MECM90015 History and Philosophy of Media 2012

6. Mediated Politics

Baudry founded his critique of the cinematic appa-ratus on its inheritance of Quattrocento perspec-tive construction, which, he claimed, constitutes a viewing subject as centre and origin of meaning. Cinematic camera movement only serves to aug-ment the viewer’s feeling of power and control. For Baudry, the spectator identifies less with what is represented on the screen, than with the apparatus that stages the spectacle. The crucial illusion that cinema fosters, then, is not so much the illusory world represented, as the fantasy it engenders of a ‘transcendental subject.’ Just as the infant in Lacan’s mirror stage assembled the fragmented and unco-ordinated body in an imaginary unity, so also the imaginary transcendental self of cinema unites the discontinuous fragments of film into a unified sense

Margaret Iverson, The Discourse of Perspective in the Twentieth Century: Panofsky, Damisch, Lacan, Oxford Art Journal 2005 28(2):191-202 perspective in a typical snapshot

Bentham's Panopticon is the architectural figure of this com-position. We know the principle on which it was based: at the periphery, an annular building; at the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other. All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy. By the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery. They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visi-ble. The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions - to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide - it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than dark-ness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap.

Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison trans Alan Sheri-dan (NY: Vintage Books 1977) pp. 195-228

Aristotle: the political animalhttp://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/a8po/

Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal

Hobbes: Bellum omnium contra omnes the war of each against all http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/hobbes/thomas/h68l/

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. chapter 13

Rousseau: the social contract http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/rousseau/jean_jacques/r864s/

Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and in a body we re-ceive each member as an indivisible part of the whole

Rawls: principles of justice1. each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that

a) they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society (the differ-ence principle).b) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportu-nity

John Rawls (1971), A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard Uni-versity Press

Habermas: Legitimation Theory, Communicative Rationality

The style of the formal arrangements and procedures of democracy is such that administrative decisions may be taken relatively independently of the aims and motives of the citizens . . . This is brought about by a process of legitimation which secures the loyalty of the masses but avoids participation. In the midst of a society which is political in itself the citizens enjoy the status of passive participants, with the right to withhold their approval. Private liberty to decide on in-vestments is complemented by the people’s position as merely private citizens. Jürgen Habermas 1976 [1973]), ‘Problems of Legitimation in Late Capitalism’, in Paul Connerton (ed), Critical Soci-ology, Penguin, Harmondsworth.363-387.

Modern democracy’s specificity lies in the recog-nition and legitimation of conflict and the refusal to suppress it by imposing an authoritarian or-der. Breaking with the symbolic representations of society as an organic body. . . a pluralist liberal democratic society does not deny the existence of conflicts but provides the institutions allow-ing them to be expressed in an adversarial form.It is for this reason that we should be wary of the current tendency to celebrate a politics of consensus, claiming that it has replaced the sup-posedly old-fashioned politics of right and left. A well functioning democracy calls for a clash of legitimate democratic political positions . . . Such a confrontation should provide collective forms of representation strong enough to mobilize po-litical passions. If this adversarial configuration is missing, passions cannot be given a democratic outlet and the agonistic dynamics of pluralism are hindered. The danger therefore arises that demo-cratic confrontation will therefore be replaced by a confrontation between essentialist forms of identification or non-negotiable moral values . . . nationalist, religious or ethnic forms of identifica-tion

Mouffe, C

hantal (2005)

On the Political

Routledge, Londo: 30.

Cosmopolitanism

Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto; “I am human: nothing human is alien to me.” Terence c.160 BCE

The Satanic Verses “celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and un-expected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelisation and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Mélange, hotch-potch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world.” (Salman Rushdie)

“The Law of World Citizenship Shall Be Limited to Conditions of Universal Hospitality” Hospitality means the right of a stranger not to be treated as an enemy when he arrives in the land of another. One may refuse to receive him when this can be done without causing his destruction; but, so long as he peacefully occupies his place, one may not treat him with hostility. It is not the right to be a permanent visitor that one may demand. A special beneficent agreement would be needed in order to give an outsider a right to become a fellow inhabit-ant for a certain length of time. It is only a right of temporary sojourn, a right to associate, which all men have. They have it by virtue of their common possession of the surface of the earth, where, as a globe, they cannot infinitely disperse and hence must finally tolerate the presence of each other. (Kant, Perpetual Peace http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm)

Realism vs idealism

Sovereign is he who decides on the exceptionSchmitt, Carl (2004), Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans George D. Schwab, intro Tracy B. Strong, Univer-sity of Chicago Press, Chicago. Original publication: 1922, 2nd edn. 1934, MIT Press, 1985.

the ultimate ground of the ex-ception here is not necessity but the principle according to which “every law is ordained for the common well-being of men, and only for this does it have the force and reason of law; if it fails in this regard, it has no capacity to bind”. In the case of necessity, the vis obligandi [power to bind] of the law fails, because the goal of solus hominum [the individual man] is lacking. . . . it is a question of a paerticular case in which vis and ratio of the law find no appli-cation (p. 25)

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peer-to-peer (P2P)

diversity post-identity

networks post-community

precarity publicness

multitude rhizomes, nomads, swarms

unequal exchange

universality consensus

territory, territorialisation

security privacy

monopolies on power

old new

The social landscape . . . is characterized . . . by a flowering of free coop-eration, where individuals experience their own identity intimately related to others with whom they create the networks through which they built their connective world. This is a functioning anarchy, understood as vol-untary cooperation built on mutual trust. Though, it's a bourgeois anarchy, one which exists within the domiinant system, rather than as a revolution-ary alternative to it. This development takes place through an infrastruc-ture whose very design aggregate power in the hands of those who control the foundation of this new landscape: means of communication. And, this takes place within the framework of the state rebuilding its legitimacy around an authoritarian core promising security against the vagueries of free cooperation.

Whether or not this makes the glass half full or half empty is a meaning-less question, we are currently pouring into it as water is leaking out.

The key question when we try to think about a world without privacy is how we can promote free cooperation, which involves a high degree of visibility and identifiability of individuals, while limiting social sorting and preventing the state to rebuild itself around a deeply authoritarian core. If we manage that, I believe we can really say: goodbye privacy.

To: nettime-l {AT} kein.orgSubject: <nettime> Our New Public Life: Free Cooperation, Biased Infra-structures and Authoritarian StatesFrom: Felix Stalder <felix {AT} openflows.com>Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 12:48:36 +0200

slightly edited (original on your CD-ROM)

the problem of liberal policy was precisely to de-velop in fact the concrete and real space in which the formal structure of competition could func-tion. So it is a matter of a market economy without laissez-faire, that is to say, an active policy without state control. Neo-liberalism should not therefore be identified with laissez-faire but rather with per-manent vigilance, activity and intervention (132)

in the social contract, all those who will the social contract and virtually or actually subscribe to it form part of society until such a time as they cut themselves off from it. In the idea of an economic game we find that no one originally insisted on be-ing part of the economic game and consequently it is up to society and to the rules of the game im-posed by the state to ensure that no one is exclud-ed from this game in which he is caught up without ever having explicitly wished to take part (202)

Michel Foucault

The Birth of Biopolitics

: Lectures at the C

ollège de France 1978-1979, ed Michel Senellart, trans G

raham Burchell, Palgrave M

ac-m

illan, Basingstoke, 2004.

. . . either the rights of man are the rights of the citizen, that is to say the rights of those who have rights, which is a tautol-ogy; or the rights of the citizen are the rights of man. But as bare humanity has no rights, then they are the rights of those who have no rights, which is an absurdity Rancière, Jacques (2006), Hatred of Democ-

racy, trans Steve Corcoran, Verso, London: 61

This is what the democratic process implies: the action of subjects who, by working the interval between identities, reconfigure the distributions of the public and the private, the universal and the particular. Democ-racy can never be identified with the simple domination of the universal (Rancière 2006: 61-2)

Politics is not made up of power relationships; it is made up of relationships between worlds.(Rancière, Jacques (1999), Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans Julie Rose, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: 42)

In 1943, in a small Jewish periodical, The Menorah Jour-nal, Hannah Arendt published an article titled "We Ref-ugees." In this brief but important essay, after sketching a polemical portrait of Mr. Cohn, the assimilated Jew who had been 150 percent German, 150 percent Vien-nese, and 150 percent French but finally realizes bitterly that "on ne parvient pas deux fois," Arendt overturns the condition of refugee and person without a coun-try - in which she herself was living - in order to pro-pose this condition as the paradigm of a new historical consciousness. The refugee who has lost all rights, yet stops wanting to be assimilated at any cost to a new national identity so as to contemplate his condition lucidly, receives, in exchange for certain unpopularity, an inestimable advantage: "For him history is no longer a closed book, and politics ceases to be the privilege of the Gentiles. He knows that the banishment of the Jewish people in Europe was followed immediately by that of the majority of the European peoples. Refugees expelled from one country to the next represent the avant-garde of their people."

It is worth reflecting on the sense of this analysis, which today, precisely fifty years later, has not lost any of its currency. Not only does the problem arise with the same urgency, both in Europe and elsewhere, but also, in the context of the inexorable decline of the nation-state and the general corrosion of traditional legal-political categories, the refugee is perhaps the only imaginable figure of the people in our day. At least until the process of the dissolution of the nation-state and its sovereignty has come to an end, the refugee is the sole category in which it is possible today to per-ceive the forms and limits of a political community to come. Indeed, it may be that if we want to be equal to the absolutely novel tasks that face us, we will have to abandon without misgivings the basic concepts in which we have represented political subjects up to now (man and citizen with their rights, but also the sovereign people, the worker, etc.) and to reconstruct our political philosophy beginning with this unique figure.

Giorgio Agamben We Refugees

Symposium. 1995, No. 49(2), Summer, Pages: 114-119, English, Translation by Michael Rocke.http://www.egs.edu/faculty/giorgio-agamben/articles/we-refugees/

if I know, for example, what the causes and effects of what I am doing are, what the program is for what I am doing, then there is no decision; it is a question, at the moment of judgement, of applying a particular causality. . . . If I know what is to be done . . . . then there is no moment of decision, simply the application of a body of knowledge, or at the very least a rule or a norm. For there to be a decision, the decision must be heterogeneous to knowledge as such (Derrida 2001: 231-2)

the new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting. In this sense of initiative, an element of ac-tion, and therefore of natality, is inherent in all human activities. Moreover, since action is the political activity par excellence, natal-ity, and not mortality, may be the central category of political, as distinguished from metaphysical, thought.

Hannah A

rendt, (1958),

The H

uman C

onditionC

hicago: University of C

hicago Press: 9

QUESTIONS

How can media intervene in the relations between individuals and societies?

Is there an alternative to the mass aggregation of individuals in markets?

Is there an alternative to the nation as the primary source of political identity?

Can there be any democracy in the 21st century which is not mediated?

What should an ‘informed citizen’ be informed about?

In an increasingly fragmented world, what groupings and identifications could be brought about to contest the political?

Is the network the characteristic new terrain of politics?