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Tag: politics

  • Cultivating Reform and Revolution

    Cultivating Reform and Revolution

    The Fragility of Things: Self-Organizing Processes, Neoliberal Fantasies, and Democratic Activism (Duke University Press, 2013)a review of William E. Connolly, The Fragility of Things: Self-Organizing Processes, Neoliberal Fantasies, and Democratic Activism (Duke University Press, 2013)
    by Zachary Loeb
    ~

    Mountains and rivers, skyscrapers and dams – the world is filled with objects and structures that appear sturdy. Glancing upwards at a skyscraper, or mountain, a person may know that these obelisks will not remain eternally unchanged, but in the moment of the glance we maintain a certain casual confidence that they are not about to crumble suddenly. Yet skyscrapers collapse, mountains erode, rivers run dry or change course, and dams crack under the pressure of the waters they hold. Even equipped with this knowledge it is still tempting to view such structures as enduringly solid. Perhaps the residents of Lisbon, in November of 1755, had a similar faith in the sturdiness of the city they had built, a faith that was shattered in an earthquake – and aftershocks – that demonstrated all too terribly the fragility at the core of all physical things.

    The Lisbon earthquake, along with its cultural reverberations, provides the point of entry for William E. Connolly’s discussion of neoliberalism, ecology, activism, and the deceptive solidness of the world in his book The Fragility of Things. Beyond its relevance as an example of the natural tremors that can reduce the built world into rubble, the Lisbon earthquake provides Connolly (the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at the Johns Hopkins University), a vantage point from which to mark out and critique a Panglossian worldview he sees as prominent in contemporary society. No doubt, were Voltaire’s Pangloss alive today, he could find ready employment as an apologist for neoliberalism (perhaps as one of Silicon Valley’s evangelists). Like Panglossian philosophy, neoliberalism “acknowledges many evils and treats them as necessary effects” (6).

    Though the world has changed significantly since the mid-18th century during which Voltaire wrote, humanity remains assaulted by events that demonstrate the world’s fragility. Connolly councils against the withdrawal to which the protagonists of Candide finally consign themselves while taking up the famous trope Voltaire develops for that withdrawal; today we “cultivate our gardens” in a world in which the future of all gardens is uncertain. Under the specter of climate catastrophe, “to cultivate our gardens today means to engage the multiform relations late capitalism bears to the entire planet” (6). Connolly argues for an “ethic of cultivation” that can show “both how fragile the ethical life is and how important it is to cultivate it” (17). “Cultivation,” as developed in The Fragility of Things, stands in opposition to withdrawal. Instead it entails serious, ethically guided, activist engagement with the world – for us to recognize the fragility of natural, and human-made, systems (Connolly uses the term “force-fields”) and to act to protect this “fragility” instead of celebrating neoliberal risks that render the already precarious all the more tenuous.

    Connolly argues that when natural disasters strike, and often in their wake set off rippling cascades of additional catastrophes, they exemplify the “spontaneous order” so beloved by neoliberal economics. Under neoliberalism, the market is treated as though it embodies a uniquely omniscient, self-organizing and self-guiding principle. Yet the economic system is not the only one that can be described this way: “open systems periodically interact in ways that support, amplify, or destabilize one another” (25). Even in the so-called Anthropocene era the ecosystem, much to humanity’s chagrin, can still demonstrate creative and unpredictable potentialities. Nevertheless, the ideological core of neoliberalism relies upon celebrating the market’s self-organizing capabilities whilst ignoring the similar capabilities of governments, the public sphere, or the natural world. The ascendancy of neoliberalism runs parallel with an increase in fragility as economic inequality widens and as neoliberalism treats the ecosystem as just another profit source. Fragility is everywhere today, and though the cracks are becoming increasingly visible, it is still given – in Connolly’s estimation – less attention than is its due, even in “radical theory.” On this issue Connolly wonders if perhaps “radical theorists,” and conceivably radical activists, “fear that coming to terms with fragility would undercut the political militancy needed to respond to it?” (32). Yet Connolly sees no choice but to “respond,” envisioning a revitalized Left that can take action with a mixture of advocacy for immediate reforms while simultaneously building towards systemic solutions.

    Critically engaging with the thought of core neoliberal thinker and “spontaneous order” advocate Friedrich Hayek, Connolly demonstrates the way in which neoliberal ideology has been inculcated throughout society, even and especially amongst those whose lives have been made more fragile by neoliberalism: “a neoliberal economy cannot sustain itself unless it is supported by a self-conscious ideology internalized by most participants that celebrates the virtues of market individualism, market autonomy and a minimal state” (58). An army of Panglossian commentators must be deployed to remind the wary watchers that everything is for the best. That a high level of state intervention may be required to bolster and disseminate this ideology, and prop up neoliberalism, is wholly justified in a system that recognizes only neoliberalism as a source for creative self-organizing processes, indeed “sometimes you get the impression that ‘entrepreneurs’ are the sole paradigms of creativity in the Hayekian world” (66). Resisting neoliberalism, for Connolly, requires remembering the sources of creativity that occur outside of a market context and seeing how these other systems demonstrate self-organizing capacities.

    Within neoliberalism the market is treated as the ethical good, but Connolly works to counter this with “an ethic of cultivation” which works not only against neoliberalism but against certain elements of Kant’s philosophy. In Connolly’s estimation Kantian ethics provide some of the ideological shoring up for neoliberalism, as at times “Kant both prefigures some existential demands unconsciously folded into contemporary neoliberalism and reveals how precarious they in fact are. For he makes them postulates” (117). Connolly sees a certain similarity between the social conditioning that Kant saw as necessary for preparing the young to “obey moral law” and the ideological conditioning that trains people for life under neoliberalism – what is shared is a process by which a self-organizing system must counter people’s own self-organizing potential by organizing their reactions. Furthermore “the intensity of cultural desires to invest hopes in the images of self-regulating interest within markets and/or divine providence wards off acknowledgment of the fragility of things” (118). Connolly’s “ethic of cultivation” appears as a corrective to this ethic of inculcation – it features “an element of tragic possibility within it” (133) which is the essential confrontation with the “fragility” that may act as a catalyst for a new radical activism.

    In the face of impending doom neoliberalism will once more have an opportunity to demonstrate its creativity even as this very creativity will have reverberations that will potentially unleash further disasters. Facing the possible catastrophe means that “we may need to recraft the long debate between secular, linear, and deterministic images of the world on the one hand and divinely touched, voluntarist, providential, and/or punitive images on the other” (149). Creativity, and the potential for creativity, is once more essential – as it is the creativity in multiple self-organizing systems that has created the world, for better or worse, around us today. Bringing his earlier discussions of Kant into conversation with the thought of Whitehead and Nietzsche, Connolly further considers the place of creative processes in shaping and reshaping the world. Nietzsche, in particular, provides Connolly with a way to emphasize the dispersion of creativity by removing the province of creativity from the control of God to treat it as something naturally recurring across various “force-fields.” A different demand thus takes shape wherein “we need to slow down and divert human intrusions into various planetary force fields, even as we speed up efforts to reconstitute the identities, spiritualities, consumption practices, market faiths, and state policies entangled with them” (172) though neoliberalism knows but one speed: faster.

    An odd dissonance occurs at present wherein people are confronted with the seeming triumph of neoliberal capitalism (one can hear the echoes of “there is no alternative”) and the warnings pointing to the fragility of things. In this context, for Connolly, withdrawal is irresponsible, it would be to “cultivate a garden” when what is needed is an “ethic of cultivation.” Neoliberal capitalism has trained people to accept the strictures of its ideology, but now is a time when different roles are needed; it is a time to become “role experimentalists” (187). Such experiments may take a variety of forms that run the gamut from “reformist” to “revolutionary” and back again, but the process of such experimentation can break the training of neoliberalism and demonstrate other ways of living, interacting, being and having. Connolly does not put forth a simple solution for the challenges facing humanity, instead he emphasizes how recognizing the “fragility of things” allows for people to come to terms with these challenges. After all, it may be that neoliberalism only appears so solid because we have forgotten that it is not actually a naturally occurring mountain but a human built pyramid – and our backs are its foundation.

    * * *

    In the “First Interlude,” on page 45, Connolly poses a question that haunts the remainder of The Fragility of Things, the question – asked in the midst of a brief discussion of the 2011 Lars von Trier film Melancholia – is, “How do you prepare for the end of the world?” It is the sort of disarming and discomforting question that in its cold honesty forces readers to face a conclusion they may not want to consider. It is a question that evokes the deceptively simple acronym FRED (Facing the Reality of Extinction and Doom). And yet there is something refreshing in the question – many have heard the recommendations about what must be done to halt climate catastrophe, but how many believe these steps will be taken? Indeed, even though Connolly claims “we need to slow down” there are also those who, to the contrary, insist that what is needed is even greater acceleration. Granted, Connolly does not pose this question on the first page of his book, and had he done so The Fragility of Things could have easily appeared as a dismissible dirge. Wisely, Connolly recognizes that “a therapist, a priest, or a philosopher might stutter over such questions. Even Pangloss might hesitate” (45); one of the core strengths of The Fragility of Things is that it does not “stutter over such questions” but realizes that such questions require an honest reckoning. Which includes being willing to ask “How do you prepare for the end of the world?”

    William Connolly’s The Fragility of Things is both ethically and intellectually rigorous, demanding readers perceive the “fragility” of the world around them even as it lays out the ways in which the world around them derives its stability from making that very fragility invisible. Though it may seem that there are relatively simple concerns at the core of The Fragility of Things Connolly never succumbs to simplistic argumentation – preferring the fine-toothed complexity that allows moments of fragility to be fully understood. The tone and style of The Fragility of Things feels as though it assumes its readership will consist primarily of academics, activists, and those who see themselves as both. It is a book that wastes no time trying to convince its reader that “climate change is real” or “neoliberalism is making things worse,” and the book is more easily understood if a reader begins with at least a basic acquaintance with the thought of Hayek, Kant, Whitehead, and Nietzsche. Even if not every reader of The Fragility of Things has dwelled for hours upon the question of “How do you prepare for the end of the world?” the book seems to expect that this question lurks somewhere in the subconscious of the reader.

    Amidst Connolly’s discussions of ethics, fragility and neoliberalism, he devotes much of the book to arguing for the need for a revitalized, active, and committed Left – one that would conceivably do more than hold large marches and then disappear. While Connolly cautions against “giving up” on electoral politics he does evince a distrust for US party politics; to the extent that Connolly appears to be a democrat it is a democrat with a lowercase d. Drawing inspiration from the wave of protests in and around 2011 Connolly expresses the need for a multi-issue, broadly supported, international (and internationalist) Left that can organize effectively to win small-scale local reforms while building the power to truly challenge the grip of neoliberalism. The goal, as Connolly envisions it, is to eventually “mobilize enough collective energy to launch a general strike simultaneously in several countries in the near future” even as Connolly remains cognizant of threats that “the emergence of a neofascist or mafia-type capitalism” can pose (39). Connolly’s focus on the, often slow, “traditional” activist strategies of organizing should not be overlooked, as his focus on mobilizing large numbers of people acts as a retort to a utopian belief that “technology will fix everything.” The “general strike” as the democratic response once electoral democracy has gone awry is a theme that Connolly concludes with as he calls for his readership to take part in helping to bring together “a set of interacting minorities in several countries for the time when we coalesce around a general strike launched in several states simultaneously” (195). Connolly emphasizes the types of localized activism and action that are also necessary, but “the general strike” is iconic as the way to challenge neoliberalism. In emphasizing the “the general strike” Connolly stakes out a position in which people have an obligation to actively challenge existing neoliberalism, waiting for capitalism to collapse due to its own contradictions (and trying to accelerate these contradictions) does not appear as a viable tactic.

    All of which raises something of prickly question for The Fragility of Things: which element of the book strikes the reader as more outlandish, the question of how to prepare for the end of the world, or the prospect of a renewed Left launching “a general strike…in the near future”? This question is not asked idly or as provocation; and the goal here is in no way to traffic in Leftist apocalyptic romanticism. Yet experience in current activism and organizing does not necessarily imbue one with great confidence in the prospect of a city-wide general strike (in the US) to say nothing of an international one. Activists may be acutely aware of the creative potentials and challenges faced by repressed communities, precarious labor, the ecosystem, and so forth – but these same activists are aware of the solidity of militarized police forces, a reactionary culture industry, and neoliberal dominance. Current, committed, activists’ awareness of the challenges they face makes it seem rather odd that Connolly suggests that radical theorists have ignored “fragility.” Indeed many radical thinkers, or at least some (Grace Lee Boggs and Franco “Bifo” Berardi, to name just two) seem to have warned consistently of “fragility” – even if they do not always use that exact term. Nevertheless, here the challenge may not be the Sisyphean work of activism but the rather cynical answer many, non-activists, give to the question of “How does one prepare for the end of the world?” That answer? Download some new apps, binge watch a few shows, enjoy the sci-fi cool of the latest gadget, and otherwise eat, drink and be merry because we’ll invent something to solve tomorrow’s problems next week. Neoliberalism has trained people well.

    That answer, however, is the type that Connolly seems to find untenable, and his apparent hope in The Fragility of Things is that most readers will also find this answer unacceptable. Thus Connolly’s “ethic of cultivation” returns and shows its value again. “Our lives are messages” (185) Connolly writes and thus the actions that an individual takes to defend “fragility” and oppose neoliberalism act as a demonstration to others that different ways of being are possible.

    What The Fragility of Things makes clear is that an “ethic of cultivation” is not a one-off event but an ongoing process – cultivating a garden, after all, is something that takes time. Some gardens require years of cultivation before they start to bear fruit.

    _____

    Zachary Loeb is a writer, activist, librarian, and terrible accordion player. He earned his MSIS from the University of Texas at Austin, and is currently working towards an MA in the Media, Culture, and Communications department at NYU. His research areas include media refusal and resistance to technology, ethical implications of technology, infrastructure and e-waste, as well as the intersection of library science with the STS field. Using the moniker “The Luddbrarian,” Loeb writes at the blog Librarian Shipwreck. He is a frequent contributor to The b2 Review Digital Studies section.

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  • Trickster Makes This Web: The Ambiguous Politics of Anonymous

    Trickster Makes This Web: The Ambiguous Politics of Anonymous

    Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy
    a review of Gabriella Coleman, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous (Verso, 2014)
    by Gavin Mueller
    ~

    Gabriella Coleman’s Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy (HHWS) tackles a difficult and pressing subject: the amorphous hacker organization Anonymous. The book is not a strictly academic work. Rather, it unfolds as a rather lively history of a subculture of geeks, peppered with snippets of cultural theory and autobiographical portions. As someone interested in a more sustained theoretical exposition of Anonymous’s organizing and politics, I was a bit disappointed, though Coleman has opted for a more readable style. In fact, this is the book’s best asset. However, while containing a number of insights of interest to the general reader, the book ultimately falters as an assessment of Anonymous’s political orientation, or the state of hacker politics in general.

    Coleman begins with a discussion of online trolling, a common antagonistic online cultural practice; many Anons cut their troll teeth at the notorious 4chan message board. Trolling aims to create “lulz,” a kind of digital schadenfreude produced by pranks, insults and misrepresentations. According to Coleman, the lulz are “a form of cultural differentiation and a tool or weapon used to attack, humiliate, and defame” rooted in the use of “inside jokes” of those steeped in the codes of Internet culture (32). Coleman argues that the lulz has a deeper significance: they “puncture the consensus around our politics and ethics, our social lives and our aesthetic sensibilities.” But trolling can be better understood through an offline frame of reference: hazing. Trolling is a means by which geeks have historically policed the boundaries of the subcultural corners of the Internet. If you can survive the epithets and obscene pictures, you might be able to hang. That trolling often takes the form of misogynist, racist and homophobic language is unsurprising: early Net culture was predominantly white and male, a demographic fact which overdetermines the shape of resentment towards “newbies” (or in 4chan’s unapologetically offensive argot, “newfags”). The lulz is joy that builds community, but almost always at someone else’s expense.

    Coleman, drawing upon her background as an anthropologist, conceptualizes the troll as an instantiation of the trickster archetype which recurs throughout mythology and folklore. Tricksters, she argues, like trolls and Anonymous, are liminal figures who defy norms and revel in causing chaos. This kind of application of theory is a common technique in cultural studies, where seemingly apolitical or even anti-social transgressions, like punk rock or skateboarding, can be politicized with a dash of Bakhtin or de Certeau. Here it creates difficulties. There is one major difference between the spider spirit Anansi and Coleman’s main informant on trolling, the white supremacist hacker weev: Anansi is fictional, while weev is a real person who writes op-eds for neo-Nazi websites. The trickster archetype, a concept crafted for comparative structural analysis of mythology, does little to explain the actually existing social practice of trolling. Instead it renders it more complicated, ambiguous, and uncertain. These difficulties are compounded as the analysis moves to Anonymous. Anonymous doesn’t merely enact a submerged politics via style or symbols. It engages in explicitly political projects, complete with manifestos, though Coleman continues to return to transgression as one of its salient features.

    The trolls of 4chan, from which Anonymous emerged, developed a culture of compulsory anonymity. In part, this was technological: unlike other message boards and social media, posting on 4chan requires no lasting profile, no consistent presence. But there was also a cultural element to this. Identifying oneself is strongly discouraged in the community. Fittingly, its major trolling weapon is doxing: revealing personal information to facilitate further harassment offline (prank calls, death threats, embarrassment in front of employers). As Whitney Phillips argues, online trolling often acts as a kind of media critique: by enforcing anonymity and rejecting fame or notoriety, Anons oppose the now-dominant dynamics of social media and personal branding which have colonized much of the web, and threaten their cherished subcultural practices, which are more adequately enshrined in formats such as image boards and IRC. In this way, Anonymous deploys technological means to thwart the dominant social practices of technology, a kind of wired Luddism. Such practices proliferate in the communities of the computer underground, which is steeped in an omnipresent prelapsarian nostalgia since at least the “eternal September” of the early 1990s.

    HHWS’s overarching narrative is the emergence of Anonymous out of the cesspits of 4chan and into political consciousness: trolling for justice instead of lulz. The compulsory anonymity of 4chan, in part, determined Anonymous’s organizational form: Anonymous lacks formal membership, instead formed from entirely ad hoc affiliations. The brand itself can be selectively deployed or disavowed, leading to much argumentation and confusion. Coleman provides an insider perspective on how actions are launched: there is debate, occasionally a rough consensus, and then activity, though several times individuals opt to begin an action, dragging along a number of other participants of varying degrees of reluctance. Tactics are formalized in an experimental, impromptu way. In this, I recognized the way actions formed in the Occupy encampments. Anonymous, as Coleman shows, was an early Occupy Wall Street booster, and her analysis highlights the connection between the Occupy form and the networked forms of sociality exemplified by Anonymous. After reading Coleman’s account, I am much more convinced of Anonymous’s importance to the movement. Likewise, many criticisms of Occupy could also be levelled at Anonymous; Coleman cites Jo Freeman’s “The Tyranny of Structurelessness” as one candidate.

    If Anonymous can be said to have a coherent political vision, it is one rooted in civil liberties, particularly freedom of speech and opposition censorship efforts. Indeed, Coleman earns the trust of several hackers by her affiliation with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, nominally the digital equivalent to the ACLU (though some object to this parallel, due in part to EFF’s strong ties to industry). Geek politics, from Anonymous to Wikileaks to the Pirate Bay, are a weaponized form of the mantra “information wants to be free.” Anonymous’s causes seem fit these concerns perfectly: Scientology’s litigious means of protecting its secrets provoked its wrath, as did the voluntary withdrawal of services to Wikileaks by PayPal and Mastercard, and the Bay Area Rapid Transit police’s blacking out of cell phone signals to scuttle a protest.

    I’ve referred to Anonymous as geeks rather than hackers deliberately. Hackers — skilled individuals who can break into protected systems — participate in Anonymous, but many of the Anons pulled from 4chan are merely pranksters with above-average knowledge of the Internet and computing. This gets the organization in quite a bit of trouble when it engages in the political tactic of most interest to Coleman, the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. A DDoS floods a website with requests, overwhelming its servers. This technique has captured the imaginations of a number of scholars, including Coleman, with its resemblance to offline direct action like pickets and occupations. However, the AnonOps organizers falsely claimed that their DDoS app, the Low-Orbit Ion Cannon, ensured user anonymity, leading to a number of Anons facing serious criminal charges. Coleman curiously places the blame for this startling breach of operational security on journalists writing about AnonOps, rather on the organizers themselves. Furthermore, many DDoS attacks, including those launched by Anonymous, have relied on botnets, which draw power from hundreds of hijacked computers, bears little resemblance to any kind of democratic initiative. Of course, this isn’t to say that the harsh punishments meted out to Anons under the auspices of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act are warranted, but that political tactics must be subjected to scrutiny.

    Coleman argues that Anonymous outgrew its narrow civil libertarian agenda with its involvement in the Arab Spring: “No longer was the group bound to Internet-y issues like censorship and file-sharing” (148). However, by her own account, it is opposition to censorship which truly animates the group. The #OpTunisia manifesto (Anonymous names its actions with the prefix “Op,” for operations, along with the ubiquitous Twitter-based hashtag) states plainly, “Any organization involved in censorship will be targeted” (ibid). Anons were especially animated by the complete shut-off of the Internet in Tunisia and Egypt, actions which shattered the notion of the Internet as a space controlled by geeks, not governments. Anonymous operations launched against corporations did not oppose capitalist exploitation but fought corporate restrictions on online conduct. These are laudable goals, but also limited ones, and are often compatible with Silicon Valley companies, as illustrated by the Google-friendly anti-SOPA/PIPA protests.

    Coleman is eager to distance Anonymous from the libertarian philosophies rife in geek and hacker circles, but its politics are rarely incompatible with such a perspective. The most recent Guy Fawkes Day protest I witnessed in Washington, D.C., full of mask-wearing Anons, displayed a number of slogans emerging from the Ron Paul camp, “End the Fed” prominent among them. There is no accounting for this in HHWS. It is clear that political differences among Anons exists, and that any analysis must be nuanced. But Coleman’s description of this nuance ultimately doesn’t delineate the political positions within the group and how they coalesce, opting to elide these differences in favor of a more protean focus on “transgression.” In this way, she is able to provide a conceptual coherence for Anonymous, albeit at the expense of a detailed examination of the actual politics of its members. In the final analysis, “Anonymous became a generalized symbol for dissent, a medium to channel deep disenchantment… basically, with anything” (399).

    As political concerns overtake the lulz, Anonymous wavers as smaller militant hacker crews LulzSec and AntiSec take the fore, doxing white hat security executives, leaking documents, and defacing websites. This frustrates Coleman: “Anonymous had been exciting to me for a specific reason: it was the largest and most populist disruptive grassroots movement the Internet had, up to that time, fomented. But it felt, suddenly like AnonOps/Anonymous was slipping into a more familiar state of hacker-vanguardism” (302). Yet it is at this moment that Coleman offers a revealing account of hacker ideology: its alignment with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. From 4chan’s trolls scoffing at morality and decency, to hackers disregarding technical and legal restraints to accessing information, to the collective’s general rejection any standard form of accountability, Anonymous truly seems to posit itself as beyond good and evil. Coleman herself confesses to being “overtly romantic” as she supplies alibis for the group’s moral and strategic failures (it is, after all, incredibly difficult for an ethnographer to criticize her informants). But Nietzsche was a profoundly undemocratic thinker, whose avowed elitism should cast more of a disturbing shadow over the progressive potentials behind hacker groups than it does for Coleman, who embraces the ability of hackers to “cast off — at least momentarily — the shackles of normativity and attain greatness” (275). Coleman’s previous work on free software programmers convincingly makes the case for a Nietzschean current running through hacker culture; I am considerably more skeptical than she is about the liberal democratic viewpoint this engenders.

    Ultimately, Coleman concludes that Anonymous cannot work as a substitute for existing organizations, but that its tactics should be taken up by other political formations: “The urgent question is how to promote cross-pollination” between Anonymous and more formalized structures (374). This may be warranted, but there needs to be a fuller accounting of the drawbacks to Anonymous. Because anyone can fly its flag, and because its actions are guided by talented and charismatic individuals working in secret, Anonymous is ripe for infiltration. Historically, hackers have proven to be easy for law enforcement and corporations to co-opt, not the least because of the ferocious rivalries amongst hackers themselves. Tactics are also ambiguous. A DDoS can be used by anti-corporate activists, or by corporations against their rivals and enemies. Document dumps can ruin a diplomatic initiative, or a woman’s social life. Public square occupations can be used to advocate for democracy, or as a platform for anti-democratic coups. Currently, a lot of the same geek energy behind Anonymous has been devoted to the misogynist vendetta GamerGate (in a Reddit AMA, Coleman adopted a diplomatic tone, referring to GamerGate as “a damn Gordian knot”). Without a steady sense of Anonymous’s actual political commitments, outside of free speech, it is difficult to do much more than marvel at the novelty of their media presence (which wears thinner with each overwrought communique). With Hoaxer, Hacker, Whistleblower, Spy, Coleman has offered a readable account of recent hacker history, but I remain unconvinced of Anonymous’s political potential.

    _____

    Gavin Mueller (@gavinsaywhat) is a PhD candidate in cultural studies at George Mason University, and an editor at Jacobin and Viewpoint Magazine.

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  • Network Pessimism

    Network Pessimism

    By Alexander R. Galloway
    ~

    I’ve been thinking a lot about pessimism recently. Eugene Thacker has been deep in this material for some time already. In fact he has a new, lengthy manuscript on pessimism called Infinite Resignation, which is a bit of departure from his other books in terms of tone and structure. I’ve read it and it’s excellent. Definitely “the worst” he’s ever written! Following the style of other treatises from the history of philosophical pessimism–Leopardi, Cioran, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and others–the bulk of the book is written in short aphorisms. It’s very poetic language, and some sections are driven by his own memories and meditations, all in an attempt to plumb the deepest, darkest corners of the worst the universe has to offer.

    Meanwhile, the worst can’t stay hidden. Pessimism has made it to prime time, to NPR, and even right-wing media. Despite all this attention, Eugene seems to have little interest in showing his manuscript to publishers. A true pessimist! Not to worry, I’m sure the book will see the light of day eventually. Or should I say dead of night? When it does, the book is sure to sadden, discourage, and generally worsen the lives of Thacker fans everywhere.

    Interestingly pessimism also appears in a number of other authors and fields. I’m thinking, for instance, of critical race theory and the concept of Afro-pessimism. The work of Fred Moten and Frank B. Wilderson, III is particularly interesting in that regard. Likewise queer theory has often wrestled with pessimism, be it the “no future” debates around reproductive futurity, or what Anna Conlan has simply labeled “homo-pessimism,” that is, the way in which the “persistent association of homosexuality with death and oppression contributes to a negative stereotype of LGBTQ lives as unhappy and unhealthy.”[1]

    In his review of my new book, Andrew Culp made reference to how some of this material has influenced me. I’ll be posting more on Moten and these other themes in the future, but let me here describe, in very general terms, how the concept of pessimism might apply to contemporary digital media.

    *

    A previous post was devoted to the reticular fallacy, defined as the false assumption that the erosion of hierarchical organization leads to an erosion of organization as such. Here I’d like to address the related question of reticular pessimism or, more simply, network pessimism.

    Network pessimism relies on two basic assumptions: (1) “everything is a network”; (2) “the best response to networks is more networks.”

    Who says everything is a network? Everyone, it seems. In philosophy, Bruno Latour: ontology is a network. In literary studies, Franco Moretti: Hamlet is a network. In the military, Donald Rumsfeld: the battlefield is a network. (But so too our enemies are networks: the terror network.) Art, architecture, managerial literature, computer science, neuroscience, and many other fields–all have shifted prominently in recent years toward a network model. Most important, however, is the contemporary economy and the mode of production. Today’s most advanced companies are essentially network companies. Google monetizes the shape of networks (in part via clustering algorithms). Facebook has rewritten subjectivity and social interaction along the lines of canalized and discretized network services. The list goes on and on. Thus I characterize the first assumption — “everything is a network” — as a kind of network fundamentalism. It claims that whatever exists in the world appears naturally in the form of a system, an ecology, an assemblage, in short, as a network.

    Ladies and gentlemen, behold the good news, postmodernism is definitively over! We have a new grand récit. As metanarrative, the network will guide us into a new Dark Age.

    If the first assumption expresses a positive dogma or creed, the second is more negative or nihilistic. The second assumption — that the best response to networks is more networks — is also evident in all manner of social and political life today. Eugene and I described this phenomena at greater length in The Exploit, but consider a few different examples from contemporary debates… In military theory: network-centric warfare is the best response to terror networks. In Deleuzian philosophy: the rhizome is the best response to schizophrenic multiplicity. In autonomist Marxism: the multitude is the best response to empire. In the environmental movement: ecologies and systems are the best response to the systemic colonization of nature. In computer science: distributed architectures are the best response to bottlenecks in connectivity. In economics: heterogenous “economies of scope” are the best response to the distributed nature of the “long tail.”

    To be sure, there are many sites today where networks still confront power centers. The point is not to deny the continuing existence of massified, centralized sovereignty. But at the same time it’s important to contextualize such confrontations within a larger ideological structure, one that inoculates the network form and recasts it as the exclusive site of liberation, deviation, political maturation, complex thinking, and indeed the very living of life itself.

    Why label this a pessimism? For the same reasons that queer theory and critical race theory are grappling with pessimism: Is alterity a death sentence? Is this as good as it gets? Is this all there is? Can we imagine a parallel universe different from this one? (Although the pro-pessimism camp would likely state it in the reverse: We must destabilize and annihilate all normative descriptions of the “good.” This world isn’t good, and hooray for that!)

    So what’s the problem? Why should we be concerned about network pessimism? Let me state clearly so there’s no misunderstanding, pessimism isn’t the problem here. Likewise, networks are not the problem. (Let no one label me “anti network” nor “anti pessimism” — in fact I’m not even sure what either of those positions would mean.) The issue, as I see it, is that network pessimism deploys and sustains a specific dogma, confining both networks and pessimism to a single, narrow ideological position. It’s this narrow-mindedness that should be questioned.

    Specifically I can see three basic problems with network pessimism, the problem of presentism, the problem of ideology, and the problem of the event.

    The problem of presentism refers to the way in which networks and network thinking are, by design, allergic to historicization. This exhibits itself in a number of different ways. Networks arrive on the scene at the proverbial “end of history” (and they do so precisely because they help end this history). Ecological and systems-oriented thinking, while admittedly always temporal by nature, gained popularity as a kind of solution to the problems of diachrony. Space and landscape take the place of time and history. As Fredric Jameson has noted, the “spatial turn” of postmodernity goes hand in hand with a denigration of the “temporal moment” of previous intellectual movements.

    man machines buy fritz kahn
    Fritz Kahn, “Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace)” (Stuttgart, 1926). Image source: NIH

    From Hegel’s history to Luhmann’s systems. From Einstein’s general relativity to Riemann’s complex surfaces. From phenomenology to assemblage theory. From the “time image” of cinema to the “database image” of the internet. From the old mantra always historicize to the new mantra always connect.

    During the age of clockwork, the universe was thought to be a huge mechanism, with the heavens rotating according to the music of the spheres. When the steam engine was the source of newfound power, the world suddenly became a dynamo of untold thermodynamic force. After full-fledged industrialization, the body became a factory. Technologies and infrastructures are seductive metaphors. So it’s no surprise (and no coincidence) that today, in the age of the network, a new template imprints itself on everything in sight. In other words, the assumption “everything is a network” gradually falls apart into a kind of tautology of presentism. “Everything right now is a network…because everything right now has been already defined as a network.”

    This leads to the problem of ideology. Again we’re faced with an existential challenge, because network technologies were largely invented as a non-ideological or extra-ideological structure. When writing Protocol I interviewed some of the computer scientists responsible for the basic internet protocols and most of them reported that they “have no ideology” when designing networks, that they are merely interested in “code that works” and “systems that are efficient and robust.” In sociology and philosophy of science, figures like Bruno Latour routinely describe their work as “post-critical,” merely focused on the direct mechanisms of network organization. Hence ideology as a problem to be forgotten or subsumed: networks are specifically conceived and designed as those things that both are non-ideological in their conception (we just want to “get things done”), but also post-ideological in their architecture (in that they acknowledge and co-opt the very terms of previous ideological debates, things like heterogeneity, difference, agency, and subject formation).

    The problem of the event indicates a crisis for the very concept of events themselves. Here the work of Alain Badiou is invaluable. Network architectures are the perfect instantiation of what Badiou derisively labels “democratic materialism,” that is, a world in which there are “only bodies and languages.” In Badiou’s terms, if networks are the natural state of the situation and there is no way to deviate from nature, then there is no event, and hence no possibility for truth. Networks appear, then, as the consummate “being without event.”

    What could be worse? If networks are designed to accommodate massive levels of contingency — as with the famous Robustness Principle — then they are also exceptionally adept at warding off “uncontrollable” change wherever it might arise. If everything is a network, then there’s no escape, there’s no possibility for the event.

    Jameson writes as much in The Seeds of Time when he says that it is easier to imagine the end of the earth and the end of nature than it is to imagine the ends of capitalism. Network pessimism, in other words, is really a kind of network defeatism in that it makes networks the alpha and omega of our world. It’s easier to imagine the end of that world than it is to discard the network metaphor and imagine a kind of non-world in which networks are no longer dominant.

    In sum, we shouldn’t give in to network pessimism. We shouldn’t subscribe to the strong claim that everything is a network. (Nor should we subscribe to the softer claim, that networks are merely the most common, popular, or natural architecture for today’s world.) Further, we shouldn’t think that networks are the best response to networks. Instead we must ask the hard questions. What is the political fate of networks? Did heterogeneity and systematicity survive the Twentieth Century? If so, at what cost? What would a non-net look like? And does thinking have a future without the network as guide?

    _____

    Alexander R. Galloway is a writer and computer programer working on issues in philosophy, technology, and theories of mediation. Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, he is author of several books and dozens of articles on digital media and critical theory, including Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization (MIT, 2006), Gaming: Essays in Algorithmic Culture (University of Minnesota, 2006); The Interface Effect (Polity, 2012), and most recently Laruelle: Against the Digital (University of Minnesota, 2014), reviewed here in 2014. Galloway has recently been writing brief notes on media and digital culture and theory at his blog, on which this post first appeared.

    Back to the essay
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    Notes

    [1] Anna Conlan, “Representing Possibility: Mourning, Memorial, and Queer Museology,” in Gender, Sexuality and Museums, ed. Amy K. Levin (London: Routledge, 2010). 253-263.

  • Warding Off General Ludd: The Absurdity of “The Luddite Awards”

    Warding Off General Ludd: The Absurdity of “The Luddite Awards”

    By Zachary Loeb
    ~

    Of all the dangers looming over humanity no threat is greater than that posed by the Luddites.

    If the previous sentence seems absurdly hyperbolic, know that it only seems that way because it is, in fact, quite ludicrous. It has been over two hundred years since the historic Luddites rose up against “machinery hurtful to commonality,” but as their leader the myth enrobed General Ludd was never apprehended there are always those who fear that General Ludd is still out there, waiting with sledge hammer at the ready. True, there have been some activist attempts to revive the spirit of the Luddites (such as the neo-Luddites of the late 1980s and 1990s) – but in the midst of a society enthralled by (and in thrall to) smart phones, start-ups, and large tech companies – to see Luddites lurking in every shadow is a sign of either ideology, paranoia, or both.

    Yet, such an amusing mixture of unabashed pro-technology ideology and anxiety at the possibility of any criticism of technology is on full display in the inaugural “Luddite Awards” presented by The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). Whereas the historic Luddites needed sturdy hammers, and other such implements, to engage in machine breaking the ITIF seems to believe that the technology of today is much more fragile – it can be smashed into nothingness simply by criticism or even skepticism. As their name suggests, the ITIF is a think tank committed to the celebration of, and advocating for, technological innovation in its many forms. Thus it should not be surprising that a group committed to technological innovation would be wary of what it perceives as a growing chorus of “neo-Ludditism” that it imagines is planning to pull the plug on innovation. Therefore the ITIF has seen fit to present dishonorable “Luddite Awards” to groups it has deemed insufficiently enamored with innovation, these groups include (amongst others): The Vermont Legislature, The French Government, the organization Free Press, the National Rifle Association, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The ITIF “Luddite Awards” may mark the first time that any group has accused the Electronic Frontier Foundation of being a secret harbor for neo-Ludditism.

    luddite
    Unknown artist, “The Leader of the Luddites,” engraving, 1812 (image source: Wikipedia)

    The full report on “The 2014 ITIF Luddite Awards,” written by the ITIF’s president Robert D. Atkinson, presents the current state of technological innovation as being dangerously precarious. Though technological innovation is currently supplying people with all manner of devices, the ITIF warns against a growing movement born of neo-Ludditism that will aim to put a stop to further innovation. Today’s neo-Ludditism, in the estimation of the ITIF is distinct from the historic Luddites, and yet the goal of “ideological Ludditism” is still “to ‘smash’ today’s technology.” Granted, adherents of neo-Ludditism are not raiding factories with hammers, instead they are to be found teaching at universities, writing columns in major newspapers, disparaging technology in the media, and otherwise attempting to block the forward movement of progress. According to the ITIF (note the word “all”):

    “what is behind all ideological Ludditism is the general longing for a simpler life from the past—a life with fewer electronics, chemicals, molecules, machines, etc.” (ITIF, 3)

    Though the chorus of Ludditisim has, in the ITIF’s reckoning, grown to an unacceptable volume of late, the foundation is quick to emphasize that Ludditism is nothing new. What is new, as the ITIF puts it, is that these nefarious Luddite views have, apparently, moved from the margins and infected the larger public discourse around technology. A diverse array of figures and groups from figures like environmentalist Bill McKibben, conservative thinker James Pethokoukis, economist Paul Krugman, writers for Smithsonian Magazine, to foundations like Free Press, the EFF and the NRA – are all tarred with the epithet “Luddite.”The neo-Luddites, according to ITIF, issue warnings against unmitigated acceptance of innovation when they bring up environmental concerns, mention the possibility of jobs being displaced by technology, write somewhat approvingly of the historic Luddites, or advocate for Net Neutrality.

    While the ITIF holds to the popular, if historically inaccurate, definition of Luddite as “one who resists technological change,” their awards make clear that the ITIF would like to add to this definition the words “or even mildly opposes any technological innovation.” The ten groups awarded “Luddite Awards” are a mixture of non-profit public advocacy organizations and various governments – though the ITIF report seems to revel in attacking Bill McKibben he was not deemed worthy of an award (maybe next year). The awardees include: the NRA for opposing smart guns, The Vermont legislature for requiring the labeling of GMOS, Free Press’s support of net neutrality which is deemed as an affront to “smarter broadband networks,” news reports which “claim that ‘robots are killing jobs,” the EFF is cited as it “opposes Health IT,” and various governments in several states are reprimanded for “cracking down” on companies like Airbnb, Uber and Lyft. The ten recipients of Luddite awards may be quite surprised to find that they have been deemed adherents of neo-Ludditism, but in the view of the ITIF the actions these groups have taken indicate that General Ludd is slyly guiding their moves. Though the Luddite Awards may have a somewhat silly feeling, the ITIF cautions that the threat is serious, as the report ominously concludes:

    “But while we can’t stop the Luddites from engaging in their anti-progress, anti-innovation activities, we can recognize them for what they are: actions and ideas that are profoundly anti-progress, that if followed would mean a our children [sic] will live lives as adults nowhere near as good as the lives they could live if we instead embraced, rather than fought innovation.” (ITIF, 19)

    Credit is due to the ITIF for their ideological consistency. In putting together their list of recipients for the inaugural “Luddite Awards” – the foundation demonstrates that they are fully committed to technological innovation and they are unflagging in their support of that cause. Nevertheless, while the awards (and in particular the report accompanying the awards) may be internally ideologically consistent it is also a work of dubious historical scholarship, comical neoliberal paranoia, and evinces a profound anti-democratic tendency. Though the ITIF awards aim to target what it perceives as “neo-Ludditism” even a cursory glance at their awardees makes it abundantly clear that what the organization actually opposes is any attempt to regulate technology undertaken by a government, or advocated for by a public interest group. Even in a country as regulation averse as the contemporary United States it is still safer to defame Luddites than to simply state that you reject regulation. The ITIF carefully cloaks its ideology in the aura of terms with positive connotations such as “innovation,” “progress,” and “freedom” but these terms are only so much fresh paint over the same “free market” ideology that only values innovation, progress and freedom when they are in the service of neoliberal economic policies. Nowhere does the ITIF engage seriously with the questions of “who profits from this innovation?” “who benefits from this progress?” “is this ‘freedom’ equally distributed or does it reinforce existing inequities?” – the terms are used as ideological sledgehammers far blunter than any tool the Luddites ever used. This raw ideology is on perfect display in the very opening line of the award announcement, which reads:

    “Technological innovation is the wellspring of human progress, bringing higher standards of living, improved health, a cleaner environment, increased access to information and many other benefits.” (ITIF, 1)

    One can only applaud the ITIF for so clearly laying out their ideology at the outset, and one can only raise a skeptical eyebrow at this obvious case of the logical fallacy of Begging the Question. To claim that “technological innovation is the wellspring of human progress” is an assumption that demands proof, it is not a conclusion in and of itself. While arguments can certainly be made to support this assumption there is little in the ITIF report that suggests the ITIF is willing to engage in the type of critical reflection, which would be necessary for successfully supporting this argument (though, to be fair, the ITIF has published many other reports some of which may better lay out this claim). The further conclusions that such innovation brings “higher standards of living, improved health, a cleaner environment” and so forth are further assumptions that require proof – and in the process of demonstrating this proof one is forced (if engaging in honest argumentation) to recognize the validity of competing claims. Particularly as many of the “benefits” ITIF seeks to celebrate do not accrue evenly. True, an argument can be made that technological innovation has an important role to play in ushering in a “cleaner environment” – but tell that to somebody who lives next to an e-waste dump where mountains of the now obsolete detritus of “technological innovation” leach toxins into the soil. The ITIF report is filled with such pleasant sounding “common sense” technological assumptions that have been, at the very least, rendered highly problematic by serious works of inquiry and scholarship in the field of the history of technology. As classic works in the scholarly literature of the Science and Technology Studies field, such as Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s More Work for Mother, make clear “technological innovation” does not always live up to its claims. Granted, it is easy to imagine that the ITIF would offer a retort that simply dismisses all such scholarship as tainted by neo-Ludditism. Yet recognizing that not all “innovation” is a pure blessing does not represent a rejection of “innovation” as such – it just recognize that “innovation” is only one amongst many competing values a society must try to balance.

    Instead of engaging with critics of “technological innovation” in good faith, the ITIF jumps from one logical fallacy to another, trading circular reasoning for attacking the advocate. The author of the ITIF report seems to delight in pillorying Bill McKibben but also aims its barbs at scholars like David Noble and Neil Postman for exposing impressionable college aged minds to their “neo-Luddite” biases. That the ITIF seems unconcerned with business schools, start-up culture, and a “culture industry” that inculcates an adoration for “technological innovation” to the same “impressionable minds” is, obviously, not commented upon. However, if a foundation is attempting to argue that universities are currently a hotbed of “neo-Ludditism” than it is questionable why the ITIF should choose to signal out two professors for special invective who are both deceased – Postman died in 2003 and David Noble died in 2010.

    It almost seems as if the ITIF report cites serious humanistic critics of “technological innovation” as a way to make it seem as though it has actually wrestled with the thought of such individuals. After all, the ITIF report deigns to mention two of the most prominent thinkers in the theoretical legacy of the critique of technology, Lewis Mumford and Jacques Ellul, but it only mentions them in order to dismiss them out of hand. The irony, naturally, is that thinkers like Mumford and Ellul (to say nothing of Postman and Noble) would have not been surprised in the least by the ITIF report as their critiques of technology also included a recognition of the ways that the dominant forces in technological society (be it in the form of Ellul’s “Technique” or Mumford’s “megamachine”) depended upon the ideological fealty of those who saw their own best interests as aligning with that of the new technological regimes of power. Indeed, the ideological celebrants of technology have become a sort of new priesthood for the religion of technology, though as Mumford quipped in Art and Technics:

    “If you fall in love with a machine there is something wrong with your love-life. If you worship a machine there is something wrong with your religion.” (Art and Technics, 81)

    Trade out the word “machine” in the above quotation with “technological innovation” and it applies perfectly to the ITIF awards document. And yet, playful gibes aside, there are many more (many, many more) barbs that one can imagine Mumford directing at the ITIF. As Mumford wrote in The Pentagon of Power:

    “Consistently the agents of the megamachine act as if their only responsibility were to the power system itself. The interests and demands of the populations subjected to the megamachine are not only unheeded but deliberately flouted.” (The Pentagon of Power, 271)

    The ITIF “Luddite Awards” are a pure demonstration of this deliberate flouting of “the interests and demands of the populations” who find themselves always on the receiving end of “technological innovation.” For the ITIF report shows an almost startling disregard for the concerns of “everyday people” and though the ITIF is a proudly nonpartisan organization the report demonstrates a disturbingly anti-democratic tendency. That the group does not lean heavily toward Democrats or Republicans only demonstrates the degree to which both parties eat from the same neoliberal trough – routinely filled with fresh ideological slop by think tanks like ITIF. Groups that advocate in the interest of their supporters in the public sphere (such as Free Press, the EFF, and the NRA {yes, even them}) are treated as interlopers worthy of mockery for having the audacity to raise concerns; similarly elected governmental bodies are berated for daring to pass timid regulations. The shape of the “ideal society” that one detects in the ITIF report is one wherein “technological innovation” knows no limits, and encounters no opposition, even if these limits are relatively weak regulations or simply citizens daring to voice a contrary opinion – consequences be damned! On the high-speed societal train of “technological innovation” the ITIF confuses a few groups asking for a slight reduction of speed with groups threatening to derail the train.

    Thus the key problem of the ITIF “Luddite Awards” emerges – and it is not simply that the ITIF continues to use Luddite as an epithet – it is that the ITIF seems willfully ignorant of any ethical imperatives other than a broadly defined love of “technological innovation.” In handing out “Luddite Awards” the ITIF reveals that it recognizes “technological innovation” as the crowning example of “the good.” It is not simply one “good” amongst many that must carefully compromise with other values (such as privacy, environmental concerns, labor issues, and so forth), rather it is the definitive and ultimate case of “the good.” This is not to claim that “technological innovation” is not amongst values that represent “the good,” but it is not the only value – treating it as such lead to confusing (to borrow a formulation from Lewis Mumford) “the goods life with the good life.” By fully privileging “technological innovation” the ITIF treats other values and ethical claims as if they are to be discarded – the philosopher Hans Jonas’s The Imperative of Responsibility (which advocated for a cautious approach to technological innovation that emphasized the potential risks inherent in new technologies) is therefore tossed out the window to be replaced by “the imperative of innovation” along with a stack of business books and perhaps an Ayn Rand novel, or two, for good measure.

    Indeed, responsibility for the negative impacts of innovation is shrugged off in the ITIF awards, even as many of the awardees (such as the various governments) wrestle with the responsibility that tech companies seem to so happily flaunt. The disrupters hate being disrupted. Furthermore, as should come as no surprise, the ITIF report maintains an aura that smells strongly of colonialism and disregard for the difficulties faced by those who are “disrupted” by “technological innovation.” The ITIF may want to reprimand organizations for trying to gently slow (which is not the same as stopping) certain forms of “technological innovation,” but the report has nothing to say about those who work mining the coltan that powers so many innovative devices, no concern for the factory workers who assemble these devices, and – of course – nothing to say about e-waste. Evidently to think such things are worthy of concern, to even raise the issue of consequences, is a sign of Ludditism. The ITIF holds out the promise of “better days ahead” and shows no concern for those whose lives must be trampled upon in the process. Granted, it is easy to ignore such issues when you work for a think tank in Washington DC and not as a coltan miner, a device assembler, a resident near an e-waste dump, or an individual whose job has just been automated.

    The ITIF “Luddite Awards” are yet another installment of the tech world/business press game of “Who’s Afraid of General Ludd” in which the group shouting the word “Luddite” at all opponents reveals that it has a less nuanced understanding of technology than was had by the historic Luddites. After all, the Luddites were not opposed to technology as such, nor were they opposed to “technological innovation,” rather, as E.P. Thompson describes in The Making of the English Working Class:

    “What was at issue was the ‘freedom’ of the capitalist to destroy the customs of the trade, whether by new machinery, by the factory-system, or by unrestricted competition, beating-down wages, undercutting his rivals, and undermining standards of craftsmanship…They saw laissez faire, not as freedom but as ‘foul Imposition”. They could see no ‘natural law’ by which one man, or a few men, could engage in practices which brought manifest injury to their fellows.” (Thompson, 548)

    What is at issue in the “Luddite Awards” is the “freedom” of “technological innovators” (the same-old “capitalists”) to force their priorities upon everybody else – and while the ITIF may want to applaud such “freedom” it is clear that they do not intend to extend such freedom to the rest of the population. The fear that can be detected in the ITIF “Luddite Awards” is not ultimately directed at the award recipients, but at an aspect of the historic Luddites that the report seems keen on forgetting: namely, that the Luddites organized a mass movement that enjoyed incredible popular support – which was why it was ultimately the military (not “seeing the light” of “technological innovation”) that was required to bring the Luddite uprisings to a halt. While it is questionable whether many of the recipients of “Luddite Awards” will view the award as an honor, the term “Luddite” can only be seen as a fantastic compliment when it is used as a synonym for a person (or group) that dares to be concerned with ethical and democratic values other than a simple fanatical allegiance to “technological innovation.” Indeed, what the ITIF “Luddite Awards” demonstrate is the continuing veracity of the philosopher Günther Anders statement, in the second volume of The Obsolescence of Man, that:

    “In this situation, it is no use to brandish scornful words like ‘Luddites’. If there is anything that deserves scorn it is, to the contrary, today’s scornful use of the term, ‘Luddite’ since this scorn…is currently more obsolete than the allegedly obsolete Luddism.” (Anders, Introduction – Section 7)

    After all, as Anders might have reminded the people at ITIF: gas chambers, depleted uranium shells, and nuclear weapons are also “technological innovations.”

    Works Cited

    • Anders, Günther. The Obsolescence of Man: Volume II – On the Destruction of Life in the Epoch of the Third Industrial Revolution. (translated by Josep Monter Pérez, Pre-Textos, Valencia, 2011). Available online: here.
    • Atkinson, Robert D. The 2014 Luddite Awards. January 2015.
    • Mumford, Lewis. The Myth of the Machine, volume 2 – The Pentagon of Power. New York: Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970.
    • Mumford, Lewis. Art and Technics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
    • Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage Books, 1966.
    • Not cited but worth a look – Eric Hobsbawm’s classic article “The Machine Breakers.”


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    Zachary Loeb is a writer, activist, librarian, and terrible accordion player. He earned his MSIS from the University of Texas at Austin, and is currently working towards an MA in the Media, Culture, and Communications department at NYU. His research areas include media refusal and resistance to technology, ethical implications of technology, alternative forms of technology, and libraries as models of resistance. Using the moniker “The Luddbrarian,” Loeb writes at the blog LibrarianShipwreck, where this post first appeared. He is a frequent contributor to The b2 Review Digital Studies section.

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  • The Reticular Fallacy

    The Reticular Fallacy

    By Alexander R. Galloway
    ~

    We live in an age of heterogenous anarchism. Contingency is king. Fluidity and flux win over solidity and stasis. Becoming has replaced being. Rhizomes are better than trees. To be political today, one must laud horizontality. Anti-essentialism and anti-foundationalism are the order of the day. Call it “vulgar ’68-ism.” The principles of social upheaval, so associated with the new social movements in and around 1968, have succeed in becoming the very bedrock of society at the new millennium.

    But there’s a flaw in this narrative, or at least a part of the story that strategically remains untold. The “reticular fallacy” can be broken down into two key assumptions. The first is an assumption about the nature of sovereignty and power. The second is an assumption about history and historical change. Consider them both in turn.

    (1) First, under the reticular fallacy, sovereignty and power are defined in terms of verticality, centralization, essence, foundation, or rigid creeds of whatever kind (viz. dogma, be it sacred or secular). Thus the sovereign is the one who is centralized, who stands at the top of a vertical order of command, who rests on an essentialist ideology in order to retain command, who asserts, dogmatically, unchangeable facts about his own essence and the essence of nature. This is the model of kings and queens, but also egos and individuals. It is what Barthes means by author in his influential essay “Death of the Author,” or Foucault in his “What is an Author?” This is the model of the Prince, so often invoked in political theory, or the Father invoked in psycho-analytic theory. In Derrida, the model appears as logos, that is, the special way or order of word, speech, and reason. Likewise, arkhe: a term that means both beginning and command. The arkhe is the thing that begins, and in so doing issues an order or command to guide whatever issues from such a beginning. Or as Rancière so succinctly put it in his Hatred of Democracy, the arkhe is both “commandment and commencement.” These are some of the many aspects of sovereignty and power as defined in terms of verticality, centralization, essence, and foundation.

    (2) The second assumption of the reticular fallacy is that, given the elimination of such dogmatic verticality, there will follow an elimination of sovereignty as such. In other words, if the aforementioned sovereign power should crumble or fall, for whatever reason, the very nature of command and organization will also vanish. Under this second assumption, the structure of sovereignty and the structure of organization become coterminous, superimposed in such a way that the shape of organization assumes the identical shape of sovereignty. Sovereign power is vertical, hence organization is vertical; sovereign power is centralized, hence organization is centralized; sovereign power is essentialist, hence organization, and so on. Here we see the claims of, let’s call it, “naïve” anarchism (the non-arkhe, or non foundation), which assumes that repressive force lies in the hands of the bosses, the rulers, or the hierarchy per se, and thus after the elimination of such hierarchy, life will revert so a more direct form of social interaction. (I say this not to smear anarchism in general, and will often wish to defend a form of anarcho-syndicalism.) At the same time, consider the case of bourgeois liberalism, which asserts the rule of law and constitutional right as a way to mitigate the excesses of both royal fiat and popular caprice.

    reticular connective tissue
    source: imgkid.com

    We name this the “reticular” fallacy because, during the late Twentieth Century and accelerating at the turn of the millennium with new media technologies, the chief agent driving the kind of historical change described in the above two assumptions was the network or rhizome, the structure of horizontal distribution described so well in Deleuze and Guattari. The change is evident in many different corners of society and culture. Consider mass media: the uni-directional broadcast media of the 1920s or ’30s gradually gave way to multi-directional distributed media of the 1990s. Or consider the mode of production, and the shift from a Fordist model rooted in massification, centralization, and standardization, to a post-Fordist model reliant more on horizontality, distribution, and heterogeneous customization. Consider even the changes in theories of the subject, shifting as they have from a more essentialist model of the integral ego, however fraught by the volatility of the unconscious, to an anti-essentialist model of the distributed subject, be it postmodernism’s “schizophrenic” subject or the kind of networked brain described by today’s most advanced medical researchers.

    Why is this a fallacy? What is wrong about the above scenario? The problem isn’t so much with the historical narrative. The problem lies in an unwillingness to derive an alternative form of sovereignty appropriate for the new rhizomatic societies. Opponents of the reticular fallacy claim, in other words, that horizontality, distributed networks, anti-essentialism, etc., have their own forms of organization and control, and indeed should be analyzed accordingly. In the past I’ve used the concept of “protocol” to describe such a scenario as it exists in digital media infrastructure. Others have used different concepts to describe it in different contexts. On the whole, though, opponents of the reticular fallacy have not effectively made their case, myself included. The notion that rhizomatic structures are corrosive of power and sovereignty is still the dominant narrative today, evident across both popular and academic discourses. From talk of the “Twitter revolution” during the Arab Spring, to the ideologies of “disruption” and “flexibility” common in corporate management speak, to the putative egalitarianism of blog-based journalism, to the growing popularity of the Deleuzian and Latourian schools in philosophy and theory: all of these reveal the contemporary assumption that networks are somehow different from sovereignty, organization, and control.

    To summarize, the reticular fallacy refers to the following argument: since power and organization are defined in terms of verticality, centralization, essence, and foundation, the elimination of such things will prompt a general mollification if not elimination of power and organization as such. Such an argument is false because it doesn’t take into account the fact that power and organization may inhabit any number of structural forms. Centralized verticality is only one form of organization. The distributed network is simply a different form of organization, one with its own special brand of management and control.

    Consider the kind of methods and concepts still popular in critical theory today: contingency, heterogeneity, anti-essentialism, anti-foundationalism, anarchism, chaos, plasticity, flux, fluidity, horizontality, flexibility. Such concepts are often praised and deployed in theories of the subject, analyses of society and culture, even descriptions of ontology and metaphysics. The reticular fallacy does not invalidate such concepts. But it does put them in question. We can not assume that such concepts are merely descriptive or neutrally empirical. Given the way in which horizontality, flexibility, and contingency are sewn into the mode of production, such “descriptive” claims are at best mirrors of the economic infrastructure and at worse ideologically suspect. At the same time, we can not simply assume that such concepts are, by nature, politically or ethically desirable in themselves. Rather, we ought to reverse the line of inquiry. The many qualities of rhizomatic systems should be understood not as the pure and innocent laws of a newer and more just society, but as the basic tendencies and conventional rules of protocological control.


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    Alexander R. Galloway is a writer and computer programer working on issues in philosophy, technology, and theories of mediation. Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, he is author of several books and dozens of articles on digital media and critical theory, including Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization (MIT, 2006), Gaming: Essays in Algorithmic Culture (University of Minnesota, 2006); The Interface Effect (Polity, 2012), and most recently Laruelle: Against the Digital (University of Minnesota, 2014), reviewed here earlier in 2014. Galloway has recently been writing brief notes on media and digital culture and theory at his blog, on which this post first appeared.

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  • Twin Offspring of Empire, Neoliberalism and Neotraditionalism: Thoughts on Susan Buck-Morss, “Democracy: An Unfinished Project” (excerpts)

    Democracy: An Unfinished Project

    a response by Arif Dirlik
    ~
    Susan Buck-Morss’ essay, “Democracy: An Unfinished Project,”1 provides occasion for reflecting on a challenge that faces contemporary radical criticism in North America and Europe: how to reconcile the universalist goals that are the legacies of Euromodernity to radical thinking with the demands of cultural voices emanating from newly-empowered societies that make their own claims on modernity, especially when contradictions between the two seem irreconcilable? Buck-Morss’ discussion navigates through questions thrown up by this dilemma with finesse, engaging critiques of Euromodernity without relinquishing its promises, which demand recognition even by those who would reject it. The title would have reflected the content of the essay more fully had it been elongated to: “Democracy: An Unfinished Project: A Critique of Davut Ahmutoglu’s Project of Islamic Modernity.” Ahmet Davutoglu, Minister of Foreign Affairs when the article was written, just recently has been elevated to the post of Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey. He is a politician with academic credentials. Author of studies on Islamic politics, international strategy and modernity, he displays a strong philosophical bent in his writings which is important for understanding his policies as well….He believes that “ontological differences” between “Islam” and “the West” call for an “alternative modernity” based on Islamic principles. Like the AKP(Justice and Development Party) and others in the Islamic movement, he seeks to roll back the secularist policies instituted by the Republic after 1923, and to restore to Turkey the glory and power of the Ottoman Empire….

    Buck-Morss offers telling critiques of these claims ….Given the venue (a conference in Istanbul) where the article was first presented as a paper, it may be understandable that the author would go about some of her arguments in a roundabout way, skirting issues that might be too venturesome into sensitive territory of national sentiment. While Buck-Morss offers a political reading of claims to an Islamic modernity, what is missing from the discussion is the actual practice of politics. In her addendum she takes note of the Gezi protests of June 2013 that intervened between the initial presentation and the final publication of the paper. She apparently did not think these events and their outcomes to be sufficiently important to introduce them into a more directly political reading of the claims made for Islamic modernity by the likes of Davutoglu who, as a leading member and brain-trust of his party, had no qualms about the suppression of that broad-based democratic movement, instigated by government disregard for public sentiment in its promotion of neo-liberal economic agenda….

    Buck-Morss is primarily interested in Davutoglu’s “reliance on certain Western methodologies, specifically twentieth-century German phenomenology.” This may unduly credit with philosophical intent a political operator whose “political analysis,” according to Turkish scholar Behlul Ozkan, “remains on the level of prophecy rather than prognosis,” and whose “pseudoscientific” ideas are “based on inspiration related to historical destiny rather than rational thought.” Ozkan writes that “Davutoglu’s writings reveal his central concern to be not values but power politics.” The most visible imprint of Western sources on his thinking is geopolitical.

    The discussion only indirectly hints at the alliance between neoliberal global capitalism and claims to unchanging religious or more broadly “cultural” identities that characterizes the ideology of the Islamic leadership in Turkey—as of all the societies that have found new economic and political opportunities within the context of global capitalism and the seeming decline in Euro/American hegemony, most importantly, the People’s Republic of China…. In those societies descended from empires that for long ruled large parts of the world earning them the title of “civilizations,” newfound power and influence have triggered what may best be described as nostalgia for future reproduction of past glories…. Ethical values claimed for various civilizations may serve as a cover for but barely disguise the privatization of public resources, creation of new class divisions, the concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands, and the sacrifice of public interest and rights to the interests of ruling elites in the name of development that is characteristic of global capitalism in general….The point here is not whether these cultural traditions deserve respect, or have anything to contribute to global futures. The point is rather that what they have to contribute is to be judged not by the texts they claim for their origins or abstract claims about civilizations detached from history, but by the historical outcomes of activity conducted in their name. And the outlook presently is not all that promising.

    _____

    notes:
    1. boundary 2, 41.2 (Summer 2014): 71-98. In-text references are from this text.
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    _____

    Read the original essay here.

    Summer 2014

    Summer 2014
  • Program and Be Programmed

    Program and Be Programmed

    Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (MIT Press, 2013)a review of Wendy Chun, Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (MIT Press, 2013)
    by Zachary Loeb
    ~

    Type a letter on a keyboard and the letter appears on the screen, double-click on a program’s icon and it opens, use the mouse in an art program to draw a line and it appears. Yet knowing how to make a program work is not the same as knowing how or why it works. Even a level of skill approaching mastery of a complicated program does not necessarily mean that the user understands how the software works at a programmatic level. This is captured in the canonical distinctions between users and “power users,” on the one hand, and between users and programmers on the other. Whether being a power user or being a programmer gives one meaningful power over machines themselves should be a more open question than injunctions like Douglas Rushkoff’s “program or be programmed” or the general opinion that every child must learn to code appear to allow.

    Sophisticated computer programs give users a fantastical set of abilities and possibilities. But to what extent does this sense of empowerment depend on faith in the unseen and even unknown codes at work in a given program? We press a key on a keyboard and a letter appears on the screen—but do we really know why? These are some of the questions that Wendy Hui Kyong Chun poses in Programmed Visions: Software and Memory, which provides a useful history of early computing alongside a careful analysis of the ways in which computers are used—and use their users—today. Central to Chun’s analysis is her insistence “that a rigorous engagement with software makes new media studies more, rather than less, vapory” (21), and her book succeeds admirably in this regard.

    The central point of Chun’s argument is that computers (and media in general) rely upon a notion of programmability that has become part of the underlying societal logic of neoliberal capitalism. In a society where computers are tied ever more closely to power, Chun argues that canny manipulation of software restores a sense of control or sovereignty to individual users, even as their very reliance upon this software constitutes a type of disempowerment. Computers are the driving force and grounding metaphor behind an ideology that seeks to determine the future—a future that “can be bought and sold” and which “depends on programmable visions that extrapolate the future—or more precisely, a future—based on the past” (9).

    Yet, one of the pleasures of contemporary computer usage, is that one need not fully understand much of what is going on to be able to enjoy the benefits of the computer. Though we may use computer technology to answer critical questions, this does not necessarily mean we are asking critical questions about computer technology. As Chun explains, echoing Michel Foucault, “software, free or not, is embodied and participates in structures of knowledge-power” (21); users become tangled in these structures once they start using a given device or program. Much of this “knowledge-power” is bound up in the layers of code which make software function, the code is that which gives the machine the directions—that which ensures that the tapping of the letter “r” on the keyboard leads to that letter appearing on the screen. Nevertheless, this code typically goes unseen, especially as it becomes source code, and winds up being buried ever deeper, even though this source code is what “embodies the power of the executive, the power of enforcement” (27). Importantly, the ability to write code, the programmer’s skill, does not in and of itself provide systematic power: computers follow “a set of rules that programmers must follow” (28). A sense of power over certain aspects of a computer is still incumbent upon submitting to the control of other elements of the computer.

    Contemporary computers, and our many computer-esque devices (such as smart phones and tablets), are the primary sites in which most of us encounter the codes and programming about which Chun writes, but she takes lengths to introduce the reader to the history of programming. For it is against the historical backdrop of military research, during the Second World War, that one can clearly see the ways in which notions of control, the unquestioning following of orders, and hierarchies have long been at work within computation and programming. Beyond providing an enlightening aside into the vital role that women played in programming history, analyzing the early history of computing demonstrates how as a means of cutting down on repetitive work structured programming emerged that “limits the logical procedures coders can use, and insists that the program consist of small modular units, which can be called from the main program” (36). Gradually this emphasis on structured programming allows for more and more processes to be left to the machine, and thus processes and codes become hidden from view even as future programmers are taught to conform to the demands that will allow for new programs to successfully make use of these early programs. Therefore the processes that were once a result of expertise come to be assumed aspects of the software—they become automated—and it is this very automation (“automatic programming”) that “allows the production of computer-enabled human-readable code” (41).

    As the codes and programs become hidden by ever more layers of abstraction, the computer simultaneously and paradoxically appears to make more of itself visible (through graphic user interfaces, for example), while the code itself recedes ever further into the background. This transition is central to the computer’s rapid expansion into ever more societal spheres, and it is an expansion that Chun links to the influence of neoliberal ideology. The computer with its easy-to-use interfaces creates users who feel as though they are free and empowered to manipulate the machine even as they rely on the codes and programs that they do not see. Freedom to act becomes couched in code that predetermines the range and type of actions that the users are actually free to take. What transpires, as Chun writes, is that “interfaces and operating systems produce ‘users’—one and all” (67).

    Without fully comprehending the codes that lead from a given action (a user presses a button) to a given result, the user is positioned to believe ever more in the power of the software/hardware hybrid, especially as increased storage capabilities allow for computers to access vast informational troves. In so doing, the technologically-empowered user has been conditioned to expect a programmable world akin to the programmed devices they use to navigate that world—it has “fostered our belief in the world as neoliberal: as an economic game that follows certain rules” (92). And this takes place whether or not we understand who wrote those rules, or how they can be altered.

    This logic of programmability may be linked to inorganic machines, but Chun also demonstrates the ways in which this logic has been applied to the organic world as well. In truth, the idea that the organic can be programmed predates the computer; as Chun explains “breeding encapsulates an early logic of programmability… Eugenics, in other words, was not simply a factor driving the development of high-speed mass calculation at the level of content… but also at the level of operationality” (124). In considering the idea that the organic can be programmed, what emerges is a sense of the way that programming has long been associated with a certain will to exert control over things be they organic or inorganic. Far from being a digression, Chun’s discussion of eugenics provides for a fascinating historic comparison given the way in which its decline in acceptance seems to dovetail with the steady ascendance of the programmable machine.

    The intersection of software and memory (or “software as memory”) is an essential matter to consider given the informational explosion that has occurred with the spread of computers. Yet, as Chun writes eloquently: “information is ‘undead’; neither alive nor dead, neither quite present nor absent” (134), since computers simultaneously promise to make ever more information available while making the future of much of this information precarious (insofar as access may rely upon software and hardware that no longer functions). Chun elucidates the ways in which the shift from analog to digital has permitted a wider number of users to enjoy the benefits of computers while this shift has likewise made much that goes on inside a computer (software and hardware) less transparent. While the machine’s memory may seem ephemeral and (to humans) illegible, accessing information in “storage” involves codes that read by re-writing elsewhere. This “battle of diligence between the passing and the repetitive” characterizing machine memory, Chun argues, “also characterizes content today” (170). Users rely upon a belief that the information they seek will be available and that they will be able to call upon it with a few simple actions, even though they do not see (and usually cannot see) the processes that make this information present and which do or do not allow it to be presented.

    When people make use of computers today they find themselves looking—quite literally—at what the software presents to them, yet in allowing this act of seeing the programming also has determined much of what the user does not see. Programmed Visions is an argument for recognizing that sometimes the power structures that most shape our lives go unseen—even if we are staring right at them.

    * * *

    With Programmed Visions, Chun has crafted a nuanced, insightful, and dense, if highly readable, contribution to discussions about technology, media, and the digital humanities. It is a book that demonstrates Chun’s impressive command of a variety of topics and the way in which she can engagingly shift from history to philosophy to explanations of a more technical sort. Throughout the book Chun deftly draws upon a range of classic and contemporary thinkers, whilst raising and framing new questions and lines of inquiry even as she seeks to provide answers on many other topics.

    Though peppered with many wonderful turns of phrase, Programmed Visions remains a challenging book. While all readers of Programmed Visions will come to it with their own background and knowledge of coding, programming, software, and so forth—the simple truth is that Chun’s point (that many people do not understand software sufficiently) may make many a reader feel somewhat taken aback. For most computer users—even many programmers and many whose research involves the study of technology and media—are quite complicit in the situation that Chun describes. It is the sort of discomforting confrontation that is valuable precisely because of the anxiety it provokes. Most users take for granted that the software will work the way they expect it to—hence the frustration bordering on fury that many people experience when suddenly the machine does something other than that which is expected provoking a maddened outburst of “why aren’t you working!” What Chun helps demonstrate is that it is not so much that the machines betray us, but that we were mistaken in our thinking that machines ever really obeyed us.

    It will be easy for many readers to see themselves as the user that Chun describes—as someone positioned to feel empowered by the devices they use, even as that power depends upon faith in forces the user cannot see, understand, or control. Even power users and programmers, on careful self-reflection may identify with Chun’s relocation of the programmer from a position of authority to a role wherein they too must comply with the strictures of the code presents an important argument for considerations of such labor. Furthermore, the way in which Chun links the power of the machine to the overarching ideology of neoliberalism makes her argument useful for discussions broader than those in media studies and the digital humanities. What makes these arguments particularly interesting is the way in which Chun locates them within thinking about software. As she writes towards the end of the second chapter, “this chapter is not a call to return to an age when one could see and comprehend the actions of our computers. Those days are long gone… Neither is this chapter an indictment of software or programming… It is, however, an argument against common-sense notions of software precisely because of their status as common sense” (92). Such a statement refuses to provide the anxious reader (who has come to see themselves as an uninformed user) with a clear answer, for it suggests that the “common-sense” clear answer is part of what has disempowered them.

    The weaving of historic details regarding computers during World War II and eugenics provide an excellent and challenging atmosphere against which Chun’s arguments regarding programmability can grow. Chun lucidly describes the embodiment and materiality of information and obsolescence that serve as major challenges confronting those who seek to manage and understand the massive informational flux that computer technology has enabled. The idea of information as “undead” is both amusing and evocative as it provides for a rich way of describing the “there but not there” of information, while simultaneously playing upon the slight horror and uneasiness that seems to be lurking below the surface in the confrontation with information.

    As Chun sets herself the difficult task of exploring many areas, there are some topics where the reader may be left wanting more. The section on eugenics presents a troubling and fascinating argument—one which could likely have been a book in and of itself—especially when considered in the context of arguments about cyborg selves and post-humanity, and it is a section that almost seems to have been cut short. Likewise the discussion of race (“a thread that has been largely invisible yet central,” 179), which is brought to the fore in the epilogue, confronts the reader with something that seems like it could in fact be the introduction for another book. It leaves the reader with much to contemplate—though it is the fact that this thread was not truly “largely invisible” that makes the reader upon reaching the epilogue wish that the book could have dealt with that matter at greater length. Yet, these are fairly minor concerns—that Programmed Visions leaves its readers re-reading sections to process them in light of later points is a credit to the text.

    Programmed Visions: Software and Memory is an alternatively troubling, enlightening, and fascinating book. It allows its reader to look at software and hardware in a new way, with a fresh insight about this act of sight. It is a book that plants a question (or perhaps subtly programs one into the reader’s mind): what are you not seeing, what power relations remain invisible, between the moment during which the “?” is hit on the keyboard and the moment it appears on the screen?


    _____

    Zachary Loeb is a writer, activist, librarian, and terrible accordion player. He earned his MSIS from the University of Texas at Austin, and is currently working towards an MA in the Media, Culture, and Communications department at NYU. His research areas include media refusal and resistance to technology, ethical implications of technology, alternative forms of technology, and libraries as models of resistance. Using the moniker “The Luddbrarian” Loeb writes at the blog librarianshipwreck. He has previously reviewed The People’s Platform by Astra Taylor and Social Media: A Critical Introduction by Christian Fuchs for boundary2.org.

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  • Mohamed-Salah Omri's "The upcoming general strike in Tunisia: a historical perspective"

    boundary 2 extends the work begun by RA Judy in his important dossier on Tunis.

    Tunisian Unrest

    The upcoming general strike in Tunisia: a historical perspective
    by Mohamed-­Salah Omri
    St, John’s College, Oxford

    The first general strikes in Tunisia since 1978 takes place in a much-­‐changed country and against old friends but for rather similar reasons.  To understand post independence Tunisia, one must get to grips with its labour movement.  Successive governments tried to compromise with, co-­‐opt, repress or change the union, depending on the situation and the balance of power at hand.

    In 1978, the powerful General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT) went on general strike to protest what amounted to a coup perpetrated by the Bourguiba government to change a union leadership judged to be too oppositional and too powerful. The cost was the worst setback in the union’s history since the assassination of its founder, the legendary Farhat Hached, in 1952.  The entire leadership of the union was put on trial and replaced by regime loyalists. Ensuing popular riots were repressed by the army, resulting in tens of deaths. In few years, however, the formidable trade union would rise gain and continue to play a crucial role as locus of resistance and refuge for activists of all orientations, down to the present time.

    UGTT has been the outcome of Tunisian resistance and its incubator at the same time since its founding in 1946.  Because of that birth, in the midst of the struggle for liberation from French colonialism, the union had  political involvement from the start, a line it has kept and guarded vigorously since. In 1984, it aligned itself with the rioting people during the bread revolt.  In 2008, it was the main catalyst of the disobedience movement in the Mining Basin of Gafsa.  And come December 2010, UGTT, particularly its teachers’ unions and some regional executives, became the headquarters of revolt against Ben Ali.

    After January 2011, UGTT emerged as the key mediator and power broker at the initial phase of the revolution, when all political orientations trusted and needed it. And it was within the union that the committee which regulated the transition to the elections was formed. At the same time, UGTT used its leverage to secure historic victories for its members and for workers in general, including permanent contracts for over 350,000 temporary workers and pay rises for several sectors, including teachers.

    Despite various lacunae, UGTT remained democratic throughout.  All its bodies were elected freely, even as dictatorship continued to be consolidated over the country as a whole.  A combination of symbolic capital of resistance accumulated over decades, a record of results for its members and a well-­‐oiled machine at the level of organisation across the country and every sector of the economy, made UGTT unassailable and unavoidable at the same time.  But it also became the force to beat for anyone bent on gaining wider control in Tunisia.  In other words, as Tunisia moved from the period of revolutionary harmony in which UGTT played host and facilitator, to a political, and even ideological phase, characterised by plurality of parties and polarisation of public opinion, UGTT was challenged to keep its engagement in politics without falling under the control of a particular party or indeed turning into one.  But, due to historical reasons, and partly because of the nature of trade unionism in a country such as Tunisia, UGTT remained on the left side of politics and, in the face of

    rising Islamist power, became a place where the left, despite its many newly-­‐formed parties, kept its ties and even strengthened them.  It is no secret that the top leadership of UGTT is largely leftist, or at least progressive in the wide sense of the term.  For these reasons, UGTT remained strong and decidedly outside the control of Islamists. This was not for lack of trying, through courtship initially, appeasement afterwards and finally and coercion.

    On December the 4th, 2012 as the union was gearing up to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the assassination  of its founder,  its iconic headquarters,  Place Mohamed  Ali, was attacked  by groups known  as  Leagues  for  the  Protection  of  the  Revolution.  The  incident  was  ugly,  public  and  of immediate impact. These leagues, which originated in community organisation in cities across the country designed to keep order and security immediately after January 14, but were later disbanded, are now dominated by Islamists of various orientations. They have been targeting the media, artists and members of the former regime under the slogans: purification  or cleansing of the old regime and protection of the revolution.  A prominent action was their violent attack against the party Nida Tounes, headed by former Prime Minister, Beji Qaid Sebsi, which resulted in the first political killing after the revolution, that of Nida member Lotfi Nagadh in the southern town, Tataouine.

    UGTT sensed in the  attack, which was the latest in a series of actions, such as throwing trash at the unions offices in several regions few months ago, a repeat of 1978 and an attempt against its very existence.  It responded by boycotting the government, organizing regional strikes and marches, and eventually calling for a general strike on Thursday the 13th of December, the first such action since

    1978. For the first time, UGTT came clearly against Nahdah party and declared it enemy number one after stating on many occasions that it stands at the same distance from all parties.  Anti-­‐Nahdah parties and individuals are now banking on this and backing UGTT.  In Tunisia, contradictions have suddenly sharpened, rather not unlike the situation in Egypt, where President Morsi managed to unite warring opposition groups against his party when he gave himself sweeping powers.

    Tunisia today stands divided, with UGTT heading one side and Nahdha on the other.  If history is any guide, UGTT will overcome this time as well. What is in doubt is the cost to a revolution plagued by a set of circumstances and developments largely beyond the control of the country.   This is also Nahdah’s toughest test, internally and internationally.  Internally, UGTT is forcing a rift between the government and the party which dominates it by challenging the former to protect a national organization and apply the rule of law. Internationally, UGTT has already laid bare the para-­‐military nature of the Leagues as danger to social peace in Tunisia, on one hand, and rallied the union’s powerful friends in the international labour movement.  As the 13th approaches, Tunisia is holding its breath, and everyone is involved in one way or another to head off what could be a collision of titanic proportions.

  • Table of Contents for Volume 39, number 3 Fall 2012

    Wlad Godzich / Friedrich Kittler (1943–2011)

    E. Khayyat / The Humility of Thought: An Interview with Friedrich A. Kittler

    Intervention

    Anthony Bogues / And What About the Human?: Freedom, Human Emancipation, and the Radical Imagination

    Arif Dirlik / Transnationalization and the University: The Perspective of Global Modernity

    Emmanuel Alloa / The Inorganic Community: Hypotheses on Literary Communism in Novalis, Benjamin, and Blanchot

    Henry Veggian / Anachronisms of Authority: Authorship, Exchange Value, and David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King

    Bradley J. Fest / The Inverted Nuke in the Garden: Archival Emergence and Anti-Eschatology in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest

     

    Intervention

    Lindsay Waters / The Recovery of the Literal: Learning from the Renaissance How to Circumnavigate the Globe

    Richard Purcell / The Enigma of Arrival; or, When Should We Have Read Ralph Ellison’s Three Days Before the Shooting?

    Soyica Diggs Colbert / “When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead”: The Future of the Human in Suzan-Lori Parks’s The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World