From Word To Word

I have always regarded it as positive that the internet as a medium permits its users a greater degree of active participation than most other media, but during the discussion at this past Saturday’s Dinner and a Doc, I found myself questioning this assumption.  We had just finished watching The U.S. vs. John Lennon, and we were asking why the war in Vietnam had produced such a strong and sustained opposition while the war in Iraq has not generated a similar level of response.  After all, the activists of today have technological advantages that those opposing the Vietnam War did not, and these technologies should theoretically enable them to network and to share information far more easily and far more effectively.  Perhaps, I suggested to the group, the more active experience of using a computer actually dissuades people from becoming active in more practical ways, so that they respond to an issue by signing an online petition, or by writing a blog post, or by sending a mass email, or by contributing to some relief fund, but they never make the transition from internet activism to physical activism.  Their drive to engage in issues becomes satisfied through the monitor and never finds expression beyond it.

To be clear, I am not at all arguing that real activism cannot be accomplished online.  I am merely suggesting that the internet often allows people to engage with issues in ways that provide only the illusion of activism and that it frequently functions to satisfy the need for active involvement in political issues without really addressing these issues beyond the level of the monitor.  Rather than enabling activism, the internet comes to replace it, limiting the ways in which people are willing to be politically active.

The answer to this problem is obviously not to abandon the internet as a tool for activism, because it is simply too effective a means for communicating and networking and organizing and raising awareness.  The answer may, however, involve reimagining how we use the internet and how we promote activism through it, so that we do not content ourselves with online petitions that nobody sees at the expense of actually feeding the hungry, defending the oppressed, and protesting injustice.  I am not sure that I have any specific suggestions as to how this might be accomplished, but I would encourage you, the next time you are confronted by a cause in your online wanderings, to see what it is exactly that you are being asked to do.  Is it the kind of activism that stops at the monitor, or is it the kind that only begins there in order to go much further?

I have written several timed on the poetry of the list, particularly with reference to the writing of Georges Perec, so I enjoyed what Umberto Eco had to say on the subject in an interview with Spiegel, a piece to which Dave Humphrey directed me this afternoon.  You should read the interview yourself, so I will not say very much about it.  I will just list the following ideas that I think deserve some future discussion.

1. “The list is the origin of culture.”

2. “How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists.”

3. “The list doesn’t destroy culture; it creates it.”

4. “We like Lists because we don’t want to die.”

5. “I like lists for the same reason other people like football or pedophilia. People have their preferences.”

6. “The list is the mark of a highly advanced, cultivated society because a list allows us to question the essential definitions.”

Of course. Eco has much more to say about lists than a list could convey, about education and about culture and about libraries and about many other things, so you should take this list only as an invitation to read further.

I have an environmentalist friend who is constantly espousing the virtue of “doing without”.  His dream is to live in a very small house, built all of natural materials, located on a piece of land that he would be partly cultivating and partly renaturalizing.  Another friend wrote me this past week to tell me that he will now be doing without email in order to spend more time reading and writing in other ways.  A third friend has recently decided to do without alcohol as a way of supporting his brother-in-law who is a recovering alcoholic.    None of these choices is what I would call an ethical absolute, because it is not doing without itself that is the question but the reasons for doing without them and, conversely, the reasons for doing with them.  Email is not essentially unethical, but it may be unethical for me if what I am doing with it is distracting myself from more important things.  Alcohol is not essentially unethical, but it may be unethical for me if it shows disregard for the struggle of a friend.

If I follow this kind of reasoning consistently, however, it often puts me into apparently contradictory positions.  For example, my wife and I have chosen to do without a car, without cable, without a dishwasher, without a clothes dryer, without a power lawnmower, without a cellphone, without air conditioning, without fast food, without commercial pesticides and fertilizers, and without many other things too small or too obvious to mention.  On the other hand, we have also chosen to have a fairly large house in downtown Guelph, and many people see this as contradicting a lifestyle that seems otherwise to be based on the principle of doing without.  In actuality, however, both our choices to do with things and our choices to do without them are based on the same principle, which is the choice to act ethically and purposefully and intentionally, and to let this principle determine whether we will do with something or without it.

In this sense, I choose to do with a large house for many of the same reasons that I choose to do without a car, because I want to live a more convivial, familial, neighbourly life.  I do without a car so that I can walk through my neighbourhood and come to know it, so that I can make this place a home, so that I can make its inhabitants my neighbours.  I choose to do with a house so that I can live with my extended family, so  hat I can live with others who happen to need a place to live, so that I can open my home and my table to those who need a place to sit and eat and be at home.  It is not the with or the without that is important here, but the doing that informs these decisions.  It is not simply about having something or not.  It is about being able to do something with what I have and with what I do not have.

To give a second example, I choose to own many films and books, not because I need them all for myself, though I do use many of them from day to day, but because I want to be able to share them with people, to lend as a way of introducing people to things that I think are worth reading and watching.  I do not simply have them.  I choose to do with them, to do something with them.  The choice to have them or not is secondary to the question of what I want or need to do with them.  The with or the without is  secondary to what I am doing, and this enables me to do with things or without them purposefully, to do with them or without them while avoiding the temptation to take the with or the without as a commandment, whether it be materialism’s commandment that I need  something or it be radicalism’s commandment that I do not.  The with and the without become intentional expressions of what it is that I choose to do.

This is to do with.  This is to do without.  This is to do ethically.  This is to do.

Despite my grandiose aspirations, I only managed to see two of the Guelph Festival of Moving Media films this past weekend:  Burma VJ, which I will discuss further when I introduce the documentary film course that I will be teaching in January, and Rip: A Remix Manifesto, which I will take up now.

Rip explores the music of mash-up artist Girl Talk as a way of introducing questions about intellectual property.  It is  not intended to add much new to the subject, focusing instead on raising awareness among those who have not yet been exposed to it, so those who are already familiar with the issues will find it a little simplistic.  Its tone is openly rhetorical, as you might expect from a manifesto, most often preferring the engaging generalization to the subtle argument, but it is usually able to convey the essential ideas nevertheless.

A good example of its approach can be found with its section on the history of copyright law.  It gives a brief explanation of the first copyright law formed in England and an equally brief explanation of the most recent copyright law, but it is content to pass over the details of these acts and to ignore the many legislative and legal interventions that contributed to the transition from one to the other.  The audience is clearly shown that copyright has been vastly extended over the past few hundred years, but it is not given the details of how this extension occurred.  So, while newcomers to the question of intellectual property may very well find this idea provocative, there is little that would enable them to develop an informed opinion or to locate themselves with respect to the current legal questions and legislative initiatives before the courts and legislatures.  The film is a good introduction in many ways, to be sure, but it is always only an introduction.

Even as an introductory tool, however, the film has its short comings.  For example, it does not distinguish very well between the acts of ripping. mixing, and burning, each of which poses very different legal and artistic questions, even at a very basic level.  It is one thing for me to make a copy of someone else’s work, another thing for me to alter that work for my own ends, and another thing again for me to produce and distribute this work for other people, but all of these things are lumped together in the film, and this sometime results in some poor reasoning and some false conclusions.

The film also focuses too heavily on intellectual property in music and film, touching only very briefly on the more serious aspects of intellectual property, like the patenting of living material, the length of patents on potentially life-saving drugs and other medical technologies, and the copyrighting of material that materially pertains to the ability of people to make a living or exercise freedom of speech.  These oversights are perhaps to be expected in a film that is using a musician as a case study, but they have tendency to reduce the intellectual property debate to the question of artistic and cultural freedom when much more material things are also at stake.

Despite these problems, the film is generally successful in raising the central ideas of the intellectual property debate, and it does include one section that I found quite profound.  The section is set in Brazil, where the government has decided that it will not respect United States copyright law but will allow and even foster the creative reuse of cultural artifacts.  In this context, the film quotes the  Cannibal Manifesto by the Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade, and suggests that cannibalism might be a useful metaphor for understanding the creative process, where the artists of the present cannibalize the artists of the past in order to take the strength of the past into themselves.

This idea is attractive to me.  Though I have encountered it before with respect to how writers make use of one another’s writing, I have never made the fairly obvious move of extending it to the creative process generally, and I had never understood how political an image it actually is.  After all, this discourse of cannibalism is being used by a Brazilian to oppose a European culture that has been imposed on him, and doing so by making use of that European culture’s long history of regarding his native culture in terms of savagery and cannibalism.  The film itself mostly passes over these political implications, but there are some interesting correlations between the kinds of cultural impositions made by the European colonizers on the native inhabitants of Brazil and those being made by today’s big media cultural colonizers on most of the world, and if the figure of the cannibal consumes the body of the enemy in order to take the enemy’s strength, all the while playing through and against the enemy’s stereotype of the savage, there is a very real sense, I think, in which today’s open culture movement might want to regard itself as cannibalistic.

My housemate Katerina Strohschein asked to assist me in selecting the film for the next Dinner and a Doc, which is coming up this Saturday, November 14th, and we eventually settled on The U. S. vs. John Lennon by David Leaf and John Scheinfeld.  The film focuses on the political elements of Lennon’s life and music, following his development from pop star to celebrity activist.  It also highlights the response of the United States government to Lennon’s politics, relating the ongoing struggles that Lennon had as an outspoken public figure.

Those who are interested in more information can have a look at the official trailer and a video review by A. O. Scott of The New York Times.   A complete version of the film is also available.

Our soup for the night will be a broccoli bisque, both because the recipe looks fabulous and also because, well, I just like saying “broccoli bisque”.  There will also be homemade pumpkin pie.

As usual, the event will be at my place, 130 Dublin Street, Guelph, and all are welcome, though please email or leave a comment to let me know that you will be coming. We will eat at about 5:30 and begin the film at about 6:00.

Lastly, some people have requested that I give them earlier notice of which films I will be showing on which dates, so, despite the fact that this will require me to know what I am doing more than a week in advance, here is the upcoming schedule for Dinner and a Doc.

December 12th – We will be taking December off, though I may do something a little different instead, so stay tuned.
January 9th – The Price of Sugar by Bill Haney
February 13th – Lost in La Mancha by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe
Match 13th – Man or Aran by Robert Flaherty

I realized today why I do not love Halloween in the same way that I love some of the other holidays.  The problem is, for me, that it is so difficult to make Halloween less commercial and more familial and neighbourly.

With Christmas, for example, our family has stopped giving gifts except to children.  Instead, we put our money together and give it to charity, and we make homemade things for each other’s stockings, and we bake, and we cook, and we eat.  By replacing the commercial aspects of the holiday with family traditions, our time together is less stressful and more celebratory.  It becomes something we can truly anticipate as a family.

It is more difficult to avoid the commercial elements of Halloween, however, because they are driven by a question of safety.  It is no longer possible to pass out homemade candy apples or popcorn balls rather than mass produced candy, and this is largely because we no longer know our neighbours well enough to trust them not to hurt us.  The evening becomes reduced to strangers buying huge amounts of poor quality commercial candy to hand out to the children of other strangers who are handing the same candy out to your own children.  It is a candy exchange program, where nobody wins except the candy manufacturers and the dentists.

So, I have decided to make Halloween a little more neighbourly and a little more homemade.  I will, for the first time in decades, have candied apples for the children who know me, for the children who make up my neighbourhood.  I will also have mulled cider for their parents.  Of course, I will still need to have a bucket of candies for the kids who do not know me, but I will make our porch a reminder of what Halloween might actually be like if we took the time to know each other as a community.

Perhaps you can do so too.

There is a way of being between that is a balance, that is a caution and a calculation and a measurement, that is a careful poise on the edge of every possible direction, that is a walk on a line, foot in front of foot, to prove one’s sobriety.  This between is a refusal of any extreme, of any discipline or extravagance, of any sacrifice or excess.  It is a moderate moderation, a balanced balance, a considered consideration.  It is a swallow of warm water.

There is also a way of being between that is a suspense, a tautness and a tensity, a pulling and a straining, that is a dangling in the void, that is a stretching on the rack, inch by inch, to prove one’s faith.  This between is a desire that is both lascivious and ascetic, both wanton and austere, both carnal and sacred, simultaneously.  It hangs between these things.  It is drawn and quartered.  It is agonized and exaltated.  It is a live coal on the tongue.

Over the several weeks since I completed it, Pierre Bourdieu’s On Television has kept me thinking about what it means to appear publicly, particularly through the media, but also in the many other places where we are asked to “make an appearance” in a formal sense, to deliver a conference paper, for example, or to give a sermon, or to teach a class.  More specifically, it has kept me thinking about the conditions, often unspoken and unrecognized, under which we agree to make these kinds of appearances.

Bourdieu argues that, “by agreeing to appear on television shows without worrying about whether you will be able to say anything, you make it very clear that you are not there to say anything at all but for altogether different reasons, chief among them to be seen,” and while he is referring to television specifically here, his argument is more broadly applicable.  Whenever we are asked to appear, whenever we are asked to make an appearance, we are confronted by this question of whether the conditions of our appearance will enable us to say anything, will enable us to do anything but be seen.

Throughout On Television, Bourdieu discusses several factors that silence those who try to say something by appearing through the media, and central among these factors are time limits, which he says “make it highly unlikely that anything can be said.” This is one of the reasons that On Television takes the form it does.  It was originally delivered as two television lectures for which Bourdieu imposed his own strict conditions.  He was allowed to speak as long as he liked without interruption by advertizing and without editing or censorship of any kind.  Bourdieu agreed to appear, in other words, but only under conditions that he believed would allow him to say something rather than just be seen, which meant in large part insisting on having sufficient time.

Jacques Derrida says and does some similar things in Echographies of Television, arguing that “the least acceptable thing on television, on the radio, or in the newspapers today is for intellectuals to take their time.”  The central part of this book, the interview with Bernard Stiegler, was also to have been shown on television, though the broadcast never took place, and Derrida agreed to appear in this way only after asking for a right of inspection, a right to inspect the conditions under which he would appear.  Though he says that he had no illusions about his right of inspection being able to guarantee that anything would in fact be said or that what was able to be  said would not be misappropriated, Derrida insists on the principle of this right, on the principle of at least trying “to reconstitute the conditions in which one would be able to say what one wants to say at the rhythm at which and in the conditions in which one wants to say it.  And has the right to say it.  And in the ways that would be least inappropriate.”

I agree with this argument, and I am very concerned with the conditions under which I have to appear in various senses, but I am discovering that the right of inspection is not available to most of us in the way that it is available to Bourdieu and to Derrida.  These thinkers are able to insist on this right only because they already possess a certain status and a certain influence that allows them to negotiate the conditions of their appearance from a position of relative power.  The vast majority of us, however, in the vast majority of the situations where we might appear, are not operating from a similar position.

For example, I recently had the opportunity to appear on a local Christian radio show as a participant in a panel on ethics, but I knew immediately that it was not an opportunity that would, in Bourdieu’s terminology, allow me really to say anything. The constraints of time and of the moderator’s questions and of the station’s political position would have made it very difficult for me to say anything worth being said. I would have liked to do as Bourdieu and Derrida did, to have negotiated a different way of appearing, but I lack completely the kind of influence that would allow me to make such demands.  To appear in a way that would have allowed me to say something was simply not possible for me in that situation, so I decided not to appear at all.

This is not to say that opportunities do not exist that would allow me to appear under conditions that I would find more acceptable.  I was also recently approached by a parenting show on the local university radio station to participate in a discussion on fathers who stay at home and who homeschool their children.  I was initially very skeptical again, and I have no guarantee that I will not be disappointed in the event, but my conversation with the host was a very positive one, and I felt that I would be permitted the time and the space to say something worth saying, so I decided that I would appear on the show.

The problem, therefore, is not that there will never be a place where we can appear under the kinds of conditions that Derrida calls least inappropriate.  The problem is that most of us have no power by which to insist on these conditions, and so our right of inspection amounts almost entirely to a right of refusal, and if those who have something to say must constantly refuse to appear, than the only ones who will appear are those who are interested merely in being seen.  In this way, our right of inspection as right of refusal will most often serve to reinforce a media culture that is concerend primarily with being seen rather than with actually saying something, and though I think this cost is perhaps necessary, it is nevertheless a vastly heavy one to bear.