On 10/01/14 11:58 PM, Kẏra wrote: > > What, then, is the substantive difference between ‘remix’ culture and > either fan fiction or hip hop? What do the remix/free movements gain > from presenting their values and practices in an ahistorical and > revolutionary fashion? What could the movement gain by locating it in a > larger historical context?
The latter two are part of the former and are routinely used as examples in the literature. This means that the values and practices are not presented ahistorically, on the contrary they are presented as parts of historical traditions that are exemplified by their constituents. > We can see that, especially in the rhetoric of the F/OSS community, that > there is an explicit resistance proprietary and capitalist ways of > organizing labour, and yet very little discussion about resisting > implicit or subtle sites of power. That's because of the objects that are the subject of free software and free culture. They are useful for resisting the forces that constitute them (legally and economically). Less so for resisting forces that do not constitute them as this is non-reflexive. It is volunteerism. > More starkly, we can see how an explicit disavowel of one type of > capitalist organization of labour simply does nothing to address the > fundamental issues of the distribution of wealth. Knowledge (and culture) is wealth and copyleft redistributes it. > Depressingly, this means that the F/OSS community and the way that it > embodies and practices its values of ‘open’ and ‘free’ serves not as a > resistance to the dominate (and oppressive) forms of organization and > institutions, but as simply a different, perhaps more subtle, > instantiation of context in which it was created. They are products of the same society, yes. But crucially they are critical products of it. That quote is also a product of the same society. It is however not more subtle in its instantiation of the context of desire to alienate and instrumentalize the products of hacker and cultural labour that gave rise to free software and free culture in the first place. > The thing about symbols and other cultural elements often targetted for > appropriation, is that absolutely *no one* is ever asserting that these > symbols or elements are owned by any specific individual. Indeed, this > is encoded in the term ‘cultural appropriation’ itself. What is actually > at issue here is how we understand ‘free culture’ in an inter-cultural > context. Or, in other words, how we can understand the priciples of > ‘free culture’ as applied to what we might call ‘collective property’? As a challenge to partriarchy and taboo, as a means of resisting the enclosure of traditional knowledge, and as a means of protecting the ability to critique acts of cultural appropriation. - Rob. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss
