are you an extremist?

are you an extremist? THE SCHOOL OF POTENTIAL ENGAGEMENT POTENTIAL The School of Potential Engagement Potential (SPEP) is a transient space for coll...
4 downloads 2 Views 24MB Size
are you an extremist?

THE SCHOOL OF POTENTIAL ENGAGEMENT POTENTIAL The School of Potential Engagement Potential (SPEP) is a transient space for collaborative learning. It is and always will be unaccredited. Its walls are temporary, its curriculum is ad hoc, and its occupants collectively assume the roles of students, professors, and administrators at once. This free experimental education model, in a perpetual state of redesign, is oriented towards the radical supplementation and redefinition of higher education during an era of actualized academic capitalism. SPEP was conceived as a by-product of creative research conducted by The Naught Collective. It was founded upon a firm belief that higher education should be free and accessible to all, and a dedication to the diverse ways knowledge is made. www.spep.info [email protected]

HQHQ is an artist run exhibition and project space located in a renovated office in inner southeast Portland. It was established in April 2014 by HQ Objective (André C Filipek & Johnny Ray Alt.) http://hq-objective.info [email protected] 232 SE Oak St #108 Portland, OR

SPEP4

The Branding of Extremity Aubrey Bauer Carmen Denison André Filipek Madelyn Freeman Kebrina Lott Daniel Mackin Travis Nikolai Anastasia Tuazon

July 20th - September 19th, 2014 @ HQHQ Project Space

i

CONTENTS Preface

1

Post-Syllabus

3

The Dyspeptics

5

A Preposterous Meditation on a Preposterous Question

10

Quiz: Are you an extremist?

13

A seeing (obscene)

15

R U X-TREME Or Nah? or Emotionz Takin’ Me Over: A Marginally Critical Analysis of Things That Are Passably Extreme.

17

The Citation

23

Creating the Counter-Hegemonic Image

25

ii

PREFACE Over the past six weeks, The Naught Collective has inquired into the aestheticization (or branding) of extremism. A chaotic process guided our curricular inquiry as the content of this course was selected intuitively, and in a manner responsive to the immediacy of our conversations. We began with RETORT’s essay “The State, The Spectacle, and September 11,” which interprets contemporary media representations of terror through a revived Situationist lens. Our attention then turned to an investigation into perceived boundaries between actions which constitute radicalism, extremism, and terrorism - as well as the ways these actions are aestheticized. Throughout our time together we have delved into texts and other media that address directly, or served as a departure point into, an investigation of complexities of political ideology in a post 9/11 America. As we considered how everyday American media representations of terrorism necessitate and are necessitated by a culture of fear, we began to look at the ways in which fear functions as a necessary mechanism in the branding of extremity. Throughout this process, we have questioned who or what decides when counterhegemonic actions are aestheticized as political radicalism and/or extremism. positioned actions within limited terms. How do we write towards political action or consume and respond to polemics in a way which enacts change?

individually, how we see it taking place in other contexts, and how these experiences motivate action. In many ways, our inquiry ended where it began. Our collective understanding of the branding of extremity is quite possibly less clear than it was when we formed this question because of our inclination to, upon consideration, locate more of the center as being extreme. Although our consideration of this topic has been expanded, this expansion has pointed us towards the problematics and utter frivolous nature of such a generalized inquiry, causing us to be wary of the potential Leftist cynacism has to enact nothing but political remissness. Are you an extremist?

1

2

3

POST-SYLLABUS Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War (Intro and Chapter I) RETORT The Spectacle Today: A Response to RETORT W. J. T. Mitchell The Architect of 9/11 Daniel Brook #ACCELERATE MANIFESTO for an Accelerationist Politics Alex Williams & Nick Srnicek Passions of the Real, Passions of Semblance from Welcome to the Desert of the Real! Slavoj Žižek What Do You Believe In? Film Scholarship and the Cultural Politics of the Dark Knight Franchise Martin Fradely The Politics of Batman Slavoj Žižek The Politics of “The Dark Knight Rises” Ross Douthat The Dark Knight Rises Cristopher Nolan Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay is about You Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Here We Accrete Durations: Toward a Practice of Intervals in the Perceptual Mode of Power Amit S. Rai 4

5

6

7

8

9

A PREPOSTEROUS MEDITATION ON A PREPOSTEROUS QUESTION Are you an extremist? Immediately I am defensive. What a pointed and seemingly narrow question. The contemporarily pejorative identifier “extremist,” paired with the directedness of “are you” causes an especially politicized accuser/accusee relationship. Unlike other less politicized accusatory statements—“are you a swimmer?” “Are you a wearer of shoes?”—“are you an extremist?” implicates at the same time a history of horrific acts of violence, and indoctrinated mass-paranoia. Within this colloquial read, the accuser has been predetermined. If I am however to attempt to assume that the accuser is not a personification of the current state of Western modernity—or more specifically, spectacular neoliberal hegemony—the question becomes much more complex. The question is evasive in nature. It accuses whoever reads the question, in this moment myself, and later you. And the accuser simultaneously jumps around in my imagination, from individual, to organization, to regime, ad nauseam. It is directed towards—and delivered by—moving targets, ghosts. I am imagining other mysterious “yous” toiling over the question, while faceless entities wring their hands diabolically as they ask it. As the question is sourced/ perceived from/by various subjectivities its contents change dramatically. This is not, however, just because the pronoun shifts in meaning as it is perceived by others. The term “extremist” also shares this evasive quality. What then is extremism? This would be similar to defining a vessel. A most superficial reading defines the vessel as a simple grouping of material that together have the ability to surround objects of an applicable size. Central to its definition is not just what it is but also what it surrounds. It has a shadow. Only in the context of another implied material can the vessel find any utilitarian meaning. The vessel contains; it is a container. “Extremism” is a similar container. A Saussurean analysis of this sign is useful here. However, the word e-x-t-r-e-m-i-s-m does not point to, or contain, any specific referent. The referent(s) in this case are composed of other undetermined signs, and the word’s only socio-linguistic utility is to contain them in reference to a specific context of use. The meaning of extremism requires activity, a filling with other signs by the user, or utterer. I can identify someone as an extremist, but

10

what really am I referring to without adding a never-ending string of adjectives that will eventually provide some trace of specificity? Extremism is an ideological vessel. Upon its utterance ideologies compete for its content. When I consider what extremism is, I must consider positionality. What vantage point, or prevailing ideology, is the word directed from? I see my extremities from the center of my body—or rather the eyes positioned in the center of the head. When I look at my arm or leg I can thoroughly examine its form. I can consider them in their independent objectness. In a way they are apart from my body. My position, the vantage point of my head, gives me the ability to consider my extremities in this way. In many ways, I am blind to my own vantage point because I cannot look directly at it, or isolate it, without my theoretical death. Without the aid of some technology that would allow my vantage point to be altered, I cannot stare into my own eye or see the back of my head. Only from a given vantage point can I locate extremisms. I locate them to the left and to the right of a given ideological head; from the American ideological state apparatus I can see black bloc, and I can also see the Islamic State.

The value here is the critical function of the question. A theoretical occupation of extremity, or imaginative identification with it, can be utilized to closely examine the ideological head, so to speak; I can imagine myself within extremity and through this vantage point I can analyze the ideological apparatus that actively fills it with meaning. This however requires a paradoxical shift in perspective. As if I were to hold a mirror in my hand and stare into my eyes. My vantage point stays the same, but at the same time I am able to see from a drastically different

11

perspective. What once was the head is now the hand; what once was the central ideology, is now extreme. Here lies the evasive nature of extremism. It is identified only by a commanding ideology, and would be nullified without it. Extremism is contextualized, aestheticized, and mediated through a specific ideological vantage point and can never be perceived independent from it. Through this mirror I can examine “Islamic extremism”, and can source much of its image power to the American ideological state apparatus from which it is constructed. This form of extremity is defined through representation in mass media, but more importantly the torrential onslaught of Islamophobic images proliferated via new “democratic” social medias—RETORT’s reinvestigation of Debord’s Spectacle in relation to the War on Terror is useful here. In continuing to entertain the question, would the extremist ever refer to themselves as an extremist? It seems to me that without a rejection of the ideological framework that first declared the subject an extremist, or of an extreme ideology, this gesture would be nonsensical. If one were to declare himself or herself an extremist—or rather respond to the pointedness of the original question—I could only understand it to be a political action. Answering the question affirmatively actively rejects the commanding ideology, but through that same ideological vantage point. It would be to identify with what is upside down—what is backwards and outside—through a given ideological lens, if we recall Marx’s camera obscura of ideology. Within the political dimension the question is a potential site for antagonism, resistance, and/or dissensus. And if this is the case, I can imagine many contexts in which I would answer the question in the affirmative.

12

QUIZ: are you an

extremist? Are you a

commonplace so-and-so

1

or do you often get

carried away?

for your beliefs?

Find out with this fun, exonymic quiz!

a) b)

I’m constantly chatting up friends and strangers about my ideology.

c) d)

I don’t have any beliefs.

*

Sometimes, but I can admit Are you usually when I’m wrong. right? b) No, not usually; I’m literally always right. c) My god/favorite text is the only one that has all the answers. d) I never have any idea what I’m talking about. a)

3

a) That depends on the conversation. No. I usually need to convince them that I’m right before the conversation ends. c) I have a community of 30-50 people that agree with me. d) I am a very agreeable person. b)

13

2

4

a)

I like to think I’m a good patriot. b) I hate the state of this country, which is why I work so hard to convince everyone else to agree with me. Then things

c)

I love my country more than anything, which is why I work so hard to get all the bad people out and save the Mostly ’s souls of everyone else. You might be slightly radical. d) I have no feelings about my country.

A

5

a)

I don’t trust any single source of news. b) It’s a capitalism machine designed to sedate and control the masses. c) It always misrepresents me and my cohort. d) I don’t pay attention to world events.

6 a)

Be careful! You are at extreme risk for becoming an extremist!

Mostly B’s

You are an extremist.

Mostly C ’s You are extremely extremist!

Mostly D ’s Yeah you’re extreme. Extremely boring.

you hate

People who are mean. b) People who are wrong. c) People who are immoral. d) My neighbor’s cat.

* 14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

THE SCHOOL OF POTENTIAL ENGAGEMENT POTENTIAL 34