°Frakking blogs
As threatened, some aggregation (and encouragement) of blogposts on Battlestar Galactica. To be updated over the next week, and another post from me shortly to add to the series thus far. Drop some links in, if you’re so inclined and I’ll add.
But for the moment, some fragments I’ve been perusing from elsewhere, to give some idea of the discussions that have opened up. The remarks and debates from the conservative blogdimensions are interesting, and funny.
A small fragment from the lengthy thread at Feministe: I take this arc as a critique of Euston-manifesto-style liberal interventionism. Galactica Sharon and Caprica Six thought that they could bring a New Way of Being to humans and Cylons first by occupying and then by integrating the populations. Peace and flowers would then abound on New Caprica. [added: datetime=2006-10-14 | T13:25:45]
Psychotic Cocktail: Ellen’s hypersexuality in Seasons 1 and 2 was part of what made her unlikeable. (Now, this is because she was awfully sleazy about it and also dishonest, not strictly because she was a sexual woman. Starbuck was sexual and she was vindicated.) Now, that sexuality being turned against her is what makes Ellen suddenly sympathetic. She’s trapped in feeling her only power is her sexuality (which could be true) and her place in the resistance is as this sexual liason between humans and cylons, a role which must remain covert. [via] [added: datetime=2006-10-14 | T13:25:49]
Politblogo: The parallels with the occupation of Iraq in this nascent story arc are clearly deliberate, but the show is clever enough to avoid doing something as transparent and crass as direct Bush-bashing. It instead seems to focus itself against the deception known as liberal interventionism. The Cylons have switched from the genocidal programme that occupied the past two seasons to a new programme instigated by the new, liberal leadership of Baltar’s original Six and Tyrol’s Sharon, who helped each other achieve a great moral epiphany in the last few episodes of the previous season. This new programme involves “finding a new way to live together.” [added: datetime=2006-10-16 | T01:00:20]
Theoria: Let us, finally, remember that Roslin and Adama agree on one thing: there is no war - they have already lost. That is, the exception doesn’t exist in a positive sense, but in a negative sense - it is the refusal or disavowal of recognizing that there is an exception in the first place. [added: datetime=2006-10-16 | T14:29]
Sarapen: That was where Galactica began, but it’s certainly not where it is now. Slowly, we began to see more of what Cylons were really like, and slowly, we began to sympathize with what had been an unknowable enemy. Finally, by the third season the tables had turned and “we” were supposed to feel conflicted as to which side root for: the violently incompetent Cylons, or the suicide-bombing humans? […] suicide bombing lays bare the fiction that soldiers are human beings. That is, suicide bombing acknowledges that soldiers are not and cannot be human as long as they are soldiers; rather, they are military assets, pawns to be moved back and forth in war, the true game of kings. [added: datetime=2006-10-18 | T15:02:37]
Mentok: The start of the third season has signalled that war issues will be an increasing focus of the show. In the first episode, the show accomplishes the awesome and terrible task of taking a North American audience inside the mind of a suicide bomber. By the end, you will feel sympathy and support for even the most brutal acts of terrorism.
Eunomia: Presumably we should condemn terrorism whether committed by jihadis or by Caprican resistance fighters who are taking out the “skinjobs” in a cafe, but in BSG we do at least always have the excuse that the Cylons aren’t human; the normal rules don’t apply. That makes us feel better when we root for the Colonials to kill the “Toasters”; it ought also to make us reconsider just how often ”we” are willing to view other people as little better than Toasters to be scrapped in pursuit of a greater goal.
Swift: a moving and haunting allegory about why we should stay the course in Iraq. The heroes are a deeply religious race, called the Cylons, who struggle to bring democratic ideals and Christian values to a planet called New Caprica (Iraq, of course) in the face of an increasingly violent insurgency. In a clever and ironic twist the Christian Cylons (Americans) are actually very human-like machines, while the villainous “humans” on New Caprica (al Qaeda) are brutal terrorists who follow a primitive polytheistic religion and behave like animals.
Crooked Timber: Another of the show’s defining tensions is that between military and civilian authority. It raises the question of what elections might mean in an extreme situation—a “state of exception” in which the legitimacy of constitutional democracy is itself in doubt.
Unqualified Offerings: Brian calls the whole thing a “very very thinly veiled Iraq war commentary,” which is true as far as it goes: it’s a very very good Iraq war commentary. By this I don’t mean an inarguable Iraq war commentary - you could disagree on the substance of the show’s critique of “both sides.” But it is a coherent correlative of what happens when a powerful group sets out to “save” a weaker group that doesn’t want saving. … The thing is that people like Brian and I already believe that the nanny state requires and fosters a vast apparatus of coercion anyway, so you still end up, at some point, with angry Cylons wanting to haul humans off in trucks for summary execution. You still have groups of humans trying to shock their fellows into throwing off the shackles. At some point it all gets very bad, because of the structures of dominance and rebellion. … The fact of resistance itself preempts whatever the Cylons did plan for humanity.
Sweet crap, Swift is hilarious: “I am not generally a big fan of science fiction (my favorite genres are biblical epics, alpine mountain dramas, and women’s prison movies).” Maybe I’ll get around to Galactica blogging as soon as I stop wishing I was dead (i.e. get rid of my cold).
Sarapen [October 13, 2006 @ 5:42 am]
Now that I have got over my fit of giggles at Swift’s comments, I have this to offer.
I think that the series has always been about war right from the very beginning. What I have observed across the two and a bit series is a shift from a distant, impersonal ‘us against them’ kind of war to a close-up conflict characterised by a series of intimate relationships between ‘us and them’ that break down any easy distinctions between enemy and friend. I am so looking forward to seeing how these relationships play out…
sorenson [October 13, 2006 @ 8:12 am]
Swift is indeed hilarious. Many of those posts are strange in their own ways. Yes, it’s strange that they didn’t notice that war was a focus of the series before this. And that’s right about the disentangling of friend and enemy (also human and machine) distinctions.
The discussion at Unqualified Offerings is odd for its discussion of the ‘nanny state’ - interesting that conservatives choose this phrase rather than, say, ‘colonisation’, to talk about missionary occupation. The discussion at Crooked Timber just struck me as superficial - one could be pressed to think further along. But perhaps strangest of all: the discussion at Eunomia begins by disavowing the politics of the series, since they obviously support the war in Iraq, but they so much want to ‘enjoy the show’ that they end up having to think about - for want of a better phrase for the moment - the processes of dehumanisation that war presupposes.
I’ll add this post from EL (My Amusement Park), and any others I come across, shortly.
Get better Sarapen.
s0metim3s [October 13, 2006 @ 2:53 pm]
There’s an interesting discussion of BSG’s genderpolitics and other stuff at Feministe, too…
az [October 13, 2006 @ 6:58 pm]
I had a bit of a look at some of the other stuff on Swift’s blog and it seems like the whole thing is a pisstake. Whether it’s a leftist taking the piss out of a conservative or a conservative taking the piss out of other tories I couldn’t determine.
Pete
Pete [October 15, 2006 @ 5:02 pm]
Either way, I laughed. Though, with a tagline that reads “Since the media is biased I get all my news from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Jay Leno monologues” - I lean toward the former. And it wouldn’t be as funny as it is if they spent a lot of time winking and nudging. It seems the best way to respond this kind of stuff.
And I’m now wondering whether the hyper-literality of the first episode of Season 3 was, in a way, a response by the BSG writers et al to the blockheads who, strangely, hadn’t noticed the politics of the series before. I mean, and aside from all the ambiguities one could read into the series, one hardly employs Olmos and McDonnell to, or expects the writer of Carnivale, to reproduce the Republican line.
s0metim3s [October 15, 2006 @ 5:13 pm]
Having only begun the series - and having that beginning
filtered through “the left blogosphere” - the politics of the series seems rather blatant. The Crooked Timer superficial reading is, indeed, superficial. However, it is interesting (having just finished watching “Water”; S01E02) that the dichotomies McLemee points to - civilian versus military power and, in that episode, military qua external versus police qua internal - are set up and then instantly violated. As though they know what they are doing (and, indeed, they do) and, yet, they do it anyway. Paraphrase: Adama - “Military outside; police inside. When the military is both, you have a police state.” Roslin - “Yes, but we have riots that need stopping.” Adama - “Yes, but.” Roslin - “I know, I won’t let it come to that.” Adama - “I’ll send troops over.”
Craig [October 16, 2006 @ 6:07 am]
That’s interesting. It could take us back to this discussion. Or - though I’d rather not spoil the rest of Season Two for you - this. A snippet: … suggests a slight modification of Schmitt’s definition of sovereignty. Not the ability to decide the exceptions, but the state of emergency as the inability of the state to be decisive (sovereign) about where the border between exception and norm is located …
And now you have me mulling over - given your Zizek a la Althusser remark about knowing and doing - whether the question here is also about the particular character of decision. And not only the segue into the biopolitical, as I speculated about Season Three.
s0metim3s [October 16, 2006 @ 6:49 am]
We could be using different understandings of biopolitical, but, if we are toying with Foucault and accept that the Holocaust (or genocide in general) is the ultimate of biopolitics, the series begins beyond that frontier. Although there is, of course, confusion surrounding the word “race,” it isn’t “race” so much as “species” that is at stake. Foucault points to the racial logic of biopolitics that always threatens the species - that is, the attempt to exterminate the Jews almost lead to the extermination of humanity as such; not to mention the omnipresent threat of nuclear weapons. (Interestingly, the height of military technology in BSG as well.) What biopolitics suggests is the possibility of humanity absolutely destroying itself. This isn’t the possibility in BSG. The Cylons and the Humans present a new option: the complete obliteration of one species by the other. In this sense, the plight of the humans is comparable to the black rat snake (i.e., an endangered species) and not to something like Darfur.
Of course, we might be “reading in” a bit too much: the series - at this point, at least - can just as easily be read as “the return of the repressed” or the “irrational consequences of rationality.” That is, either Freud or Frankfurt. Or, maybe, Heidegger.
But, I think you’re on to something: the distinction between civilian and military is already blurred. Roslin gives the order to blow up the passenger cruiser - a military call. And Adama is willing to use police measures on civilian populations. To even speak of a civilian and military hierarchy with autonomous spheres of action is laughable. Although there is interesting things (once again, with reference to the cruiser, but also the prisoner transport) insofar as Roslin threatens to place them under a ban; i.e., outside the protection of - and therefore at the risk of - the military.
A lot more could be said, of course. (I’m still not clear on how Boomer’s ship was rescued by Colonial 1 in the pilot and who left the message for Adama at the end of the pilot - and that he didn’t think anything of it.) Being Canadian, and the being produced in Canada, it is hard to separate - for me at least - the minor nobodies in the show from where else they’ve appeared on Canadian television. For instance, Leoben remains the guy who just came out and repeatedly fails at committing suicide in “Wilby Wonderful.” A guy who can’t hang himself in the bathroom just isn’t all that threatening as a killer robot!
Craig [October 16, 2006 @ 7:10 am]
A little of Foucault - the politicisation of life itself - but beyond, particularly in its gendered aspects, as the politicisation of the womb (Federici is of interest here). And, at the beginning of Season 3, the confluence of care and control in the New Caprica Occupation Authority.
Also, I’d say the distinction between the species of cylon and human is a stand-in for the concept of race.
s0metim3s [October 16, 2006 @ 2:42 pm]
Regarding care/pregnancy &c, are you familiar with Lorna Weir’s work? (I’m not sure if her book on pregnancy is out - it was due in the summer - but she had an article few years ago in Economy & Society on “the government of pregnancy.”) She’s one of the more sophisticated Anglo-Foucauldians.
Craig [October 16, 2006 @ 3:52 pm]
No, I haven’t - I’ll put it on my list of things to chase down. Aside from Federici, I think Susan Maslan’s work is of some relevance (not wombs, but sentiment - given that sentiment, or affect, plays a big part in traversing the line between human and cylon).
s0metim3s [October 16, 2006 @ 4:09 pm]
If you don’t have electronic access to the Weir article in E&S (it might somewhere on Isin’s CSML database, however), I’ll see if I can track it down for you. I read one of the Maslan articles you mentioned here and enjoyed it.
Craig [October 16, 2006 @ 4:12 pm]
I just did a search for Weir on the Economy & Society site - didn’t come up. You don’t recall which edition do you?
s0metim3s [October 17, 2006 @ 3:30 pm]
Craig, are you talking about this book by Weir? It came out a few weeks ago. Sounds pretty good, but I’m not willing to dish out $125US for it, even if I could afford it.
Re the Weir article, there’s a pdf here that appears to be a scanned version of the paper from Economy & Society Craig is talking about, linked to from here, at number 12 at the bottom of the page:
Weir, Lorna. “Recent Developments in the Governance of Pregnancy.” Economy & Society. vol.25, no.3 (Aug. 1996): 373-392.
Eric [October 18, 2006 @ 2:09 am]
Yes, Eric, that is the book. It was supposed to come out in trade paperback and hardcover simultaneously. But then, Routledge is strange: Jodi Dean’s book isn’t available in Canada yet as far as I can tell.
Craig [October 18, 2006 @ 3:59 am]
Oh, it is in paperback, but still expensive.
Craig [October 18, 2006 @ 4:00 am]
Following this tangent: Walby and Cooper’s “The Biopolitics of Reproduction” - the pdf here.
s0metim3s [October 21, 2006 @ 3:44 pm]