(Rasselaine’s definition of) discursive position: Theposition an individual or a group takes in thediscussion or discourse on a particular issue, that isto say, the position from which an individual orgroup speaks.

Discursive practices are characterized by Foucaultby the delimitation of a field of objects, that is, thedefinition of a legitimate perspective for the agent ofknowledge, and the fixing of norms for theelaboration of concepts and theories. Eachdiscursive practice implies a play of prescriptionthat designates its exclusions and choices. (From theArcheology of Knowledge)

SUMARY FROM LAST CLASS:• What does Sartre meant by, “To make men out of the natives?” French Humanism

preaches that all men are equal and thus have the right to be free. Once the “natives” were liberated from their colonial oppressors, we all became men, thus, bearers of rights.

• Since the 1970s, funding has been poured into formerly colonized countries, disaster areas and war zones so they could build or rebuild their infrastructure (housing, administration of common goods, such as electricity, roads, education, health).

• This money was given through the International Monetary Fund (IFM) and other credit organisms (and NGOs), establishing relationships of symbolic or economic debt.

• The 17th century narrative of “Progress” (taken up by Marx as progress toward the liberation of men and a classless society) was substituted by the idea of “development.”

• The world has since the 1970s been divided into “developed” and “underdeveloped” countries. This is measured by a nation’s accumulation of intellectual, monetary and infrastructural capital. A new recent division is that of “Democratic” versus “undemocratic” countries.

• What are the new struggles once “Revolution” and taking over power failed? Anti-imperialist struggles became either: corrupt, terrorist movements, dictatorships, narcoguerrillas (drug cartels), violating human’s rights.

• What are the new struggles now that capitalism and empire predominate, since the option of socialism evidently failed?

• To speak truth to power implies: to denounce oppression, to point at fingers, to create a supplement of the mass media.

• Since the 1970s, mediation (or representation, formerly the task of delegates and intellectuals) has been mediatized. That is, the media are the site to speak truth to power.

• Is the mediatization of mediation a problem of content (the violation of a right, somewhere) or of form?

• Last week we asked the question: “Can the Subaltern speak?: The “Subaltern” is the discursive position of the formerly colonized, and it shares with the discursive position of victims how they address the viewer

• The discursive regime of the victim and the subaltern is to bear witness in the first person.

• The discursive regime of the journalist and of the activist is to bear witness from a given angle. Which one? (Bearing in mind traps like falling into “Tropical Surrealism or the “Dantesque South” -or exploiting prejudice)

Praxis/Action (effect)

Charity

Identification

Pity/guilt:

Compassion:

Sympathy: Solidarity

Shock:

Schadenfreude, relief

Outrage, indignation

How do we relate to intolerable realities?Is to protest suffering, the same thing as acknowledging it?What is there to be done?

Personal feeling (cause)

Indifference:

What about poiesis and technique?

For the midterm you need to prepare/bring with you:

1recent activist action from anywhere in the world. It should be something that bears no relation to situationism, or psychogeography (urban recuperation) and bring the description and details with you. Bear in mind: How is this funded, is it an NGO, an artist’s collective, how was the action diffused (media, exhibition, internet)? Is it an instance of “tactical media” or an effort to unveil information, is it a symbolic action or illegal violence? What forms of speech (action) are used and how? What about poiesis? Does the activist action preach to the converted and or create consensus? Does it convey information or is it a complex rendering of a state of affairs? Make sure are aware of the action’ historical and geopolitical stakes. (1 double-sided page)

5 double-sided pages of notes (YOUR TOOLS)A ready-made typed bibliography.You will staple all of these materials with your exam booklet

• The media centralize information, it creates consensual opinion. (It is more of an apparatus of distribution than communication)

• This is because media allow no reciprocal action between transmitter and receiver, thus it reduces feedback to the lowest point compatible with the system.

• Brecht argued in 1932 for making the radio interactive, to make feedback possible.

• Enzensberger took this further and argued for an interactive relationship to the media (1970), and to make everyone a manipulator, to turn everyone into a producer (You hear the Benjaminian echoes here)

• For Enzenzberger the media is the “Superstructure” or the apparatus for the distribution of ideology, subject to the interests of capital.

• The task thus becomes to acquire the tools to create alternative information, opinion from below.

• Baudrillard: has a more pessimistic view and argues the media as an apparatus influences the form AND the content of the message. In his view, we thus have no agency in the form or the content or the apparatus because the media, as a technique is a standard way of communicating; this hinders us from being able able to interact with it genuinely and to produce meaning. Example: Polls.

• Baudrillard also finds problematic the idea that technology will free humanity. (Where does this idea come from?)

• Marx famously said, “historical materialist” terms, that the accumulation of capital creates the potential to invest in technology. Technological progress implies less work (labor time) and more leisure, or free time and eventually such progress will create freedom.

• For Baudrillard, the media cannot serve as mediation because it fabricates non-communication and thus, it kills speech (which is, as we have seen the condition for the political).. The mutual correlation of exchange in speech and politics dies with the media.

• For Baudrillard, speech must be able to exchange, give and repay itself, because it is the founding of social process and politics.

• Internet, blogging, and alternative information sources realize Brecht’s and Enzenzbergers’ ideal communication apparatus.

• Has being able to be “more informed” or having the ability to inform through communication technologies, have the potential for social change? Yes and no.

• Technologies of information and communication are inextricable from surveillance and marketing; we still have no agency in terms of the content (polls, voting); we are consumers of information about each other and about the world.

• Television as a language (a form of speech) and pirate radio have the potential to go around surveillance, they allow us to be producers of the technique and the content. How can they be used to purport social change?

• Godard’s aim was to use cinema as the “other” of the media; trying to de-identify the spectator from what he is seeing on the screen, to interrupt her viewing habits and to make her produce knowledge with the film, as opposed to consuming the film.

Contradictions are raised by the potential use of the media for social change. The Balkans War (1992-99) was the first television-documented genocide. Susan Sontag said that to bring the information home is no longer the task.

Documentary (as an aesthetic form) is an alternative way to get information and knowledge about the here and the elsewhere. Documentary claims to be a “transparent” record of reality or of a situation. Only sometimes, is the documentary filmmaker aware that she is presenting us with one face or one aspect of a situation.

The problem is, as Guillermo Gómez-Peña puts it, is that the world is divided in two: peoples who are subjects of (fringe) documentary and peoples who watch the documentaries, keeping stable the current socio-economical division of the world.

Scopophilia and Voyeurism

Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Robert Capa, Death of a Spanish Loyalist, 1936

Praxis (action) = Speech (information, awareness)(creates immediacy and co-presence)

Poiesis = creates proximity*We are looking at actions/interventions that are involved in visual

(sensible) productions so “awareness” or information practices are not enough.

WORDS OR IMAGES? (Sartre and Sontag vs. Picasso, Adorno and Godard).

Mind works that bear a complex relation between praxis and poiesis, and that have creative modes of outreach and distribution.

Think about Benjamin and Godard: “A work should have both a correct political and artistic tendency. Politically progressive and have aesthetic qualities.

Godard and Brecht: To make spectators not only consumers (of information), but also producers (of knowledge)