°Publication
What’s at stake in publication is the creation (and fortifiction) of publics. This seems to me a better way to approach the question of ‘freedom of speech’ - which is to say, not as a question of rights, but of freedoms, as they are trammelled to (and so circumvented by) certain notions of ‘the public’, which public, whose public, hegeonial contests over res publicum, the representation and jurisdiction of any public, and so on.
Anyway, this is what I’m thinking as I peruse various debates over caricature and limits - the WSW article on the recent publication by SBS of more photos and vid from Abu Ghraib (republished at Icite), Leunig’s whining over the entry of his cartoons in an Iranian newspaper competition, Vale’s remarks about ‘we’ being threatened by abortion, and the obviously related discussion about solidarity that Jon has been compiling over at LongSunday, as well as others such as recognition and populism.
I suppose, then, the question - if one is inclined to write for something other than the creation of a public and any pitch for hegemony over such - would be how to create texts that are less publications than textiles, weaves - or, in Nancean terms, (k)nots.
Which brings me to an essay by Rebeca Comay - “Benjamin’s Endgame” - that I think is a far more potent consideration of the puppet and the hunchback (and a less a Leninist/statist inexorability claim, that, of course, comes with the Hegelian package) than is Zizek’s. The essay should be read in full (and I can offer the source when I get back to Melbourne), particularly for its argument of Benjamin contra Hegel. In any case, here’s a part of the final part:
Benjamin’s hunchback pulls the strings but, although a Meister, is no master. And the string is both tangled and frayed. If the ‘Penelope’s work of Eingedenken‘ resembles, in its involuntariness, the forgetfulness of an automatism, something invariably escapes. Plato’s tether becomes, in Benjamin, a weave, that is, a textile, a textum: or, as he writes at the end of his Proust essay, a net ‘cast into the sea of the temps perdu‘. […] Benjamin alerts us to the secret interests at work in such assumption [historicism’s proposition of self-identity], exposes the hidden power plays for what they are. A memory that unravels as it weaves breaks the smooth thread of progress - the causal ‘rosary’ of historicism, the ‘chain’ of tradition, ultimately the ’snare’ of the ‘apparatus’ - and, perhaps, thereby (but too late, of course) sets the slave free.
I don’t see how Comay paragraph cited connects with (engages, criticizes, presents an alternative to, etc) the Zizek paragraph.
Also, on publics: I myself don’t find the concept useful at all; it seems a stand in, a filler, for what at different times has been designated with terms as diverse as the state, constitutencies, identities, communities, interest groups, audiences, readers, etc. It may be that you and I agree critically that the term public is always invoked in a specific, policing, authorizing, and disqualifying way; what is less clear to me is why you suggest that writing tends to be writing so as to call a public into being and that this is what needs to be combatted. For me, this gives an unnecessary priority to the concept ‘public’.
Jodi [February 19, 2006 @ 5:13 am]
Isn’t talk of freedoms equivalent to talk of rights? There is one sense of ‘rights’ that is simply ‘being free to…’; there is another which is “ should be free to”. And you obviously think that some freedoms should be, since they are being ‘trampled’. So what’s at stake there? It looks, for all intents and purposes, like you do believe in rights after all.
Worse, you believe in rights in such a way that they are logically completely independent of the state, or constitutions, theology or flowery liberal prose… hey, that’s a lot like what I believe.
Could a warming towards democracy be next?
(…)
Acording to Kerenyi, theoria ultimately derives from an expression meaning “watching distant spectacles” (have a look at The Peaks of Greek and Roman Religious Experience ); it must still mean that given the idiocy around these cartoons. An obvious act of provocation provokes. Wow, a rare success for psychological warfare. Then, the whole western intelligentsia take five minutes, of five weeks to congratulate themselves on their great respect for freedoms. It’s just comical.
TCO [February 19, 2006 @ 8:49 am]
Jodi, the extract from Comay’s essay doesn’t engage with Zizek but speaks to my own sense of what’s at stake in the various ‘events’ and statements noted. Though, Comay’s essay is I think useful for proposing a non-dialectical way in which to consider the relation between puppet and hunchback, of the characterisation of ‘who pulls the strings’, makes demands, and so on. I think Zizek’s depiction does suggest an inexorability.
Public seems a stand in, a filler, for what at different times has been designated with terms as diverse as the state, constitutencies, identities, communities, interest groups, audiences, readers
I guess it is a place-holder, in the sense that particular forms of address are also claims for a future state, or state-in-waiting, or, most minimally, for a particular form of state (more or less pluralist, more or less unitary, giving priority to cerain interests, notions of community, and so on). If I transpose ’subjectivation’ for ‘publics’ is that better? But that doesn’t seem to emphasise the address as much as I’d like - as in, the ways in which the dispute over the cartoons, or Vale’s ‘we’, is a form of address.
Also, a propos the related partisanship discussion - I found Grant Fared’s essay on the ‘not-yet counterpartisan’ (SAQ) interesting.
Thiago, nope, and I’m not about to warm to democracy or rights any time soon. The only connection between democracy (or rights) and freedoms is that the former mystify the latter.
An obvious act of provocation provokes. Wow, a rare success for psychological warfare. Then, the whole western intelligentsia take five minutes, of five weeks to congratulate themselves on their great respect for freedoms. It’s just comical.
On this, we agree. And, for more creepy hilarity: try the rabbit.
Anyway, I’ve been looking after my partner post-op, who just passed out in the bathroom this morning, so my apologies if I’m somewhat distracted and not joining the dots as clearly as I should.
s0metim3s [February 19, 2006 @ 11:58 am]
Angela,
Please give my best to the partner and keep me posted. Reading about the passing out made me jump a bit in my chair. If I wasn’t the opposite side of the world I’d bring over a big bowl of food, that and buy drinks are all I really know how to do for other people.
I quite like your characterization of writing as knotting and weaving, rather than as seeking to found or find a public. Another sense of this might be what the ‘-to-’ in many-to-many consists of. At it’s best (least ‘public’ and most ‘knotted’?) it’s more like many-with-many, in a process of becoming. Please do post the source for the Comay piece.
take care,
Nate
Nate [February 20, 2006 @ 5:32 pm]