By Gary Alan Fine, January 5th, 2012 
We have just experienced the season of gifts, a moment at which images of plummy consumption dance in our heads. And I had a gift in mind. A magazine, or perhaps, a certain website.
I am a serial reader, and, sometimes, a reader of serials. As the Deliberately Considered audience knows – because I have admitted in cyber-print – I have ogled Glenn Beck: less as harassment or flirtation, and more as an imagined discourse. I promiscuously read conservatives and progressives – and others in left, right, and libertarian venues. I live by The New Yorker, I conserve the Weekly Standard, I reason with Reason, and Mother Jones is Mom. However, I have long regretted that I cannot get a daily dosage of civic nutriment in a single journalistic bowl. I hold to a somewhat eccentric contention that there are smart liberals (neo- and old-timey, pink and pinker), conservatives (neo- and paleo-), progressives, reactionaries, socialists, libertarians, and more. Is my generosity so bizarre?
It has been argued that one of the fundamental problems in American political culture is that citizens tend to read narrowly. Those who consider themselves conservatives will not squander their lives reading liberal intellectuals, and the same is true of liberals, should they even admit to such a creature as a conservative intellectual. The divide between red and blue is as evident in the library as in the voting booth. This argument was made most compellingly by the ever diverting Cass Sunstein in his 2001 book, Republic.Com. Sunstein argued that we feel comfortable in segregated domains of knowledge in which:
“People restrict themselves to their own points of view – liberals watching and reading mostly or only liberals; moderates, moderates; conservatives, conservatives; neo-Nazi, neo-Nazis.”
People reside in gated communities of knowledge. This is what the sociologist David Maines, referring to epistemic divisions between blacks and whites, described as racialized pools of knowledge. Our pools, suitable for private skinny dipping, are political. But if we are truly interested in the play of ideas, this chasm is a dispiriting reality. Of what are . . .
Read more: My Magazine
By Vince Carducci, December 5th, 2011 ![Book cover of Cutting Across Media: Appropriation Art, Interventionist Collage, and Copyright Law [Paperback] © 2011 Duke University Press Books](../../../../wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Cutting-Across-Media-96x150.jpg)
In his recent book Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past, British-born writer Simon Reynolds laments what he believes is the lack of creative originality in contemporary popular music. He compares what he perceives as the debilitated state of today’s sounds to the toxic instruments of financial piracy that nearly collapsed the global economy: “music,” he writes, “has been depleted by derivativeness and indebtedness.”
And yet one might note the irony that Reynolds himself initially emerged as a champion of English punk, a musical form that leapfrogged back over the stylistic excesses of glam, disco, and arena rock to mine the lode of romantic primitivism that fueled skiffle and the thrashier proponents of beat, in particular groups like Them, the Kinks, and the Yardbirds. What’s more, the subsequent style Reynolds lionized, rave, is even more obviously built upon a preexisting foundation, pilfering tracks from a variety of sources, which are sampled, looped, and mashed-up into collages of sound.
That this is pretty much the way that popular music, and indeed much of art, both high and low, has long been made is obvious to Kembrew McLeod and Rudolf Kuenzli, who have put together the collection of essays, Cutting Across Media: Appropriation Art, Interventionist Collage, and Copyright Law (Duke University, 2011). As befits its subject, the book brings together a broad range of contributors, from highfalutin academics to cutting-edge (no pun intended) street-level remixers, who reflect on a plethora of creative practices in all manner of media and genres.
An idea underlying the book is that the process of exchanging, altering, and assimilating information is and always has been central to humankind’s conscious being in the world. Natural scientist Richard Dawkins terms the basic unit of information exchange the meme, which is to culture what the gene is . . .
Read more: Cutting Up: Art in the Age of Electronic Reproduction
By Harrison Schultz, October 24th, 2011 
I unofficially joined the Occupy Wall Street movement on August 2nd of 2011, not because I wanted to demand anything from the government, but because I wanted to use what I had learned over the past several years as a data analyst at a global advertising agency to somehow attack the system. I had, and still have I suppose, an agenda to somehow turn corporations upon one another, make them divide and conquer themselves so that we (I) can stop working for them and so that they’ll start working for us. Many of my comrades abhorred my ideas and proposals, like the one I had discussed in a private email to Micah White about having corporations actually fund us while we camped out. However, no one told me I was unwelcome, and I actually have met other individuals who found my ideas appealing. I, furthermore, have yet to be told that I am unwelcome at camp in spite of the fact that the same email thread was publicly leaked, and I have since been accused of being a corporate stooge by several conspiracy theorists with blogs. The movement is tolerant of diverse and extreme opinions, which is its strength as well as the reason why there isn’t a coherent message. Or is there?
I’ll confess that I never really imagined that Occupy Wall Street would actually happen. I knew the turn out wouldn’t be anywhere near the 20,000 that Adbusters had called for. There had been 200 at most at the New York City General Assembly meetings leading up to the 17th, and the occupywallst.org website didn’t even begin receiving more than a few thousand visitors until the 17th. I didn’t bring my sleeping bag to Wall Street. I ran home and returned to the park with it. Waking up in Liberty Plaza on the morning of Sunday, September 18th, was surreal. I thought the cause was lost on the morning of September 20th while in my office cubicle I typed out an unanswered email for help from the New School community as I . . .
Read more: The View From Zuccotti Park: On the Post-Political Thrust of OWS
By Irit Dekel, October 18th, 2011 
Gilad Shalit is home today, after five years and four months as a captive of Hamas. My initial reaction, as an Israeli, reflecting on these developments in Berlin, looking mostly at Israeli written press online: I think it is wonderful that Shalit’s mental and physical condition is good enough for him to be able to appreciate his return.
As for the “home” he will find, others have written about the Israeli society he left in contrast with the one to which he returns. I wish instead to comment on two significant symbolic questions: Was the “price” paid for his return justified? And, the more difficult question which requires the help of a philosopher to address: what is the nature and meaning of his homecoming?
The first issue concerning the “price” paid for the safe return of a soldier seems to me and to most of the Israeli public as a no- brainer: one has to save the life of a soldier sent in one’s name. This issue has been covered in the German press I follow in Berlin, praising the commitment of the Israelis to their own people. However, the Israeli press’ apparent need to declare Hamas inhuman concerns me.
I am happy that Shalit is healthy, and recognize that the call in the Palestinian street today to capture other “Shalits” so that other prisoners will be released is obviously morally wrong. Yet, the parallel Israeli use of “price tag” to refer to the urge to hurt Palestinians, as well as the attacks upon what is conceived as the memory of left wing and secular Israel, specifically focused upon the Rabin Assassination, are no less morally wrong.
The attacks, about which Vered Vinitzky Seroussi has extensively written, seem to appear at moments of peaceful interaction and are deeply problematic. Last week, graffiti on the memorial site read: “free Yigal Amir” [Rabin’s assassin]. Perhaps the positive lesson from the discourse on “prices” is that it cannot be read in a vacuum: talking . . .
Read more: Gilad Shalit Comes Home
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 14th, 2011 
I think that the form of Occupy Wall Street expresses its content, as Scott Beck showed in his earlier post on the occupation. I observe, further, that the way people use social media contributes to this form, as does the setting of the occupation. And I believe deliberating about the movement and connecting the debate to other political, social and cultural activities are keys to the democratic contribution of the movement to broader politics in America and beyond.
Jenny Davis in her post last week makes cogent points about the role of social media in social movements in general and in Occupy Wall Street in particular. Her key observation is very important. Digital activism is not only a means to the end of embodied social action. It also is an end in itself, a new type of politics that can make the previously hidden visible and can contribute to what she calls “the zeitgeist,” what I would prefer calling the prevailing common sense. I would add that it can constitute a space for free action, a public, a point made by Judith Butler in a recent lecture. This is especially telling as David Peppas and Barbara note in the two comments to Davis’s post, because the occupation doesn’t have a simple meaning or political end. The act of protesting, as well as the act of posting, makes the world look differently, and looking at the world differently is what is most needed at this time, to face up to stark social realities that have been ignored and develop the capacity to act on this. It is interesting how the way this happens is structured by social media actions, no longer a monopoly of the mass media, while the power of the movement, is quite material. It’s embedded in a specific geography and its link to political culture.
The place of the occupation in an important way contributes . . .
Read more: In Review: OWS, The Ground Zero Occupation
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 10th, 2011 
I am on the road from Gdansk. It’s been an intense few days. Last Tuesday, I joined the Occupy Wall Street demonstration for a bit. By Wednesday, I was in the Gdansk shipyards, where Solidarity confronted the Party State in 1980, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Soviet Empire. I was interviewed for the Solidarity Video Archive, giving my account of the work I did with Solidarity and my understanding of the great labor movement. Immediately after which, I was taken to Gdansk University, where I gave my talk, this year’s Solidarity Lecture, “Reinventing Democratic Culture.” It opened the All About Freedom Festival. Over the weekend, I visited my family in Paris, and now I am flying over the Atlantic on my delayed flight to Newark, hoping I will get back to New York in time to teach my 4:00 class, The Politics of Everyday Life. It has been a packed week.
Unpacking my thoughts is a challenge. A new social movement is developing in the U.S., with potentially great impact. In Poland, a new generation is confronting the Solidarity legacy, trying to appreciate the accomplishments, while also needing to address new problems. Yesterday’s elections in France and especially in Poland were important. Yet, just as important for what was not on the ballot as for what was. Everywhere, there seems to be a political – society agitation and disconnect, with the politics of small things potentially contributing to a necessary reinvention of democratic culture.
I have many thoughts and will need more time to put them into a clear perspective. Here, just a start. I have a sense that things are connected: not falling apart, rather, coming together.
In the U.S., the central ideal of equality has been compromised in the last thirty years. From being a country with more equal distribution . . .
Read more: Things Come Together: Occupy Wall Street, Solidarity, Elections and Khodorkovsky
By Jenny Davis, October 6th, 2011 
I found a post on Cyborgology of particular interest a number of days ago, posted a reply, which led to an interesting email exchange with Jenny Davis. We agreed to start a dialogue about the new media and the politics of small things, specifically about the case of Occupy Wall Street. Her post today, my reply in a bit when I finish my work at the European Solidarity Center in Gdansk. -Jeff
Two recent posts on Deliberately Considered, one by Scott Beck and the other by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, examine the role of social media in social movements. They demonstrate the way in which social media allow us to harness the power of the people, contest the interpretations of mainstream media, organize, and mobilize. They show how, through communications on digital networks, physical bodies have come together in physical spaces, protesting both ideological and material conditions.
The points made by Beck and Goldfarb are important ones, yet I believe they should be extended. In particular, we need to address not only the ways in which these new media technologies work to bring together and document the physical bodies who occupy physical spaces. We also must examin the role of those whose activism never goes beyond the digital realm. We must look at how this latter group, colloquially referred to as slacktivists, matter.
Slacktivism matters in two interrelated ways: 1) increasing visibility and 2) generating a particular zeitgeist surrounding social movements.
Not everyone reads and/or watches the news, and in the age of the 24 hour news media, those who do read and/or watch the news must necessarily be selective in what they consume. What we share on Facebook or tweet on Twitter, therefore, works to increase the visibility of particular news items. Moreover, by linking a news item to a familiar other, to someone inside an actor’s personal network, is to imbue the news item with relevance. Status updates and tweets about Occupy Wall Street, for example, not only spread information about the protests, but also locate the protests in the digitally networked . . .
Read more: Slacktivism Matters
By Malgorzata Bakalarz, October 5th, 2011 
Sex:
Formally, it’s a pleasant poster. Whites and sandy beiges to recall Karen Blixen stories – the sun, the beach, the endless Africa, the innocent exotic; a successful attempt to cater to our idea of the far away, in a classy, elegant way. Even the slow walk, in which the men are captured as if coming back from work, helps to maintain a relaxed ambiance.
The content, on the contrary, seems to be a masterpiece of offense.
It starts with the exact same troubling “sandy beiges”: colonial cliché of a white man wearing his elegant outfit next to indigenous “exotic-folk” batik skirts and beads (if the men are indeed coming back from a work site, should one ask about division of labor? Better not).
And it goes further, to the main message of the poster, being a quotation of the man on the first plane (the two men turn their heads to him, listening eagerly): “Approach women like you do wild animals, with caution and a soothing voice.”
I can’t stop thinking about Bakhtin and his approach towards “the chain of speech communion” (although I’m not sure if I would like to be chained to the speech visualized on the poster in any way). Aside from his famous “the speaker is not Adam,” indicating that no speech is “innocent” and free of its precedent, he was also pointing out – a father of advertising? – that the speech is created in anticipation of encountering its response (which in his metaphor of chain of communication adds subsequent links to the preceding ones).
So there is no need to discuss a scandal of the actual statement – rather, one should think about the expectations of the response.
Was the indigenous man chosen to make this statement, as he could serve as an authority, given his familiarity to wild animals? Or was he chosen to be easily dismissed, in the presence of civilized white man, who knows (does he?) it is not . . .
Read more: Sex, Race, and Advertising
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 3rd, 2011 
A new kind of politics is upon us. Many observers have highlighted the technological characteristics of this politics. Cell phones and Facebook and other social media are the heroes in these accounts of the Arab Spring, the Israeli summer, and now of not only the Tea Party but also Occupy Wall Street. Yet, these accounts are unsatisfying, because they don’t take into account the human agency of the new politics, the specific political struggles. We should clearly recognize the importance of the new media, but it seems to me that what is extraordinary is the way a type of power, political power as Hannah Arendt understood it, is becoming increasingly important. People are meeting each other, now virtually and not only face to face, speaking and acting in each other’s presence, developing a capacity to act in concert.
I analyzed the way this power works in our world in my book, The Politics of Small Things. It points to the way the power of “the politics of small things” was common to both the Solidarity Movement in opposition to the previously existing socialist order in Poland of the 80s and to the anti-war movement and the Dean campaign during the Bush years in America. Recently a Korean translation of the book was published. I wrote a special preface, including some thoughts on how the politics of small things worked in a social movement in South Korea, the Candle Movement. Now, those reflections are helping me understand what I am seeing in lower Manhattan and considering its potential. I think the power of the politics of small things is becoming a significant force throughout the world today in many different contexts, and that it is important to take notice in places far and near.
My general understanding as an outsider and non-expert of the Candle Movement: Using . . .
Read more: A Specter is Haunting the Powers That Be: Thinking about Korea while Looking at Wall Street
By Scott Beck, September 29th, 2011 
The other day someone working for the mainstream media (MSM) seemed to be undecided about how exactly they should disparage a burgeoning movement. First the hypertext link on MSNBC’s website read, “Protesters want to tame Wall Street’s wild ways, but they’re a little wild themselves.” Later in the day it read, “Wall Street protesters spread murky message.” In both cases, clicking on the link would reveal the title of the article, “Familiar refrain: Wall Street protest lacks leaders, clear message,” with the opening lines, “It’s messy. It’s disorganized. At times, the message is all but incoherent.” With the accompanying photos focusing on the disheveled belongings of the protesters scattered about their home base, Liberty Park, the theme was that the seeming lack of organization and consensus of the “Wall Street Protesters” was analogous to the dysfunctional state of American political discourse. Being unsympathetic, skeptical, or even cynical, reporters do find what they’re looking for. Yet such a jaundiced look at the protests, as is typical of much of the media’s coverage, misses something strikingly obvious: what has largely faded in the rest of the country is still alive in Liberty Park– hope and change.
Last week, a young couple from Virginia Beach paid a visit to the park with their two children, one about five or six years old, the other not older than three. They met a young man who was writing a message on a cardboard to protest corporate malfeasance. The couple asked him to explain to their eldest daughter what it was he was protesting about. The young man smiled, and looked at the girl, who shyly averted his glance. “So basically, a few people have a lot of power, and they’re using that power to take advantage of everybody else.” At that point, the girl began to give the young man her undivided attention. “You know, it’s like a bully, we’ve all had plenty of bullies in our lives, and they think of different ways to better their position. And what we have is just that, on a larger scale, . . .
Read more: The People Should Lead: The Meaning of the Occupy Wall Street Movement
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