As information about Operation Moshtarak in Afghanistan--a coalition offensive purportedly against a key Taliban stronghold of 80,000 residents called Marjah--becomes available from web muckrakers like BagnewsNotes and Truthout, I can't help but think of the following passage from Jean Baudrillard's essay on Simulacra and Simulations:
The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth
which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true...
...Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror
or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential
being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without
origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map,
nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory
- precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory
and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose
shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map,
whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer
those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself.
In many ways, we can see Afghanistan as a governing assemblage of simulacra: democracy, humanitarianism, human rights, community capacity building, reconstruction, and the war on terror. Unfortunately, the bodies of the dead, maimed, sick, and injured--from all sides--remind us that the desert of the real is also a very brutal place.
Photo credit: Paolo Alfieri (his flickr-stream of Afghan landscapes is pretty stunning)
Are you currently working on a Masters or Ph.D. that explores aspects of how art and social change are related? Or are you really interested in the topic? If so, the following workshop organized by colleagues at the University of Bristol might just be for you. Please see the details below:
‘Beauty will save the world’*: An Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Workshop on Art and Social Change
University of Bristol, 7-8 September 2010
Hosted by the Department of Politics and sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Global Insecurities Centre, University of Bristol
How does art construct, resist and contest dominant identities and social practices? How does art open up possibilities for (re)creating the world? What are the relationships between art, aesthetics, and politics? What are the power relations involved in art? Whose art, and whose values are best placed to change the world? Can engaging with art help us develop new epistemologies and research methodologies? Can beauty ‘save’ the world?
This two-day interdisciplinary postgraduate workshop is premised on the assumption that art actively constructs social ‘reality’, as opposed to merely reflecting it. Against dominant pronouncements privileging the centrality of rationalism and science as the legitimate avenues towards knowledge and social change, this workshop poses the question: what does the ‘serious’ pursuit of ‘progress’ miss out on when it disqualifies the artist’s imaginary as superfluous, lacking impact, unimportant?
The workshop aims to bring together postgraduate students working in and across various disciplines to share research which looks at the contested meanings of art and aesthetics, explores art in different cultural and historical settings, and examines the ways in which art and its constructions of beauty, society, politics can help in understanding, and changing, the social world. The workshop will also enable postgraduate students to engage and network with more established scholars, who will be present at the workshop as keynote speakers, panel chairs and roundtable discussants.
We welcome paper and panel proposals (2-3 presenters per panel) which engage specifically with the theme of art and social change, from various disciplines, including but not limited to: Archaeology, Anthropology, Classics, English, Modern Languages, History, History of Art, Visual and Performing Arts, Cultural Studies, Geography, Philosophy, Sociology and Politics.
Ideas for papers might include:
Art as nationalism;
The aesthetics of social movements, protest and revolution;
The envisioning of utopia(s);
‘The world as a stage’: playwrights, audiences and social change;
Art as methodology.
Papers can include think pieces or works in progress. We encourage a diversity of presentation styles, from ‘traditional’ papers to interactive sessions, involving short film screenings, musical and dramatic performances, and the display of paintings, sculpture, photographs, and installation art. Presenters will be assigned a 30-minute slot for their presentation, which can be used by the presenter as they wish, but must include at least 5 minutes for audience questions.
Please email abstracts (maximum 300 words) of proposed presentations to both Cerelia Athanasiou (cerelia.athanasiou@bristol.ac.uk) and Shaira Kadir (shaira.kadir@bristol.ac.uk) by 31 May 2010.
Presenters will be able to make use of a digital data projector and DVD/CD player. However, we will not be able to provide musical instruments or any other specialist equipment.
And congratulations to David Campbell and Sharron Lovell on being awarded the 'Online excellence in projects for mid-sized websites' by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers at the 15th Annual Best in Journalism Competition for the multi-media project 'Living in the Shadows'.
As part of its 60th Anniversary celebration, the UK's Political Studies Association is polling its membership to compile a list of the top 'political' songs of all time.
They state that:
the top ten
songs voted by members and an additional ten chosen by a judging panel will be
published by the New Statesman to
coincide with the Association’s 60th Annual Conference, which is
being held in Edinburgh from 29th March to
1st April.
And here's the list of songs that they've chosen as being exemplary 'political':
Annie
Lennox & Aretha Franklin: Sisters are doing it for themselves
Anon.: Bella Ciao
Barry
McGuire: Eve of Destruction
Billie Holiday: Strange
Fruit
Billy
Bragg: Which side are you on?
Bob
Dylan: The Times They Are a changing
Bob
Marley: Redemption Song
Bruce
Springsteen: Born in the USA
Carl
Bean: I was born this way
Cecil
A. Spring-Rice: I vow to thee my country
Charles A. Tindley: We
Shall Overcome
Charly García: Nos
siguen pegando abajo
Claude Joseph Rouget de
Lisle: Le Marseillaise
Donovan: Universal
Soldier
Edwin
Starr: War
Elvis
Costello: Tramp The Dirt Down
Enoch
Sontonga: Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika
Eugène Pottier: The
Internationale
Fela
Kuti: Zombie
Gil
Scott Heron: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Horst
Wessel: Die Fahne hoch
Jim
Connell: The Red Flag
John
Lennon: Imagine
Joni
Mitchell: Big Yellow Taxi
Leornard Cohen: The
Partisan
Li
Youyuan: The East is Red
Marvin Gaye: What's
Going On?
Midnight Oil: Beds are
Burning
Nena:
99 Luftaballons
Nina
Simone: Mississippi Goddam
Pete
Seeger: Where have all the flowers gone?
Peter
Gabriel: Biko
Plastic Ono Band: Give
Peace a Chance
Public Enemy: Fight the
Power
Randy
Newman: Political Science
RATM:
Killing in the name
Robert Wyatt:
Shipbuilding
Rolling Stones: Gimme
Shelter
Sex
Pistols: God Save The Queen
The
Beatles: Revolution
The
Clash: Know Your Rights
The
Cranberries: Zombie
The
Jam: Eton Rifles
The
Police: Invisible Sun
The
Specials AKA: Free Nelson Mandela
The
Strawbs: Part of the Union
Tracy
Chapman: Talkin' 'bout a revolution
U2:
Sunday Bloody Sunday
UB40:
1 in 10
Verdi: Chorus of Hebrew
Slaves
Victor Jara: Te Recuerdo
Amanda
William Blake: Jerusalem
Woody
Guthrie: This Land is Your Land
Now to give credit where it is due, the list is not as lame as one might have feared, even if it is heavily skewed in favour of nostalgic boomer anthems and assumes that music stopped being political sometime in the mid 1990s.
But, it is an obvious collection, in part because it is underpinned by a very narrow assumption about what politics 'is' and therefore what can properly count as 'political'. These choices reveal that politics--at least for those who drafted this list--is defined by explicit representations of nationalism, street protest, conflict, inequality, support for--or opposition to--government policy, and perhaps alienation that have become associated with historical time periods or events. These are presented as songs that have responded to a politics that exists out there regardless of what we may think about it.
It is the politics of recognized issues, institutions, and actors, that have been invested by the dominant socio-economic forces of the time with the importance and privileged status of being coded as 'political' in political discourses. Moreover, it is a politics of direct intentions, intentions that the audience can supposedly discern from the lyrical content or title of the pieces.
To be clear, I am not arguing that these songs do not cover what we can consider to be political subjects. And it is not to say that these songs do not address important political issues. But there is more to music being political and to the politicization of music than a neat fit with events that are recorded in orthodox history books as being 'of' the political sphere.
For example, take the Rolling Stones' 'Brown Sugar'. Some might dismiss it as a cheeky song about lust--or maybe lines of prose from Strom Thurmond's secret diary--that is devoid of any broad political significance. Yet, the narrative exposes the societal power-relations enabled by the privileging of the white heterosexual male gaze. More specifically, the song can be seen as an example of how that gaze eroticizes difference into an object of fetishistic corporeal desire while simultaneously denying the humanity of the eroticized other. This strikes me as incredibly political and as important to understanding gender and racial dynamics today as when it is was first performed.
Similarly, this list does not take into account that aesthetics are in part about the shaping of what we can and/or are prepared to perceive as well as the value to be accorded to ways of representing our perceptions. And since perception itself shapes political possibility by forwarding a particular understanding of reality, then music that challenges aesthetic norms is also highly political. So pieces like John Cage's 4'33 or genres like Noise Music are themselves constitutive of the limits of the political, transgressing boundaries that are supposed to separate art, profanity, the abject, or even the sublime. While I am unsure how these might relate to a specific praxis, that does not mean that they lack a political sensibility.
Furthermore, the limited conception of the political underpinning the PSA list completely misses the constitutive role of music in the creation and maintenance of particular relations of power. For example, the Barney the Dinosaur Theme Song or the Meow Mix Commercial Jingle were favoured by American interrogators as a means to torture detainees in Iraq. In my mind they have just as an important political significance as Pete Seeger lamenting the metaphorical absence of flowers.
So in the end, even with my reservations above, I'm not entirely sure how to read the PSA's attempt to form links between the field of politics and popular culture. On the one hand, given how small-c conservative the disciplines of politics and international relations are in general, might this represent an opening--however small--to begin to get colleagues to take the popular culture-world politics continuum seriously? Or is this best seen as a shallow and gimmicky appropriation that just reinforces problematic understandings of politics and of popular culture?
'Israel Reveals New Drone Fleet That Can Reach Iran' at nytimes.com
'Explaining Broadly Understood' by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson at duckof minerva [or why mainstreamers in the discipline of international relations struggle with the concept (popular) culture]
'Lethal T-Square: Architecture, Violence, Renewal' by Keith Eggener at designobserver.com
'Death Wears Aqua Green' by Pete Brook at the always amazing prisonphotography
Please see the message from Matt Davies below, in his capacity as the head convenor of 'The Critical Limits of the Financial Crisis: World, Politics, Aesthetics, and Re-politicization' section for the upcoming Standing Group on International Relations Conference in Stockholm. As an associate convenor, I'd just like to reiterate our desire to solicit as many interesting papers as possible!
Call For Papers
The SGIR 7th Pan-European Conference on IR will take place in Stockholm, Sweden, from September 9-11, 2010. The deadline for submitting paper or panel proposals is 28 February and proposals must be submitted on-line at here.
There are 43 sections for the conference, all dealing in different ways with the conference theme, “Politics in Hard Times.” Our section, number 9, “The Critical Limits to the Financial Crisis: World Politics, Aesthetics, and Re-politicization” especially invites panels that bring together both specialists in political economy and specialists in aesthetic or cultural theory for dialog about the contemporary crisis and how finance fits in it, or papers that could contribute to these kinds of panels. The section’s call for papers can be found here.
We have had several inquiries about what this might mean and just to be clear, we do not see these contributions as being limited to papers that examine “the aesthetics of finance” understood narrowly (though such proposals would be most welcome). The panels should bring together diverse approaches to common concerns: for example, a political economic analysis of the role of the housing bubble in the financial crisis could be brought into dialog with a paper on the aesthetics of housing in times of boom or bust. Finance and visuality have been brought together in very interesting ways in cultural political economy, and the notion of “financial architecture” provides another common meeting ground between political economy and aesthetics.
Please contact any of the section convenors, listed on the section’s call for papers, if you have any questions and please feel free to circulate this call to any interested colleagues across the Arts, Humanities, or Social Sciences.
Breakthrough, an international human rights advocacy group, has put together an excellent resource to draw attention to what can only be described as the appalling treatment of immigrants in American detention centers.
Spearheading the campaign Homeland Guantanamos: The Untold Story of Immigrant Detention in the U.S. is a video game that is:
designed to spotlight the
inhumane conditions being faced by nearly 300,000 people in immigrant detention
as a result of unfair Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policies. Visitors
to the website assume the role of an undercover journalist doing an
investigative series on Immigration Detention and the true story of Boubacar
Bah, an immigrant who died in U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody
under questionable circumstances in 2007. (find the full press release here)
Having played the game, I was very impressed with the delicate balance achieved between the quality of the gaming experience and maintaining the gravitas that the subject deserves.
Moreover, the use of video first person testimonials from those who have been detained--or had family members detained--was extremely powerful without feeling exploitative. Hearing and seeing those--even if just a tiny portion-- who have been caught in the Kafkaesque world of ICE custody packs a real visceral punch than goes beyond reading lists or third party accounts of (alleged) violations.
And perhaps what is most admirable of all is that those who speak are given the opportunity to reveal their multiple and overlapping identities that demonstrate the violence inherent in defining someone simply as a 'migrant'. Yet, none of the people profiled are represented as passive victims; their agency, forms of resistance while detained, and hopes that current practices can be overturned come through as they share their experiences.
Although, I'm not in a position to evaluate how successful the Homeland Guantanamos campaign has been, it certainly presents its message in an innovative way that communicates the message effectively. Thus, it will be interesting to see if the use of non-traditional mediums like video games and emerging forms of social networking are adopted by other organizations seeking to make the world a more humane and just place? What do you think?
Given that a fair number of this blog's readers are artists and/or cultural producers, please note that we--that is academics studying world politics and popular culture--are particularly interested in finding out from you how political commitments--very broadly defined--may or may not influence the medium and messages of your work. Thus, I'd like to emphasize that PCWP III is really interested in 'receiving proposals for the performance,
presentation, screening or display of cultural works which seek to
produce a (world) politics in their practice.' And I promise, we don't bite!
Anyhow, please see the call for papers below or click on the original link here.
Call for Papers:
Popular Culture and World Politics (PCWP III)
04-05 November 2010
York University, Toronto, Canada
There is a growing movement in and around
the study of international politics to think about the intersections of
world politics and the production, circulation, content and consumption
of various popular cultural forms. This burgeoning scholarship has
reached a point in which it is possible to move well beyond the
important initial forays that emphasised the content of cultural
forms-as-text, seeking metaphorical connections between the cultural
and the political, to explore the interwoven possibilities and limits
of the cultural and political.
The York Centre for International and Security Studies is pleased to invite you to Popular Culture and World Politics III,
to be held in Toronto 4-5 November 2010. Following two successful
events, hosted by the University of Bristol in 2008 and the University
of Newcastle in 2009, Popular Culture and World Politics III
seeks to continue the growing conversation on the intersections of
various forms of popular culture and the study of world politics, from
a range of disciplines and practices in the social sciences, humanities
and the arts.
We welcome proposals for performances,
screenings, panels, or individual papers, on any aspect of world
politics and popular culture. In particular, we seek proposals which
address any of the following themes or issues:
‘Doing’ popular culture and world politics: methods, practices and approaches
Popular security: exploring the intersections of popular culture and global security.
Using popular culture to span the disciplines:
with a range of disciplines looking at both popular culture and issues
of world politics, how can the study of pop culture and world politic
work to foster inter-disciplinary conversations?
‘Making’ popular culture and world politics:
what is the politics that is emerging at the intersection of popular
cultural production, the culture industries, and governance?
Outside the West: exploring the intersections of non-Western popular culture(s) and non-Western-centric world politics.
Is anybody watching? The problem of audience in the study of popular culture
Performing International Politics:
rather than students of world politics reading popular culture how are
the producers of cultural forms making their politics? We are
particularly interested in receiving proposals for the performance,
presentation, screening or display of cultural works which seek to
produce a (world) politics in their practice.
If you are interested in attending the conference please Click here and submit a brief abstract of your paper (no more than 250 words) before 2 April 2010.