Mar+16th


 * MARCH 16, 2009**

Give out evaluations. Last screening today. Subject the last session to vote.
 * Today**: Screening of Ursula Biemann’s //Remote Sensing// @ the Student common room (it is only 1 hr long). I have office hours afterward.

Homework was a mess. Why? Because you were using //common sense//.

Liberty: is freedom. In democracies, freedom is established as a set of inalienable rights: the right to speak one’s mind, the right to be happy, the right to fulfill oneself, the right for education, healthcare, opportunities, etc. Liberalism: Is the doctrine of democratic or //left wing// parties (sometimes manifested as social democracies promoting welfare, healthcare, multiculturalism). In this sense, it is the opposite of conservatism (or right wing). Neo-Liberalism: refers to FREE MARKET economies. No-state intervention, privatization of common goods, the tendency to create profit out of natural resources. Associated with //conservative policies//.

The police for Foucault ARE NOT the people in uniforms hitting people in protests and putting them into prison, or the people who keep us safe from burglars or fires or protecting women from being hit by their husbands. For Foucault, the //police// is a complex set of power relations, regulations and techniques in order to assure the smooth traffic of: goods, people and money. The //police// has a preventive rather than a //punitive// character. The police considers //crime// to be a //social// problem to be prevented (not punished or corrected; the correction of crime is the task of //social work//). For Foucault there is a previous manifestation of power, which is different from the //police regime// that applies to sovereign and __totalitarian__ regimes, which is when //the loyalty of the// subjects needs to be assured. This is what he calls the //society of discipline// and it has a punitive character –even physical. Another way of assuring the loyalty of subjects is //Pastoral Power//: the leader “sacrifices” himself for his people, they are thus indebted to him and obey. One of the components of the //police regime// is governmentality. Governmentality relates to the power that the government has to legislate in terms of measures that affect the economy. T//he police//, for Foucault is linked to the notions of //preemption// and security. This means that the police deploys various mechanisms and techniques in order to //prevent// disaster, crime or misdemeanor –all in order to assure the traffic of goods, money and people. It thus carries within itself the rhetoric of constant and impending danger and acts in the name of our safety. (An example that we discussed was Bush’s color-code system of level of terrorist threat). The morality of the police is SECURITY as LIBERTY. For Foucault, the societies of control assert power by way of visualization. Through techniques like surveillance and the accumulation of private data (mining: for profit), control is asserted by way of possessing information and visualizing subjects. The contemporary manifestation of the Panopticon is NOT surveillance cameras all over the city. For Foucault, the Panopticon is not only the model for a prison or an architectural device. When deployed, it makes that the subjects internalize the surveillance, developing an awareness of being constantly watched and thus, self-surveil. Perhaps we could make a link between the internalization of surveillance, self-constraining and political correctness. Another manifestation of the Panopticon (adopted also by schools, hospitals and institutions) is urban planning. We looked at Renaissance cities, which are designed also to maximize visibility. A contemporary manifestation is the suburbs –particularly, the Israeli colonies in the West Bank, are constructed as panopticons: Why and how? Constructed outward, on top of hills and fenced, they look down at Palestinian cities and this gives them not only full visibility of what is happening there but gives them military advantages. One of the current containers of power relations is //biopower//, defined by Foucault as the politics of life (in Late capitalism). It asserts control over the life of the population through various techniques like eugenics, the regulation and administration of life. Governmentality is also at stake here. “The People” is as much as a concept as “The Multitude.” “The People” is made up of the working class and the intellectuals who unite in order to take over power and make a revolution. A problem that sprung, in the late sixties is that workers did not want to be defined anymore in terms of class relations or in terms of their occupation –this is aligned with the crisis of representation –remember we talked about this a few sessions back? This tendency to define //political subjects// as other than “workers” or “bourgeois” came along with “post-fordism” a mode of production that promotes difference, individuality, singularity and autonomy. These new modes of production and subjectivity (without forgetting that Industrialized countries “exported” their factories to the Third World creating an international division of labor), are the grounds for the concept of the MULTITUDE. Another thing to keep in mind is the //cognitive// or //intellectual power//, which the Multitude possesses. Because there are less and less factories in the “First” world, the jobs are intellectual in kind (technology, services, design) as opposed to //manual//, and this knowledge empowers the Multitude. Notice how in //V for Vendetta//, a combination of //anarchy// and the implosion of power take place, as opposed to the “revolutionary taking over of the state, in order to create a new one.” The //multitude//, for Paolo Virno, is a spontaneous formation of people //resisting// (NOTE: as opposed to struggling or fighting) against the destruction of given forms of life, habits. An example of this mode of //resistance// is the peasants who resisted being displaced (by the government, in its expression as governmentality) for the sake of the construction of the new airport in Mexico City (2003). In //V for Vendetta//, the masks symbolize singular anonymity, as opposed to individuality, and you need to be aware of the distinction between “the people” and “the multitude”, which in spite of both being concepts that define //subjects of politics//, they emerge from different historical moments and theoretical formulations. Neo-liberalism and capitalism: not as modes of production (only) but as the equivalent of //ideology//.
 * What is the Police for __Foucault__**?


 * Security is ideology**: and it is the product of the PARANOIA that is fueled by the media, creating an economic system that ensures the traffic of goods, people, money and the consumption of the world resources –nature, manual labor, creating dumpsters; of __global security and fear__. The rhetoric is “We need to protect our quality of life.” (This rhetoric is war propaganda).

There is a link to be made between security, the police and the “state of exception.” (State of exception is the institutionalization of a political crisis; it aligns itself with a form of power characterized by constant transformation…and adaptation due to “permanent threat”; and thus permanent war). And CAPITAL.

Third Worldism in 1978 as a sort of aberration of decadent Socialism, foregrounding a new de-ideologized form of contribution to the emancipation of the people of the Third World: humanitarian intervention and development. As Kristin Ross put it, intellectuals substituted revolutionary and political sympathy for empathy, transforming pity and moral indignation into political emotions within the discourse of “pure actuality” and emergency. This led to the new figure of alterity in the 1980s and 1990s as the “suffering other” that needs to be rescued. [1] The media became the privileged site for ethic-political intervention in the name of human rights, particularly in light of the Leftist belief in its emancipatory potential. Stripped of Leftist ideology, engaged intellectuals grounded the discourse for speaking for others as a depoliticized universal “we” and an objective “it speaks” from a community of “civilized” nations – predicated upon a “we” and a constitutive “other.” By the late seventies, as Lyotard argues, granting the respect of human rights had entitled everyone to exercise the right to be informed and the right to be heard and to bear witness: “the world thus began to see itself in the media, ready to hear and speak, discuss, protest, explain ourselves, look at ourselves as humans fulfilling the duty of making rights prevail.” [2] What is more, human rights movements claim to have a prescriptive status that is independent of political interests, aiming at proving that the wrongs of the unfit should be solved by those who are fittest, as Spivak puts it, which is an agenda of a kind of social Darwinism: it is the “white man’s burden” to civilize and develop those who cannot constitute themselves politically. [3] In such a dynamic, images are used to validate humanitarian aid, and the human rights are alibis for economic, military, and political intervention. [4] The impulse to denounce and to bear witness to the abuses of human rights was fuelled by the professional foreign correspondents, documentarists, and agents who served the industrial production of witness-images for a consumer market. [5] Over the past forty years, witness-images have sought to address a disinterested and liberal viewer, who would potentially act upon the events on the screen; moral shame and indignation were believed to be the catalysts to prompt outrage in the observer as a potential agent for intervention. Paradoxically, the media renders the viewer impotent, as it presents events to the spectator, who consumes information passively, unable to act upon the events depicted by the images shown on the screen, creating “consensual stupor.” [6] In addition, when packaged for consumption, images of desolation and disaster provoke in the spectator a powerful fascination, voyeurism, horror, compassion, and guilt, as well as relief and //Schadenfreude//. This kind of “disaster pornography” enacts a crisis of viewership in the media, as the viewer-consumer is either in denial or acting as a voyeur. However, the crisis goes the other way, as well, as Thomas Keenan has pointed out; photo opportunities are performances done for the camera that attempt to bring in international pressure upon the governments violating the imaged’s rights. [7] The overexposure of the subjects of the images thus, is not accidental, as those who appear before the camera contribute actively to the proliferation of images of real dead and wounded bodies and disaster zones, in a craze to bear witness to the wrongs done to them. However, because of an excess of visibility, images of tragedies and violence have lost their potential to call for an ethical or political response, while at the same time justifying economic, political and relief interventions that aim at “breaking in” by developing “intractable” problematic communities and subsuming them to international economical interests. [8]


 * Capital and Empire, and geopolitics –we will end in our discussion of //Children of Men// and Spectacle –linking it to Capital and Empire**.

For Retort (a collective formed by 3 writers), September 11 began a new phase in geo-politics characterized by an unprecedented movement of American capital in the world accompanied by militarization. This is parallel to the new stage of the management of society (biopolitics: traffic of goods, people and money). This is accompanied by the de-centralization of power in the information age. (power: not held by institutions or embodied in a single person or dictator). Retort: Draws a 200 year history of the increasing militarization of foreign politics of the United States and its recent intensification; for them the “PERMANENT WAR” is military expansionism at the service of Empire; that is, the US’ is an ongoing imperial project (Earlier empires: British, French, Ottoman… Roman). Retort: they detect an expansionist pattern in the US; discussing how they had progressively establisheed their presence in Key regions in the world (Vietnam, Iraq… they threatened of going to North Corea in 2003… I think now the next one will be Pakistan. It we look at the map it becomes evident that gas, oil, Russia, China and India as threats are at stake. **[D: SHOW MAP]** Remember what was the excuse of going into Iraq? Danger of nuclear weapons (same as in Iran): Preemptive war (ring a bell with Foucault and the police?). Expansion of democracy and regime change; topple the totalitarian governments.
 * War**: Clausewitz (a theoretician of war) said that War is politics by other means. For Retort, in our historical means, war IS politics. (Think about the I-P conflict: constant effort from Israel to avoid establishing a POLITICAL relationship with Palestinians by refusing to acknowledge them as political counterparts in the first place). Strategic refusal to consider them political equals.
 * September 11 was the excuse to intensify the expansionist pattern.**


 * Michael Ignatieff has a similar argument**: According to him, America is neither establishing colonies, nor the American corporations that establish themselves in foreign countries acquire territory by force. For Ignatieff, this is a new model of empire (before: built on colonies, conquest, acquisition of territory by force, imposition of culture and religion). For him, it is an **Empire Lite**: that maintains hegemony without creating colonies and that manifests global influence but without the burden of direct administration (colonies: gave education, healthcare… Palestinian friend who always said: look at the French, at least they brought universities to Maghreb –North of Africa).

The countries “imperialized” are friends of America; the US acts as a friend… for the sake of human rights, in the name of democracy and freedom. Ignatieff this does not make the US less of an Empire because it attempts to permanently order states and markets according to their interests. He calls this type of empire: “Nation-building exercises.” And the American as a kind of “Empire Lite”

Retort argue that the fiction propagated by Empire in order to pacify the people is that America is a “reluctant power”; this means that America is “unwilling” to invade or to go to war. But that it is “necessary” (in order to establish democracies, or to “save people whose rights are not being respected in places that are not, to get rid of “terror”). America sells itself as a preemptive, unilateral force, claiming transparency. Condoleza Rice: talked about the Empire as a “Republic”; (citizens with equal rights): If that is the case, the whole world should vote for the US president, not only Americans –if at all!

The link to capitalism here, for Retort is that these invasions and wars are necessary to //keep the machine running//. In other words, CORPORATIONS need to keep the wars going in order to keep on profiting and to maintain hegemony and monopolies. The wars help to introduce neoliberal policies, American corporations and brands; to expropriate natural resources; to industrialize other countries and get cheap labor and to be closer to the resources.


 * MILITARY HUMANISM**: America’s claims to “do good elsewhere,” to act in defense of humanity (Retort: find traces of this ideology since the beginning although there was slavery up in the 19th century…. The genocide of the Native Americans and the annexation of half of Mexico –and of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philipines… Hawaii…

The method, according to Retort is “Indirect control.” They invade, bombard, terrorize and then they “pacify” and “liberate” the civilians (or women from the “oppression” of Islam, right?). They establish a military base, prompt corruption and get their allies in power. Then they bring in American contractors with American construction materials and workers to rebuild (Iraq).

In terms of the propaganda, a link can be made between the Cold War years (world divided into 2, remember? US vs. Communist Block + the Third World which is still a mess). Bush used the rhetoric of being attacked, imminent terror and danger; in the sixties people had bunkers in their back yards in the US!! All this with the aim of containing the expansion of communism and establishing an ideological advantage –all preemptive and defensive. Preemptive and defensive like today: The axis of evil, etc. For the sake of “Homeland security,” biopower and the **police (Foucault)**

à Retort: what they do is to establish the STRUCTURAL TEMPLATE of American imperial expansion, that help us understand the recent ivasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

(WhAT IS NATO?) North Atlantic Treaty Organization; since 1949; 26 countries in North America and Europe; to keep themselves safe. “NATO safeguards the Allies’ common values of democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law and the peaceful resolution of disputes, and promotes these values throughout the Euro-Atlantic area. The Alliance embodies the transatlantic link by which the security of North America and Europe are permanently tied together. It is the practical expression of effective collective effort among its members in support to their common interests.”
 * The business of managing the post-1945 peace** was put in the hands of the new institutions of post-war capitalism, the IMF and the World Bank; new militarized neo-liberalism. **Preemptive terror**. (airborne terror)

Bush senior sent 25,000 troops to the immiserated, but strategic, Horn of Africa; “humanitarian relief” provided the cover for this massive emplacement; since neither the Pentagon nor the politicians could come up with even the faintest simulacrum of a threat to the US. In the spring 1993, Clinton sent still more troops to Somaila, in an attempt to alchemize an entirely new state apparatus **in thrall** to the US –much like the “governing councils” in Afghanistan and Iraq.
 * 1992-93** intervention in Somalia: presented a similar mix of the tactically chaotic with the strategically consistent: outcome that **prefigured** the spectacular defeat of September 11.

à Retort emphasize how the reality of PERMANENT WAR renders inadequate even the notion of “peace” (as oppositional frame or strategy –difference between “war party” and “party of peace.” There is no longer a distinction to be made between “war” and “peace”; because the rhetoric of TERROR and THREAT create the “permanent state of exception” (Permanent war)  à What is their critique of anti-war movements? “Frequent war keeps the liberal mind satisfied with, and mostly unquestioning of, the cruel peace. Even those who go into the streets when outright war is underway find it much more difficult –and we include ourselves in the company –to muster similar energy in the face, for example, of the slow death from disease and malnutrition of hundreds of Iraqis under “sanctions.” à They say that WAR keeps the liberals outraged enough so that they do not get engaged with what happens when there is peace. Thus, they go down to the streets and mobilize when there is a war, but not when people are dying of malnutrition due to “sanctions” or embargo –they do not know anything. **Gaza** as a question has sort of disappeared from public debate: and people are still dying, on tents, the human aid that is being let in is minimal, etc.

EMPIRE LITE: applies and sells a PACIFICATION STRATEGY: first they do a direct military intervention; the devastation created by the intervention provides with an apparent excuse to replace politicians and institutions that are not cooperating with them. They are vulnerable.. and chaotic, unstable… this is what is left after the invasion (look at Iraq) So in this way, the US can operate more easily and invisibly than with a normally functioning local state apparatus.

The total militarization of territory permits permanent US emplacements, not only in the war zone, but also in the periphery; with __these bases comes a military bureaucracy that operates as a shadow government (with the help of compliant NGOs), primed to “advise” and “assist” the region’s weak states.__ à The chaos of ongoing war also provides camouflage for the implantation of external economic forces: the pumping up of an addictive regional arms trade, and the military and its contractors acting as advance men for “development” capital (pipelines, terminals, transport, communication); In the long term, warfare’s devastation of infrastructure requires an infusion of handouts and investment with various neo-liberal conditions attached. In all of these ways, war’s service to capital is to set the stage for the trinity of crude accumulation: looting of resources; creation of cheap labor; captive markets. à NAOMI KLEIN CALLED THIS THE “SHOCK DOCTRINE.” Milton Friedman: Only a crisis can create change Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.

à __They do this without knowing exactly what or how well capital will do in the particular site of intervention__. It too, may not matter to the larger strategic project whether the invasion of Iraq results in a newly constituted coherent state open to market penetration under neo-liberal orders, or ends in a chaos of factionalized, fratricidal zones of brutal and shifting tribal sectarian control. à The war will have succeeded strategically to the extent it has facilitated a significantly greater permanent US military presence in Iraq and much else of the Middle East;

à __Permanent war (or STATE OF EXCEPTION)__: seeks to normalize itself and to relativize the notion of “peace”; expansionist military interventions is embarked on regularly enough… serve to maintain the image of war as an unexceptional part of the state’s external political life. Weak citizenship is crucial to the maintenance of social control; Direct terrorizing of citizens in the name of homeland security, patriotism and support for the troops; –the threat against a nation;

PROPAGANDA MACHINE AFTER SEPTEMBER 11; The US propaganda machine slips into its “humanitarian intervention/implanting democracy” mode, with this new legitimization of the occupation meant implicitly to revise the reasons for the war itself. This tactic too has a long imperial history… **One of our abiding concerns about the state’s return to such rationales for military incursion is the extent to which segments of the Left are willing to accept these propositions with a kind of “humanitarian internationalism”; permitting human rights discourse to short-circuit their otherwise distrust of the state. They have lostt sight… of what humanitarianism is;** ARMED POWER AS THE BASIS OF SOCIAL ORDER;

A kind of re-imposition of the ideological divide between West and East has further served to justify wars in the name of democracy, freedom, and multiculturalism. Two examples are Sarajevo and Iraq, which were historically multicultural geographies at the border of the East and the West. Radical Islam in Bosnia and in the Middle East represents, however, the fracture between the West and Islam, which for many is the result of the failure of Muslim societies to become “modern.” This lack of “modernity” has been posited as a lack of democracy and freedom, and thus military intervention is justified discursively and morally, as a way of fighting the intolerance of the other (i.e., the oppression of Muslim women). [9] How to clarify what we can regard as legitimate and just in the domain of human rights? [10] Alain Joxe describes genocidal wars as today’s wars. Regarding the Israelo-Palestinian conflict, however, Joxe discussed it in 2001 as a “Bantu-type repression and treatment.” [11] Back to Ignatieff’s definition of Empire as “nation-building exercises.” Even though the United nations and independent NGOs take part… what is at stake is American military intervention. **By way of humanitarian interventions on the part of the “international community.” Now the humanitarian interventions probably would not have had been necessary had the US not intervened militarly in the first place.** Military interventions: For the sake of ensuring stability and security for the US and its allies. Ignatieff calls it an “Humanitarian Empire”: in which Western powers, led by the US get together to rebuild a state order and reconstruct societies torn by war: this for the sake of global statbility and security. Agencies like the UNICEF and the Red Cross: how can they keep their programs without being subordinated to economic and geopolitical interests if they are funded by Empire? For Ignatieff (and I agree with him), humanitarian relief goes hand in hand with imperial projects. They are forced to be complicit with the imperial project. The **ideology of the Human Rights** sustains the permanent war. (Chaos, massacres, ethnic wars); This kind of imperialism: for the sake of self-rule… empowering local elites who will act according to the interests of empire: that is why Ignatieff calls them “Nation-building exercises” (Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Palestine, Iraq…) Sub-sovernty: the states are independent only in name; now the apparent motive is humanitarian intervention, but the principle, is imperial: the “maintenance of order over barbarian threat.” à Comment from an European liberal: We should go fix up what the mess in Africa so then they don’t massively come to Europe seeking for jobs and then mess us up.
 * “Preemption”, “direct military intervention” and “military humanism” and explain how both notions have normalized themselves for the sake of “keeping the machine running”.**

Recently, Bernard Kouchner, who was a former Maoist and one of the founders of Doctors Without Borders was accused in a book by a journalist of corruption, of making business –robbing African countries for personal gain. IN the Balkans, he has been accused of putting for sale organs of kidnapped Serbs. (Info from a review of the book, //Le Monde selon K.// just published: de-construct.net/e-zine/?p=4825) Rwanda, Darfur, the old Yugoslavia: He has been accused with siding with American interests. Accused of conflict of interests: was a consultant for the dictators he was criticizing: Omar Bongo of Gabon and Denis Sassou of Congo. Consulting on reforming their health insurance systems (over 4 million euros). He is claiming innocence and saying that he is the victim of an anti-Semitic attack. Played an important role in the “negotiations” for bringing peace to the Balkan wars stopping the genocide (working for NATO –the Serbs hate him –the greatest number of crimes against the Serbs took place during his mandate). They hold him responsible for the deaths of thousands of Serbs. “Embezzlement and misappropriation of funds destined for the reconstruction.” Suspected of complicity and profiting from organ extraction and trafficking in Kosovo. He has a consultant firm: for the development of medical services.

When Bernard Kouchner lands in Kosovo in the summer of 1999 there is no mobile telecommunication. German Siemens and French Alcatel submit one offer each. A panel of local experts select Siemens. The offer is the cheapest and it is not colonial. At a fixed lump sum the Germans promise to build a network for Kosovo. The French offer says the network would remain French property and the country code of Monaco would be utilized. What happens? Bernard Kouchner, Kosovos legislator, head of government and head of justice, all in one person, replaces the UNMIK director of post and telecommunications, an Albanian, with a certain Pascal Copin, who in turn awards the contract to Alcatel. It is the only feasible solution, claims Copin, because only Alcatel (in a collaboration with Monaco Telecom) can provide Kosovo, not a formal state, with a country code. Result: Seven years later Kosovo boasts the worst and most expensive telephone system in the region, concludes the European Council. Yet every time a Kosovan lifts the receiver, money rattles into French and Monegasque bank accounts, and we are not talking about small money. Close to a hundred million euros over the years, more than Swedens annual aid to Kosovo.

Sudan: Kicking out human rights; Source: [] Omar al Bashir, the president of Sudan, was accused of crimes against humanity last week and this week, he expelled 13 NGOs helping the displaced in Darfur. (1 million people without aid and food). Said would bring in NGOs from Arab countries (the red crescent); Four aid workers were kidnapped (from Doctors Without Borders) and were liberated. (Afghanistan: kidnappings and killings of aid workers).

Zoe’s Ark: accused of kidnapping children; making business; [] In 2007 103 African children were flown out of Chad to Europe by a humanitarian group from france called “Zoe’s Ark.” They took them out claiming that they were orphans from Darfur, Sudan. They were arrested… they took the children without authorization, so they were charged for abduction and fraud. Were they well-meaning philanthropists or children smugglers? (Sell them for adoption or sell their organs). Many children are trafficked for organs and prostitution; exploitation. They were taken without the consent of their parents;

“Lord of War”: Victor Bout; Used a UN Aid airplane to smuggle weapons in to Sierra Leone. The US sells over 50 percent of all the weapons put into circulation in the world market.

à The occupation of Somalia spun out of control; “Blackhawk Down ” Battle of Mogadishu, in 1993: During the operation, two U.S. [|UH-60 Black Hawk] helicopters were shot down by [|rocket-propelled grenades], and three others were damaged. Some of the soldiers were able to evacuate wounded back to the compound, but others were trapped at the crash sites and cut off. An urban battle ensued throughout the night. Early the next morning, a combined task force was sent to rescue the trapped soldiers. “NO MAN LEFT BEHIND.” 3,000-4000 somali civilians killed in the battle; 18 american soldiers and 73 wounded. “LEAVE NO MAN BEHIND”; televised LIVE in CNN –subject of a movie by Ridley Scott (2001) PENTAGON FOOTAGE: http://inquirer.philly.com/blackhawk/video_dodraid.asp

//Children of Men//: It happens in the future (which is not that far, 2027). Apocalyptic: all the states in the world are in chaos (we see the news at the beginning, there is wars and disaster everywhere. The country that is still “functional” is England. The world is barren, there has not been a human being born in 19 years. A move happens here in the narrative: The “Revolution” is understood as the destruction of the old in order to bring in the new. Now for Hannah Arendt, //natality//, or birth, represents the capacity to begin something new by way of action. She places //natality// in her book, as the central category of political thought because natality for her (Notice: not from the point of view of motherhood) saves the world and gives human affairs faith and hope. For Arendt natality is freedom because it means the capacity to begin, to start something new: action as the realization of freedom is rooted in each birth: a new beginning, and the introduction of novelty into the world. Action for her is creativity and creativity is birth, the new. Natality “throws the human subject into the world giving him/her the chance of a new beginning.” Natality is the coming of the new, unpredictability and contingency in human affairs. Action which is ordiented toward the public destiny of political bodies IS history and it maps the same intersection “past and future” (like birth). __ “the new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the __ __ world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something __ __ new, that is, of acting. In this sense of initiative, an element of action, and __ __ therefore of natality, is inherent in all human activities. Moreover, since action is __ __ the political activity par excellence, natality, and not mortality, may be the __ __ central category of political, as distinguished from metaphysical, thought” (HC __ __ 9) __
 * 1990s bombings after Somalia: (TO ERASE THE MEMORY OF SPECTACULAR DEFEAT IN MOGADISHU) Israeli “deterrence” (war in gaza);**
 * (reasserted US authority over NATO)**
 * [D: Citation by Arendt]**

à What about activism? What happened to activism? What kinds? Jasper and his wife: old hippies (up to date in music, smoking pot… living in the countryside). Julian and Theo: were hard core activists until their son died. Julian stayed and joined a militant group that wants to use the baby for their own political purposes no matter at what cost. They are criminals-terroists… mob; no ideology. The Human Project: The boat of the future (utopia) Stephen: both this movie and V for Vendetta give us hope at the end… it is the apocalypse but there is hope –no? What is it that we see in England? à The //elsewhere// is brought //here//. What do I mean by this? The movie is composed of recent images of disaster and war. Cuarón “re-enacts” images of wars and disasters of the 20th century; along with images of //OUR actuality//, Cuarón embeds them in a terrifying future. In other words: The perceived chaos, disorder, fundamentalism //elsewhere// today, is embedded in the First World (England) What do we see? People in cages, violent mobs –the scene throwing stones at the train. The mass media are everywhere (newsflashes in the bus and billboards; when Theo gets “kidnapped” by Julian, the “detention cage” they bring him in is made out of newspaper clippings. If we pay attention to them and to those in Casper’s house –also with a wall full of clippings: we can piece together what has happened in the world. In other words, the visual background of the story is an amalgamation of images from the media, pointing at the obliteration of the recent past by spectacle and to the subsequent __disappearance of the present AND of the past by digital reproduction__. The citation of images from spectacle points at the incapacity to imagine both, the present and the future (endless repetitions of images embedded in images: 30 years ago this was called post-modernism and was cynical-radical AND depoliticized). Cuarón creates filmic images carrying the many signs of oppression and violence in the present that flow out from information networks and from everyday life. Examples? The fusion of these images in the background of //Children of Men// stages a phase of the __de-historicization characteristic of late capitalism__, a further stage of Debord’s Spectacle in which “false appearances” and their indistinguishability from life have proliferated into signs of oppression creating a false, terrifying “real” present. [12] Spectacle: is defined as the IMPOSITION OF A FALSE UNITY into a more heterogeneous field –what Jameson calls the “total flow” (what is a flow? Unified, nonstop, a stream that takes everything with it…) Again: it is not very productive to say that Spectacle is evil and that it is the opium of the masses; as we saw in //V for Vendetta// and as WE know: we are not fooled by TV … (for the most part); we have kind of developed an awareness on how it works.
 * Ideological confusion of the present is projected (fanaticism, terrorism, activism: all into one).**
 * [Show images**]
 * What is the relationship between Spectacle and power (as we have seen power is diffused, difficult to pin down and to define: made up of knots of power relations… virtual; it is linked to Capitalism**).

à Is it a necessary tool for the figuration of a radical systemic shift in the way power functions noncoercively?
 * Power functions non-corecively: What does this mean? What is coercive?** (Disciplinary: forcing subjects into loyalty); How does it work non-corecively: examples: the police, biopower, governmentality.

(We will discuss the definition of Spectacle by Baudrillard as the DEMOCRATIZATION OF SIGNS AND OBJECTS –semiokapitalism: two sessions from now)

Crary locates the beginning of the society of spectacle: in the late 1920s with television. The “speeding up” of the image and its ubiquity and simultaneity: broadcasting, its becoming a flow. For Crary: **Spectacle is a form of consumption by way of perception, and it radically transforms ATTENTION into something that produces profit**. Attention is linked to memory. Memory is defined as the CREATION OF A NEW PERCEPTION IN THE PRESENT. We perceive something in the present memory PLAYS A ROLE. **[D: Bergson’s memory cone]** __Benjamin: we look at something, turn our eyes away and then we get an “after-image” of the thing: MEMORY permeates the after-image. Memories follow immediately this perception.__ This, for Crary, empoverishes perception: because it becomes standardized. Why is it hard to watch a Godard film? Precisely because we are used to a standard mode of visual perception that is created by our consumption of spectacle-images. Spectacle is thus, a kind of crisis of perception. Spectacle: is a set of techniques for the management of bodies, affects, the management of attention, to FIX (paralyze) For Crary it is not opposed to Surveillance and he makes a very nice analogy between the TV set and a prison cell (individualized, we are free to chose what we watch… while it is PRE-GIVEN, pre-fabricated).
 * After-images (created by spectacle) are the ENTRY of memory into perception. This entry of memory into perception, STANDARIZES PERCEPTIOn. IMAGINE: we all have the same cone of image-memories stored in our brains. From Canada to Nepal to Australia to Argentina to Sudan.**

Debord: “in 1988 spectacle has irradiated into everything and has absolute control over production, over perception, and especially over the shape of the future and the past. DEBORD: sees the core of the spectacle as the annihilation of the historical knowledge –in particular the destruction of the recent past. (the reign of the PERPETUAL PRESENT). Before, **History**: was the measure of novelty; but selling novelty has an interest in destroying the means by which it could be judged. This should be understood in terms of how mechanized memory has changed the way in which we remember. WHO DID THE READING OF Borges’ story? Borges’s short story “Funes el memorioso” [13] lays out the obliteration of the present and of analytic thinking by the impossibility of forgetting prompted by mechanical reproduction and its transformation into a total flow of mechanized memory. In the story, Ireneo Funes is a boy of humble origins with a prodigious memory prompted by a fall that has given him clarity of vision of the present and of the past. Funes is not only able to memorize everything in complete detail, but he can also remember events, sounds, and things in real time. His prodigious memory, however, prevents him from being able to analyze, think abstractly, or really be in the present. Funes embodies the prodigious memory from Pliny’s //Natural History//, which is a compendium of encyclopedic informational descriptions. [14] Like Funes, this compendium does not analyze or give an opinion on the facts that have been recorded, and they are conveyed as information with a pedagogical voice. In Funes’ case, the possibility of fully documenting the world through visual and aural memory is realized similar to today’s analog (and digital) inscriptions and projections. When Funes remembers in real time, he is subtracted from the present because his ability to remember the //core of events// is accomplished by registering and reproducing duration. This registering is previous to history, as Funes’ memory is an unmediated witness of events capturing not only their immediate traces but duration, in this case, which transcends subjectivity and testimony, a document, a kind of public (objective) duration. Arguably, Funes’ memory is a movie camera registering events that have the potential to become history. Following Péguy (who influenced Godard’s notion of history), history, the event and memory must not be confused; rather, “History and memory make a right angle. History is parallel to the event, and memory is central and transversal to it.” [15] With Funes, we see the symbiosis of memory, event and testimony of mechanical reproduction. Evidently the ability to register real duration through mechanical memory has changed the way in which we perceive, remember, and write history, although mechanical memory itself cannot remember. We could see Funes’ non-differential remembrance in real time as the hypostatization of Jameson’s televisual “total flow” because “nothing haunts the mind or leaves after images… structurally memory (remembering) is excluded and so is critical distance.” [16]

Are we still in the midst of a society that is organized as appearance? Or have we entered a non-spectacular global system arranged primarily around the control and flow of information, a system whose management and regulation of attention would demand wholly new forms of resistance and memory?

Semio-Kapitalism (Bifo): creates schizophrenia because of the excess of semiotic flows with respect to our capacity to interpet them. Too many signs cross by too fast and thus the mind is no longer able to distinguish or interpret things. So what happens is that we try to make sense of things by INCLUDING EVERYTHING –extending the boundaries of signification. (An image inside an image inside an image…)

For our last session, please vote, as we have two options:

· Mike Davis, “Planet of Slums,” //New Left Review// 26, (March-April 2004), 5-35. · “Urbicide” Graham Smith, NLR (13 pps) · Selections from Eyal Weizman’s //Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation// (London: Verso, 2007). Case Study: (a sequence from //Slum Dog Millionaire//, 2008)
 * A)**
 * The Slums, Urban Planning, Capital and Mitarization**


 * With an assignment based on the readings.

Panel discussion and Q&A with Eshrat Erfanian, Alessandra Renzi, Irmgard and Etienne Turpin.
 * B)**
 * What is there to be done, today?**


 * The assignment is to split into groups of 4 and create questions to give to the panelists in advance.

[1] Ibid. [2]  Jean-François Lyotard, “The General Line” (1990), //Political Writings// (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 110-111. [3] Spivak, “Righting Wrongs,” 524-525. [4] See Michael Ignatieff, //Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan//, (Toronto: Penguin, 2003), 45-74. [5] See Jonathan Benthall, //Disasters, Relief and the Media// (London & New York: I.B. Thauris & Co. Ltd., 1993). This industry (as well as that of war-photojournalism) has a history over a hundred years old, accounted for by Susan Sontag in //Regarding the Pain of Others// (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003). [6]  Jacques Rancière, //The Future of the Image//, 47. [7] Thomas Keenan, “Mobilizing shame,” //South Atlantic Quarterly// 103, nos. 2-3 (Spring/Summer 2004), 435. [8] Spivak, “Righting Wrongs,” 524-525. [9]  Žižek, //Violence//, 18. [10] Benhabib, “The Legitimacy of the Human Rights.” [11]  Alain Joxe, “The Empire of Disorder,” 53 [12] See Žižek’s commentary which is included as a special feature on the DVD. This brings to mind, as well, Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s cathartic practice of improvisational tableaux vivants for which performers interact with props, their bodies creating images charged with the signs of oppression embedded in images from the media, re-enacting from the visual unconscious this terrifying present reality, thereby exorcizing the participants and viewers from it. [13] Published in //Ficciones// (1944). The short story is available in Spanish at [|www.zap.cl/cuentos/cuento158.html]. Date consulted: April 21, 2008. [14] Pliny the Elder, //Natural History//, available at []. Date consulted: August 11, 2008. [15] Péguy, 231. [16] Fredric Jameson, “Video: Surrealism Without the Unconscious,” //Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism// (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 70-71.