidentiary Realism”. Typically it is a movement that combines data gathering, data analysis and digital imaging to illuminate complex social systems for broadly progressive social purposes. In his exhibition notes Cirio describes how the “ the truth seeking artworks featured explore the notion of evidence and its modes of representation”. It is noteworthy side effect that this is perhaps the first fully-fledged research led art movement. It covers a wide spectrum of artists including Lawrence Abu Hansen, Wachter & Judt, Paolo Cirio, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Forensic Architecture, Trevor Paglen, Lev Manovich, Morehshin Allahyar, to name just a few. As I write Bazzachelli is busy building on these achievements with the event CITIZENS OF EVIDENCE that is “exploring the investigative impact of grassroots communities and citizens to expose injustice, corruption and power asymmetries". Recently mainstream awareness of this movement has grown significant enough to become the subject of a recent BBC radio documentary “Evidently Art” in which Andrew McGibbon interviewed a number of artists involved. Within the confines of what is possible in a short documentary McGibbon does a good job of introducing this movement to a wider audience. But although a number of probing questions were asked, important issues remained untouched. The most urgent of these questions revolve around what we might expect (or even demand) of a cultural movement driven by the primacy of evidence and data when the nature and status of knowledge itself is in crisis. Cirio himself acknowledges that applying the principles of ‘realism’ in art is not new. Indeed some of the basic principles of this movement were already in place in the 19th century naturalism, and most particularly in Emile Zola's literary
Fwd: Supreme Court Rulling consequeces
Begin forwarded message: > From: Richard Barbrook > Subject: Re: Supreme Court Rulling consequeces > Date: 25 September 2019 15:07:42 BST > To: David Garcia > Reply-To: rich...@imaginaryfutures.net > >> Cummings’ passion for Bismark and game theory >> (read his blog: https://dominiccummings.com) >> will deliver him a majority by repeating the approach that won the >> referendum. His faith in Cummings is not dented by broken institutions >> "move fast and break things” could have been coined for this bunch. > > Here is our response to the Brexit elite's fascination with game theory which > was performed at The World Transformed during the 2019 Labour conference. > > Richard > > = > > Communiqué 11: 22/9/19 > > CLASS WARGAMES AUTUMN OFFENSIVE > > “The labouring classes have conquered nature; they have now to conquer > humanity. To succeed in this attempt they do not lack strength, but the > organisation of their common strength, organisation of the labouring classes > on a national scale – such, I suppose, is the great and glorious end aimed at > by the Labour Parliament.” – Karl Marx. > > Comrades and citizens, the future of this island and its inhabitants will > soon be decided by the decisive battle between the Party of Emancipation and > the Party of Reaction! For over three years, the class enemy has schemed and > manoeuvred to escape the consequences of its self-inflicted defeat through > victory in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Our stunning advances during the 2017 > election inflicted severe losses on the Tories and demoralised their depleted > troops. This year, they’ve already dismissed one failed general and selected > a duplicitous scoundrel as her replacement. The Conservative government’s > last hope of recovery is the appointment of Dominic Cummings as Boris > Johnson’s aide de camp. Mesmerised by the solipsistic formulas of Johnny von > Neumann, Thomas Schelling and Herman Kahn, this aficionado of game theory is > playing a Brexit contest of mutually assured destruction with a numerically > and economically superior competitor who can easily survive the worst case > outcome in its decision matrix. While waiting for this Tory stratagem’s > inevitable miscarriage, Labour activists must now redouble their efforts to > acquire and perfect our greatest advantage in political and economic > struggles against the oppressors of humanity: game practice. > > On Sunday evening, Class Wargames will begin its ludic intervention at The > World Transformed with a participatory performance of Guy Debord’s The Game > of War. First published in 1977, his simulation was designed as the > Situationist cure for the oligarchical recuperation of participatory > democracy. By moving silver and gold pieces across the gridded board, its two > teams of players are able to teach themselves the tactical and strategical > principles that deliver success on the social battlefield. For far too long, > military learning has been monopolised by the privileged few. By training > withThe Game of War, this wisdom can now be shared amongst the many. When > every proletarian possesses the knowledge of how to be a skillful general, > then revolutionary leadership is exercised by the entire class. > > On Monday afternoon, Class Wargames is making its second intervention at The > World Transformed with Digital Liberties’ Taste of Power: the great municipal > socialism game. Building on last year’s A Very British Coup mega-game, this > massive multi-player role-playing exercise enables Labour cadre to experiment > with different responses to the many crises and opportunities which we will > face when in government. By competing and cooperating together, the > participants in the Taste of Power game can learn how to combine > administrative efficiency and community mobilisation to bring about radical > social change. When the Labour party goes into government, the working class > must, as a whole, take control of the conditions of our everyday life, at > work, rest and play! > > Wargames are a continuation of politics by other means. > http://www.classwargames.net > https://www.digital-liberties.coop > https://www.facebook.com/groups/58141166910 # 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:
Supreme Court Rulling consequeces
Sorry nettime (press delete anyone who has a life and so is uninterested in UK politics and related constitutional/Brexit shenaningans) https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2019/sep/24/say-it-with-a-brooch-how-a-fashion-item-became-a-political-statement Aside from the fascinating and (for sad folk *me*) important constitutional consequences of the rulling (its 25 pages and worth a look for its elegant argumentation in classic english legal prose--dply sexy!). Patrice asked me if yesterday’s Supreme Court rulling whether would lead to the sacking/resignation of the Brexit "brain lord" Dominic Cummings or even the demise of unfunny comedy toffs Mogg and Johnson. Sadly the answer is a resounding NO. Beyond the sound and fury yesterda’s Supreme Court’s rulling Jonson is still popular in the country at large. And like Trump every defeat is turned into a victory as it strengthens the populist narrative that he is the people’s tribune fighting the elite establisment blah blah utter bat-shit but it still cuts through. The calculation is if he can weather the storm to an election then he can capitalise on his "die in a ditch” pitch to win big. Whatever the pressure from within his own party Johnson will not sack Cummings as he is heavilly invested in his tactics for winning the election when it comes. He hopes and believes that the combination of “do or die” (Biggles Defy’s the Swastika) rhetoric combined with Cummings’ passion for Bismark and game theory (read his blog: https://dominiccummings.com) will deliver him a majority by repeating the approach that won the referendum. His faith in Cummings is not dented by broken institutions "move fast and break things” could have been coined for this bunch. It is an ethos in which failure is just seen as success by other means. So he will not sack him. At least not until beyond the election. From a strictly political position dont believe those who say that it changes nothing. Here are the main points.. To begin with Labor were able to conclude their annual conference on a high. There was real swagger in Corbyn’s speech enabling him to focus on attacking Johnson and diverting public attention away from a tricky start and internal divisions. Labor were looking at a difficult final day or two but now they avoiding thoes banana skins and return to Westminster with a “spring in their step”. Importantly the fact that the verdict of the judges was unanimous means that the government know that they are unlikely to be successful if they try other tricks or try to Prorogue again. And their bluf about defying the lae to short circuit the bill designed to force Johnson to ask for the extension is rendered far less likely Finaly the fact that Parliament is in session will enable MPs who are legal eagles to amend the legislation to make sure its watertight. as some people are worried that it was hastily drafted and might have some loop holes. This is vital as the only chance (and its still a long shot) of defeating Johnson is to force him to fail to get the UK out by the October deadline. Making him fail is essential to the hopes of the Remain resistance. Once the election kicks off (mid November is my guess) the question is whether Labor’s postion of *we’ll do a gentler version of May’s deal* and then put it back to the people to decide on the new deal or Remain…. is too complex for the age of hyper-polarisation, micro-targeting and sound bites.. where Cummings and co excel. But people continually underestimate Corbyn’s qualities as a campaigner he is much better on the “stump” than in interviews and his current rif of being the adult in the room (which he is) may yet cut through. There is also a strong chance that Johnson will wilt under scrutiny. Under the relentless heat of an election campaign there is a strong possibility that people will realise that he is.. well quite rubbish.. Lets also remember the ‘Momentum” factor. I was at the The World Transformed event organised by Momentum in Brighton in the last few days and they are remarkable and adress one of the core issues of today’s radical politics. How can you combine the energy and autheticity of a movement with the need for party stuctures able to win and sustain power. We will shortly see whether Momentum still seem part of the answer to this question. But my impresson at the event was that they are still an amazing youthful energised grass roots base that you just can’t fake. The Tories keep trying but still cannot come close to matching them. In my oppinion Corbyn (aka Magic Grandpa) will ride again in November… here’s hoping. David Garcia # 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 conta
what is to be done
listening to the Ted and Felix discussion is great thanks Shulea and others who made this happen.. Alongside the mailing lists and Nettime should feature a regular radio program. # 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: don't be afraid of 'project fear'
Yes correct.. exhibit 1. as evidence is that many in the current cabinet serving under Johnson contributed to a dubious anthology of post Thatcherite drivel the title “Britania Unchained” tells you all you need to know about post imperial arrogance a nd delusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britannia_Unchained Worth a visit just for the cover.. David Garcia On 2 Sep 2019, at 14:14, Morlock Elloi wrote: > An interesting proposition: it's about terminal illusions of grandeur. > Abstract below, full text at > https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10./1467-923X.12739?af=R > > >> Since 2016, the UK government has outlined plans for ‘Global Britain’ >> as a framework for post‐Brexit foreign policy. Some criticise the idea >> as a vision of ‘Empire 2.0’, but it is rarely made clear exactly what >> form it takes or what its wider political implications are. This >> article argues that Global Britain constitutes not just an idea or a >> slogan, but a foreign policy narrative and, more specifically, the >> narrative of empire. Indeed, to appear reasonable its grand ambitions >> require pre‐existing knowledges of past imperial ‘successes’ and >> accepting images of empire among the British public. Yet Global >> Britain lacks efficacy: as a domestic rather than an international >> narrative, by being inherently regressive in its worldview, and for >> contradicting the preferences of international partners on which the >> UK heavily relies. These narrative flaws, it is argued, make Global >> Britain an actively problematic, rather than merely ineffective, >> component of UK foreign policy. > > # 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: # 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: don't be afraid of 'project fear'
Hi, just a quick question: Why should we care about Brexit and England at all? It just takes so much energy and resources out of all of the rest. I think we have much more important issues in EU. Who cares about arrogant, failed and backward country that gets the backlash it deserves? Scots and Welsh should separate and stay in EU, North Ireland given to the Republic of Ireland - problem solved. And we have the third class Singapore alike creation of what's left of GB. Hi Harv, just a quick response to your pertinent "why should we care question”. Let me ask who is the ‘we’ you are refering to ? EU citizens ? Do you include the millions of EU citizens livng in the UK sometimes for decades who now don’t know if they are on their "arse or their elbows"? Or maybe you are generous enough to include the Brits who have made their lives in the EU countries and whose world have been thrown into turmoil. Maybe its the 'we' who have families with partners and children. Sorry if me wanging on about the plight of millions of individual citizens who are about to lose their rights seems to you of no consequence (and compared with the plight of refugee migrants it can seem like a marginal issue sure). Also the technicalities can be quite boring and procedural I know unless you have some interest in the variaties of constitutional law when it falls into crisis. Quite nerdy I know but nettime is a space where nerdy discussion and passionate politics can meet.. right? More broadly there may even be something to learn from the particular forms of populism that spring from politicians who hijack constitutions and claim that “speaking for the people” using it to ride roughshod over constitutional legal norms that have evolved over generations. This has echoes in a number of other countries. But perhaps you are lucky enough not to live in one of those countries and can simply turn your back and say why should 'we’ care. Whoever this big “we” are Best David Garcia On 1 Sep 2019, at 15:36, Harv Stanic Staalman wrote: # 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:
don't be afraid of 'project fear'
Dear Nettimers Next week the British parliament will try to introduce legislation to make a crash out no-deal Brexit impossible. Given the limited time available, since Johnson and co will soon shut down Parliament for a month, the rebels must complete this legislative proces in one week. A very very difficult task and a battle Royal, as it must go through the upper an lower houses with filibustering and many other shenanigans. But even if the rebels succeed it is now clear that the Johnson government will just ignore parliament's will by with-holding the sovereign's Parliamentary Assent. Can they really get away with that the short answer looks like yes. Constitutional legal expert Robert Craig (a wise owl despite looking like Hannibal Lector) points to the following legal opinion. " If the monarch were given clear and firm Prime Ministerial advice that she should withhold her royal assent to a Bill which had passed through the Houses of Parliament, it seems to be the case that the monarch should follow that advice."(Public Law, 63-64) https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2019/01/22/robert-craig-could-the-government-advise-the-queen-to-refuse-royal-assent-to-a-backbench-bill/ So here's the question: when government is hell bent on ignoring the previously binding constitutional arrangements of one of the oldest parliamentary democracies in the world is the only avenue left to citizens a program of sustained mass civil disobedience? One of the most effective rhetorical tools of the Brexiters is to call every objection raised about the likely consequences of a hard Brexit *Project Fear* “Oh there they go again with their fear tactics." The standard remainer responce has been to try point to all the evidence hoping that reason and will ultimately prevail. But that time has passed. Fear is not cowardice. It is perhaps the most important instinct on which survival often depends. Like the Impressionists and the fauvists who embraced the insults of their critics performing a piece of rhetorical judo.. remainers need to do the same. It may be time to candidly embrace Project Fear and say yes I am fearful for this country’s future. Not fear as paralysis or ‘flight’ but as the driver that unites the fragments in a for call to action to begin the restoration of parliamentary democracy. It won’t be easy. David Garcia PS Below is the latest twitter thread of constitutional legal guru David Allen Green -How we got here- Brexit, the Tories, and the Constitution A thread on how we got here, with actual examples Secretaries of State repeatedly misled the House and its committees over the extent and existence of Brexit sector analyses reports The government committed itself to billions of pounds of public expenditure in a blatant bribe to the DUP for support in a supply and confidence vote The government stood by when there were attacks on the independent judiciary and the independent civil service "Enemies of the People" “Traitors" The government deliberately broke the pairing convention, in respect of an MP on maternity leave, so that the the government could win a vote The government gave serious consideration to blocking a duly passed Bill from obtaining Royal Assent The government has now locked the doors of parliament for five weeks in the crucial run-up to a no deal Brexit, just to avoid scrutiny and adverse legislation Today a senior cabinet minister refused to commit the government to complying with any laws passed by parliament And the response of government supporters to anyone disturbed by this pattern of increasingly serious constitutional wrongs? "Hysterical" But these concrete examples show there is something serious to be worried about Something bad is happening, and it has to be stopped /ends # 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: from Meatloaf to penalty Shoot Outs
On 24 Aug 2019, at 10:52, Dr. Peter Troxler (p) wrote: > So it is not just the referendum, it is how the referendum is used in a > rather different system of implementing democracy (oh, and did I mention that > the “constitution” is actually a written document in Switzerland, not an > assemblage of Acts of Parliament, court judgments and conventions). > Yes the question of different written and unwritten constitutions is interesting and important from the UK’s point of view. Our consitution is supposed to be unwritten but a great deal of it is written but in many different places not in a single document. We are currently supposed to be in a ‘constitutional crisis’. But actually the constitution has (so far) stood up to the current ‘stress test" quite well as parliament has actually succeeded in holding the government to account. The real test will come when parliament reconvenes in September. Johnson and Cummings have made it clear that they are prepared to defy convention and many of our key protocols (e.g. a Prime Minister resigning and calling a generation if defeated in a vote of no confidence) are not legaly enforcible rather they are normatively binding. Faced with a Speaker prepared to defy convention and government prepared to defy usually binding normative conventions the foundations of our current losely framed constitution and party political framework are likely to tested as never before in generations. Its a great time to be a constitutional lawyer or a curious observer from another land, but its a bad time for the rest of us. David Garcia # 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: from Meatloaf to penalty Shoot Outs
The relationship we have between knowledge and political decision making in the context of complex technological societies hss been recognised as problematic since the arguments between Dewey and Lipman in the 1920s and many of their arguments about the changing nature of democracy and the nature of the public as we moved beyond the small communities of farmers envisaged by the founding fathers are as relevant today as they ever were. One particularly apsoste ‘entity' that our constitutions have not yet come to terms with is the enormous growth and importance of a domain that exists outside of normal politics (until there is a problem) and that is the vast hinterland of regulatiory bodies with quasi judicial powers sometimes called Quangos in english. A good example is European Medicines Agency (EMA).. Which as a direct consequence of Brexit has moved from London to Amsterdam. EMA as is a regulatory structure for decision making about our medicines and other pharmascuticle products. The trouble is that if you look at the UK’s Brexit political declaration all it says about the EMA and other regulatory regimes is that we will aspire to associate membership. What the f*%K does that mean? We will *aspire* to be in an absolutely critical regulatory framework which is regulating all the medicines and pharmaceutical products we use. We are in effect aspiring to join something that doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as associate membership. It is not a golf club. And even today with weeks to go we just don’t know. Manufacturers don’t know.. customs officials don’t know. We are a knowledge free zone. This time next year will we be operating under the EMA’s regulatory regime and certification processes for their products.. that is absolutely staggering and alarming.. and the same is true of food standards. This highlights the basic misunderstanding of the UK’s position of being prepared to leave without a deal.. It is an 19th or early 20th century idea of political sovereignty that existed before the rules and treaty based international systems we inhabit today. And highlights perfectly the epistemic crisis we face when we misunderstand the foundations of the world we live in. The deep trouble we are in to some extent originates from the fact that the vital work of these agencies are opaque and lack any meaningful interface with the publics that arise when a problem arises that demands public involvement. I see a great deal of value in emergence of Citizans assemblies operating in conjunction with referenda. This happened successfully in the Irish abortion referendum where expert groups were deployed in these assemblies not as decision makers but as advisors or public servants. Although this kind of democratic experiment is not fullproof we need to persevere with experimentation in this most urgent task of building a ‘knowledge democracy’. In my view this begins by recognising the regulatory regime as a new arm of government as important as the judiciary, the executive and the legislature Acknowledging this status would force us to think about how we make these bodies more transparent and accountable and ultimately improving their interface to the citizenry. B David Garcia On 23 Aug 2019, at 12:56, Michael Guggenheim wrote: > I beg to disagree, and I would love to invite you to a trip to Switzerland, > where indeed referenda are held 4 times a year on all kinds of things, from > deciding whether to build a new school or (infamously) whether to ban > minarets. Sometimes you and I may agree or disagree with an outcome, but the > last time I checked, overall policy decisions in Switzerland were no better > or worse (according to my parochial judgment) than those of any other > European country without regular referenda. > > When I last checked (a week ago), Switzerland was not "frighteningly > fascistic". In fact, it is the opposite. A simple reason is that if people > are asked in referenda repeatedly, they learn how to act in referenda > (including the fact that the state develops complex techniques for > administering them, that overcome the beginner mistakes of the Brexit > referendum (was it advisory or not? What were the options exactly? etc.). > Most importantly, they do get engaged in the relevant questions and are much > better informed about issues. They also have the possibility to decide case > by case whether they agree with a certain policy, rather than being forced to > vote for a party with which they may agree in some issues bit disagree in > others. > (Also ask yourself: Are MPs better informed and do they make better arguments > than random people on the street? Answer: They do not, for the simple reason > that they are not trained to be policy makers). > > best > Michael > > > > On 23/08/2019 11:28, Sean
Re: From Meat Loaf to Penalty Shoot Outs
John Preston wrote > I fail to see how anyone can say anything with certainty, nobody seems > to quote any models or statistics (that's not a dig about the discussion > on this thread, it's a general vent about the nature of all discussion > around Brexit). It is not only that no one knows anything with certainty, no one (with regard to Brexit ) knows anything at all. Presenting more stats and facts will change nothing and shift no ones opinion. People have given up quoting evidence and statistics because the role of evidence in public life is no longer clear and so has little or no traction. Once in government politicians no longer feel they need to submit themselves to questioning or scrutiny. The mantra of every news transmission has become “we asked the ministry for somone to answer these questions but no one is available". Private Yotube channels have taken the place of serious discussion and the probing interview. The Brexit Party has even refused to put out a manifesto claiming that they were only ever packed with lies. At a stroke Farage dispensed with the principal instrument for evaluating claims and promises in search of contradictions and error as parties seek public support. In place of knowledge the new populists prefer instinct and the leader’s charisma to be the basis for public judgement. The secure position of authority once enjoyed by experts has fallen by the way-side. This expertocracy used to be the basis for manufacturing consent and we were rightly suspiscious of this regime and its role in marking the line between legitimate and illigitimate knowledge. The traditional role of evidence and expertise in public discourse has gone. It cannot be regained in its old form, normal service will not be resumed, the genie is out of the bottle, the horse has bolted the cat is out of the bag.. knowledge, evidence, facts, experts and expertise will have to find a new and less arrogant relationship to the publics that arise when problems cannot be solved by normal political means. More spread sheets, models and statistics or expert commentary will not help us. David Garcia # 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:
From Meat Loaf to Penalty Shoot Outs
-What Now- For the time we have gone beyond a Govenment of National Unity (GNU). as this option has run into the sand with Corbyn unable (as yet) to find the numbers and all the other factions against no-deal have been able to coalesce around an alternative candidate with enough cross party support. This may well change in late September early October when procedural options are exhausted and we are staring down the barrel of a gun. Then we might find that tribal walls start to soften. In the mean time the main action will be with regard to procedural maneuvers. Once parliament reconveenes those against no deal and remainists will be placing their hopes on a cross party coalition led by a combination of legal brains like Letwin, Grieve, Cooper and Benn + former cabinet heavy weights like Hammond, Gauke and Stewart who will work with a sympathetic speaker to try an get control of the parliamentary time table to amend and legislate to stom no deal (they are already plotting with the speaker behind the scenes). BUT these maneuvers are as unpredictable as a 'penalty shoot outs’ and just as unpopular. So they might well fail. As despite the arithmetic the government has the advantage that leaving the EU is the default legal position. BUT most constitutional legal brains believe that it is rebuttable BUT it will take a huge effort of "coordination, time and unanimity” (David Allen Green) among remainist MPs which they have as yet shown no sign yet of displaying. For all the wrong reasons the coming months will be ‘interesting’ David Garcia # 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:
It goes beyond the Meat Loaf Problem
My friend Racheal Baker just posted the question on FB: "why is a no deal Brexit is less detrimental than a temporary Corbyn-led gov. What exactly is it that centrists are scared of? It’s not the fear of the democratic socialism of Labour’s policy positions (akin to Scandinavia or Spain). It appears to be the figure of Corbyn himself…" For thoes living outside of the UK this question springs from the fact that Corbyn has recently offered to call a vote of no-confidence and put himself forward for a short term Prime Minister for the sole purpose of requesting a further extension to article 50 from the EU followed by a Genera Election. In this offer Labour has committed to campaign for new referendum with Remain on the ballot. Rachel not unreasonably is curious why all these MPs who claim that their overiding duty is to prevent no deal should not take this opportunity when all of the other pariamentary devices being planned are so much more convoluted and uncertain? There is as Rachel suggested a strong personal animosity at play. Aggravated by an unrelentingly hostile press. The dilema has in some quarters been dubbed the Meat Loaf problem “Ill do anything to avoid no deal. But I won’t do that”! But beyond personalities and ideologies is another important factor is constitutional. The UK first-past the post.. zero sum.. winner takes all party political system means that our politicians have very little experience of (and a mental block) with regard to any bi-partizan cooperation. All the other parties know that once Corbyn is through the door of number 10 he will have been legitimised and all the efforts to de-legitimise him as a credible potential PM will go up in smoke. Certainly any of the (so called) Conservative rebels who went down that road would be forever tainted. But anyone serious from any of the parties should take the proposal seriously. It should be seen as a portal to pulling the plug on the current madness rather than an ultimate destination. Sadly I can't see it working. He will need 20 Tories to come over to him and he won't get even get 5. But as the leader of the second biggest party he is still a powerful force and must be reckoned with. Even though he is not trusted by Remainers who see him as a closet leaver his record on whipping Labour to avoid no deal should reassure sceptics. He may have been ambivalent on Brexit per se, but voting record shows he is very serious about avoiding no-deal. In my opinion he has every constitutional right as leader of the opposition to put in the first bid. And in my view it was both reasonable and a politically shrewd offer. Moreover the having submitted himself to the electorate in the last General Election and greatly increased the membership of the Labour membership his personal democratic mandate is greater than Johnson's. BUT he knows now that he will not be able to command the numbers in Parliament. So he will very shortly have to answer the most important question of his political life: what is your plan B for avoiding the disaster of a crash out of the EU? t When it is established that he cannot get the numbers himself will he be prepared to whip Labour to back someone else (posibly a less divisive Labour figure) who can win the confidence of enough MPs to work across the political tribes? There is a great deal at stake for all us poor Brits. David Garcia# 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: limits of networks...
On 1 Jul 2019, at 15:24, Kristoffer Gansing wrote: > discussion of > networked forms seems to be returning at the moment, maybe especially > also on a list like nettime, because it seems as if it disappeared from > the big "digitalisation" debates that are now anyway everywhere. (except > for the breaking up of THE social network) Meanwhile, users are > returning to smaller networked forms in the form of the fediverse or in > other intimate constellations taking their cue from safe spaces and > intersectional practices online, offline or rather in between. Exciting that the next Transmedialle will look at the re-emergence of discussions of “networked forms” which I suppose would include a reassesment of the sociological concept of the “network society” at the point when there is a strong movement away from the Castells’ depiction of the net as a “universal space”. This was always a vision that flew in the face of many highly situated socio/political movements for whom there is no such thing as any universal categories, principles, or experiences. Does recuperating "autonomous zones" and "safe spaces” of smaller networks represent effective resistence to the new technological formalism of big tech’s computational social scientists? Or does it simply highlight the fact that the twin ideals of autonomy and participation that were once seen as not only related but actually entailing one another have proved themselves to be all to frequently incomensurable as to be a participant is always to be enrolled in some kind of infrastructure ? # 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: nettime-l Digest, Vol 141, Issue 66
Hi one of the surest signs of a struggling platform is spiraling into meta discussions (nettime anout nettime) what is it and what its for.. a platform doomed to argue endlessly about itself. The mods maybe less interventionist but they still know how to make their presence felt when necessary. And the advice that more familiar voices should take a back seat so that others may feel empowered to "pipe up” did seem to lead to a brief flurry of fresh activity. But there is more to it if we want to blow lightly on the embers to spark it back into life. Sometimes that still happens from time to time but not enough. For my money the best way to change nettime is to contribute pieces of (loosely defined) nettcriticism generously to the list. Maybe even taking the risk of exposing embryoninic slices of books or articles in the process of being writen and the exposure of ideas only partly formed. To take just one example I remember that a number of the ideas of Lev Manovich’s Language of New Media first saw daylight on these pages and evolved a bit through discussion. I may be wrong but my impression is that this happened far more frequently in the early phase when nettimers (perhaps less professionalised) risked using the space as a dry run with critical peers. People these days seem far more protective of their work often holding back to wait for more formal publication settings. There are exceptions and I could be wrong but thats how it feels to me. If I am misreading this and if not then maybe suggest some ways this might be addressed? Moving from the ICT era where we began in the 90s to our world of mobile devices and smart infrastructure and platforms makes something like nettime's a community memory reflective, generous but willing to be critical a space that is MORE not less valuable. But maybe we have use it more experimentaly both in the writing and in how it connects to other platforms. So my ten cents worth is to ask for more generosity, more experiment, more risk taking (perhaps) some curation (in terms of seeking out and requesting contributions)..and please not too much meta-discussion. David Garcia On 30 Jun 2019, at 11:31, Allan wrote: > hello, > Seems Nettimers suffer similar illusions of those entrenched in other forms > of social media. Disconnected or detached from face-to-face political > processes and programmes linked to the daily activities that change > institutions and governments there is an abundance of debates, verbiage and > sometimes just utter nonsense. > > What appears necessary is a re-framing of Nettime objectives and upgrading of > the discursive tools that could make conversations more relevant and > constructive. > > Keep the faith > Allan > On 2019. Jun 30. 12:00 +0200, 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: Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can change it. >> (carlo von lynX) >> 2. Re: Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can change it. >> (Molly Hankwitz) >> >> >> -- >> >> Message: 1 >> Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2019 16:11:47 +0200 >> From: carlo von lynX >> To: nettim...@kein.org >> Subject: Re: Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can >> change it. >> Message-ID: <20190629141147.ga30...@lo.psyced.org> >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 >> >> I'll keep it short as I've said it before some years ago? >> I think the pro-active moderation was the whole specialty >> of nettime, fostering high quality and inclusiveness. Since >> you dropped that (possibly because it was too much work, so >> I'm not blaming) the list slowly lost its focus just as all >> the sociologic research I look into predicted? maybe Pit >> can give it the original pitch back? Hugs from NK, C. >> >> >> >> -- >> >> Message: 2 >> Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2019 13:23:18 -0700 >> From: Molly Hankwitz >> To: carlo von lynX >> Cc: nettim...@kein.org >> Subject: Re: Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can >> change it. >> Message
The Uses and Abuses of Citizens’ Assemblies
The Uses and Abuses of Citizens’ Assemblies Of all the Conservative Party candidates competing in the parade of lying nincompoops to be the UK's next Prime Minister Rory Stewart is the exception in that he actually tries to answer questions and is the most honest about the obstacles ahead. However the central part of pitch to solve Brexit impasse is to use the evolving method of Citizens’ Assemblies modeled on Irish abortion referendum is deeply flawed for the following reasons: 1. unlike the Irish Ref Stewart is ruling out in advance the two most likely outcomes "no deal"or a "confirmatory referendum". Its completely pointless to convene a Citizens' Assembly with the participants aware that the two probable outcomes have already been ruled out. 2. The Irish Citizens' Assemblies happened as part of the Referendum process itself so the participants had a sense of genuine agency and saw that they were contributing to the outcome which of course made the process credible. 3. Although the Irish example lead to a positive outcome there are a quite a few less positive examples of Citzens Assemblies. This is no reason to try but expectations should be moderated. 4. The Irish process had plenty of time to unfold. So unless Stewart was to commit to extending the deadline beyond October and committing to considering all outcomes not just ones he already favours then it is not so much a solution to Brexit block as a dodgy gimmick. It is also important to recognise that the Labour MP Stella Creasy has been proposing a Citizen's Assembly to address Brexit for nearly 2 years. But the difference is that she would fold them into a new Referendum on the deal, with nothing ruled out and on the basis of enough time to enact the process properly. This is extremely important as Citzens' Assemblies are an important innovation that hold out some hope of reforming the democratic process that is badly in need of repair. This really is a multi-dimensional opportunity because as well as creating a framework for experts to advise citizens rather than dictate to these bodies could be integrated into or constitutions as part of the process of building a 'knowledge democracy’. This would be an important challenge to the populist phenomenon of politics as a “knowledge free zone”. It would represent a challenge to parties like Farage's Brexit Party who refuse to have a manifesto for us to examine or individuals like Boris Johnson and Trump who refuse to submit themselves to meaningful journalistic scrutiny. That’s why its important that Stewart does not contribute to discrediting the potential of Citizens Assemblies by misapplying them as part of a poorly thought through piece of political expediency. David Garcia - Brexit Correspondent for Radio Patapou-# 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:
*Farage's as Hyper-leader * A Knoweledge Free Zone* - by Design
*Farage's as Hyper-leader and the cult of disintermediation* It is no longer news (if it ever was) that the big winners in the UK’s European Parliamentary elections were the Bexit Party or rather the Nigel Farage party. This was a remarkable achievement bearing in mind his party has only been in existence for six weeks. Meanwhile Farage’s previous vehicle Ukip without the blokish charisma of its former talismanic show-man was effectively wiped off the political map. Away from the frothy headlines it is worth highlighting two very useful reference points to help us make some sense of Farage’s extraordinary political resurrection. To begin with there is the influence of Gianroberto Caseleggioan (brain lord) of the 5Star movement. For this angle I ransacked Darren Loucaides’ article for the Guardian which chronicles in some depth the history and influence on Farage’s strategic thinking of Caseleggio, the backroom brains and partner (until Caseleggio’s death) of 5Star's own ‘hyperleader’ Bepe Grillo. Caseleggio is widely acknowledged as being instrumental in guiding Grillo in deploying digital platforms to propel the 5Star movement into power. The article not only charts the relationship between the two men it also exposes the faultlines in exagerated claims that 5Star’s participatory platform Rouseau is a space of genuine democratic participation on which consensus spontaneously arises though the platform’s ingenious design. Loucaides’ article paints a far less flatering picture than the narrative of an open and organic process of deliberative decision making. He describes a space in which strategic interventions of Caseleggio shape decisions in the direction of outcomes that the leadership prefers including members agreeing to join the right wing parliametry block with UKIP. The second point is that however Farage began as he surfed the zeitgeist he has emerged as a classic example of what Paolo Gerbaudo calls a ‘hyperleader’, a phenonemon connected to widespread suspiscion of structures of management and mediation. This according to Gerbaudo gives rise to a certain kind of leadership based on immediacy and the claim that technology can be employed to eliminate the layers of bureacracy separating leader from the “people". The concept of the hyperleader is developed in a chapter in Gerbaudo’s excellent ‘The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy, And many of the descriptions can be almost isomorphically mapped over Farage’s persona. There is something very particular about Farage’s emergence as the most successful political actor of his generation in the UK. To call him a populist is accurate (anyone claiming to speak for the people whilst singling out vulnerable groups -people with AIDS, Refugees, people speaking languages other than English in public spaces for criticism etc) is evidence enough. But this doesnt do justice to his particular character and style. It is this context that Gerbaudo’s concept of the ‘hyperleader’ as a "purveyer of a spectacular and highy personalised form of leadership that matches the changes in the public sphere as a consequence of the rise of digital hypermedia.” takes us further than the mere epiphet ‘populist' The Italian Connecton Loucaides’ article in the Guardian charts how the connection between Farage and 5Star goes back to a visit in 2015. Not only is Farage immediately impressed by “how Caselegglio was using social media and the internet to create a new model for communications” This platform later culmianted in the “participatory” decision making platform Rousseau. But of more substantive influence on Farage was the fact that "the 'movement’ was dominated by a private company owned by Caseleggio.” It is above all this model of the political party *as an instrument of corporate control* that made the deepest impression and it is this element that he eventually replicated in the formation of the Brexit Party which Farage constitutes as a private limited company with no members, just paying ‘registerred supporters’ with Farage having overal control. For all Farage and his 'sock puppets’ incesent sound and fury on the subject of democracyIt is hard to imagine a less democratic structure than the brexit party. In this regard it is closer to the Dutch 'Freedom Party' and the control exerted by Geert Wilders. Disintermediation It is not the creation of participatory platforms that Farage absorbed via Caseleggio so much as the rhetoric of ‘disintermediation’ that goes back to the early 1990s , the belief that it was the destiny of the internet to eliminate the gate keepers and intermediaries that stand between provider and consumer. The elimination of bureaucracies and complex chains of decision making would have an obvious appeal to the former commodities trader Farage. It is not difficult to see where he and Assange might make common cause. The rise of the
Good Ship Mary.... Celeste
The Good Ship Mary….Celeste After the kind EU allowed us a deferral till Halloween a strange paralysis has descended on the land. May has not been much seen. She appears laid out like the sick king in Parsifal waiting for one of her bold knights of the cabinet table to go forth and bring her back the Brexit Grail. But outside of the courtly world of Westminster real-world consequences intrude as British Steel is about to go into administration (loss of 5000 jobs and about 20,000 in the supply chain) as European orders are cancelled while Theresa’s survival tactic remains "say anything do nothing”. But she has now finally run out of road… and is on the brink (we’ll hear it later today) of a last fultile throw of the dice by bringing her deal back to Parliament.. I won’t bore you with the intricacies BUT if it goes through there are routs to a public vote through amendments but the more likely outcome will be another defeat and an increase in the risk of no deal. Why? as immediately after the bill falls she will resign and after the time wasting of an election a few thousand members of the conservative party will choose our next PM who will be a hard brexiter (the real people’s vote). If its a hard brexiter they could in theory ‘prorogue’ parliament (close it down) and wait till Brexit happens by default in October as, it will without the need for parliamentary intervention. If this would look like happening then there just might be the parliamentary will and the numbers to vote to revoke article 50.. This would not be simple. The MPs (with the Speaker’s help) would need to take control of the business of parliament and pass legislation instructing the PM to go to Brussels with a letter of revocation. For a long month Parliament itself was as quiet as the Mary Celeste at the ‘end of days’ with MPs wandering about in daze to tired even to plot against each other.. (not Game of Throes on Steroids as someone said but on ‘Mogodon’) But all that has changed with the impending Tory leadership campaign now ramping up. The word ‘beauty pageant’ scarcely does justice to the parade of scoundrels, mountebanks and Quacks selling their WTO snake oil along with a few “would be” 'Captain Sensibles'. All falling over each other to become the next Tory PM to become impaled on the Spear of Destiny called Brexit… On the impailalement stakes (pun intended) Corbyn has beat them to it long ago sitting on the spikes of a very uncomfortable fence. As evidence let me quote from Legal eagle 'Dave (Boy) Green’s’ recent twee where he probes the careful wording of Labour’s position on a public vote: “What purpose (asks Dave) is being served by words "the option of”? Why not just say "backs a public vote”? What weasels hide in those three additional words? --- Signing off from deep in the Hold of the Good Ship Mary... # 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:
Interiors
Interiors The Novel To the Turing test for establishing machine intelligence we can now add the McEwan test: Does he falls in love and then sleeps with your girlfriend. If he does and you hate him he passes the test. This is the starting point of Machines Like Me, a classic love triangle in which McEwan deploys the literary novelist’s craft and craftiness to generate a sense of interiority in his characters and in the reader. This is has an unsettling effect when applied to Adam the artificial human and protagonist in a love triangle. Adam is seen through the eyes of the flat footed Charlie Friend the machine’s all too human owner. McEwan's talent for mingling an English creepiness with forensic moral examination re-animates in compelling form over famillier philosphical conundrums on the nature of consciousness whilst playing a useful trick only open to the novelist. Films Nearly a decade separates Aaron Sorkin’s brightly vindictive movie Social Network from Bo Burnham's *8th Grade* a hymn to teen anxiety and panic attacks, a decade in which the psycho/social consequences of Zukerberg’s vision have come home to roost. Burnham a former Youtube star and charmless stand up has in his big screen debut delivered a masterclass in the depiction of teen anxiety and alienation refracted through the cracked (literally) glass of social media’s hall of mirrors. To my surprise (I was not a fan till now)its a match for any of the post war coming of age classics from Catcher in the Rye onwards. For anyone who has suffered from social anxiety this is a difficult at times excruciating movie to watch. In a New Yorker feature Michael Schulman declared to Burnham that "8th Grade felt visceral in the way that adolescence feels when your in the middle of it.” To which Burnham responds "I wish life was a little less visceral the "worst thing about a panic attack for me is that I feel more alive than I ever felt”. This statement has all the looped ambivalence of the movie’s relationship to the ways ‘smart’ devices have insinuated themselves into every corner of life no longer a separate ‘virtual’ realm, insertiability is total, this is the digital condition. Mission accomplished If the movie does one thing it screams of the need to radically re-make the ideal of ‘participation’. An ideal that remains ubiquitous but utterly transformed into zombie form. Filmically what is so arresting is that such psychological intenisty can coexist with such a lack of dramatic incident. A simple visit to a teen pool party is made to appear as physically hazardous and traumatic as the body horror of any slasher movie. One aspect of the film is its ability to use the confessional aspect of the youtube channel to embody the intense "interiority” of teen life. It is through the medium of Kayla Day's (Elsie Fisher) youtube channel made up of stumbling motivational movies that we first introduced to Kayla talking about “how to be yourself”. Unlike Burnham whose followers are in the millions Kayla has so few followers she is effectively talking to herself which of course is the whole point. This way of using the term interiority is taken from a piece by the novelist Zia Haider Rhamen in which he speculates about the difficulty film has in replicating the first person dimension of the novel. He uses the example of the Great Gatsby. His argument is that in general film cameras show everything in the third person, rather than from the vantage point of a particular character. But from a stance separated from any consciousness.” Rhamen argues that “If our reading experience of a first person novel is substantially conditioned by the particular perspective of the character telling the story, (and when is it not) then recreating that reading experience through the third person of film is impossible”. His point is that there is a basic difference between fiction grounded in the *interiority* of characters on the one hand and film and TV on the other. One of the many achievements of 8th Grade is that it opens new doors to demonstrate that this is no longer true.. if it ever was. David Garcia # 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:
At last a real crisis.
After months of Brexit paralysis a real crisis looms. I was planning to go to a Brexit themed fancy dress party as the "Withdrawal Agreement Implementation Bill” but as the government is too frightened to published it, no one actually knows what it looks like. Damn! I'll have to go as the "Irish backstop" or "Article 50" instead. As the sage once said life is such a box of chocolates. All Quiet on the Western Front. David Garcia # 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: Guardian Live on Assange's arrest
The bluring of the Swedish allegations and request for extradition and the US request for allegations have proved a useful smoke screen for the authorities. This deliberate bluring makes it particularly important that we don’t add to the fog by eliding all the allegations into one conspiritorial box.. IMHO it means keeping the Swedish and US allegations separate and not assuming that we know who is conspiring with whom and why. However In the midst of yesterday’s fog of misinformation and political posturing one fact stands out The Swedes do not seem to have been informed in advance of arrest. The Swedish prosecutor expressed surprise and were unprepared. Whatever US and Ecuador knew in advance, Sweden does not appear to have been in the loop https://news.cision.com/aklagarmyndigheten/r/statement-regarding-media-information-on-arrest-in-london,c2786974 Whereas the US authorities had clrearly been well prepped. We should not assume that the Swedish allegations are a groundless fabrication. The was a request for extradition in 2010 but Assange jumped bail but the request was left outstanding until 2017 when it was dropped despite the prosecutor believing there was a case to answer. Yesterday after Assange’s evicton and arrest the request, the Swedish prosecuting body has now confirmed it is reviewing whether to resume the investigation and thereby renew its extradition request. https://news.cision.com/aklagarmyndigheten/r/update-in-the-assange-case,c2787466 Sweden may be less of a stooge for US ambitions than the UK (who is desperate to please the US as they imagine that it offers a solid alliance economic and geo-political alliance post-brexit). David Garcia On 12 Apr 2019, at 01:58, Morlock Elloi wrote: > The principal sin is that Wikileaks undermined (by explicitly exposing > crimes) the wide spread belief among subjects of modern states: "it is OK for > my state/party to behave criminally, because I benefit from it, as long as > they keep it quiet". This is the unpardonable offense. > > If documenting crimes requires "super-empowered individual" it just means > that criminals are expending enormous efforts to hide them. > > >> Assange (and Wikileaks) has become a prime example of what military >> theorist in the early 00s called a "super-empowered individual" capable >> of marshaling technology and resources available to non-sate actors to > > # 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: # 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: Guardian Live on Assange's arrest
Given the nature of the allegations agree to Swedish request for extradition. But refuse extradition to US for allegations related to publishing activities. On 11 Apr 2019, at 18:02, Morlock Elloi wrote: > What was the voluntary part? Lifelong imprisonment in the US or execution are > viable alternatives? > > The amount of normalization is staggering. And it works. > > From left-talk about revelations of criminal election rigging being far > bigger crime than the criminal rigging itself (cretins on the left still > believe it, also that Assange is a rapist), to forgetting how Wikileaks > profoundly changed the public discourse (cables, war logs, collateral murder, > vault, etc etc.) how it saved Snowden from chains, how it enabled effective > whistleblowing. > > And it is enabled mainly by cretins on the left living in psychotic denial of > reality. > > Now watch the sad show of British and their judicial system as they bend over > to receive the final ejaculation ... state-size necrophilia. > >> semi-voluntary confinement > > # 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: # 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: Not Brexit
Appologies to Morlock who rightly berated those of us obsessed with arcane
and ridiculous parliamentary shenanigans of a small or medium size country of
diminishing relevance. So yes I do struggle to understand my own obsession.
Except to say that it is the most fantastic and excuisite mess. Or to put it
another
way its a genuine ‘event’, one those moments when a system reveals itself
BECAUSE it has gone so spectacularly awry. The moment the result of the
referendum
came in it was immediately clear that there was now a BEFORE and an AFTER and
that the Brexit event would in future years appear to create its own
precursors. Thats
why if you live here its like staring at the Sun and proably as dangerous.
———
Heiko
It is my understanding that without MEPs sitting in Parliament we are from an
institutional point of view OUT. That is why May is fighting so hard to avoid
participatingin these elections.
And make no mistake there is no stopping the clock on the European elections.
Revoke should be the very very last resort as it would be a very big slap in
the face
for those who voted in good faith. But it should (like the ejector seat) remain
an option
if it was clear that we were on the brink of crashing out.
The best outcome in my view is we press the pause button for at least a year.
And (dream scenario here) convene citizens forums focused on close examinations
of
what the trade offs actually entail. This was very successful in the Irish
abortion refferendum.
A talented leader could play the role of national explainer helping to candidly
lay out the trade
offs and drawing the threads together rather than acting like an advocate for
the status quo as
Cameron did allowing Leave to occupy the role of insurgents.
In this way Corbyn may been wise in what looks like fence sitting as it opens
up the
possibility of him acting as honest broker in some future vote.. There is no
simple way
out of the “mad riddle" of Brexit.
David Garcia
On 8 Apr 2019, at 14:53, Heiko Recktenwald
wrote:
> Dear all,
>
>
> Am 07/04/19 um 12:57 schrieb David Garcia:
>> BUT HERE'S THING- Remainers Must hope and fight to hold those European
>> Elections otherwise we will be legally out.
>
>
> No, you would have broken EU law, thats all. Maybe the agreement as
> well. They could cancel it if it were a treaty. But they just stopped
> the clock one more time -- until a certain still unknow date, lets hope
> they do. The safest way would be to revoke "Brexit" and forget "direct
> democracy". But to revoke would be action. And it is still possible that
> they do nothing ("passive aggressivness").
>
>
> Best, H.
>
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Re: Not Brexit
Agreed Ariston.. nothing is certain and no-deal is still the deafault option. But parliament faced with no deal still has the legal option to “revoke” article 50. It is no one’s favoured option but when staring down the barrel of a gun it would probably be the choice. of a parliament that has rejected no-deal. That would then innevitably be followed by a General Election of a new refferendum or both. The more likely outcome is that May is (reluctently) granted an extension (or flextension) but one that is a year or more in which case will be forced to take part in the European Elections. She has asked for a limited extension till June so if forced into something longer she can claim in a typically English ‘passive aggressive’ way “they made me do it” (sickening cowardice? yes I know). BUT HERE'S THING- Remainers Must hope and fight to hold those European Elections otherwise we will be legally out. So it must be the first second and third priority if we are to have a chance of remaining. If we (remainers) are granted this opportunity then its ‘game on’. Nigel Farage (with his usual tactical nous) is already up and running with his new party but Remainers are still splintered and one step behind as usual. This must change. Like Boy Scouts we must be preparing now. Just in case we get that break. Holding the European elections in the UK offers all sides of the argument a powerful set of risks and opportunities. For Remain it offers a platform to connect the envigrated remain insurgency to the ballot box. More than 6 million signed the petition and hundreds of thousands marched on the street. Now is the opportunity to translate this movement into an electoral process that will be taken seriously in the UK and by the rest of Europe. One of the ironies of Brexit (pointed out in a TV interview with Richard Barbrook) is that Brexit has turned the UK from a Eurosceptic nation into one of the most engaged and increasingly pro-EU countries in the EU! No other European country would be able to put hundreds of thousands on the streets waving the Union Blue flag. Its time to use the ballot box to translate this into a new impulse of democratic involvement in ways that could ultimately send positive democratic ripples through the EU’s flawed institutional hierarchies. David Garcia On 7 Apr 2019, at 09:23, Ariston Theotocopulos wrote: > The UK press this morning seems to be under the impression that the > possibility of 'no-deal' Brexit has receded, but it seems to me that this > situation has too many moving parts to have any such certainty. > > But right now I'm going to offer the idea that no-deal Brexit isn't to be > feared - not because it will be fine, but because it will be absolute chaos, > with everything from stranded holidaymakers to financial panic. The immediate > result would be the UK parliament signing up to the existing withdrawal > agreement within days. > > This taste of madness followed by humiliating climbdown would be a historic > defeat of the UK right-wing and all that WTO rules bollocks. I wonder which > players in this drama are also thinking along these lines... > > Ariston Theotocopulos > # 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: # 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:
*No Euphoria No Carnival just Fatalism*
*No Euphoria No Carnival just Fatalism* It was good to join friends as part of more than a million marching yesterday for a ‘people’s vote’. The most remarkable thing was that with such a great tide of humanity that there was not one single reported incident of violence or damage.. not a single broken window. But unlike the carnival atmosphere of previous marches there was no euphoria. The chants were there but were not taken up for long.. Overall I would describe the atmosphere as fatalistic. We recognised that despite the numbers on the street and the millions more who signed a petition, in all likelihood these facts would be noted and then ignored. We were marching just because we could. Marching in the knowledge that time is running out and without much hope that the government would listen. On the other hand some of us hope that there is one last chance. That just on Monday parliament will take its final chance to vote to take control of what is called the "order paper" and wrest control from May. With a likely deadline of April 12th, Parliament has just one shot at saving the nation from the Hobson's choice of May's deal or a crash out scenario. How? Here is the sequence of votes: 1. Taking control of the order paper 2. Taking a series of indicative votes 3. Find a majority in the house for a course of action that will also be acceptable to Brussels 4. Legislate to instruct government to take this proposition to the EU. This sequence will be hard to enact in the time available and unlikely that May (or a caretaker PM) would agree to play "Postman-Pat" but this at least is a roadmap to one possible course to salvation. David Garcia - Back on the Brexit Couch -# 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: Chris Grey's latest Brexit commentary
Thanks for posting this excellent oversight and commentary on the current situation. I would only add one thing (and that is a reflection on the fact that things are now so fast moving that important changesare happening not in days but in hours.) The latest being that in the last 7-8 hrs it has become clear that May is unlikely to bring her deal back to Parliament because she has accepted that there is no likelyhood of it passing. So we are now in the realm of ‘indicative votes’ on Monday as parliament is FINALY allowed to seek a consensus on alternatives to May’s deal and then find a rout to legislation. The key will struggle will be between Parliament setting the agenda and order of business and May struggling to hold on to this last shred of authority. She must not succeed. Our only hope is that she loses and that this is the moment when Parliament finally grabs the steering wheel. Ultimately (if she did not resign) this would reduce her to being an observer or postwoman between parliament and the EU. I do not think that she can survive this humiliation. Whatever her fate it is absolutely vital that parliament is able to reach accross tribal divides and find consensus for a plan in a matter of days. Otherwise the EU will gather around the sick bed with grave faces and (with some relief) allow nature is allowed to take its course. David Garcia -off to the march not sure why- On 23 Mar 2019, at 00:02, tbyfield wrote: > < http://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2019/03/a-national-emergency.html > > > Friday, 22 March 2019 > > A national emergency > > > Britain now faces a "national emergency" according to a joint > statement by the heads of the CBI and TUC. We do not know how, in just > a few weeks' time, the UK is going to be attached to the global > economy. No doubt many feel relieved that the timescale of that has > shifted from the end of March to the middle of April, but that is > really only the difference between the shelf life of a pint of milk and > packet of bacon. > > Meanwhile, our political institutions are in complete chaos. Cabinet > government has broken down, the Tory Party is in open warfare, the > opposition is missing in inaction, parliament is deadlocked and MPs > are advised to travel in groups to avoid abuse and attacks primarily, > it would seem, from irate Brexiters. > > A military planning team has been activated in the Ministry of > Defence in preparation for no-deal (bizarrely, in a nuclear-proof > bunker, which sounds like Project Fear by any standards). Other > preparations are subject to hundreds of government gagging orders. > > Whether this is to prevent alarm at how far-reaching the plans are or > ridicule of their feebleness is, by definition, impossible to know > (although a leaked document suggests it could be both). > > Bercow's bombshell > > Events are happening so quickly now that it is difficult to keep up > with, let alone make sense of, them. It seems a long time ago, but was > only last Monday, that `Bercow's Bombshell' joined the list of > Brexit jargon that sounds like bad book titles. That intervention, > saying that MPs couldn't be asked to vote twice on the same > proposition, was often reported as resurrecting some arcane rule from > the 1700s. In fact, it merely confirmed what had been custom and > practice since then. What was noteworthy was that Theresa May had > sought to break with custom and practice. > > Noteworthy, but not surprising. May's actions and Bercow's ruling > occurred against a background in which May has repeatedly sought to > evade or downgrade the role of Parliament. That goes right back, of > course, to her ill-fated attempt to prevent a vote on triggering > Article 50, her attempts to prevent the meaningful vote on the final > deal (these two things are sometimes, wrongly, conflated), and the many > other ways in which she has been both literally and metaphorically > in contempt of Parliament. > > Consequences of Bercow's intervention > > The consequences of Bercow were difficult to interpret and, in the rush > to comment, easy to misinterpret. One reason for that is the utter > confusion now amongst Brexiters about May's deal. Since it is > represented by different factions as delivering Brexit and as betraying > it, it is not surprising that some saw Bercow as their saviour and > others as a saboteur. Remainers, too, scented an opportunity. They > couldn't all be right and it turned out they were all wrong. They all > assumed that the one certain thing was that May's deal had suddenly > become far less likely to pass. After all, how could it pass if it > couldn't be voted on? > > In fact, as the dust has settled, the main consequence of Bercow is > actually rather helpfu
Re: Christchurch and the Dark Social Web by Luke Munn
Thanks Francis and Brian et al When Francis points out that [….]This kind of description ascribes a lot of power/agency to the technical medium and does in my opinion not fully grasp the agency of individuals who have to actively seek this content (they have to go online, subscribe to certain streams, pick their phones and read messages, click on more extreme content and so on). Francis appears to be arguing that we can differentiate the workings of human agency from the devices, ‘smart’ infrastructurse and platforms that are *also* the result of human agency. There is still an important role for forums (like this one) which struggle to examin the changing 'digital condition’ not only from the perspective of explicit content but also in terms of how various (often profit driven) configurations might actually amplify our worst or our better impulses. Remembering that the gun lobby like to tell us that its people that do the killing not guns is a useful reminder that technology is not neutral. This is not to underplay the role of human agency but it is to insist that the presence of this agency doesn’t begin and end with the users but is at work from the earliest point at which these platforms, devices and interfaces are configured. Brian wrote > But now all social relations in all the developed societies are in some way > mediated by networks. That means two things simultaneously: computer networks > seep into all culture, and all elements of culture - including the worst and > most rancid white supremacy - seep directly into computer networks. The near total cybernetic entanglement that Brian points to is no reason to turn our attention away from political and sociological analysis of the formation of digital infrastructures. On the contrary it is their fading into the the background to become ‘the environment” that makes them so powerful frequently insidious and so vital to contest. David Garcia On 19 Mar 2019, at 19:13, Brian Holmes wrote: > On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 11:28 AM Francis Hunger > wrote: > So I wonder, why does the discussion want to look into the > "sociotechnical properties of that environment" instead of looking into > the political dimension which forms and enables humans who wish to kill > other humans. > > This is spot on, and it calls for some revision of an old project: "an > immanent critique of the networks" -- which was the idea that Geert, I > believe, launched long ago (please set the record straight if it was someone > else, or a more collective ambition from the get-go). > > A focus on, of and for computer networks has been valuable, no question. But > now all social relations in all the developed societies are in some way > mediated by networks. That means two things simultaneously: computer networks > seep into all culture, and all elements of culture - including the worst and > most rancid white supremacy - seep directly into computer networks. The > daunting conclusion might be that the critique of networked cultures > (Frankfurt School in a Linux box) must again become a general anthropology of > globalizing society. Kulturkritik, full stop. > > Thoughts? > > Brian > # 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: # 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: Banality of code
There is a lift in the Universtity of Portsmouth UK in which among all the normal buttons there is one that simply reads “random”. On 19 Mar 2019, at 05:19, Morlock Elloi wrote: > The most scary recent example I've seen are the new elevators: there are no > buttons/controls inside. They will take you where you have been authorized to > go, by someone else. > > # 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: # 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:
Mad-Hatter’s Tea Party
o from the jaws of a catastrophe. Who knows not me.. I am used to being wrong but remain as entranced as a rabit staring at the head lights coming towards me. From my Brexit Central Sofa David Garcia # 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: more brexit spam.. sorry
Sadly it may be a ‘twitter cliche’ but it is (not yet) wrong as it remains the law and so is still the default outcome. I hope that Yvette Cooper’s is successful in proposing an extension givig time to make the new legislation that would take “no deal off the table” but it is not straight forward or clear with little precedent for success. Also this evening Steve Barclay deputy Chair of the the ERG (the Tory Brexit Taliban) are already considering instruments that could frustrate those efforts.Barnier and the EU negotiating team are also negative.. So for the time being and without a great deal of legal ingenuity no deal remains THE table. Any change in this situation will have to begin by accepting that the UK will need to participate in the EU elections which would be bizaar but interestingly Nigel Farage anticipated this a year ago and is readying himself for his campaign for re-election. Yes really ! I think I may be a bit too "long in the tooth” to offer myself as a candidate and oppose him but I am tempted. David Garcia PS are we having fun yet :-(( On 13 Mar 2019, at 22:45, Keith Hart wrote: > > “No deal can’t be taken off the table; it is the table.” You’ll hear this > clever sound bite in Twitter feeds on both sides of the Brexit divide, but it > suffers from the serious defect of being wrong. When we talk about no deal > being the table, we mean that it is the present default position. No deal is > now the ultimate default position. But no deal can be taken off the table. An > alternative ultimate default is that we remain in the EU. > > The European court of justice gave the UK an absolute right to revoke the > article 50 notice and remain in the European Union. MPs could adopt > legislation saying that, without an agreed deal by exit day (29 March or > after an extension), our article 50 notice would be automatically revoked. > > A bill ruling out no deal was given a clear democratic mandate by tonight’s > vote. This is also in line with Labour party policy. Their 2017 manifesto > said, “leaving the EU with ‘no deal’ is the worst possible deal for Britain”; > and, “We will reject ‘no deal’ as a viable option.” Unless Labour supports > legislation to take no deal off the table, it will renege on those promises. > > > If you are pro-Brexit, it creates a powerful incentive to agree a deal. MPs > have now twice rejected the form of Brexit negotiated by the prime minister: > they have also rejected Labour’s proposed softer Brexit, and tonight they > rejected a third form of Brexit – no deal. > > We still don’t know what we want because we have not had a national > conversation about it. The people have not been asked if they want something > sharply different from the European social model -- like the low-tax, > low-public service, deregulated US model. This is the real debate when > people talk about Brexit. > > If MPs revoke, they can later renotify an intention to leave the EU. That > might flow from a national conversation about the economy we want and the > relationship with the EU that implies. > > First, the government must be required to make time to pass legislation > taking no deal off the table. Yvette Cooper’s amendment making time for an > extension bill could be a model for that. > > • Jolyon Maugham, director of the Good Law Project [The Guardian 13.3.19, > edited KH] > > > > # 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: > # 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: # 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:
more brexit spam.. sorry
The UK Parliament just voted to take a Brexit 'no deal' off the table. But it is the law and therefore the default option unless the law is changed. So Parliament's motion means ‘sweet diddly squat’. The problem is actually a category error. You can't take no deal off the table as it is the fucking table. David Garcia# 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:
It is the table
Hi Keith, many thanks for your kind words.. I recomend this from the excellent Stephen Bush https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2019/03/theresa-may-has-been-defeated-again-time-she-isnt-one-denial In this very worrying article about just how far parliament is from actually waking up to what it needs to do technically if they are to actually take no deal of the table.. Actually a little thought would lead all involved to realise that as no deal is the default position. So ’no deal' can’t be taken off the table because it IS the table! Best David# 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: At last the brexit dividend
Hi James, I agree with all your points except: > I'm of almost exactly the opposite view to you, in that I'd say that this > shit-storm has demonstrated that Parliament absolutely is sovereign. > > The fact that the executive needs, deceptively, to propose cunningly > ambiguous forms of wording to non-binding votes, and needs to try to game the > Parliamentary system, rather than confidently overruling it (as would a > genuinely unrestrained autocracy) suggests that it still acknowledges > Parliament's power > The explanation for the necessity of the maneuvers you are describing is not the strength of parliament but the fact that the goverment lost its majority in the last election. Interestingly even in this context it was still able to control the timetable and the agenda right up until the yesterday’s vote. In fact even now we are seeing the government STILL contemplating bringing back the same failed deal for a third time in the hope that eventually parliament will be terroised into surrender. Best David > Hi Keith > >> >> I think the article is interesting but misses out the central challenge that >> the profound political/constitutional crisis has thrown up which is: at what >> point and how >> does a theoretically sovereign parliament take control when a government has >> lost control of events but is unwilling to admit to the fact. >> >> If this shit storm has done one thing it has demonstrated that parliamentary >> sovereignty is a myth. And the real power is with the Prime Minister. It has >> >> revealed the comparative impotence of parliament to do anythig but block an >> oppose. The PM sets the time-table and the agenda as the cliche goes >> "govenment proposes, parliament disposes". >> >> What we will see in the coming days is whether there is enough wriggle room >> for some of the legal brains in the house (Letwin, Cooper, Reeve, Starmer) >> to come >> up with statutory instruments that would enable them to stop the car going >> over the cliff by reversing the law which takes us out on the 29th (or at >> the end of the >> extension period). This is hard as usually it is only the executive >> (government) that gets to make new laws. >> >> This experiment in actualising parliamentary sovereignty will not only >> require legal expertise but also an ability to cooperate accross the tribal >> divieds to forge a majority >> for some course of action in parliament. This will have to begin with a >> series of indicative (non-binding) votes to see what there is a majority >> for. Maybe there is no majority >> for anything.. or maybe parliament can get its act together and build a >> workable process… withing 2 weeks!! Aaah >> >> David >> >> On 13 Mar 2019, at 10:55, Keith Hart wrote: >> >>> On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 12:42 PM David Garcia >>> wrote: >>> A true Democracy: All United in Ignorance- >>> Total fucking insanity >>> When asked by what is actually happening my reply has become “I know >>> nothing!” >>> >>> There are a few people who have not abandoned thinking about Brexit, even >>> if the prospects are still gloomy. Take this lucid contribution today from >>> Patrick Maguire, political correspondent of the New Statesman: >>> >>> Good morning. MPs have voted down Theresa May's Brexit deal for the second >>> time - by a thumping margin of 149 votes. What happens now? >>> >>> Westminster's favourite refrain is that nobody has a clue where things will >>> eventually end up, but we at least can say with some confidence what will >>> happen today: MPs will vote against leaving the EU without a deal. >>> >>> Or will they? As of 7am, we know now a bit more about how that scenario >>> would look in practice: a "smuggler's paradise" in Northern Ireland, where >>> the UK would unilaterally waive checks on goods >>> crossing the border, and what the CBI calls a "sledgehammer" to the economy >>> in the form of the temporary removal of tariffs on 87 per cent of imports. >>> >>> But despite its attempt to put the screws on MPs, today's government motion >>> is a curious thing. If passed, it would both confirm Parliament's >>> opposition to a no-deal Brexit and note that it remained the legal default >>> on 29 March. That slightly confused proposition reflects the feeling among >>> many Tories that retaining the ability to jump over the cliff is a vital >>
Re: At last the brexit dividend
Hi Keith I think the article is interesting but misses out the central challenge that the profound political/constitutional crisis has thrown up which is: at what point and how does a theoretically sovereign parliament take control when a government has lost control of events but is unwilling to admit to the fact. If this shit storm has done one thing it has demonstrated that parliamentary sovereignty is a myth. And the real power is with the Prime Minister. It has revealed the comparative impotence of parliament to do anythig but block an oppose. The PM sets the time-table and the agenda as the cliche goes "govenment proposes, parliament disposes". What we will see in the coming days is whether there is enough wriggle room for some of the legal brains in the house (Letwin, Cooper, Reeve, Starmer) to come up with statutory instruments that would enable them to stop the car going over the cliff by reversing the law which takes us out on the 29th (or at the end of the extension period). This is hard as usually it is only the executive (government) that gets to make new laws. This experiment in actualising parliamentary sovereignty will not only require legal expertise but also an ability to cooperate accross the tribal divieds to forge a majority for some course of action in parliament. This will have to begin with a series of indicative (non-binding) votes to see what there is a majority for. Maybe there is no majority for anything.. or maybe parliament can get its act together and build a workable process… withing 2 weeks!! Aaah David On 13 Mar 2019, at 10:55, Keith Hart wrote: > On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 12:42 PM David Garcia > wrote: > A true Democracy: All United in Ignorance- > Total fucking insanity > When asked by what is actually happening my reply has become “I know nothing!” > > There are a few people who have not abandoned thinking about Brexit, even if > the prospects are still gloomy. Take this lucid contribution today from > Patrick Maguire, political correspondent of the New Statesman: > > Good morning. MPs have voted down Theresa May's Brexit deal for the second > time - by a thumping margin of 149 votes. What happens now? > > Westminster's favourite refrain is that nobody has a clue where things will > eventually end up, but we at least can say with some confidence what will > happen today: MPs will vote against leaving the EU without a deal. > > Or will they? As of 7am, we know now a bit more about how that scenario would > look in practice: a "smuggler's paradise" in Northern Ireland, where the UK > would unilaterally waive checks on goods crossing the border, and what the > CBI calls a "sledgehammer" to the economy in the form of the temporary > removal of tariffs on 87 per cent of imports. > > But despite its attempt to put the screws on MPs, today's government motion > is a curious thing. If passed, it would both confirm Parliament's opposition > to a no-deal Brexit and note that it remained the legal default on 29 March. > That slightly confused proposition reflects the feeling among many Tories > that retaining the ability to jump over the cliff is a vital negotiating > tactic. But with just 16 days to go, that isn't the unequivocal rejection > that Tory Remainers and opposition MPs want and we can expect that coalition > of the unwilling to approve an amendment from Labour's Jack Dromey and Tory > Caroline Spelman, ruling out no-deal in any circumstances. > > That, for some reason, has prompted a great deal of excitement and gnashing > of teeth. There is talk of the amendment taking no-deal “completely off the > table” and one Leave-supporting minister even told Newsnight that it meant > Brexit was dead. It doesn't, and it isn't, for the simple reason that even at > this late stage, the Commons is unwilling to incur the political pain of > deciding what it is for, rather than what it opposes. If it really wants to > stop no-deal two Fridays from now, it will have to actively vote for > something else: an Article 50 extension or a deal. > > An unlikely alliance of hard Brexiteers, Conservative Remainers and the DUP > believe they have found the answer in an amendment seeking approval for the > latest iteration of the so-called Malthouse Compromise. It proposes an > extension of Article 50 to May 23rd - the hard deadline before the European > Parliament elections - and a sweetener of cash and assurances on citizens' > rights in exchange for a two-year transition period. It all sounds terribly > sensible but for the fact the EU has never been willing to entertain it. But > even at this late stage it is gaining traction among Tory MPs, which serves > to illustrate the extent to which this Parliament is only rea
At last the brexit dividend
A true Democracy: All United in Ignorance- Despite promises that this would be the ‘crunch week’ when the second “meaningful (HA!) vote" was to be held. It is looking increasingly likely that despite solumn promises the Olympic level can-kicker May will again defer the vote replacing it with an indicative vote on a deal already rejected by the EU! Total fucking insanity What madness is this when you are "holding a vote on a deal you wish you had got rather than one you actually have” (Ian Dunt) When asked by Dutch friends what is actually happening my reply has become “I know nothing!” I have found a niche. I inhabit a new democracy of universal stupidity. A true democracy in which the genius, the (merely) well informed and the utter nincompoop are all equal in total ignorance. Raise a glass my friends is what we are calling the true democratic dividend of Brxitania in which all of us know progressively more and more about what we do not know. your depressed and stupidly obsessed nettime brexit correspondent :-(( # 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:
More news from the front-line of Brexshit Bollocks
Sorry (Patrice) and other nettimers bored with the subject. But just a bit more from the front line of the Brexit Bollocks Car Crash With less than 1000 hours from the cliff edge. A new level of distraction and idiotic complexity has emerged with the arrival this week of the so called ‘Independent Group”. It began with the 7 dwarves and was followed by the lone ranger and was yesterday joined by the '3 Amigas”.. They originaly called themselves the 3 Amigos before remembering they were women. In terms of parliamentary arithemtic and political logic this group changes little. Buts that not quite how it feels as ‘common sense’ and parliamentary and political logic left the building long ago. Thats why we need to create the pseudo science of ‘parliamentary alchemy’ to describe how ’the house’ has become a gigantic experimental crucible in which extreme temperatures are giving rise to logic defying compounds that could either just piffle out into ‘business as usual’ or explode into a fundemental political re-alignment. I notice in the combination and exhaustion of all the usually wise political comentatators that no one has any idea what the fuck will happen next. Flying into the fog now.. instruments are spinning … Over and Out... # 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: Why I have stopped reading about Brexit
Resolving the Brexican Standoff Don’t stop just yet Patrice just the wrong moment as we come to the final episode of series 1 of the neverending Brexit Box Set. As we know May is playing Eastwood in the Mexican stand off in the Good the Bad and the Ugly a confrontation in which no strategy exists that allows any party to achieve victory. As a result, as a result all participants need to maintain the strategic tension which remains unresolved until some outside event makes it possible to resolve it. Surprisning that event may just be the Cooper/Letwin Bill. Forget the latest meaningless votes..amidst all the smoke and mirror distractions something constitutionally momentous may be just around the corner. If the past two years have demonstrated anything it is that the UK is a “parliamentary sovereignty” is a myth. Despite her weak position we have witnessed the real power of the Prime Ministerial position, through the ability to legislate and to control the parliamentary timetable has all served to demonstrate the power of the office of PM. Parliament’s power is largely negative. It can block and sometimes amend but it cannot legislate. As the cliche goes “government proposes and parliament disposes” (but can do no more). This is why May has been able to just carry on running down the clock. despite the fact that there is no parliamentary majority for crashing out. The PM can simply carry on pretending to negotiate while taking us to the brink so we will be forced to accept her rubbish deal. All the talk of Parliament taking control has come to nothing as there was no obvious method of grabbing the steering wheel from May. That is Until the Cooper/Letwin Bill that will come before the house on May’s return on Feb 27th. The group behind the Cooper/Letwin are believed to be up to 10 ministers including cabinet ministers who will resign on mass to back the bill. Which means there is a strong chance of getting this through the House of Commons thereby short circuiting May’s “my way or the highway” “gun to your head” (choose your metaphor) strategy. What matters here is that what is proposed is a new law that is designed to take power from the executive and re-locate it to the legisalture. This really is high noon because it is technically the last point when law can be changed before the 29th. You can see this strategy outlined in Oliver Letwin’s speech in yesterday’s debate where he talks about this as a historic moment when the natural order of the UK’s constitutional law is turned on its head.. and in this case the Parliament will actually become the government and the cabinet. https://www.conservativehome.com/video/2019/02/watch-letwin-the-commons-must-take-on-the-government-of-our-country-and-be-a-cabinet.html Bearing in mind that Cooper is Yvette Cooper from the labour and Letwin is very senior Conservative what we could be seeing is the beginings of a profound re-alignment of British politics. (that is even without the rumours swirling about Labour members on the brink of resigning). How that will work in pracice is anybody’s guess but it looks like a government of national unity. Undercutting the leadership of both parties. So Labour better clarify its own position in relationship to this possible outcome. Of course it is quite possible that as with all the previous ‘high noon’ moments the remain lobby backs down and the ruthless May’s Brexican Stand off strategy prevails. So in summary Patrice although I agree that the Brexit Box Set has indeed somehow managed to be simultaneously boring and engrossing in equal measure. But it could be that the final episode of series 1 could hold far more interesting twists and surprises that you have anticipated. Best David On 14 Feb 2019, at 21:14, Patrice Riemens wrote: > > Aloha, > > I was a Brexit addict. Till the day before yesterday. I used to spell the > Guardian online and go thru all the vagaries of that great soap. But no > longer. I might merely scan the headline, and may be even not. > > I 'know' what is going to happen (even though you never can know). The Maybot > is going to run the clock till March 27th, will probably not get her 'deal' > (the same old one) passed, and Britain will leave the EU without an > agreement. No problem for her since she will go down in history as the PM who > has wrecked the no longer United Kingdom, but will have not split the > Conservative party under her tenure. Which will end soon thereafter anyway, > and will see the Conservative party split all the same. > > Just as Labour will do, since Corbyn, who was doing a 'parcours sans fautes' > as long as the un-negotiations between UK and EU were going on, but then > cogently swerved out of the bend as the Maybot tired everyone out, and for > exactly the same reason: fear of displeasing the more vociferous parts of his > electorate, even though it's a minority, just as they are among the
Re: James Bridle: Review of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff (Guardian)
Felix wrote: > Mozorov puts lots of emphasis on her lack of engagement with other > theories of contemporary capitalism and her unwillingness to considers > options beyond the market. And, really, not even Wikipedia is ever > mentioned (expect as a source once) and Free Software only in relation > to Android and Google's strategy to dominate it. Thus, she never asks > why such alternatives exist and what could be done to support them. So, > the only alternative we get is Apple, the company, as Richard Stallman > famously put it, that "made prison look cool”. I am also reading this large tome in bits and moments.. But so far I actually do feel there is more engagement other theories of 'contemporary capitalism’ than she is being given credit for by Mozorov. She goes into some detail on the relevance of Hannah Arendt’s complication of Marx’s concept of 'primitive accumulation’ (page 99) with regard to Google’s discovery of the potential for exploitation of the vast quantities of our ‘behavioural surplus’ which they simply seized as the new ‘virgin rain forest’ in the permissionless culture of Sylicon valley. Zuboff points out that Arendt complicates both Polanyi and Marx’s notion by pointing out that ‘primitive accumulation’ wasnt just "a one time primal explosion that gave rise to capitalism but a recuring phase in a repeating cycle as more aspects of the social and natural world are subordinated to the market dynamic. Zuboff then proceeds to show how David Harvey builds on Arendt’s writing with his notion of the “accumulation of dispossession”.. In this case of course we are being dispossed of our own most intimate life spaces.. Coincidentally I was reading an interview with Harvey this morning where he asserts that “extraction and appropriation of value (often through dispossession) at the point of realisation is a political focus of struggle as are the qualities of daily life” hewire.in/economy/david-harvey-marxist-scholar-neo-liberalism So Zuboff provides useful explanetory and rhetorical tools to more aggressively contest these new sites of accumulation. Of course I am quite early and I am sure that many of the flaws spotted are accurate but lack of engagement with other theories of capitalism doesnt seem to be quite correct. She is certainly able to draw multiple familier threads together with some lucidity and anger which is an achievement. As well as the ‘guts’ and intellectual confidence to pick fights with powerful contemporary players whom she identifies as complicit with surveilance capitalism (which differentiates her from other highly placed scholars of the digital e.g. Manuel Castells). Although the extreme praise (the new Adam Smith or Marx etc) are probably ludicrous (so far and I am just a few chapters in) I think there is plenty of value to be found in the nearly 700 hundred pages. # 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: Paul Mason: Britain's impossible futures (Le Monde diplomatique, English edition)
Paul Mason wrote: > The left at a crossroads > > By the end of February it is likely that May’s attempt to renegotiate Brexit > will fail, stockpiling of food and medicines will increase, and sterling and > growth will fall sharply. In an atmosphere of crisis, May’s bluff will be > called. It is unlikely that all her cabinet members would remain in office if > she sets her sights towards the finishing line of a No Deal Brexit. > > To prevent No Deal, the cabinet is going the have to pull the plug on Article > 50, or on May herself. For either May or her replacement, the option then > would be to embrace Labour’s proposal of a customs union plus single market > alignment, to get Brexit through with Labour votes. That would split British > conservatism strategically, probably for decades. There is however another an equally plausible scenarion which is that after May’s latest attempt to re-negotiate fails she will continues to pander to the Rees-Mog’s (ERG) hard right wing of the Conservative party (which is supported by the bulk of Conservative party members) leading her to grit her teeth and go down the hard-brexit “no-deal” rout and take us over the edge. Why would she do that? A clue lies in May’s ’sisterly’ advice she gave when she sacked former Chancelor, George Osbourn on coming to power. She advised him that if ever he wanted to become PM he should go out and “get to know the party”. This offers an important indicator.. that it is not the MPs that matter most to her (or even economic future of the country). Her emotional priority is staying close and true to the instincts and prejudices of the dwindling population of of Tory members (about 124,000 members) in the country. This group are far more in tune with Reece Mogg, Johnson and yes Farage than they are with the majority of Tory MPs who fear what the reality of a no-deal Brexit would mean. In the end she might well calculate that either way the party will split but the split might be worse if she betrays he instincts of the Tory grass roots. So it may be the moment for us locals to start stock-piling... For the Labour party the dillema is precisely the opposite as Mason so eloquently describes.. In the article Mason argues that it is not classic leftist arguments against the EU that determined his ‘luke warm’ attitude to a public vote that his party agreed to at Conference but his belief that the moral authority of the refferendum result could not be dismissed. My memory however is that Corbyn was equally luke warm to the remain cause during the refferendum campaign itself.. when asked out of 10 how enthusiastic a member of the EU he was ? He replied “7". True he participated in the campaign and showed up on the hustings but if you compare it to the energy of his campaign for the party leadership and the general election he never really looked like he had his heart in it. But othere may disagree on this... # 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: No evidence of digital wrong-doing...
I agree Felix that it is probably too late for Brexit..but... there remains a chance that the parliamentary log jam means that other options cannot gain a majority and there is enough of a realisation that ‘crashing out without a deal’ would be a disaster to make another referendum least worst option left.. Perhaps May has just enough grasp of reality to realise that a ’no deal brexit’ would keep her party out of office for a generation. Under those circumstances it would be likely that rather than repeat the polarising fiasco of the 2016 vote we would adopt a more thoughtful approach that would include Citizens Forums as part of the equation. This scenario although unlikely remains a possibility and so it is important to be prepared for this eventuality.. To answer you question about Labour’s position: they have proposed a ‘softer version’ of Brexit which involves reamaining in a customs union which would make the Irish boarder problem soluble and they called for a vote of no confidence in May which she won. So no General Election likely unless May tries a last roll of the dice rather than going down the other paths which are all unpalatable. So the brexit car is stuck deep in the mud.. the wheels are spinning….. we are going no-where… except for sliding into fuck knows where… And that it is not so much a journey as a predicament and is why we can’t yet rule out another referendum not because anybody wants one but…well you know…. We are Sooo fucked! David PS for the record below is Stella Creasy’s proposed amendment that may be considered tomorow but will almost certainly not be selected for consideration. Labour MP Stella Creasy's amendment Requires the government to ask the EU to postpone Brexit day for an unspecified period and give the public more say in the Brexit process through a 250-member "Citizens' Assembly". This would: * comprise a "representative sample of the population" to make recommendations on the Brexit process after 10 weeks of consideration * be supported by an "expert advisory group” * require the government to respond within two weeks On 28 Jan 2019, at 13:55, Felix Stalder wrote: > > > On 28.01.19 13:46, carlo von lynX wrote: >> Even better when expert knowledge is in check by liquid >> democracy rather than size-limited citizen assemblies. >> We actually have a new technology that solves this >> challenge but it is still being used too rarely. > > > As far as I know from the German Pirate Party, the use of liquid > democracy has been pretty problematic, to say the least. But anyway, > these are different things, as David said, no either or. > > Citizens' Assemblies are for a smaller number of citizens coming > together multiple times over longer period of times (say one year), > discussing, in depth and with experts, contentious issues. The > advantages of a small number is that you can be more clear with the > selection process (ensuring a minimum of diversity) and you can > materially suppor the participants (again, important is you want to > include people who canno affort "free labor".). > > The advantage of such assemblies really lies in the qualitative > dimension, people from different backgrounds being forced to listen to > each other, respond face-to-face to each other, and seeing where > agreements can be reached and were disagreement might be rephrased to > change the question into something more productive. > > This is really hard to replicate electroncially and with large number of > participants. > > But to iniate this process now for Brexit, it's really too late. This > takes a long time, and it would mean, in effect, to day inside the EU > until the process is finished, and then we will see again, depending on > the outcome of the process. > > What I've always wondered by Labor hasn't come up with their version of > Brexit and then called for a new elections to make sure they have the > majority to bring it through parliament. At least, then people could > vote, even indirectly, for their prefered version of the thing, without > having to re-do the vote, which would be problematic, to say the least. > > > > > Felix > > > > > -- > http://felix.openflows.com > |Open PGP http://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=0x0bbb5b950c9ff2ac > > # 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: # 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
Re: No evidence of digital wrong-doing...
Thanks Carlo, no need for an either/or choice here. I’d be interested in any examples you have of liquid democracy in action and yielding concrete results. > > > On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 09:35:35AM +0000, David Garcia wrote: >> Brilliant as O’tool’s artcle is, he and other commentators need to pay more >> attention to is the importance >> to the evolution of the role of expert knowledge (ethics,medical, legal) >> played in the Irish forums. What is >> vital to comprehend is that they were not brought in as regulators. Nor as >> the voice of power and authority. >> They were a resource that citizens could draw on in the prcess of coming to >> their conclusions. We could look >> on this as the beginings of an important broadly based move towards a more >> dynamic, experimental and less >> defferntial relationship not only between experts and citizens. It could >> articulate a new relationship >> between citizens, the unelected regime of regulation (expertocracy), and the >> political class and the judiciary. >> This is the direction in which we must travel to take us beyond te epistemic >> crisis of the cybernetic era. > > Even better when expert knowledge is in check by liquid > democracy rather than size-limited citizen assemblies. > We actually have a new technology that solves this > challenge but it is still being used too rarely. > > > -- > E-mail is public! Talk to me in private using encryption: > // http://loupsycedyglgamf.onion/LynX/ > //irc://loupsycedyglgamf.onion:67/lynX > //https://psyced.org/LynX/ > # 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: # 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: notes from Brexania in limbo...
Patrice, is completely right.. One of the amendments to May’s “deal" (sadly it
will not
succeed-it ay no longer be in play) is one to be put by Stella Creasy which
would mandate
more time by suspending article 50 not simply to delay the innevitable but of a
final vote but
a vote supported by the convening ‘Citizens Assemblies’ in a manner that
mirrors the approach
taken by the Irish abortion refferendum. This points to wider implications for
how we might
change how we change the way we do politics.
When I first heard about Citizen’s Assemblies I had no idea about how they
worked (sortation) and of
how they are increasingly becoming an important addition the democratic process
in a number
of countries, particularly when facing issues that are highly contentious and
divisive . As Patrice has
pointed out they were very important part of how the Abortion referendum in
Ireland was conducted.
As ever the Finton O’Tool essay is that Patrice provides a link to, is
extremely illuminating.
Among the many impotant observations for this list is the way in which this
process appeared to undercut
the use of polarising tactics and deliberate fake facts micro targeting
facilitated by sophisticated
data analytics. The anti-knowledge tactic of dismissing expertise completely
failed inpart because Citizans fora
changed the relationship between citizen and expert. It is vital and neglected
aspect of what is being proposed
and its future promise in addressing the much greater existential issues
associated Anthropocene.
Brilliant as O’tool’s artcle is, he and other commentators need to pay more
attention to is the importance
to the evolution of the role of expert knowledge (ethics,medical, legal) played
in the Irish forums. What is
vital to comprehend is that they were not brought in as regulators. Nor as the
voice of power and authority.
They were a resource that citizens could draw on in the prcess of coming to
their conclusions. We could look
on this as the beginings of an important broadly based move towards a more
dynamic, experimental and less
defferntial relationship not only between experts and citizens. It could
articulate a new relationship
between citizens, the unelected regime of regulation (expertocracy), and the
political class and the judiciary.
This is the direction in which we must travel to take us beyond te epistemic
crisis of the cybernetic era.
On 28 Jan 2019, at 06:15, Patrice Riemens wrote:
> On 2019-01-28 03:39, Heiko Recktenwald wrote:
>> Am 18/01/19 um 16:48 schrieb James Wallbank:
>>> Thanks for this summary David, I'd suggest that it's broadly accurate.
>>> Some of you may have noticed that Brexit has pretty much incinerated
>>> my social media presence (which used to focus on the impacts of
>>> digital engagement and transformation on the arts, culture, and
>>> locality,(plus a smattering of green issues). Now its focus is almost
>>> exclusively the madness of Brexit, which I can only interpret as the
>>> national equivalent of a nervous breakdown.
>> For me the basic problem is direct democracy as in referendum. And
>> second referendum. It may be unpopular because direct democracy looks
>> like the non plus ultra of democracy but Brexit shows that the non plus
>> ultra of democracy is the sovereignty of parliament. Also as far as a
>> second referendum is concerned. All that is necessary for "remain" is a
>> decision by a simple majority of MPs.
>> "Direct democracy", is this a fashion of politicians without
>> responbibility or a principle of constitutional law of the UK? Like the
>> sovereignty of parliament. Maybe we should rethink democracy once more.
>> Is direct democracy good in all cases? Obviously not.
>> Best, H.
>
>
> Heiko's remarks completely bypasses the fact (sorry, it's a fact) that the
> British 'Brexit' referendum was a clusterfaktap of major magnitude (&
> probably 'deliberate by default') in terms of how a real, valid referendum
> should be prepared and organised, even if you don't have the Swiss experience
> in running one.
>
> These two opinion pieces, highlighting the differences between the Irish
> abortion referendum ('in the end the people knew what they were voting for')
> and the British one (obfuscation central) should settle the score:
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/29/brexit-ireland-referendum-experiment-trusting-people
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/26/brexiters-never-had-a-real-exit-plan-no-wonder-they-avoided-the-issue
>
> True democracy is direct democracy, difficult to handle as it is.
> Representative democracy, unless representatives are kept at a short leash by
> their constituents - never mind how representative a first pass the post
> system is - is a snapshot at best, and an elected dictatorship at worst.
>
> Cheers to all, p+2D!
> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission
> #is a moderated mailing list for net
Re: notes from Brexania in limbo...
Thanks Keith, yes I am an an enthusiastic follower of Fintan O’tool’s writing and lectures. Its instructive that in both the cases we have mentioned from Ireland and India both in different ways victims of English post-collonial delusion. The fact that Ireland barely featured in the refferndum campaign and yet is now threatening to de-rail the whole process is indicative of the persistance of the post imperial cataract that continues to obscure England's vision of itself and others. There has been one writer that I have found useful (English this time) Anthony Barnett whose Lure of Greatness sees Brexit as a crisis arising not simply from the UK but as an English malady, founded on a large hole in the heart of the ‘English’ national identity now that the other so called 'home nations’ have their own assemblies. Their flags are not associated with racist gangs in the way that the flag of St George is. They have been able articulate a different conception of national identity.. A reasonable substitute for reading his book is this Youtube lecture.. curious what people think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ksdrYYUY2w Finaly its a pity all these thinkers I am referencing are men.. How much of these neo-nationalist pathologies are man made…? Best David On 18 Jan 2019, at 10:36, Keith Hart wrote: > >...a brilliant and utterly coruscating essay published in the NY Times by > >Pankaj Mishra a writer and polemicist from India who situates the crisis in > >English post-colonial delusion < > > Thanks, David. You are right that Brexit is the UK's post-imperial hangover > come home to roost. Have spent my adult life waiting for Brits to wake up in > this regard and I am not convinced that even this will do the job. In the > early twentieth century, the strongest political and intellectual > opposition to the Empire came from Ireland, India and South Africa and the > first two are still the best source. Apart from Pankaj Mishra, Fintan O'Toole > is keeping up the good work with his book, Heroic Failure: Brexit and the > politics of pain. Ireland is noted for its literary Nobel prize-winners and > he is well up to standard. His latest article came out today: > https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/18/europe-brexit-britain-state-politics-fit-for-purpose > > > O'Toole's point -- that Brexit was never about Europe, but rather about the > home political dispensation -- is one that I have been making for two > decades. I call it the creeping constitutional crisis of the cruel historical > experiment, the United Kingdom. I wrote "Where once was an empire" soon after > the 2016 referendum result: > https://www.academia.edu/29662300/Where_once_was_an_empire_on_Brexit_ > > Best, > > Keith >> >> # 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: >> >> >> -- >> >> Keith Hart >> keith-hart.com > > # 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: > > > -- > > Keith Hart > keith-hart.com # 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: notes from Brexania in limbo...
Thanks Keith for fleshing out the wider political context for our “little local difficulty” that sprang from Cameron’s reckless gamble that had everything to do with the Tory party and resulted in a deep national psychosis. Sorry if this sounds like histrionics but its how it feels. I want to pass on to nettimes an even broader perspective a powerful article that Brian Holmes was kind enough to share (hope thats ok Brian) a brilliant and utterly corruscating essay published in the NY Times by Pankaj Mishra a writer and polemicist from India who situates the crisis in English post-colonal delusion https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/sunday/brexit-ireland-empire.html Best David On 17 Jan 2019, at 17:46, Keith Hart wrote: > > > # 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: > > > -- > > Keith Hart > keith-hart.com # 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:
notes from Brexania in limbo...
My friend Eric Kluitenberg asked for my local view of the current situation in Brexania. It gave me the chance to pull some threads together. Some caveats this is a view from the sidelines. The journalists are all suffering from as much confusion and exhaustion..as the rest of the population. I read nearly everything written and watch the parliamentary debates and follow commentators including my dear Uncle Fred (who is dead by the way and so should know a thing or two about the after life) and the only consistent message that emerges is that "no one knows anything”. So this is what I think I know becoming less certain as you go down the bullet points: * Although Parliament rejected May’s deal Parliament does not know what it wants instead. * No majority for any plan and so Parliament is deadlocked * The only Parliamentary majority is to avoid ’no deal’ 'crash out' but no can agree how to avoid it as the date is set in law and cannot be repealed without a new law being passed. * May will not take ‘no deal’ off the table as it is her principle means of terrorising parliament to get her way on her be-hated deal. * Though she denies it May is running down the clock till we get so close to the precipice that parliament votes for her deal out of sheer terror. * Even after the biggest defeat in parliamentary history she continues to pursue this strategy that some called gritty and brave and others (me) call rigid and pathological. * There is reason to believe that the current ‘consultations’ with other parties (May in listening mode ha ha) are tokenistic cover for her continued pursuit of the ticking clock strategy.. tick tick tick…. * The evidence for this is her refusal to take ’off deal’ off the table.. tick.. tick * This is why Corbyn may be right to refuse to talk to her because until ’no deal is off the the table’ the discussions remain a tokenistic delaying tactic. But it does make Corbyn look intransigent…so risky. * Corbyn is heavily criticised for not backing a ‘public vote’ * It could be strategic.. His calculation may be to let the different options play themselves out in parliament until a new referendum is the last option left standing. But it is not yet clear how these options will unfold sequentially in the way imagined as Parliament has little time and no clear method. * If the leave voting working class Labour voters (particularly in the North of England) are not to feel betrayed a public vote must be seen as the last option standing. * Then Corbyn can turn to those constituencies and say "look I have tried my best to deliver Brexit on terms that do the least damage but was not possible. So over to you the public” not my fault gov... * If I am right this is a high risk strategy.. but maybe political intransigence mean that high risk is all that is left-short of backing May’s deal…. aahhh * Traditional (neo-liberal) transactional politics is dead in the UK some might say good riddens. Conservative historian Peter Hennesy described ‘Brexit’ as a kind of secular version of the "wars of religion”. But instead of Protestants and Catholics we have ‘remainers’ and ‘leavers’ representing two very different and irreconcileable versions of ‘patriotism’.… but thats an argument for another day… * If we do have a chance to fight a third referendum (remember there was a referendum to join the EU in 1975) it will carry many risks of re-igiting toxicity. So we should keep in mind that enlightenment Philosopher, David Hume, wrote "reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions". In other words reason is inextricably linked to embodied emotions. In the struggle for the social mind Remainers (like me) should avoid sounding like the disembodied and controlling voice of pragmatic reason. We must argue from the heart and engage the passions as well as reason in our attempts to change the minds of the millions who voted to leave.. It is be no means certain that we will prevail. Best David On 16 Jan 2019, at 19:24, Eric Kluitenberg wrote: > HI David, > > Hope you are doing fine! > > Well, as expected the Br deal was voted down and May survived the motion of > no confidence. > > I was curious, how do you evaluate the situation right now? Where are we on > both sides of canal? > > all bests, > Eric # 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: Bridging the Gap between Technology and Progressive Politics in Europe
reimagining of what a “knowledge democracy” might look like and a re-envisoning of what constitutes a public fact" in a world marked out above all by contingency.. "It can only be based on a “dynamic" exchange between epistemically diverse viewpoints". (Marres - We Want our Facts Back. 2018) Further steps The Regulatory Sphere- Where is the Epistemic Traction ? Although the role of digital tools and smart infrastructure are vital components of any discussion on the sources of epistemic authority we also need to ask the question; where does the epistemic have the most actual traction in our every daily lives? where are the pragmatic spaces where the political meets the epistemic?. My proposition is that it lies overwhelmingly in the ‘regulatory sphere’, the vast space of unelected regulative agencies on which we depend to keep the complex infrastructure of an advanced technological society running (or failing to run). Although it is often claimed that we are suspicious of experts there is evidence that those with specialist knowledge who have regulatory oversight of the air we breath, the parmaceuticles and the food we consume and the aircraft we board are for the most part trusted. Although un-elected they are in fact more trusted than the elected political class. (Open Democracy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/marley-morris/no-appetite-for-deregulatory-post-brexit-britain-new-finding-on-public-attitudes) Rather than occupying the two extremes of either rejecting or uncritically embracing expert knowledge from which these agencies are constituted we need to re-make their relationship to the citizenship more dynamic, experimental and less deferential. The political theorist Frank Vibert has written interestingly on this “regulative space” in ’The Rise of the Unelected’ Democracy and the New Separation of Powers (2007) in which he argues that this domain has become a de facto yet unacknowledged sphere of government equal in power to executive and legislative authority and the courts of law and almost entirely populated by specialists as a kind of unelected ‘expertocracy’. And it is only by accepting it as such that we can begin the task of testing its accountability and articulating its legitmacy integrating this domain into a new set of constitutional arrangements. This would include their own separation of powers operating as part of a new layer of checks and balances required by a technologically advanced knowledge democracy.. Rather than seeing this domain as a threat to democracy these agencies could be seen as intensifying democracy by affording an active citizinery the means to enage and test their own assumptions and challenge the claims of both corprorate and state power. Foot note One of the problems of Brexit is that the Brexiteers have a 19th Century vision of national sovereignty when they are only just realise that they are dealing with 40 years of accumulated regulation and their multiple agencies which the UK helped to create and on which we depend.. the creation of this complex regulatory architecture is both an achievement.. but provides a deep challenge in establishing the grounds for expanding its legitimacy and accountability.. in otherwords if we want an active European citizenary we must design architectures to open up these agencies to civic scrutiny and intervention). David Garcia On 4 Dec 2018, at 07:37, Geert Lovink wrote: > Dear Nettimers, > > we’ve written the discussion text below as a proposal, a strategic > contribution and are curious what you make of the ideas and questions we > raise. For sure that there more topics and angles that could be added. Do you > see any possibility for funding such an effort to come together? Should this > be a festival, a translocal network, a support campaign for various > movements? Let us know what you think and if you want to get involved. > > Geert Lovink (ge...@xs4all.nl, Amsterdam) and Donatella Della Ratta > (d...@mediaoriente.com, Rome) > > There are a number of topics that overlap and point at a widening of agendas > beyond politics and the use of internet technologies in society. We feel that > we can no longer keep these spaces separated, or leave them surrounded by > ambiguities and grey areas, or appropriated by alt-right groups, populism or > regressive politics. We think it‘s time to brigde this gap, create new forms, > and restore alliances between tech and progressive politics. > > We feel there is a growing tension between the global, immaterial level of > social media and the concrete sphere of local grass-roots level and related > political action. Funny enough, digital technologies are becoming smaller, > more invisible and even further integrated into our messy, always-connected > everyday life. But this is not bringing neither tec
Re: Seth Abramson: We need a new kind of journalism (Guardian)
Assuming there is any truth in the hoary old cliche that "journalism is the first rough draft of history" then how does Abramson’s notion of “curatorial journalism” differ from the role of historian? The act he describes of "going beyond a recitation of the facts reliably sourced, to establishing a readily digestible narrative that establishes how and why we have come to the point we have – without sacrificing the complexities of the subject” sounds to me a lot like taking a few steps along the way to the writing of history. Do we actually gain anything by way of insight or illumination by introducing the term “curatorial” to the methods and the journey that take us from journalism to history.. And isnt this another sign that "curatorial” is rapidly becoming an overextended concept in danger of losing all meaning. David Garcia On 24 Nov 2018, at 10:41, Patrice Riemens wrote: > In each of these cases, what is needed is not just a recitation of facts but > an encompassing, reliably sourced, readily digestible narrative that > establishes how and why we have come to the point we have – without > sacrificing the complexities of the subject. Done well, the result of all > this compiling, connecting and synthesizing will be not just a thorough > history but also the production of new knowledge on each of these critical > topics. > Advertisement > > In this way, curatorial journalism can help ameliorate the deficits of > understanding our digital age inevitably produces, leaving us not just better > informed but also more trusting of the work done by our most deeply committed > investigative reporters. Here’s hoping this new subgenre of new media > journalism continues to inform us at this critical juncture in history and > perhaps, in time, gets its due. # 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:
Our revels now are ended
Our Revels Now are Ended.. Or at least they bloody should be!
(Or I blame Shakespeare)
Yesterday I heard four journos on the radio discussing the unfolding
Brexit nightmare (I nearly said ‘drama') in the wake of the
resignation of a junior minister whose departure would have caused no
more than a ripple were it not for the fact that his brother is the Killer
Clown of Brexit Boris Johnson.
Towards the end of the discussion the radio host invited the commentators
to throw some light of the big debate on the ‘final deal’ that May
might (or might not) bring back to Parliament in the coming weeks.
It was framed as the moment of great "parliamentary theatre”. And
you could practically feel the journos salivating at the ("marvelous darling")
drama of it all. As though the curtain will come down and the provincial
troop of poor character actors (oh we English love a ‘character’) come
on for their final bow. The audience will applaud their favorites, the lights
will come up. And we (the audience/public/citizens) will troop out
into the gathering gloom of a chilly winter evening and a long journey home
(oh yes the trains will have been cancelled again).
After a two year long performance we will wake up to a reality that unlike
actual theatre we will have irrevocably changed the world outside..Unless
that is someone (who people listen to) rushes in and shouts “fire”..This
is not an exercise!
Brexit negotiator Sabine Weyan described the English negotiators as indulging
in ”magical thinking” and yes that is our national talent and our burden. In
the last
speech of Shapspear’s last play the magician Prospero has the good sense
renounce
magic. He declares that “These our actors as I foretold you, were all spirits
And are melted
into thin air:” (like Cameron among others)
He then talks of the great globe itself also dissolving “like this insubstantial
pageant”.. And many believe that he was eliding the Globe Theatre with
the globe of the world. But Shakepear had the sense to recognise that
he/Prospero had to
set magic aside.. And if we don’t we to will learn the hard lesson that
politics may have an
aspect of theatre but it is NOT theatre .And that politicians may enjoy the
brief applause of
the ‘audience’ but be left to face the longer term anger of the “citizens” they
sacrificed to
their vanity and delusion.
David Garcia
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Re: Taking sides
Yes please. This tiny splinter of the community says. Bard just stop. David On 6 Nov 2018, at 04:30, Lunenfeld, Peter B. wrote: > Hello All - > > Bard asked if the community wanted him to cease and desist. My vote > is yes. Not only are his politics abhorrent, he’s not here to engage in > dialogue at all, from what I gleaned from his shit-postings. He’s just a > typist with a broadband connection and a Tourette twitch that compels him to > type “Marxist” and “Rousseauvian” every 45th and 48th word. Fuck his > Charlottesville nazi-coddling and fuck him. > > Kudos, Ted - > > Peter > > Sent from my iPhone > >> On Nov 5, 2018, at 7:08 PM, tbyfield wrote: >> >> On 6 Nov 2018, at 3:50, Ryan Griffis wrote: >> I take neither side at Charlottesville >>> >>> Need anyone say more? >> >> Nope. 'Charlottesville' was a neo-nazi riot in which a person was murdered. >> That's a good reason to take a side — against neo-nazis. To not take a side >> is, in effect, to condone that murder. I think it's reasonable to say that >> condoning murders, however indirectly, crosses a clear line on this list. >> For that reason, I just flipped the mod switch on Bard: his messages will be >> held for review. He's given us a lot to think about lately, so reviewing new >> ones won't be a high priority. >> >> This decision is mine alone — I haven't talked with Felix about it. >> >> Comments and criticisms are warmly welcome. >> >> Cheers, >> Ted >> # 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: > # 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: # 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: Identity and difference
In his book the Digital Condition Felix Stalder introduces the term ‘communal formation’ to describe a political subject that has emerged’is emerging from the collapse of the traditional frameworks (family-church-trade-union-political party-secure employment) that once served to provide ballast and orientation. They have (if I understand Felix correctly) have some relationship to ‘communities of practice’ which are formations fused in the pragmatic heat of ‘doing'.. Amsterdam’s squatters of the 90s one of many examples .. I don’t think that these formations can be dismissed as narcisistic.. they are a distinctive political subject + many such as civil rights folks, feminists, stone-wallers, AIDS activists, pre-date the internet by decades.. On 26 Oct 2018, at 12:34, Alexander Bard wrote: > Absolutely correct, dear David, I could not agree more. But there are tons of > misplaced good intentions involved in this. > Identity politics has exploded because of the internet's hidden deceitful > promise that all children were finally going to get their spot in the > limelight. Which of course never happened because we all have attention > constraints. And being drowned in mediocre floods of cat and baby pictures > (95% of Instagram postings are completely ignored, blogs peaked already in > 2006), why is the audience to blame when the flood of junk was so mediocre to > begin with? No wonder people turn to Netflix these days. It was all 99% fake > news like media always produced tons of fake news. Better then to have > quality amusement to death to make it more enjoyable. > So it is wrong to call this a desire for recognition (what an infantile > desire to begin with) but rather a desire for attention that became an > obsession with the distorted supernova called the Cartesian Self. Just when > individualism died and became an underclass phenomenon (the shift toward > dividualism was the successful use of the Internet of course, the netocratic > one). > Class was lost in all this. And as a Deleuzian I then have to decide whether > I go down the drain with Rosseauian identity politics or ally myself with the > real Marxist class struggle. Deleuzians can not escape and stay in between > any longer. Those are my ten cents. I see class as heroic tribe so I stay the > course and work on developing stories about the Heroic Tribe, which today is > to celebrate and lift people up toward the Cultural Engineer who is the true > proletarian of the the 21st century. Which means I also ally with the masses > against the (academic and financial) elites. Self-pity is a dead end. No > wonder Jordan Peterson is huge these days. > Postmodernism was meant as a CRITIQUE. That was the Frankfurt School's > intentions all along. Not meant to kill modernism and replace it. > When that shift happened, when postmodernism killed modernism and became the > de facto ideology of Western Academia, we also lost Marx to Rousseau. It's > the shift from Lenin to Stalin again for all I care. > And here is the blind spot. Postmodernism essentially claims that "all grand > narratives are dangerous narratives, therefore there must not be any grand > narrative." Well, stupid, you just created a rand narrative with that > statement and the most dangerous one of them all, the Rousseuian one. Unless > stopped, PoMo will undoubtedly lead to slaughter. It always did in the past, > so why not now? > Attention-seeking belongs to daycare centers and kindergardens. When > prevalent among grown-up people it should be called its proper name, > narcissism and/or infantilization. > Not that I don't desire variety and diversity like every other decent human > being. But I seek it and I don't need it thrown in my face from pathological > cry-bullies. > Back to Marx! Meanwhile, prepare for Trump round 2. "The Left" has learned > nothing but lost its roots. Next Bolsonaro in Brazil. I'm spending this > winter in Rio. > Best > Alexander Bard > > Den fre 26 okt. 2018 kl 10:51 skrev David Garcia > : > The emphasis on class and class struggle as the universal category often > seems to > operate differently to the cultural politics of an expanding, fluid > multiplicity of struggles > around identity and the demands to have specific identities recognised and > respected. > Sometimes called the politics of recognition. > > There has been a longstanding suspiscion in these identitarian movements > of the so called 'grand narratives' based on -universal categories, > principles or experiences. > A suspicion based on a history which sees adoption of these universals as > subsuming or > marginalising the specifities of community and community solidarity on which > these > movements depend for their
Re: Bad news for Brexit Junkies! - worse news for Labour and remainers
der to take advantage of extended powers > available to them under the scenario - including civil contingencies and > so-called Henry VIII. > > The Chequers plan is a ploy designed to engage the EU in distraction from the > desired British outcome and create a false narrative at home in the UK that > the EU are responsible. > > Sources claim emergency legislation is being prepared for January next year > (2019) when the Withdrawal Act no deal deadlines pass - this would be 29/01 > and the civil contingencies secretariat have been convened as per leaked > Hammond notes recently, adding credibility. > > On Ireland: The British government hopes the EU will be forced to move first > and install a hard border in Ireland in order to avoid blame itself for a > situation it has created. Further sources claim the data harvested during > Repeal 8th will be used in some "unity" campaigns. > > The British government has progressed trade talks with the US to the point of > potential emergency supply, moving substantially beyond informal discussions > - though the Trump administration should not be taken at its word, a degree > of reliance on this has been factored in UK side. > > The government intends to create a tax haven on the EU's doorstep to exploit > financial service deregulation. This speaks for itself. > > The British government aims to prevent France and other EU countries from > properly preparing for no deal by continuing to falsely engage in the > negotiations in bad faith, keeping the EU27 from moving from early stage > plans to contingency measures as long as possible. > > The British government hopes this will create a ripple effect of impact so it > can later pursue a "Europe in chaos" narrative of disinformation and exploit > the situation. In short hoping to spread the load of no deal impact, > particularly into France due to geographical impact. > > The British government hopes this collateral damage will add to planned > disruption around the EU election processes next spring and they will use > dissident relationships to further this - likely to include Orban. > > The British are aware that contingency planning in France has not yet reached > operational unit level even in the GIGN because the general French > presumption is that the British government is genuinely engaged in good > faith, which they are not. > > Ends." > > Thanks, > Iain Findlay-Walsh > > > On Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 9:24 AM David Garcia > wrote: > The best lack all conviction, while the worst > Are full of passionate intensity. > (W.B. Yates.. The Second Coming) > > Its a critical juncture in a very very complex moment of a 4 dimensional > chess that the UK pretends to be playing with an opponent, but is > actually playing with itself (in every sense, including the vulgar sense of > wanking our time away). > > Actually Kier Starmer -the Captain Sensible of the Brexit narrative- is > incrementally (and with some skill) inching the Labour Party’s leadership > towards a refferendum on the deal (I dislike the sterile populism of the > ‘people’s vote' tag but it seems to have caught on). > > In yesterday’s tragic parliamentary performance May stood isolated > and friendless trapped by her own cack-handed trail of bad decisions > and contradictory ‘red lines’. Apart from the isolation of someone whose only > piece on the chess board is the king which is being relentlessly pushed > towards the innevitable one other thing stood out. Accross parliament MPs > from all paties except the DUP were increasingly advocating the once > unmentionable > concept of a 'referndum on the deal’ (or ratification). MPs who have not > taken that > position before such Dominic Reeve argued for it. This fas has moved from a > being a > very faint possibility to a distinct option as one of the only ways to > resolve political > paralysis. > > This would be not so much a ‘people’s vote’ as the equivalent of the consent > form > the patient must sign before undergoing a highly risky piece of useless > cosmetic > surgery about to be perfomed of an ageing dowager suffering from severe > delusions of grandure. > > David Garcia > > > On 16 Oct 2018, at 07:35, Patrice Riemens wrote: > > > On 2018-06-17 11:15, Patrice Riemens wrote: > >> BonDi! > >> In today's Guardian/Observer: > >> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/17/europe-losing-interest-brexit-soap-it-has-bigger-worries > >> Cheers, p+2D! > > > > > > That was then - but even earlier there was: > > > > https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/201
Re: Bad news for Brexit Junkies! - worse news for Labour and remainers
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. (W.B. Yates.. The Second Coming) Its a critical juncture in a very very complex moment of a 4 dimensional chess that the UK pretends to be playing with an opponent, but is actually playing with itself (in every sense, including the vulgar sense of wanking our time away). Actually Kier Starmer -the Captain Sensible of the Brexit narrative- is incrementally (and with some skill) inching the Labour Party’s leadership towards a refferendum on the deal (I dislike the sterile populism of the ‘people’s vote' tag but it seems to have caught on). In yesterday’s tragic parliamentary performance May stood isolated and friendless trapped by her own cack-handed trail of bad decisions and contradictory ‘red lines’. Apart from the isolation of someone whose only piece on the chess board is the king which is being relentlessly pushed towards the innevitable one other thing stood out. Accross parliament MPs from all paties except the DUP were increasingly advocating the once unmentionable concept of a 'referndum on the deal’ (or ratification). MPs who have not taken that position before such Dominic Reeve argued for it. This fas has moved from a being a very faint possibility to a distinct option as one of the only ways to resolve political paralysis. This would be not so much a ‘people’s vote’ as the equivalent of the consent form the patient must sign before undergoing a highly risky piece of useless cosmetic surgery about to be perfomed of an ageing dowager suffering from severe delusions of grandure. David Garcia On 16 Oct 2018, at 07:35, Patrice Riemens wrote: > On 2018-06-17 11:15, Patrice Riemens wrote: >> BonDi! >> In today's Guardian/Observer: >> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/17/europe-losing-interest-brexit-soap-it-has-bigger-worries >> Cheers, p+2D! > > > That was then - but even earlier there was: > > https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/27/brexit-six-tests-eu-starmer-corbyn > > (referd to in to-day's Guardian, hence ...) > > I'm afraid that's going to be the scenario. A Labour party led by an > Eurosceptic at heart too afraid to ruffle feathers f its brexiters voters > (who mind well have changed their minds in the meantime), and going for the > 'extend and pretend' scenario ... > > Brexit gonna be a disaster - and not only for UK, even if far worse there. > > Salvini appears to have backtracked on Riace deportations > > Cheers, no cheers, I dunno > > p+2D! # 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:
what's your problem dude ?
Lat week I found (by chance) something I had posted on nettime a while back had been taken almost word for word by Bruce Sterling and placed on his blog for Wired Magazine without either informing me, asking permission or crediting me- though he did add a link to my blog saying that another version was available there- Thanks for that Bruce- We know there is the legal framework which is the CC lisence but in the end if a well known author chooses to take the words of someone less known and leave the provenance of the actual labour ‘ambiguous’ by adding a few lines of his own here and there. There is not much one can do about it, without wasting a lot of time and energy. He has the larger platform and the reputation. Oscar Wilde once said to the painter Whistler who had made a witty remark “I wish I had said that” to which Whistler replied “you will oscar..you will”. Picasso is also known to have said to a friend who wouldn’t let him in his studio for fear of seeing his own ideas popping up in Picasso’s next show “don’t worry I never borrow. I steal!” Bob Dylan was recently accused of appropriating chunks of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech His likely defense was highlighted by an article in Rolling Stone In a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan responded to the accusations of plagiarism pertaining to Love and Theft. “I’m working within my art form,” he said. “It’s that simple. I work within the rules and limitations of it. There are authoritarian figures that can explain that kind of art form better to you than I can. It’s called songwriting. It has to do with melody and rhythm, and then after that, anything goes. You make everything yours. We all do it.” So clearly a pithier response might be “what’s your problem dude.. it was just a cover version” Maybe this ‘squib’ will also appear on Bruce’s blog. David Garcia# 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: Quick Review..
> > On 2018-09-11 18:15, podinski wrote: >> 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... > > While this might be an adequate description on an esthetic level, what > is lacking, and what has lacked for a long time on the left, is an > analysis of power. [….] > > This contributed to opening the space for the formation of a new > power-block consisting of traditional conservatives (small government, > tax cuts), segments of the economy that realized that China was > beginning to dominate "free trade" and disaffected working and > middle-classes who formulated their decline/frustration not in economic > terms but in cultural ones (racist, misogynist, nativist, religious > etc). This has been enabled and financed by those segments of the elite, > who know that their game is ending (petrocapitalism and financialism) > but want to continue the fracking of nature and society a little longer, > privatizing more profits and socializing more costs. Is this actually an opening of "a new space”... the “formation of a new power block”? Or is it a straightforward take-over of the Republican Party by a reinvigorated and atavistic far right ? A movement that has effectively burnt down the fire walls separating traditional conservatism from a new extremist generation who took Trump as their placeholder soon to be replaced by Pence who will actually be worse. This tendency goes beyond the US. Yesterday in the European Parliament we saw a strutting Viktor Orban (acting with impunity despite the vote) leading the highly repressive and growing tendency in European politics that is effectively replacing the old partnership of neo—liberalism and mainstream conservatism ? Its true that outside of a European few rebel cities and the growth of some political parties there is very little analysis or serious engagement with -and even allergy- to power. But its an exaggeration to say there is no analysis. David Garcia # 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: Quick Review..
Whoops Sorry yes it should have read Hermann Nitsch On 11 Sep 2018, at 14:02, bronac ferran wrote: > Has Hermann become Friedrich here? > Or is it vice versa? > > On 11 September 2018 at 08:56, David Garcia > 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 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 : no commercial use without permission >> #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, >> # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets >> # more
Re: Quick Review..
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 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 : 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: # 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:
Quick Review..
Quick Review- The lecture for Florian Cramer and Stewart Home took place yeterday at the excellent looking event 'Disruption Network Lab' in Berlin, was a fascinating exploration of the complex cultural and political histories that make up aesthetics of transgression that threads through the avant garde. Luckily the talk will be archived shortly as watching the live stream was a challenge. The talk was rich in case studies that reminded us of the continuing potence of transgression as a weapon in the battle for the social mind. It was extremely valuable as it included but moved beyond the claims that the Alt.right has 'stolen' the left's transgressive cloths. In fact they used the talk to demonstrate that historically these codes are politically interchangeable. From the outset and the history of the avant garde (arguably from de Sade) has harboured as many examples on the far right as on the left. With many partularly today hovering in a space of deliberate ambiguity. Behind the blizzard of fascinating allusions and crossovers was the recognition of the hollowness of the claim that these subcultural languages and tropes have been ‘ ppropriated'. As the claim that carries the implication that transgressive energies are the property of or intrinsically belong to, one side or the other. As Florian made it clear in the Q & A transgression is a tool that can be used by either side.. Even going so far as to argue that 'hate' as an emotional register that we should not see as the sole property of the right (hating your job and your boss can be the first step to changing your life). 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") To my mind the only problem with the discussion was that in flattening out the potency of transgressive sub-cultures as politically inter-changeable there was a danger of missing out the 'power question'. There is a need to be clearer in articulating where (in terms of political practice) the differences between subcultures of the left and those on the right might currently be. This was highlighted for me in the Q when someone asked whether there was anything we might take from the Alt.right or any opportunities it this movement had broken open. Neither speaker seemed to think it had. I disagree, I would argue that the far right (which is founded on the ‘worshiping' power of own sake) is understandeably more comfortable with the idea of contesting and occupying the principal seats of power. The difference between the new transgressive sub-cultures on the right.. what they have brought to the table in 2016 was an effective trajectory (masterminded to some degree by Bannon who was quick to understand the dynamics at play) from the back alleys of the internet to the principal seats of government. This is a 'trick' or 'mind-set' that equivalent sub-cultures on the left badly need to learn. David Garcia# 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: What does Trump get right?
> "A few years ago, some believed that this emerging nightmare of a political > economy could be reversed by the self-organized uprising of critical > collectivities able to pierce the ideological veil and offer new pathways of > productive development. Instead the multitudes got fascinated with their > iPhones. More recently there has been the hope that the most oppressed (ie > anybody who's not straight and white) could transform the culture while the > rest of us applauded and liked. Both those generous hopes are a naive evasion > of responsibility. …”[ ] the only practicable instrument of the formal > institutional change, in a rigid bipartite system like that of the United > States…" Dear Brian, many thanks for your words, as ever. Just a couple of points.. These are points I made before on the list but maybe thay are worth repeating. Sorry to take your words out of context but even in context they carry the suggestion that we have to choose between politics as a self organising networks and social movements and politics that engages with the institutional power through structures like political parties. >From my vantage point in the UK we can and should practice both kinds of >politics simultaneosuly and in concert. The UK left is witnessing an important experiment. In sheer membership terms the experiment is successful as in membership terms its larger than any leftist party in Europe. The success has been in large part due to the injection of youthful energy and campaigning accumen of Momentum, an organisation that is not formally part of the Labour party, but has been formed to support Corbyn’s agenda. This separateness (whilst being very close) to the party itself is important as it enables it to maintain its grass roots ethos whilst wielding real influence. It is not a party within a party as it is sometimes disparaged by those on the right who are jealous of its success. Like the Alt.right its cultural dimension is vital to its effectiveness. The ‘World Transformed’ the annual event that was organised by Momentum and which takes place alongside the Labour Party annual conference functioning as a kind of “fringe festival” without the disciplinary constraints of the formal party political event and yet close enough to power for the major players in the party to contribute. As I have pointed out in earlier postings Momentum campaigning has borrowed (sometimes deliberately) from the Trump and Alt-right playbook and their understanding that separating grass roots activism (including media activism) from institutional engagement is a flawed approach but these thigs cannot be instituted by fiat to work radical new organisational formations appropiate to local conditions need to be forged. Connected to this is the neeed to ask ourselves whether this also means we need a ‘populism of the left’ and if so what would it look like ? And is it desirable ? For example would a leftist populism claim to be speaking for “the people” like Trump and branding critics "enemies of the people” or “traitors” as the rightwing press in the UK regularly do to their opponents. Is their a form of populism that doesn’t claim to speak "for the people” ? UK list readers will know that things are far from perfect and that fissures in the newly constituted Labour Party are begining to appear particularly on the question of where the party stands on Brexit and more urgently on a particularly toxic controversy based on accusations of anti-Semitism. These questions are too localised to go into here but they do serve to demonstrate that once grass roots movements on the left start coming close to the kitchen of power the heat will definitely be turned up. David Garcia # 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: Paul Mason: Trump is a symptom of the new global disorder, not the cause
On 14 Jun 2018, at 10:28, Alex Foti wrote: > paul mason doesn't get national-populism right - he called the current > italian rightist government "neoliberalism in one country" (what??) - yes we > need a big progressive front like the one varoufakis is building - for europe > - too bad britain is no longer part of it - Alex I think that the Britain is still a part of it as one of the most active members of what Varoufakis and others are attempting to develop through DIEM..Far from Brexit (if thats what you reffering to) meaning that the left is disengaging from Europe it has intensified and sharpened our awareness of the importance of building coalitions of the left built on regional proximity not simply on a broadly based Internationalism that too easily becomes an abstraction. Best David # 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:
The Revenge of Folk Politcs
Published in full on the Transmediale Journal transmediale.de/resource/journal …...The Revenge of Folk Politics…….. 2016 witnessed the revenge of “folk politics”. Of all the assumptions that were overturned by the success of the Alt-right insurgency, one of the most surprising is the widespread belief on the left that we have outgrown grassroots media activism. Increasingly, activists have come to be seen as victims of “communicative capitalism’s perfect lure in which subjects feel themselves to be active, even as their every action reinforces the status quo. A general assumption has taken root along the lines that if these interventions posed any genuine threat to the status quo, they would be immediately suppressed. However, the success of the Alt-right in using the full armory of tactical media in the meme wars of 2016 not only repudiated this assumption it also reminded us that there is nothing intrinsically progressive about transgressive subcultures or the disruptive aesthetics of the avant-garde…. Background It is important to see the rise of the Alt-right against the background of a profound political reorientation based on two parallel strategies; firstly, the US far right has effectively occupied established leftist counter-cultural territories, deploying tactics of subversive humour and transgression while moveing to replace the traditional conservative Right. This was the point empahsised by Florian Cramer in the discussion as he described a new kind of politics in which the "fire walls separating traditional conservatism from the new generation of far right extremism as part of a larger tendency to effectively replace mainstream conservatism”. These short paragraphs are extracted from an essay building on earlier reflections on the issues raised in Better Thik Twice: Subcultures, Alt-s and the Politics of Transgression a conversation between Florian Cramer and Angela Nagle in Transmediale 2018 face value.. read full text https://transmediale.de/content/the-revenge-of-folk-politics# 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: Towards a Non-facebook
Thanks happy to join Pit’s initiative > Lets call it #non-facebook. > https://www.facebook.com/groups/217513475509054/ I am interpreting Pit's challenge to the tactics of anti-Facebook movement as being based on a recognition that we live in a world where the digital and the social are so entangled that (as recent events have shown) not even Facebook is in control of Facebook. This combined with hard reality of the 'network effect’ makes it a bad moment to leave the internal FB territory un-contested. Not a day passes without another strange event as a consequence of of the fact that digital platforms are no longer simply -facilitating - recording - analysing- the world but Increasingly INTERVENING. Furthermore as these interventions are overwhelmingly automated and therefore instaneous, we see a collapse in the tradional (deliberative) space between knowing and acting. The epistemic and existentialist consequences of the dissapearence of this space is as yet unknown. They are there to be both feared and explored.. This erasure is a likely factor behind what Michal Seemann calls "The Digital Tailspin" with his claim of an era of structural inteterminacy and the exponential rise in so called "black swan" events. There is no more need for Zukerberg’s edict for his employees "to move fast and break things”. Its the sytems (not only the sisters) that “are doing it for themselves”. Some artists and sociologists .. Constant Dullart (his army of FB bots), Erica Scourti (her ghosted biography based on her data-body) and Noortje Marres in her many papers and book Digital Sociology that are treating these platforms not simply as instrumental space (where we have a fixed idea of what something is for) but as open-ended. As Marres wrote “not treating social relations and activity as a given and unchanging but as a set of activities, patterns and forms that may shift expand and are thus transformable, digital technologies can be said to invite an experimental approach to sociality”. David Garcia On 25 May 2018, at 03:38, Pit Schultz <p...@bootlab.org> wrote: # 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:
