Netbase (1995-2006)
Yesterday, there was a party in Vienna. It was a small, at times sombre, at times exuberant affair, fitting for the occasion. The final call for netbase, the institute for cultural technologies. Today, the doors remained closed and the website turned static. After more than a decade sailing hard against the currents, suffering countless near-death experiences, it's hard to believe that the fall of the curtain is now final. No more publicity stunts. With the netbase, one of the last 'free radicals' of the early internet culture disappears, an institution which understood art as necessarily critical, both of the commercial hype and the old and new centers of power. Insisting on the freedom of art, defining its value as cultural intelligence, probing alternative futures, netbase refused play along with the neo-liberal redefinition of culture into 'services' to be measured by tourism boards, economic development agencies, or ministries of education. Rather, what characterized netbase was an insistence on acting in public, engaging the public directly and on its own terms. That such an approach is ultimately doomed, particularly in a country like Austria, is hardly a surprise. Like a crash in a formula one race, it's easy to say "i saw it coming." Even if the real surprise is probably that netbase lasted that long, witnessing its closure is a sad affair nevertheless. Particularly for many nettimers, who enjoyed, at one time or another, its particular kind of hospitality in here Vienna. Felix +---+-+--- http://felix.openflows.org # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... [2x]
Table of Contents: Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... "Jody Berland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... Florian Cramer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 13:11:09 -0500 From: "Jody Berland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance" (United Nations 1948). What we need to ask from an ethical point of view is not whether we are defending our own freedom of speech but whether we are impinging on another's. - - Original Message - From: "Florian Cramer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Jody Berland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 8:15 AM Subject: Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... > Am Mittwoch, 15. Februar 2006 um 18:29:00 Uhr (-0500) schrieb Jody > Berland: > >> It seems to me that in the midst of this intelligent conversation, the >> elephant sitting in the room is being missed. Freedom of speech amounts >> to >> a kind of religion in American culture. > > I am not American. And I live in country that, as a whole, didn't have > something that remotely qualified as free speech before 1989. Even today, > freedom of speech and expression is severely limited over here, > with blasphemy laws, film and video game censorship, an excessive <...> -- Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 21:04:29 +0100 From: Florian Cramer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... Am Donnerstag, 16. Februar 2006 um 13:11:09 Uhr (-0500) schrieb Jody Berland: > What we need to ask from an ethical point of view is not whether we are > defending our own freedom of speech but whether we are impinging on > another's. The Danish caricatures might have been a lot of bad things - but certainly not impinging on the freedom of speech of Muslims. - -F - -- http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70 gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not...
On Feb 15, 2006, at 6:29 PM, Jody Berland wrote: > Let's have some global self-awareness here. > These are political thugs who wrap themselves in the cloak of religion. First they come for the cartoons, then they come for you. Robbin Murphy THE THING, Inc. Russian Chief Rabbi Echoes Muslim Leader in Protesting Gay Pride in Moscow Created: 16.02.2006 20:01 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 20:01 MSK, 4 hours 19 minutes ago MosNews Three days after Russia's top Islamic leader called for violent protests against this spring's planned gay pride march in Moscow the country's Chief Rabbi has joined him in denouncing gays. Rabbi Berl Lazar on Thursday told Interfax that if the gay pride parade were allowed to go ahead it "would be a blow for morality". Lazar, who also holds U.S. citizenship, did not go as far as calling for violence, but warned the Jewish community would not stand by silently, 365gay.com website said. On Tuesday Chief Russian Mufti Talgat Tajuddin said gays could be beaten if they go ahead with pride celebrations in the capital. "Muslims' protests can be even worse than these notorious rallies abroad over the scandalous cartoons," Tajuddin, of Russia's Central Spiritual Governance for Muslims, told Interfax. Rabbi Lazar on Thursday said that anything promoting what he called "sexual perversions" does not have the right to exist. "I would like to assure you, that the parade of homosexuals it is not less offensive to the feelings of believers than any caricatures in newspapers," Lazar said, linking the pride parade with the current furor over the cartoons of the Islamic Profit Mohammed published in Denmark. Nikolai Alekseyev, one of the organizers of the pride festival called the comparison "outrageous". "Any comparison between the march for human rights and against discrimination with the publication of cartoons is nothing more than an attempt to incite hatred toward sexual minorities," Alekseev said. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the city of Moscow said a parade permit would not be granted to the LGBT rights groups. "Moscow authorities will not allow the conduct of gay pride in any form," Sergei Tsoi said on Thursday. "The Mayor of Moscow said firmly that Moscow government will not allow the conduct of gay parade in any form=A0=97 neither open, nor indirect, = and all attempts to organize non sanctioned action will be severely suppressed." Alekseyev said any attempt to prevent the march would be countered with court action. "In case of denial to conduct the match of sexual minorities we will immediately sue in court. The right to meetings, marches and demonstrations is guaranteed by the Russian Constitution to every citizen of Russia including gays and lesbians, he said. If necessary the organizers will go all the way to the European Court of human rights in Strasbourg, said Alekseyev. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
RE: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not...
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jody Berland Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 4:29 PM To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Subject: Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... It seems to me that in the midst of this intelligent conversation, the elephant sitting in the room is being missed. Freedom of speech amounts to a kind of religion in American culture. It is only useful to term it a <> - Jody, This is just about the approach taken by the ever-more conservative Stanley Fish in his NYT op-ed piece on the Danish cartoons. Fish argued that "free speech" amounted to no more than a liberal faith, one that informed defenders of free speech just as much as devotion to Islam informs protesters in the Islamic world. It is a specious equation of a civil principle with a theological claim, one that seeks to dismiss a secular concept by characterizing it as a religious notion in disguise. The Bush administration in its statements condemning the cartoons has made quite clear that it regards this particular free speech exercise -- cartooning Mohammed -- as a threat to its strategic political position. Thus in the US the moral-for-the-day concerns the construction of a contemporary American imperial subject who goes about work as a culturally-sensitized agent. Victorian imperialists of the British Empire were quite similarly concerned with not giving offence to local religion, as they had occasion to regret when they did. One difference today is that we live within a communications environment where local offence to religion is global. An official antagonism towards global free speech, one that operates at many more levels than this symbolic issue, underwrites US imperialism today. No one has argued here for free speech absolutism, but a discussion of exceptions and speech limitations (even if we had the time) would not extend legitimately to a prohibition against lampooning or satire of religion or religious figures. Global self-awareness, an admirable idea, does not entail torching ideas that offend -- freedom to criticize religions and governments, women's equality, freedom and equality for gay people, free secular education, and other objectionable notions -- in the service of cultural sensitivity. If these insensitive ideas and their impolite images offend, good. Joe --- Joe Lockard Assistant Professor 209 Durham Languages and Literatures Bldg. English Department POB 870302 Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287-0302 Tel: (480) 727-6096 Fax: (480) 965-3451 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.asu.edu/english/who/lockard.htm Antislavery Literature Project http://antislavery.eserver.org/ # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not...
Well yes, I would have to agree with this, I was not asking for total relativism in world cultural policy but simply for more cultural reflexivity in the context of this discussion. I don't think one has to be a moral relativist (or Stanley Fish) to suggest that more geopolitical reflexivity all around would help move things along. I don't feel justified in making decisions about what should or should not offend and horrify other cultures -- the nature of taboo is so varied. You can't burn an American flag, for instance, although you can make bikinis out of it. I have had relatives arrested for burning their own draft card. And I am most certainly not saying that feeling offended and horrified justifies violence, or I would have murdered my entire university administration by now. I am saying that we need to try harder to come to terms with the underpinnings of these debates, for instance that one side poses it in terms of religion, the other in terms of freedom of speech, and that the discussion will offer more enlightenment when we can move beyond these binaries. For instance, it wasn't just the fact that the cartoon "mocked" the religion that was the problem; it was that it violated a sacred prohibition on showing the face of Mohammed. It was thus a direct assaults on the freedom to practice that religion. It is too simple just to say they can't stand being mocked in cartoons. It is too simple to say it is all about freedom. It is too simple to say it is all about images, too. I am a pacifist, more or less, and a life long advocate of the rights of women, gays, visible minorities, and homeless cats. I think we can take our discussion farther when the need arises. Jody - Original Message - From: "Joe Lockard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Cc: "Jody Berland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 10:24 AM Subject: RE: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... <> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not...
On Wed, Feb 15, 2006 at 06:29:00PM -0500, Jody Berland wrote: > Freedom of speech amounts to a kind of religion in American > culture. It is only useful to term it a religion if you > acknowledge that it is a civilizational ideal and political > common sense for American culture the same way other kinds of > beliefs are for other cultures. your focus lacks orientation as much as your argumentation lacks insight. freedom of speech is not of american origin but mainly a genuine product of enlightenment, part of which was exported to america and since remained of some value there, despite the hordes of fundamentalist religious nuts who arrived at nearly the same time. > If the free speech advocates were acknowledging that theirs > is a specific political ideology (...) i.e. specific to the > historical formation of the American subject, plain and simple: bollocks. see above and below. > it would be easier to find a way to discuss these issues with > others with different political formations. (...) It's not that > I think an ideal dialogue of rational understanding is always or > necessarily possible, but this lack of geopolitical reflexivity > on the part of people saying free speech is always, necessarily > and absolutely a higher value than all other values, is giving > me a pain. oh yeah, sure, and while we're at it, let's discuss the whole imperialist catalogue of human rights or just toss that crap right away, because everything is oh so relative in the end, and who would dare to judge. tell you what: i do. actually, i don't think that you really know what you're saying there. for some more clarity, please substitute "free speech" with any other human right in its neighbourhood. in case you forgot: http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html -- may i cite? Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. the basic fault in the short-witted argument of cultural relativity is the hidden assumption, that all practiced concepts are of equal worth and value. i disagree. and so did the general assembly of the UN that proclaimed upmentioned declaration. there's a word in the title that is quite telling. it reads "universal". go figure. > Let's have some global self-awareness here. oh, i think we do. you just don't recognise it. when this thread started i was already unpleasantly touched, but meanwhile it is getting tremendously atrocious. if one takes a look back towards the origins of this list, it is rather unbelievable. sascha -- :: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ::. :: .. :... . . . . . . . :: www.brsma.de :: ..: .:. . :.. ..: . . . . . . :: im [EMAIL PROTECTED] .. :: . ::. .. . .. . . . . :: public key id 0x2EA549A0 ::.. :: . . . . .... . :: fingerprint 0A0C AE42 62F5 DB65 C5A1 E335 53FB 3888 2EA5 49A0 # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not...
Am Mittwoch, 15. Februar 2006 um 18:29:00 Uhr (-0500) schrieb Jody Berland: > It seems to me that in the midst of this intelligent conversation, the > elephant sitting in the room is being missed. Freedom of speech amounts to > a kind of religion in American culture. I am not American. And I live in country that, as a whole, didn't have something that remotely qualified as free speech before 1989. Even today, freedom of speech and expression is severely limited over here, with blasphemy laws, film and video game censorship, an excessive trademark and injunction law with which any lawyer can bury any web site owner else under ruinous bills without even going through a court, and a general tendency of jurisdiction to favor the state's interest over individual free expression. Consider yourself lucky if you live in a country where this is not the case and where you no longer have to struggle for those rights. It is have lost the appreciation for them because you take them for granted. Cultural relativism can only go to a certain point and never relativize fundamental human rights. Those who found such a relativism on deconstruction theory have utterly and perversely misread Derrida (if they actually read him at all) who has been very clear and outspoken on these issues, and was an activist in support of Salman Rushdie. To consider human rights,including free speech, a purely Western construct without universal value is subtly racist because it doesn't take people in other parts for free human beings. Such extremist multiculturalism would be a perfect tool, with all theoretical and terminological sophistication of cultural studies thrown in, to defend slavery, for example. It is scary that Westerners get impressed by protests that were so obviously staged and choreographed by dictatorial regimes. Oppositional intellectuals in those countries - the Iranian blogger scene, for example - all the while struggle for their own freedom of expression. Now they are let down by those who allegedly form the very core of an activism for free media and a free net culture. Maybe multiculturalists should start to attack the Internet as a Western colonialist tool and defend China's version of it as a heroic struggle of an ethnic minority against Western universalism and for cultural diversity. -F -- http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70 gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not...
jody berland writes well about the american sacred cow of free speech, something observed more in the breech than universally, as it was often observed that americans have the RIGHT to speak out, but most do not do so, moreover, getting their voices to a PUBLIC audience is controlled by private media, which are commercial enterprises more concerned about their profit margins than any abstract concept of either fairness or public need to know ... here i would refer to "Constructing the Political Spectacle" an academic perspective from Murray Edelman the grandfather of political communication studies. Edelman also cites both historically embedded and emerging policy processes used by the US government to control information. After all, what is speech without communication, or "free" with a price tag on it? so, ms. berland offers us an insight into american secular religion wrapped around the fictive holy ark of the trinity =97 declaration of independence, constitution, and bill of rights. But this religion also finds its roots in Calvinist theocracy =97 rule by god =97predestination, and the individual, as subverting the secular trinity by "one nation UNDER god". the real litmus or touchstone of american religiousity, however, is SUCCESS, a measure within the theocratic episteme, predestination =97 god shows whom he has selected by his favours of material and social success (financial merges with social capital), therefore failure is damnation in this life and the next ... success, or the hell of poverty in this world, which is an indicator of eternal hell ... so a fear-based driver to material success underpinned by Calvinist theology. It is this subconscious driver that accounts for the rapid rise of prosperity gospel, especially among the poor, black americans in particular, who have been steeped in biblical metaphor and values. Here is the reality: american religion is inseparable from politics, and vice versa, as the two sides of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) episteme are wedded into a secular religion that mirrors its theological/theocratic self. the "other" is any ideology or praxis outside of that episteme, or even threats from within, such as liberation theology (already suspect as a roman catholic subversion of WASP dominion), or mainstream churches that preach an oecumenical gospel of love and charity, such as the sermon on the mount ... or chasing money lenders out from the temple. all this ties into manifest destiny, god's chosen people =96 WASPs=97 = and promised land =96 America, new jerusalem, city on the hill & all those similar metaphors for which many trees have fallen to provide paper in a publish or perish system. so jody berland has it right, it is a social formation particular to the USA, developed out of WASP theological & theocratic roots, destruction of the infidel (natives) to build the new jerusalem. it has, however, diffused through the infestation of WASP globalisation, embedded in the ideology and materiality of a global hegemony by Anglosphere =97 UK, USA, and including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and remnants of White South Africa, which share in part this WASP disease. this contagion is carried by Brits as they buy up property in warm climates to create their insular communities with cricket pitches, infiltrate pub life. that said, brits and anglo colonials have moved on, having passed from Cromwellian WASP into more balanced social formations, albeit still having a born again WASP PM like tony blair to guide them into continuation of empire, only now as second fiddle to the purist WASP ideology of the USA. the analysis should be continued to look at how europe may divide between protestant, roman catholic, and orthodox, in the way that free speech differs in its ideological construct among varying social formations. imho, it divides into individualist versus corporate constructs of state and society ... and whether those freedoms are directed internally at the self / collective self, or externally at "the other" in this case can we perceive an embedded ideology of europe (a geographical fiction) and ask how it has evolved throughout conflict, rise & fall / expansion & contraction of empires, shifting national identities and state boundaries, north - south, east - west differences in cultural perception of self and other, as well as how those compass points differentiate north africa from southern mediterranean, and the levant (eastern mediterranean coast) from europe ... the fault lines between balkan - levantine muslim civilisation, which dominated southeastern europe for five centuries, and the byzantine-greco-slavic orthodox world squeezed between islam and the roman catholic-protestant west then we should expand this to the rest of the world, indic states, whether muslim, hindu, buddhist, and the indo-chinese realms of mainland southeast asia, the insular islands of indonesia, philippines, malaysia, with their mix of ancestral commonalities over
Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not...
Here's the word "freedom" being used again. Nietszche did a genealogy of
morals. Wendy Brown did a genealogy of identity politics (See her book: States
of Injury (1995) Princeton University Press), anyone watching tv commercials
today and comparing the use of the word "revolutionary" now in front of new
products or fads and thinking back to the word's use in the 1960s must be
forced to some thinking. now...
Nik Rose has written an interesting genealogy of the word "freedom", more than
just the easy punch against the use of the word by liberals ("freedom of
speech, freedom of religion, freedom, etc") but actually looks at the use and
importance of the word in more radical political projects Nikolas Rose, Powers
of freedom: Reframing political thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999).
> Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 19:13:21 +0100
> From: sascha brossmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not...
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > So why defend this matter in the name of freedom of speech? For those
> i ardently disagree for several reasons.
>
> first, the only price for the freedom of speech is paid by those who do
> second, freedom might not regarded as a set of communicating vessels,
> third, the sad fact that freedom is not as well spread as it should be
- End forwarded message -
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Re: publication of "Jyllands-Posten" cartoons is not... [3x]
> scandal being > great for business ... btw many begin to find it's far too expansive for some pety & stupid & bad tasted (reminber yes its that way that proceed)scribble. nothing is stronger than market force for finding habermasian consensus..hoaa er be sure the greed of scandal is here good only if it's a buziness routine..sometimes it's hard to recycle an hammering of duchampian urinal..but one find always a solution at last. if the scandal is without ROI then it's simply irrational, bad tasted, a non emerging evenment as would say my tasted bud baudrillard. for instance google in china is it a scandal or a bad tasted investment ?..touchy..you need to go in hight bizness school for judging, er..i i am quite incompetent & you ? > we also looked at salman rushdie, an indian > muslim with uk citizenship, living in new york, no fatwa was issued > against india, uk or us, or even his publishers his publishers ? but it's civilised here! > .. he alone was held > responsible and because he was a muslim should have known better, but > for some danish cartoonist with no knowledge of islam or responsibility > toward it, how or why would we blame countries, peoples or dairy cows > ... these 18 - 22 year olds from small cities & villages, understood & > generally agreed that this was blown up out of proportion & that > governments had no real control over commerce (media) er ha i see your tractatus, you see a direct link beetwen liberty of trade & liberty of expression..more even you think it's the first that proceed the second..as i dont know ..as if the queen expressly wanted all chineese had the right to smoke opium..well have i to remind georges bush is ofizialy upset we mocked at the believers? have to remimber margaret thatcher was oficialy 'uterly shocking' by salman's bad tasted book ? hum ? cause it's bad for bizness & good bizness is the proof god is in your side be sure this is the best autoprophecy ever found on this earth...holy yahoo > & that the > individual cartoonist was the person responsible & that he probably did > not know that he was engaging in such a controversial act, but will > profit from it with fame & maybe fortune ... baaah of course not...visibly you dont went in high bizness school, you are quite irrational & perhaps more bad tasted zan me& in one word i wonder if god will ever be in your side..btw i tried to hatch & machinate a zatanizt church for having all the bunch of lucifer behind..dont you know luci in the sky is quite an ass & idiot ? dont need to go in hight bizness school, just needed to kill a chicken or two (flued) & burning 1 or 2 $ bill..hoaaa no just fake one..you know the ones the cheneeses burn for their deads...& just drone on yah yah..with some naked dancing chicks & mignons around, the only universal & inexhaustible thing in good & decent religion. are you ok to join ? # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
