At street parties across the country this weekend, conservatives will become drunk from the sickening mix of unearned deferrence, imperial nostalgia, and institutionalized inequality that are wrapped up in the monarchy.
My own feelings towards the Jubilee are very similar to those expressed in a piece that was published in the Independent earlier this week. As I have posted in the past, the principle of heredity privilege is odious, socially corrosive, and anachronistic. But beyond the principle, can anyone provide a tangible example of something that the Queen has done directly to make the Commonwealth a better place for ordinary people? A pivotal--or even semi-memorable--speech? A concerted campaign to address a social injustice of some kind? Anything?
So, in the end, what we have is the celebration of a head of state who is extraodinary in so far as her performance has been so ordinary, despite being born with every advantage possible. The Jubilee, the imposed public veneration of the Queen's mediocrity, is therefore symbolic of the egregiousness of the UK class system and the surreptitous ways that this system is normalized.
Yesterday, Reuters ran a story about Saif Gaddafi's 2002 painting exhibition that was shown in London. Called 'The Desert is Not Silent' it was scheduled to go on tour to Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Madrid, Sao Paulo, and Moscow. After looking at the on-line gallery of photos on Boing Boing, it's pretty obvious why the tour never happened: the paintings are not particularly good.
But what interests me about Saif Gaddafi artiste is what this can tell us about power. For some critics, like Jonathan Jones of the Guardian, the relationship is straight forward. Jones argued:
The exhibition was an ugly display of power, not in Libya, but in London ... the fact of their being vaunted as worthwhile art in a fancy exhibition spoke of hideous self-delusion and imposture.
Thus, Jones positioned the exhibition as a manifestation of the megalomania of dictatorship. Such an understanding is very similar to a primary characteristic of psychopathy that is noted by the criminal psychologist Robert Hare. He claims that affected attempts to be appear 'sophisticated' through superficial displays of cultural knowledge are a common practice for 'psychopaths'.
My take on the power-relations underpinning Saif Gaddafi artiste is slightly different, though not necessarily mutually exclusive to those that look to the pathological. What strikes me as interesting are the resonances of colonialism at play. I see this in at least two senses. First, the paintings are ersatz versions of Western styles, traditions, and conventions (e.g., surrealism, still-life, pop art). The exhibition shows that these have been internalised and mimicked--albeit with limited ability. Second, is the desire that the work be shown in metropolitan centers of financial and cultural power. It is not the paintings themselves but where the shows take place that confers the legitimacy and authority of Saif's artistic 'vision' and 'talent'.
In the end then, I think the collection is a microcosm of the complex power dynamics that contributed to the longevity of the Gaddafi regime. Gaddafi's Libya was both defiant of, and compliant with Western norms in seeking acceptance as a legitimate global actor. Concurrently, Western powers were too often willing to confer undeserved legitimacy when Libyan mimesis flattered their specific preferences.
A graphically arresting corrective to the cynical and xenophobic populism of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, brought to us by Retrofuturs' Stephane Massa-Bidal.
It has been over 10 days since the Afghanistan War Logs were first published in Der Spiegel, the Guardian, and the New York Times. Some analysts have deemed Wikileaks to be the first transnational news-service, while others have emphasized that the affair revealed the continuing necessity and relevance of traditional news outlets. Similarly, while some pundits argued that the revelations contained within were highly damaging (e.g., alleged double-dealing by Pakistan, US death squads, the limitations of drone technology, ongoing increases in the levels of violence, and potential war crimes) others claimed that the data revealed nothing new or particularly interesting, at least for the 'highly informed' members of the beltway media glitterati--who seemed to be the most fond of making these statements. Based on these myriad assessments, Wikileaks front-man Julian Assange was either hailed as a new media hero or vilified as a dangerously unhinged self-promoter.
In thinking about the broader geopolitical picture, the data was taken as evidence by some analysts that that the Afghan mission was inextricably tied to failure while for others--like the Economist--the logs were proof of the necessity of the change in mission from counter-terrorism to counter-insurgency. And while the governments of allies remained fairly muted on the topic, the Obama Administration provided a bizarre mixture of 'there's nothing to see here' with 'these documents pose a substantial risk to national security'.
All in all then, the Afghanistan war logs have served as a cipher, in most instances saying more about the analyst and the context within which their analysis is taking place, than anything particularly substantive about the issues raised by this information. In particular, the following questions--in their absence--have created a deafening silence:
how did it become possible to wage a war in Afghanistan?
and how did it become possible for the types of revelations contained within the war logs to register as being 'abnormal' aspects of contemporary warfare?
These questions form the implicit focal point of what I believe to be the best analysis of the war logs to date, undertaken by my colleague Martin Coward, at his blog.
The problem for me is that we tend to be obsessed by the details to the detriment of the wider narrative. To put it another way: while it is important to bring individuals to justice for specific episodes, we must not lose sight of the bigger context that gave rise to these episodes in the first place. To fail to understand this would be akin to policing individual crimes without pausing to ask how crime itself might be tackled.
It has been these bigger questions encouraged by Coward that have been overlooked in light of the war logs. Thus, rather than problematise the utility of war to achieve political aims, the legitimacy and effectiveness of imposing state-building projects from above and afar, tabloid geopolitics, techno-strategic discourse, the faith in military technology to overcome political problems, and Orientalist understandings of Central Asia, we have had myopic forms of punditry from many members of the media establishment who appear unable to escape from their own self-indulgent prolix.
Until such a time that there is sustained public engagement with the sorts of questions outlined above, we will continue to experience the same tragic outcomes in Afghanistan and in future conflicts that will arise from the very same 'paint by numbers' understandings of security, politics, and culture.
'Philip K. Dick and Heidegger' by Jeremy Crampton at the foucaultblog
'The 100 Best Magazine Articles of All Time' at cooltools
'Sex, Death, and Government Oppression: How Channel 4 is Re-inventing the Educational Video Game' by Keith Stuart at guardian.co.uk
'Targeted Killing is New U.S. Focus in Afghanistan' by Helene Cooper and Mark Landler at nytimes.com
'The Facebook half-billon: interconnection, infrastructure, anthropocentrism' and 'Negev Demolition: Israel's politics of building' both by Martin Coward at the ever excellent martincoward.net
And for any baseball fans (or any fans of new media), one the coolest presentations I've ever come across: 'How Mariano Rivera Dominates Hitters' by Graham Roberts, Shan Carter, and Joe Ward at nytimesinteractive
'Israel Gags News on Extrajudicial Killings' by Mel Frykberg at antiwar.com
'Delta Urbanism and New Orleans: After' by Richard Campanella at designobserver.com
'A Feminist State? Or Simply an Opportunity for a Case Study in Sex Culture? Iceland's Recent Banning of Strip Clubs' by Roxanne Sarner at genderacrossborders.com
'Has Popular Culture Affected Politics' at guardian.co.uk
'Turning Politics into Performance Art, Literally' by Carrie Battan at bigthink.com
Recent weeks have been awash with media anxiety over a series of 'new' drug crazes sweeping across the United Kingdom. First it was reports that university students are commonly resorting to using 'smart drugs'-- mostly Ritalin and Modafinil--in order to give them an edge in preparing papers and revising for exams. Then it was the identification of a mephedrone use epidemic amongst UK youth, initially spurred by an erroneous report that over 180 students at a school had missed classes due to consumption of the substance. In the United States, recent years have seen the rise in reports of Pharm Parties-- social gatherings where teens allegedly swap random prescription medications--and the great Jenkemscare of 2007.
Second, in most of these stories--save for Jenkem--what we see is in fact quite an old phenomena being dressed up as 'new'. For example, university students taking substances in order to raise their levels of alertness is not a recent development. Nor is the social practice of teenagers congregating together for the purposes of taking drugs. Similarly, that people ingest substances that give them a rush is not a 21st century phenomena devoid of historical precedent.
Third, hyperbole is the means by which these stories must be conveyed. It is not just an exaggeration of the events, effects or compositions of the substances, and who is using them that is required. Rather the emphasis must be on what these activities are said to represent: a loss of ethics, hedonistic degeneration, corrupted youth, and moral decay. The consequences are then said to be eschatological --or in case of Jenkem, perhaps scatological?--resulting in the destruction of an entire social structure and way of life.
Fourth, given the outrageous claims that are being made and that many of these claims are devoid of any corroborating evidence, they all turn to linking the threats to children. And all children are not equal in these stories. It is important that white middle class kids be identified as at risk because those are the children we are supposed to really care about.
Fifth, the linking of particular forms of drug use with children not only catalyzes the reactionary safety impulse of parents, it also locates the threat in a world (i.e., youth culture) that is familiar but still somewhat alien, making the claims seem much more plausible than they might otherwise.
Sixth, while children and youth are identified as the principle actors in these stories, they are granted no degree of agency towards the provision of their own well-being. Instead, children are framed as objects in need of protection. This framing is important because the assumed inability of youth to make reasoned decisions immediately precludes policy options--such as evidence-based drug education initiatives--in favour of panoptic surveillance and draconian criminal prohibitions that do very little to address the public health aspects of illicit drug use or to prevent the recurrence of recent tragedies.
Analytically, what is interesting is the work that is done by the substances themselves to make these stories appear plausible. What is it about prescription medications that makes the practice of artificial stimulation that much more dangerous or unethical than downing multiple cups of coffee, energy drinks, or over-the-counter sleep suppressants? Why is mephedrone that much more pernicious than extreme sports or marathon running where preventable injuries and deaths are quite common?
There is also no acknowledgment of the social-medical context that may be contributing to contemporary youth drug consumption patterns. Given the increasing numbers of children who are being prescribed Ritalin and other drugs to make them more docile and compliant in under-funded classrooms (in 2005 over 23 million prescriptions were filled in the US alone), not only are many of these drugs more widely available, but a culture of regularized drug taking for the purposes of altering mood has been established. But acknowledgment would uncomfortably shift the source of the problem away from reckless youth or foreign producers to parents, teachers, and doctors who have been complicit in the construction of a brave new world.
So what can be done? Charlie Brooker may have it right. Rather than focusing efforts on prohibiting drugs, perhaps its high time that we banned tabloid journalism? Or, in the very least, the people responsible for whipping up fear and outrage ought to be held to account.
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)
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'.
