Lots of bad bits too. No amount of theory can paper over basic flaws in
analysis.
One of the more useful observations I've seen lately (can't remember the
source, alas) is that in the current US political context rightists see
violence as a form of speech whereas leftists see speech as a form of
violence. True or accurate or not, this observation has the virtue of
highlighting the relationship(s) between speech and violence.
When it comes to recently reinvigorated right-wing revanchists, their
acceptance and even embrace of violence transforms the meaning of their
words and images. Meaning follows a sadistic logic, in which words
explain action and action lends force to words. But that content is
arbitrary: there's nothing intrinsically sinister or violent about Pepe
the Frog or any other right-wing -eme, visual or verbal. On the
contrary, the right's approach is precisely to assign esoteric and even
occult meanings to phrases, punctuation ("((()))"), images, rhetorical
forms, gestures, anything. To the extent that "memeing" means anything,
most of its meaning boils down to that process.
Leftoids can "counter-mirror" (IOW, parrot or even ape) rightist
techniques as much as they want, but it won't work very well because the
left has a fundamentally different view of the relationship between
speech and violence. The mainstream left, and even most of the radical
left at this point, has completely forsworn violence as a legitimate
political strategy. That was partly deliberate, a victory of important
moral strains in leftist and progressive thought; it was also partly
unwitting and/or circumstantial, the result of ferocious persecution and
subversion by rightist and state elements. But, regardless the origin,
the insistence that speech and violence are categorically different
rather than a continuum has severely limited what the l3efts's words and
images can mean. Put simply, the left doesn't inspire fear.
This is just a historical observation. I am CERTAINLY NOT suggesting
that the left should rethink its rejection of violence. Precisely the
opposite: I think that good-faith, communitarian rightists (there are
many) need to find ways to restrain and/or exclude those who would
pursue similar political outcomes with force rather than persuasion.
But the question here shouldn't be "can the left meme," it should be
"can the left speak and act with violent abandon?" At the moment, the
answer is no. That's one reason — just one — that I'm a leftist.
Cheers,
T
On 11 Jun 2017, at 18:20, Gabriella "Biella" Coleman wrote:
https://www.textezurkunst.de/106/notes-toward-memes-production/
Lots of good bits in here covering the nitty gritty mechanics of the
alt-right and their stellar command of media manipulation in light of
theories of art and cultural production. Worth a read.
# 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]
# @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
