To add to Florian's suggestion that Anonymous has moved offline- I would also ask whether Anonymous are (as the article suggests) truly as counter-public ? I would argue that the heart of Anonymous together with the Guy Faukes masked army are a repudiation of the concept of a counter-publics, defined as "articulating alternatives to a wider public". In its place we have, perhaps, what has been called the 'majoritarian turn' in activism signified by the iconic slogan -We Art the 99%- which proudly re-assumes the old mantel of the BIG WE or a wider public.
This is in marked contrast to an earlier phase of the anti-globalisation movement which projected an image of a mass convergence of the great variety of tribal identities and a celebration of difference. Has the concept of 'counter publics' as a multiplicity of exceptional entities and identities given way to something more closely reflected in the 'Indignatio' manifesto which began by a declaring that "we are ordinary people" thus marking the beginning of a possible phase shift in the culture of radical protest movements in which to be radical no longer necessarily to be controversial ? ------------------------ d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
