tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29811546300725846762024-02-07T05:14:12.130-08:00The Politics of Knowing: A Philosophy of Selfishness Every choice we make is a selfish one because we would not make that choice if it were not meaningful to us. It is our responsibility as self-conscious individuals to inspect what we think we know about why we do what we do. That is what I hope to do here.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504995612018814638noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2981154630072584676.post-35338791347198858562012-12-10T13:39:00.002-08:002012-12-10T13:39:42.159-08:00The Antisocial Society: Rhetorical Strategies for Casualizing Humanity<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Angeline Irene Olliff<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Dr. Wexler<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">English 654<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><st1:date day="11" month="12" year="2012">11 December 2012</st1:date><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The Antisocial Society: Rhetorical Strategies for Casualizing Humanity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Ten years ago, Marc Bousquet sought to expose the increasing casualization of labor in the <st1:country-region><st1:place>United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> university system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In “The Waste Product of Graduate Education: Toward a Dictatorship of the Flexible,” he argues against the idealized neo-liberal position “that assumes the academic labor system operates as a ‘market’ that, by unwarranted analogy to other markets in the business cycle, has a ‘natural’ boom-bust pattern” (82). Such a position, he says, necessarily “exclude(s) the labor of students, full-time lecturers, and part-time faculty,” the growing army of casual academic laborers upon which the university system is entirely dependent, and which it is most interested in reproducing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As part-time and graduate student positions proliferate, full-time positions are disappearing, or dying out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Graduate students who attain degrees become waste-products that must be deposited somewhere in the service of maintaining a casual labor system (Bousquet 89-90).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my view, this exposes another dimension to the term casualization that contributes to its rhetorical instrumentality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Casualization, more than referring to the hiring strategy that encourages “casual,” or contingent, labor, implicitly carries within it the word “casualty.” Advanced degree holders with no place to go can be aptly termed casualties: they are “dead” graduate students, casualties of a system that claims one objective while diligently serving another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">At first glance, the distinction between the two bases of casualization seems stark: where “casual” generally refers to “something occurring by chance,” “casualty,” is most often used to describe military deaths and political and social losses—occurrences which generally happen for a reason as the consequence of someone else’s efforts rather than by chance, fortune, or accident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, “casualty” has an archaic connection to “chance” and “fortune” which links it to “casual” and describes something unfortunate and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">unintended</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The example sentence provided by Merriam-Webster conflates this original definition with the newer one: “the ex-senator was a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">casualty</i> of the last election.” Here, the rhetorical use of casualty takes some of the sting out of the loss; as casualty denotes both loss and chance, the result must have been due to a mere turn of the wheel or happenstance, not fierce competition or fine-tuned political strategizing. Such language provides a benign connotation to the consequences of not-so-benign intentions and actions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">More than describing labor relations, then, casualization describes the strategic rhetorical omission, smoothing over or euphemizing which serves to dissemble the consequences of deleterious social or economic policies or business practices. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just as the capitalist economic system continues to produce temporary and flexible workers while killing off full-time, secure ones, and does so under the ironically benign term, “casualizing,” as if it is all an unfortunate accident, so, too, does the capitalist (anti)social rhetoric encourage a superficial and tenuous humanity. Indeed, through the strategic rhetorical manipulation and deadening of mass sentiment, American political and business figures foster an antisocial mentality that stops individuals from relating to each other and uniting in their common interest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By espousing temporarily gratifying, yet impotent solutions aimed at particular swaths of the population (i.e. “let’s create more coal jobs”), by turning the “middle class” against everyone else by demonizing either the rich or the poor (take your pick), and by avoiding the overall trajectory of a cannibalistic and self-destructive economic system, politicians and business “leaders” aim to divide and conquer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the public willingly imbibes the rhetoric of division and strategic omission, they shore themselves up against prescribed foes, scrambling for an edge, a way to beat “them,” those <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">other</i> people; what results is a society that is anti-social, a society in which the very thing that connects us all, our humanness—our weaknesses, our strengths, our need for connection—is devalued, minimized, even destroyed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In every sense of the word, what is being “casualized” is humanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Over the past year alone, this de-humanizing through the rhetoric of disconnection, division, and difference has permeated nearly every aspect of American culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It inundates popular media from multiple angles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance, in a recent Op-Ed piece for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wall Street Journal</i>, “The Business Plan for American Revival,” Mr. Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs attempts to propose a broad solution to today’s economic crisis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He suggests that “the Obama administration and large segments of the business community [must] forge a more productive relationship,” and that this will “do wonders for the economy.” He goes on to say, “We in the business community have a responsibility to contribute to a better understanding of the urgency of averting a crippling and self-inflicted recession [and] we also need to talk about the significant opportunities that result from forward-looking change” (A17).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On first read, it is difficult to argue with his seemingly benevolent position of looking out for the general interest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The economy is important; forward-looking change sounds great; we all need to work together; but, as seems to be the norm in political-economic rhetoric, there is a wealth of information waiting to be mined from the implications of the information he leaves out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Here, it is necessary to read between the lines, to look at what is said and what is not said, and to reflect on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">why </i>this might be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any effective rhetorical appeal entails “three elements that every author must consider: audience (the people who are being addressed), constraints (the limits upon what the speaker can say), and exigence” (26-7).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even a cursory inspection of these three elements for Blankfein exposes his effective casualization of empathy, understanding, and brotherhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In terms of audience, as he writes for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wall Street Journal</i>, his audience is mostly educated, middle- to upper-class conservative men, but this is not evident in his rhetoric.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather, he uses broad and inclusive terms, such as “we in the business community,” “American[s],” and the “public.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nowhere in Blankfein’s solicitation of “sensible immigration reform,” “spending cuts, [and] entitlement reform,” or “restor[ing] confidence in public finance,” does he mention what that would look like for the millions of people it is supposedly intended to help, and that is because he is not writing to or for them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Immigration reform is limited to “mak[ing] it easier for talented people to live and work in the <st1:country-region><st1:place>U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>,” and like much of his position, this sounds inarguable, but it is only inarguable because it says so little.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He does not address the real-life circumstances of the millions of people who live here illegally without having attended college or developing advanced skills, and in this occlusion, he renders those who are absent insignificant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This effectively separates his true audience from the unified American “public” he appears to address; at the same time, it gives his audience a sense that in acknowledging “the issue,” they must really be conscientious citizens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The implicitly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">included</i> have casualized the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">occluded</i>, and in so doing, what is lost is any recognition of commonality and mutual concern.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Blankfein’s references to “spending cuts” and “entitlement reform” function in much the same way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than delineate exactly what these would look like for the people who will be most affected, he simply encourages a “comprehensive and balanced solution.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such vague language allows his audience to identify themselves as solution-oriented (very humane), while patently and conveniently avoiding the ineluctable human suffering such “solutions” entail (not so humane).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This, then, sheds some light on Blankfein’s exigence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a businessman, he is no doubt interested in his own interests—namely, to encourage governmental policy decisions that will benefit his business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As such, he must appeal to his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">audience’s</i> sense of<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>self-interest so they will identify with his position.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, it is socially and politically inexpedient to blatantly promote one’s own interests, and his audience would likely reject any proposition that did so in fear of potential social repercussions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, Blankfein must appeal to his audience’s self-interest circuitously by first appealing to their humanity, and then, by casualizing it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He achieves this by purporting that his plan will “revive” the American economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such a trope implicates him as an emergency room doctor valiantly saving lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the audience, it is far easier and more gratifying to identify with a life-saving doctor than a pragmatic businessman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His position’s implicit divisiveness and abandonment of large swaths of the American population becomes acceptable under the guise of uniting in a common (read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his</i>) economic interest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whatever suffering ensues can then be viewed as an unfortunate casualty of a worthy effort by concerned citizens, rather than the consequence of human targeting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rebel Cities</i>, David Harvey gives voice to what’s between the lines of Blankfein’s position: that “the economy of wealth-accumulation piggy-backs violently on the economy of dispossession” (25).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, he gives the lie to the “trickle-down effect” upon which Blankfein’s economic model rests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a 2009 radio interview for WNYC, New York Public Radio, Harvey explains that there is a difference between the “trickle-down” effect in terms of wealth versus quality of life, the latter of which Blankfein patently ignores.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>Harvey</st1:place></st1:city> explains that some wealth does indeed trickle down with increases in capitalist accumulation; but this does not ensure that improvements in quality of life trickle down as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He explains that “it is not as though well-being trickl[es] down,” but rather, that capitalists aim to accumulate more and more while doing nothing or very little to improve anyone’s life but their own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This is all markedly absent from Blankfein’s “plan.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, Mr. Blankfein is a businessman first and foremost, so it makes sense for him to stick to an assessment of how government can get out of the way of business in order to facilitate economic growth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Mr. Blankfein does not outright say that this is the best thing for business, for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his</i> business; instead, he says that business leaders “want to see progress and contribute to it” and that “we are all ready to roll up our sleeves and work with the Obama administration and Congress to help fulfill America’s enduring promise.” There is no mention of social and economic inequality, and therefore, there is no invitation for discussion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather, he obliquely links a very particular and limited kind of economic growth to the fulfillment of an American “promise.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Silenced, devalued, effectively dehumanized through the rhetoric of casualization, are the millions of people to whom that promise will never be kept.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">From a business perspective, Blankfein’s rhetoric of casualization relies on implicit division at the same time that it purports to unify his audience in a singular “American” ambition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Central to his position is the difference between the implied and actual identity of his audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By avoiding specific reference to the diverse economic and social situations of the actual American public, Blankfein implicitly directs his argument at a very specific population.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His language, being vaguely inclusive, fosters a sense of unity in them while further separating them from the ignored.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But implicit division is not the only strategy for rhetorical casualization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some positions rely on far more overtly divisive tactics, while still, through convenient omissions, avoid the pervasive and deep-rooted causes of social discontent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Such is the case with the political rhetoric overtly directed at “the middle class” during Barack Obama and Mitt Romney’s second Presidential debate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The dominant theme during both campaigns was “jobs”—who can “create” them, who destroys them—with little or no attention paid to what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kind</i> of jobs and no acknowledgement that unemployment has become structural rather than cyclical.</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2981154630072584676#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> Further, nearly the entire debate was directed at the homogenized entity of the “middle class” and the need to “create jobs” for them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, by focusing on the middle class, both men effectively divide their audience. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In his tax proposal, for instance, Mr. Obama makes no effort hide the division he seeks: “In addition to some tough spending cuts, we’ve also got to ask the wealthy to do a little bit more.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He goes on to explain, “The only reason it’s not happening is because Governor Romney’s allies in congress have held the 98 percent hostage because they want tax breaks for the top two percent.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unlike Blankfein’s strategy of feigning American unity at the expense of the majority of the population, Mr. Obama’s strategy explicitly (and statistically) divides the population in order to unite his audience against a common enemy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is methodical divisions such as this which allow both men to casualize human relations by reducing common suffering to either “the policies of [the Obama] administration” (Romney) or the “top-down economics” of cutting taxes for “the top one percent” (Obama).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The rhetoric does not stop there, though.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, by first overtly dividing the population, both politicians can target individual segments while avoiding the entrenched systemic causes of the current acute economic and social crises.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas A. Hirschl discusses one such cause that affects the entire American population: the “qualitative transformation” of capitalism due to rapid technological innovation (162). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite the growing social unrest due to structural unemployment, Hirschl explains, “there has been little consideration of whether bourgeois property relations may or may not be disrupted by technological progress” (158).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead of looking at the indelible social and economic consequences of these changes, Obama and Romney establish the middle class and joblessness as the primary issue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With this, Romney and Obama are free pursue stop-gap measures aimed solely at the middle class to the effect of abandoning any idea of remedying the consequences of the qualitative transformation Hirschl describes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The first question posed to the candidates in this particular debate does not specifically refer to technology, so it is seems justifiable that it goes unmentioned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But neither does it mention the word “jobs” (what the college student actually asks is how he will be able to sufficiently support himself after he graduates). Whether explicitly asked or not, though, in addressing this quality of life question, both candidates avoid what Guglielmo Carchedi so succinctly describes as a crisis of capitalist social relations: namely that, with technological innovation, comes an “increase in productivity [that] goes hand in hand with unemployment,” and thus, “the development of productive forces is the ultimate cause of crises” (Carchedi 83). Rather than delve into this unattractive reality, both candidates immediately respond to the question with effusive references to jobs—four for Mr. Romney and seven for Mr. Obama. The moderator encourages this direction by following up with, “What about those long-term unemployed who need a job right now?” Here, the candidates continue to sidestep a social and economic discussion of quality of life and reasonable self-sufficiency, of the purpose of education and the direction of the country, and become immersed in the realm of stop-gap measures and band-aids. Mr. Obama speaks of “good-paying jobs” in the “private sector” and manufacturing jobs in the automobile industry, and Mr. Romney says, “I want you to be able to get a job.” This rhetoric of avoidance does not explore the systemic expansion of labor-saving technologies and their consequences in a capitalist society—specifically, that technologies initially increase capitalist accumulation at the expense of laborers’ decreased purchasing power, which then results in less profits and an increased drive toward labor-saving technology. This, in turn, results in fewer jobs, and the spiral continues (Carchedi 75). Without identifying this pervasive and accelerating cycle of capitalist (self)destruction, both candidates effectively avoid proposing the radical economic and social changes necessary to interrupt this cycle, and thus, neither candidate can propose an adequate approach.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Further, only when pressed on foreign outsourcing and competition with <st1:country-region><st1:place>China</st1:place></st1:country-region> does either candidate finally broach the topic of information and technology. Mr. Romney asserts, “<st1:country-region><st1:place>China</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s been cheating over the years … by stealing our intellectual property; our designs, our patents, our technology,” and Mr. Obama explains, “There are some jobs that are not going to come back. Because they are low wage, low skill jobs. I want high wage, high skill jobs … That’s why we have to invest in advanced manufacturing.” Both candidates imply that technology plays a serious role in economic health (something markedly absent from their initial discussion of “jobs”), and they suggest that they would protect and develop technology to protect and develop jobs. Neither addresses that these very advances in information and manufacturing technology only heighten socioeconomic polarization by delimiting the types of employment available.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The few positions available in advanced manufacturing work put a scarce amount of knowledge workers “in a position to share in their nation’s privileged position” (Hirschl 164), while the reduction of alternative job options for everyone else is framed as the casualty of necessary “progress.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This is where the rhetoric of casualization really soars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By framing joblessness as an unfortunate consequence of not investing in the right kind jobs (Obama) or as the result of foreign attacks upon our technologies (Romney), both men divert their audience’s attention away from their entrapment in a system doomed to fail them all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Worse yet, this sort of language obstructs empathy in the same breath that it increases competition and antipathy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In “Automation and Alienation,” Ramin Ramtin how this occurs: “The insecurity of capitalist conditions of labor has always acted as a powerful means of social control—but only because and as long as there is at least some hope of future employment” (247). In emphasizing the creation of jobs without addressing the long-term and systemic reasons for unemployment, these politicians encourage that increasingly unfounded hope for future employment, further pitting people against one another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than offering system-wide, socially-conscious solutions, this rhetoric perpetuates the very social and economic polarization so complicit in the populace’s increasing malaise. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">More than exposing the underpinnings of a spiraling and self-destructive “advanced” capitalism, it is imperative to expose the language used to keep the majority of the population in the dark, to placate rather than inform; it is imperative to critique the rhetoric of casualization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without identifying potential and likely reasons behind the political and economic information that is disseminated through popular media, its larger impact cannot be adequately assessed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is not to say that all words are intended to be disingenuous or manipulative, but rather, that all language is meant to mean something, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">some </i>meaning extends beyond the simple logic of the words which convey it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In accepting strategic omissions without question, in halting at catchy talking points, and in buying into the rhetoric of “me” or “us” versus “them,” our diverse and dynamic population is being handled into submission and wrought by division.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This casualized humanity—characterized by disconnection, competition, lack of empathy, and open hostility—is entirely necessary to sustain the current capitalist economic system in the face of rapid technological and cultural changes. By uncovering how this rhetorical strategy shapes identities and relationships, distorting public sentiment, it might then be possible to reclaim language in encouraging humanity rather than suppressing it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Works Cited<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Blankfein, Lloyd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The Business Plan for American Revival.” Opinion-Editorial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wall Street <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal</i> <st1:date day="14" month="11" year="2012">14 November 2012</st1:date>: A17.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Carchedi, Guglielmo. “High-Tech Hype: Promises and Realities of Technology in the Twenty-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">First Century.” <st1:city><st1:place>Davis</st1:place></st1:city>, et al. 73-86.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">---“Casual.”<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Merriam-Webster.com</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">---“Casualty.”<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Merriam-Webster.com</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><st1:city><st1:place>Davis</st1:place></st1:city> J., T. Hirschl, and M. Stack, eds. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism and Social Revolution</i>. <st1:city><st1:place>London</st1:place></st1:city>: Verso, 1997. Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Harvey, David.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>London</st1:place></st1:city>: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Verso, 2012.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">---.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“David Harvey Interviewed on <st1:state><st1:place>New York</st1:place></st1:state> Public Radio.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">NYPR.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>WNYC: <st1:state><st1:place>New York</st1:place></st1:state>, 26 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">March 2009.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><a href="http://davidharvey.org/2009/03/david-harvey-interviewed-on-new-york-public-radio/"><span style="color: purple; font-family: Times New Roman;">http://davidharvey.org/2009/03/david-harvey-interviewed-on-new-york-public-radio/</span></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> Web. <st1:date day="5" month="12" year="2012">5 December 2012</st1:date>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Hirschl, Thomas. “Structural Unemployment and the Qualitative Transformation of Capitalism.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><st1:city><st1:place>Davis</st1:place></st1:city>, et al. 157-174.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Merriam-Webster.com</i>. Encyclopedia Britannica. 2012.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Web.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:date day="24" month="11" year="2012">24 November 2012</st1:date>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Ramtin, Ramin. “A Note on Automation and Alienation.” <st1:city><st1:place>Davis</st1:place></st1:city>, et al. 243-251.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">“Second Presidential Debate Full Transcript.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ABC News. </i>WABC, <st1:city><st1:place>Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>, 16 Oct. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> 2012. Television. Transcript. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">abcnews.go.com. </i>Web.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2981154630072584676#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"> Hirschl’s discussion of structural unemployment, pg. 160-1, provided background for this independent assessment.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504995612018814638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2981154630072584676.post-23426990960612877752012-12-10T13:38:00.002-08:002014-06-28T10:17:18.859-07:00Prison University<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I was immersed in Stanley Aronowitz’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Knowledge Factory</i> when I encountered David Schalkwyk’s OP-ED piece in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">LA Times</i>, “Reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hamlet</i> Behind Bars.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My undergraduate education as an English major, maybe surprisingly, did not require that I read a single Shakespearean play.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only knowledge I have of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hamlet </i>was from watching the excellent filmic version starring Kenneth Brannagh when I was studying for the English Subject GRE.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What drew me to the article was my curiosity about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prisoners</i> reading Shakespeare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Further, after being inundated with Aronowitz’s scathing analysis of the demise of the broad, liberal education curriculum in American universities, what I read in Schalkwyk’s piece became all the more poignant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Aronowitz describes the modern university: “Like a roach motel, the university will let students in, only to release them as intellectual corpses” (63).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He criticizes the specialization resulting from certain areas being more financially lucrative than others at the great cost of producing less well-rounded citizens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Specifically, he<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>poses the goal of finding out how can we “inspire skeptical, not to say cynical, students who, having been encouraged to turn away from knowledge for its own sake in favor of the most practical conception of the role of education, may believe that general education is ‘useless’” (192).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After reading about the prisoners of <st1:place><st1:placename>Robben</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Island</st1:placetype></st1:place>, a South African political prison, I was struck with a different perspective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One man had convinced his fellows to sign “their names beside their favorite passages” (A32) in a copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Complete Works of William Shakespeare</i> that he surreptitiously circulated throughout the prison.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Schalkwyk explains, “When they signed their names against Shakespeare’s text, each prisoner recognized something of himself and his relation to others in the words of a stranger” (A32).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I gathered from this was not that Shakespeare’s texts are universal or representative of mankind, as Schalkwyk implies, but rather, that when people are motivated by the desire to understand and express themselves, they will find a vehicle with which to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What this might mean for education is that there is no perfect or ideal curriculum that will produce an ideal citizen. Instead, what needs to be developed is the attitude toward and awareness of the purpose of education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In encouraging knowledge for its own sake, Aronowitz idealistically abstracts the pursuit of knowledge from the everyday lives of the people who might pursue it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The prisoners of <st1:place><st1:placename>Robben</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Island</st1:placetype></st1:place> demonstrate, conversely, exactly why one might be inspired to pursue knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They received no degrees from their “<st1:place><st1:placename>Prison</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>University</st1:placetype></st1:place>”—in fact, they would have suffered grave consequences if their book had been discovered—and it is doubtful the passages themselves taught them any practical lesson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What they did receive was an opportunity, which they took, to treat something outside themselves as a part of themselves, to internalize someone else’s words and insight and thereby connect more deeply to their humanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This, I move, is the purpose of education, and a university degree is just one avenue for this process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, practical skills and specialized knowledge must also be disseminated in order to produce capable individuals, but that is only one facet of humanity’s ongoing pursuit of understanding, expression, and connection</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Aronowitz, Stanley. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Creating True Higher Learning.</i> <st1:city><st1:place>Boston</st1:place></st1:city>: Beacon Press, 2000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Schalkwyk, David.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hamlet</i> Behind Bars.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Los Angeles</i></st1:place></st1:city><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Times.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Op-Ed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>25 November </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">2012.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A32.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504995612018814638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2981154630072584676.post-1775296691485068102012-11-15T09:21:00.000-08:002012-11-15T09:26:21.533-08:00The Rhetoric of Omission<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> In a 2009 radio interview for WNYC, New York Public Radio, David Harvey differentiates between the “trickle-down” effect in terms of wealth versus quality of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, he says, some wealth does indeed trickle down with increases in capitalist accumulation; but this does not ensure that improvements in quality of life trickle down as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He explains that capitalists do not actually invest in production as much as in assets and that this enables them to accumulate more and more while doing nothing or very little to improve anyone's life but their own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, some jobs are created through construction, “but the wage rates were very low, extremely low, and of course, as we know, the social protections were negligible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So it is not as though well-being trickled down. A certain sort of job structure was created which was very low wage, very badly protected, which actually then produced goods which allowed the rich to get even richer.”</span><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">1</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Mr. Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs would disagree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, in a recent Op-Ed piece for the Wall Street Journal, Blankfein adeptly implies quite the opposite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In “The Business Plan for American Revival,” he suggests that “the Obama administration and large segments of the business community [must] forge a more productive relationship,” and that this will “do wonders for the economy.” He goes on to say, “We in the business community have a responsibility to contribute to a better understanding of the urgency of averting a crippling and self-inflicted recession [and] we also need to talk about the significant opportunities that result from forward-looking change” (A17).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On first read, it is difficult to argue with his seemingly benevolent and disinterested position of looking out for the general interest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The economy is important; forward-looking change sounds great; but, as seems to be norm in political-economic rhetoric, there is a wealth of information waiting to be mined from the implications of what has been omitted.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Without explicitly saying it, Blankfein assumes the position that <st1:city><st1:place>Harvey</st1:place></st1:city> so lucidly denigrates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nowhere in Blankfein’s solicitation of “sensible immigration reform,” “spending cuts, [and] entitlement reform,” or “restor[ing] confidence in public finance,” does he mention what that would look like for the millions of people it is supposedly intended to help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance, immigration reform, to him, is limited to “mak[ing] it easier for talented people to live and work in the <st1:country-region><st1:place>U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like much of his position, this sounds inarguable, but it is only inarguable because it says so little.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If he were to address the real-life circumstances of the millions of people who live here illegally without having attended college or developing advanced skills, there might be plenty of room to argue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What might he propose we do with or for them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, “spending cuts” and “entitlement reform” function much the same way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than delineate exactly what these would look like for the people who will be most affected, he simply encourages a “comprehensive and balanced solution.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if such a solution could be achieved, what has gone unaddressed is exactly what the problem is, who it plagues, and how their lives can and should change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yes, Mr. Blankfein is a businessman first and foremost, so it makes sense for him to stick to an assessment of how government can get out of the way of business in order to facilitate economic growth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Up to this point, it sounds as though the “trickle-down effect” of wealth is in order and realistic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Mr. Blankfein does not outright say that this is the best thing for business, for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his</i> business; instead, he says that business leaders “want to see progress and contribute to it” and that “we are all ready to roll up our sleeves and work with the Obama administration and Congress to help fulfill America’s enduring promise.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, he obliquely links a very particular and limited kind of economic growth to the fulfillment of an American “promise.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What he doesn’t say is what this fulfillment entails.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>Harvey</st1:place></st1:city> would have some feedback.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rebel Cities</i>, he gives voice to exactly what’s between the lines of Blankfein’s position: that “the economy of wealth-accumulation piggy-backs violently on the economy of dispossession” (25).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What Blankfein does not say is that whatever little wealth trickles down only serves to reproduce the very conditions which sustain the increasing wealth of a few while ensuring the ever-decreasing wealth of the many.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What he does not mention is how reforming the system and spurring growth will directly affect people’s lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Will a few be granted crumbs under the pretense of democratic access to the capitalist pursuit while the rest stay mired in state dependence and financial debt cycles?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or is there another way, a way to look past simply giving the same old system a kick-start to create the same results?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are tough questions because they require radical changes to a system Mr. Blankfein seeks to preserve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are tough problems because any massive solution proposed will undoubtedly be subject to vehement critique.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So it is much easier to say a whole lot of nothing, and that is just what he does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/ww9STw-o0cc?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">1. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>See the above YouTube clip, beginning at 2:48 min. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Blankfein, Lloyd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The Business Plan for American Revival.” Opinion-Editorial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wall Street <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal</i> <st1:date day="14" month="11" year="2012">14 November 2012</st1:date>: A17.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Harvey, David.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>London</st1:place></st1:city>: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Verso, 2012.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504995612018814638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2981154630072584676.post-14663224954737393602012-11-06T09:34:00.001-08:002012-11-08T09:41:38.661-08:00No Terrorists Here<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Randy Martin, author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Empire of Indifference: American War and the Financial Logic of Risk Management</i>, addresses the cause of the lingering conflicts in <st1:country-region><st1:place>Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region> by linking the <st1:country-region><st1:place>United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>’ military strategies with its economic strategies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Specifically, financial risk is broken down, parceled out, and capitalized on by being sold as a commodity, or derivative, in itself (rather than being resolved between the two original parties).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The wars on terror of late are intended to function in much the same way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>American forces break down and strategically engage potential threats under the pretense of spreading freedom and democracy, and by increasing social and political chaos, risk and effects can be calculated and capitalized on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Martin explains, “The decomposed nation would leave a colonial substrate that would spin off endless conflicts and opportunities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The old imperial ambition was to consume the colonial whole; the new aspiration attaches to less, while making more if its partial attentions” (123).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The <st1:country-region><st1:place>U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> effectively starts and spreads conflicts without actually achieving any of the “goals” it purports to pursue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not only do wars not end, they offer more and more opportunities to achieve desired effects through future conflicts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, just as debt is broken down according to calculated risk, parceled out, and re-sold, so, too, are wars now sustained indefinitely while they constantly spawn new conflicts which can then be capitalized on for political and economic purposes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One of the <st1:country-region><st1:place>U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> military’s strategies, according to Martin, is in dubbing its actions in <st1:country-region><st1:place>Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region><st1:place>Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region> responses to terror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Martin explains, “the war on terror allows nations and populations to be marked with the occult motives and shadowy intention that have long characterized racial loathing,” and in doing so “racialize(s) [the terrorist] as the bad other or object of risk—risks to freedom, liberty, ways of life, and identity” (165).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These risks must be objectified and managed, and in order to do this, there “is a splitting of a single race into a superrace and a subrace” where the subrace embodies all the darkness and ugliness of the larger race (Martin 135).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">There is ample evidence of this strategy throughout American mass media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Martin mentions, the descriptions of Saddam Hussein, bin Laden, and “the hooded torture victims of Abu Ghraib,” all render these men animalistic, vicious, and inhuman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is no surprise after years of being inundated with the rhetoric of terror and terrorists in an effort to build and sustain support for a disingenuous war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What was slightly surprising was that, even after so many years and one of the wars supposedly being over, this strategy has evolved to a whole new level of manipulation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>As I read the recent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Los Angeles Times </i>article, “Afghan Massacre a Hard Case for Army,” I was flooded with mixed feelings.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-kandahar-massacre-20121105,0,4945123.story"><span style="color: purple; font-family: Times New Roman;">http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-kandahar-massacre-20121105,0,4945123.story</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Murphy and Parker present two distinct threads in their coverage of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales’ alleged murdering of sixteen Afghani villagers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first is “whether there is sufficient evidence to hold [Bales] for a court-martial on charges of premeditated murder” (A4); the second thread draws from witness interviews to make explicit the victims’ and survivors’ suffering, incredulity, and anger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is undoubtedly a horrific experience for all involved, and the intensity of the witness accounts, at first, seems to highlight the atrociousness of the antagonist’s actions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there is a subtext which overrides the poignant depiction of these villagers’ suffering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Although there is no explicit mention of “terror,” Bales’ alleged actions, had they been undertaken by a member of al-Qaeda, would no doubt be attributed to terrorism: according to witness accounts, “he shot and stabbed people as they rose sleepily from their beds, dragged one woman by her hair and leveled his weapon at a shrieking baby’s mouth” (A1).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All signs seem to point to an excellent opportunity to divest the term “terrorist” of its racializing and “othering” effects; to show that anyone can terrorize and anyone can be a victim of terror; and, thus, to show the injustice of basing an entire occupation and war on an invented subrace of “terrorists.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Disturbingly, though, even here, those who have been terrorized are the ones indirectly turned into terrorists, and the alleged harbinger of terror, Staff Sgt. Bales, is all but exculpated. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This reversal functions subtly and smoothly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For each mention of Afghani suffering, the writers hedge against developing too much sympathy for them by playing into American consciousness and values.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance, immediately after detailing the body count, Murphy and Parker not so discreetly imply that if prosecutors have any trouble convicting Bales, it will be the Afghanis’ fault.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">their</i> fault that they buried the bodies too soon, and that mostly women and children survived and their husbands and fathers are reluctant to have them testify (A4).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In so many words, the writers describe the American justice system as being obstructed by this foreign culture—if only they were more like us, we would be able to do our jobs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">There are two other means by which the authors, as presenting the American military’s perspective, deflect the status of terrorist back to the Afghanis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bales’ lawyer, John Henry Browne, explains, “It is not possible to pass judgment on what Bales did or didn’t do in time of war without also looking at what the war did to Bales.” He goes on to say, “I believe we all have a responsibility to Sgt. Bales, and to all these soldiers” (A4).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, Sgt. Bales’ alleged actions are not only naturalized and possibly even justified, but, further, the implication is that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">he</i> is a victim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If he is the victim, then who is the terrorist?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Conveniently, the blame for this single-handed act is now shifted back to the third party of al-Qaeda and subsumed as a tragedy of the war on terror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are no terrorists here, then, and if, by chance, one of “us” undertakes a terrible deed, it is only because he has been terrorized himself. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Has anyone asked whether we can pass judgment on bin Laden for what he did or didn’t do without looking at what his environment and circumstances did to him?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I doubt it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nor do I think anyone should.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His actions, just like Bales’ alleged actions, speak for themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Enough said, but the double standard is striking.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Toward the end of the article, the writers bolster the vision of Bales as a victim by quoting one of the victims’ threatening declarations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In response to the <st1:country-region><st1:place>U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> government’s provision of “$50,000 for each death and $10,000 for each of those injured,” a childless father and widower explains, “If your child dies, what would you expect? Money? No.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Will you expect prison? We don’t want prison… If the court doesn’t go the way we want, we will not accept the decision of the court” (A4).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With this, the inversion of blame and victimhood is made complete; this widower must be a terrorist for not respecting the American justice system, and Bales, in being threatened obliquely, is now even more of a victim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Martin, Randy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Empire of Indifference: American War and the Financial Logic of Risk <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Management.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>Durham</st1:place></st1:city>: Duke UP, 2007.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Murphy, Kim, and Ned Parker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Afghan Massacre a Hard Case for Army.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Los Angeles</i></st1:place></st1:city><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><st1:date day="5" month="11" year="2012">5 Nov. 2012</st1:date>: A1+.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504995612018814638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2981154630072584676.post-51905660635808433902012-10-29T10:43:00.000-07:002012-10-29T10:43:28.209-07:00Analysis Two: "Jobs," a Rhetorical Red Herring<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"> In discussing the “qualitative transformation” of capitalism and its social consequences, Thomas A. Hirschl cites Marx’s theory that “an era of social revolution begins when the technological capacity of society supersedes or becomes too productive for the existing property relations” (158). Technological innovation fervently continues, though, so in the interest of separating social and economic crises from their roots in information and technological capitalism, leaders strategically employ political rhetoric. This is hardly more apparent elsewhere than in political debates, particularly the second Presidential Debate of 2012. Nearly the entire debate was directed at the homogenized entity of the “middle class” and the need to “create jobs.” Both candidates briefly reference technological innovation, but their overall avoidance of the role of information and technology in their supposed quest for jobs is like a pink elephant in the room—they talk all around it, obliquely alluding to it, without acknowledging the massive amount of space it occupies and its undeniable impact. By limiting the depth of their discussion to expansive, vague references to "jobs," they avoid addressing the relationship between capitalism, technology, and structural unemployment. This, in turn, shapes public discourse so that the recent economic crisis is seen in isolation, not as evidence of an accelerating trend with dire social consequences, and, in turn, neither candidate’s role and stake in serving this trend is exposed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In their respective essays in the 1997 collection, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cutting Edge</i>, Hirschl, Guglielmo Carchedi, and Ramin Ramtin address the economic and social malady of their time, a prescient description that anticipates the very situation addressed by Messrs. Obama and Romney fifteen years later. The first question posed to the candidates does not specifically refer to technology, but neither does it mention the word “jobs” (what the college student actually asks is how he will be able to sufficiently support himself after he graduates). Neither candidate addresses what Carchedi identifies as a crisis of capitalist social relations, “the relations between the owners and the nonowners of the means of production,” due to technological innovation (74). Rather than delve into this unattractive reality, both candidates immediately respond to the question with effusive references to jobs—four for Mr. Romney and seven for Mr. Obama. The moderator encourages this direction by following up with, “What about those long-term unemployed who need a job right now?” Here, the candidates continue to sidestep a social and economic discussion of quality of life and reasonable self-sufficiency, of the purpose of education and the direction of the country, and become immersed in the realm of stop-gap measures and band-aids. Mr. Obama speaks of “good-paying jobs” in the “private sector” and manufacturing jobs in the automobile industry, and Mr. Romney says, “I want you to be able to get a job.” This rhetoric of avoidance does not explore the systemic expansion of labor-saving technologies and their consequences in a capitalist society—specifically, that technologies initially increase capitalist accumulation at the expense of laborers’ decreased purchasing power, which then results in less profits and an increased drive toward labor-saving technology. This, in turn, results in less jobs, and the spiral continues (Carchedi 75). Without identifying this pervasive and accelerating cycle of capitalist (self)destruction, both candidates effectively avoid proposing the radical economic and social changes necessary to interrupt this cycle, and thus, neither candidate can propose an adequate approach.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Further, only when pressed on foreign outsourcing and competition with </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">China</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Arial;"> does either candidate finally broach the topic of information and technology. Mr. Romney asserts, “</span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">China</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Arial;">’s been cheating over the years … by stealing our intellectual property; our designs, our patents, our technology,” and Mr. Obama explains, “There are some jobs that are not going to come back. Because they are low wage, low skill jobs. I want high wage, high skill jobs … That’s why we have to invest in advanced manufacturing.” Both candidates imply that technology plays a serious role in economic health (something markedly absent from their initial discussion of “jobs”), and they suggest that they would protect and develop technology to protect and develop jobs. Neither addresses that these very advances in information and manufacturing technology only heighten socioeconomic polarization by delimiting the types of employment available.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The few laborers who are incorporated in advanced manufacturing work or as knowledge workers “are often in a position to share in their nation’s privileged position” (Hirschl 164), while the rest, in increasing numbers, become casualties. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Contrary to either politician’s stance, the source of these material and social consequences cannot be denied, nor can it be reduced to an inexplicable lack of jobs. Joblessness is a symptom of a malady, but the palliative measure of treating a symptom without treating the problem does nothing to heal the person. Ramin Ramtin explains, “The insecurity of capitalist conditions of labor has always acted as a powerful means of social control—but only because and as long as there is at least some hope of future employment” (247). In emphasizing the creation of jobs without addressing the long-term and systemic reasons for unemployment, these politicians perpetuate that increasingly unfounded hope for future employment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consequently, they manage, if only temporarily, to hold on to their positions of power in a spiraling capitalist system. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Works Cited</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Carchedi, Guglielmo. “High-Tech Hype: Promises and Realities of Technology in the Twenty-</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">First Century.” </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Davis</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">, et al. 73-86.</span></div>
<st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Davis</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;"> J., T. Hirschl, and M. Stack, eds. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism and Social Revolution</i>. </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">London</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">: Verso, 1997. Print.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Hirschl, Thomas. “Structural Unemployment and the Qualitative Transformation of Capitalism.” </span><br />
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<st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Davis</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">, et al. 157-174.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Ramtin, Ramin. “A Note on Automation and Alienation.” </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Davis</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">, et al. 243-251.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Second Presidential Debate Full Transcript.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ABC News. </i>WABC, </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Los Angeles</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">, 16 Oct. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> 2012. Television. Transcript. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">abcnews.go.com. </i>Web.</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504995612018814638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2981154630072584676.post-91056533164921421282012-10-24T13:17:00.000-07:002012-10-25T08:44:16.626-07:00Oligopolizing Freedom: the Social Reality of “Free” Trade and the “Free” Flow of Information<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Arguing against “freedom” now is like arguing against cuddly puppies, sunsets, and unique, beautiful snowflakes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is anathema to a progressive perspective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that is because freedom has been co-opted by political rhetoric.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than express autonomy and lack of constraints, freedom has come to include particular social, economic, and political implications which are not readily apparent, but which ineluctably <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">detract</i> from the instantiation of the very term which houses them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I do not take issue with freedom; what I do take issue with is the couching of oligopolistic capitalism, the stifling of cultures, and the suppression of individual liberty through the selective dissemination of information within the fallacious claim that it is all in the service of freedom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two inextricably-related instances of this arise in the rhetoric of agricultural “free” trade and of “supporters of the ‘free’ flow of information” (Schiller 71).</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><em>From the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, May 2005:</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b>Farmers in the United States, Canada, and Mexico <i>all</i></b> benefit from NAFTA.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Two-way agricultural trade between the United States and Mexico increased 149 percent since 1993. </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Two-way agricultural trade between the United States and Canada increased 112 percent since 1993.</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Although U.S. imports have grown under NAFTA, so have U.S. exports. Without NAFTA, the United States would have lost these expanded export opportunities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In 2004, exports of numerous key U.S. commodities set records to both countries:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Canada: fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, snack foods, poultry meat, pet foods, vegetable oils, planting seeds, breakfast cereals, tree nuts, nursery products, rice, soybean meal, processed fruits and vegetables, juices and eggs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Mexico: red meats, processed fruits and vegetables, poultry meat, fresh vegetables, tree nuts, wheat, soybean meal, animal fats, dairy products and rice. This broad cross section of commodities suggests the benefits of NAFTA are widely distributed across U.S. agriculture.</span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Import competition has increased under NAFTA for some commodities, a not unexpected development, as trade barriers begin to come down and trade is subject to open marketing conditions. As the largest of the NAFTA countries and with a booming economy, it is not surprising that U.S. imports from Canada have grown strongly, providing American consumers with a broader array of competitively priced, high-quality products.</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2981154630072584676#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although the above is only an excerpt, the FAS maintains an implicit theme in its explication of the benefits of the North American Free Trade Agreement: that if the <st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place>United States</st1:place></st1:country> benefits from the agreement, so too, must everyone else. The U.S.'s supposed benefits, however, are predicated on a few particular economic occurrences and are not in any way attached to commensurate benefits for either Canada or Mexico. Is it enough that Americans are provided with "a broader array of competitively priced, high-quality products" (FAS)? Should we stop there, or should we read between the lines just a little more? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Otero, Scott, and Gilbreth do indeed read between the lines in their essay on neoliberalized global trade. In particular, they explain the social consequences for the actual people of <st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place>Mexico</st1:place></st1:country>, something the FAS, in its emphasis on <st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place>U.S.</st1:place></st1:country> economic benefits, neglects to address.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Mexican peasants and rural farmers, “free” trade means trading according to the dictates of the country with the most money, and this in turn, means shifting their own agricultural system to suit such trade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One such consequence is “unemployment in cities that are unable to provide enough jobs for those expelled from the modernizing agricultural sector” (Otero, et al. 255).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Further, what the FAS claims as a benefit (at least for the <st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place>United States</st1:place></st1:country>, but presumably for <st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place>Mexico</st1:place></st1:country> as well) is the massive increase in <st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place>U.S.</st1:place></st1:country> exports of certain foodstuffs, the details of which are cited above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Otero, et al. give the lie to the social implications of this factoid, however, when they delineate the real-life consequences of such expansive and “free” trade. The United States must create a demand in Mexico for its products, and it does so by “promoting modern agriculture and a U.S.-style diet [which] has involved the displacement of subsistence crops like corn and beans, grown for human consumption” in favor of growing feed for livestock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This conveniently creates a demand for foreign food products, and the <st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place>United States</st1:place></st1:country> can step right in and provide that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consequently, “Mexican consumption patterns are still moving in the direction of greater amounts of meat and dairy products, and fewer local grains and products” ), while Americans are eating increasing amounts of whole grains and low-fat and –cholesterol products (Otero, et al. 256.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, “free” trade effectively constrains and shapes the direction of an entire group of people physically and culturally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dan Schiller presents a striking parallel in his analysis of digital capitalism and the political and economic interests in the “free” flow of information. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The overt message is that if information flows freely (without government dictating what is available and how it can be accessed), the people will be able to democratically access information via advanced technology and decide for themselves how they will explore and with what they will engage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such a proposition is incontrovertible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I certainly do not want my government, which purportedly serves me, to dictate my access to knowledge and information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is not made explicit, though, is that in place of the government, the “free” flow of information is actually the very strategic dissemination of very specific information via very constrained points of access.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such limitations are enforced by corporate interests who are now “free” to use their expansive financial means and business alliances to package information in ways which sustain and increase their profits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just as free trade in practice limits trade for those who must now play by one, highly unbalanced, set of rules, so too does the notion of freely flowing information mask the diminishing availability of democratically accessible information. Further, both of these “freedoms” serve each other: with the not-so-free flow of information, the few who benefit from free trade can bolster their dominance by manipulating how the system is viewed, and by capitalizing on an imbalanced trade system, they maintain the wherewithal to continue shaping the consumption of information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Freedom in the service of the few at the expense of the many is not freedom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead it is more closely aligned with “free reign” (as opposed to free rein), and if our grade-school history books have taught us anything, there are dangerous social consequences behind the exercise of free reign. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Otero, Gerardo, Steffanie Scott, and Chris Gilbreth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“New Technologies, Neoliberalism, and </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Social Polarization in <st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place>Mexico</st1:place></st1:country>’s Agriculture.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Capitalism and Social Revolution</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ed. Jim Davis, et al.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>London</st1:place></st1:city>: Verso, 1997.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>253-270.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Schiller, Dan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>Cambridge</st1:place></st1:city>: MIT </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Press, 2000. Print.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2981154630072584676#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> “FAS Backgrounder: Benefits of NAFTA.” USDA Foreign Agricultural service.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>May 2005.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><a href="http://www.fas.usda.gov/"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">www.fas.usda.gov</span></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:date day="24" month="10" year="2012">24 October 2012</st1:date>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Web.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504995612018814638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2981154630072584676.post-18379669247750818792012-10-13T10:28:00.002-07:002012-10-13T10:28:45.940-07:00Genetic Engineering and the Fate of the "Social Factory"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">In the following scene from Andrew Niccol’s 1997 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gattaca</i>, Vincent Freeman’s parents are looking to conceive their second child with the aid of genetic engineering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having forewent this when conceiving Vincent, his life expectancy was determined at birth to be 30.2 years, and his blood alone told the doctors he was ninety-nine percent likely to develop a congenital heart condition among other deleterious mental and physical dispositions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I first viewed this film several years after it was released, and I was more incredulous at the technology itself than with the ethics of the technology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When it first came out, I was eleven years old and busy trying to change my nature to suit society’s dictates all on my own. By the time I encountered <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gattaca</i>, I was struck by the futility of my own and Vincent’s efforts to circumvent nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did not consider the possibility that both Vincent and I were already perfectly ourselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, a decade later, and with the help of other thinkers who encourage the challenging of these ossified beliefs, I can’t help but reconsider the social, economic, and political conditions behind this fictional account, and more importantly, behind my own experience.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Nick Witheford’s “Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-Technology Capitalism” is an excellent foundation for reconsidering this film.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He begins by defining the Autonomist Marxian term, the “social factory,” as extending “class conflict [to] include not only waged labor but also all the unwaged workers, such as housewives, students, and the unemployed” (197).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With this premise, no one in society (either my own or the “futuristic” one Vincent inhabits) is free from participating in the capitalist system of oppression—we are capitalists, laborers, and/or reproducers of laborers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Witheford goes on to explain that one way “capital” retains control of the people is through their physical bodies, and in particular, through “the biopolitics of reproducing labor power” (215).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Specifically, he writes, “Although genetic engineering is generally publicized a means of curing hereditary diseases, its main achievements are currently neither therapeutic nor even diagnostic but predictive … it offers a way, not of healing, but of targeting subjects with an alleged predisposition to costly disease” (Witheford<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>215).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The film takes this hidden motive of capital’s development of technology and presents it as an overt and socially accepted means for ensuring individual greatness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What this raises, and what Witheford so articulately exposes, is the question of what this technology really means in the lives of actual people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Vincent, his parents had the means and the choice to produce a genetically engineered child, and they chose not to for moral reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They learned from that “mistake” and endeavored to have a more wholesome child the second time around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So Vincent is portrayed almost as a tragedy, being born with social, physical, and mental “handicaps.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he is not alone, there is a whole segment of the population without the wherewithal to avail themselves of genetic engineering, so in being more and more likely to reproduce the physical and mental traits that relegate them to a lower class, they reproduce themselves as a class.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The economics of technology supports social and political oppression, and this is how the social factory works.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Although contemporary capitalist society has not quite reached this degree of technological oppression, we are quite close, and the closer we come to believing that this is the path toward greatness and “freedom” from limitations, the farther we go from being whole people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This, in turn, will only make it easier to further segment and separate us, pitting laborer against laborer, social being against social being, effectively precluding any unified retaliatory effort.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Witheford, Nick. “Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-Technology Capitalism.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cutting <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism and Social Revolution</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ed. Jim </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><st1:city><st1:place>Davis</st1:place></st1:city>, et al.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>London</st1:place></st1:city>: Verso, 1997.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>195-242.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504995612018814638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2981154630072584676.post-33114761712412972672012-10-08T10:04:00.001-07:002012-10-08T10:04:06.229-07:00Serving the System: The Fate of the Worker in an Economy of “Labor-Saving” Technology<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I haven’t been able to work for three weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a part-time server at a local, non-corporate BBQ restaurant, have no delusions that the labor I provide is unique or irreplaceable, and I’m sure my managers have found some other employees to pick up the slack while my broken hand heals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, in addition to tightening my budget for the month and worrying if I will actually retain my position, I also began thinking about what it is I actually do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While reading Dwight D. Murphey’s article, “Robotics: <st1:street><st1:address>A Route</st1:address></st1:street> to the Survival of Advanced Societies” and C. George Caffentzis’ “Why Machines Cannot Produce Value,” I began thinking about how my job, what I do, is tied to technology and how that relationship effects and directs the course of my life and my other relationships.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Murphey proposes that a viable remedy for the crisis of developed nations’ efforts to compete with low-cost labor is to develop and rely on labor-saving capital, to effectively employ capital instead of people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He claims: “If the advanced economies move further into robotics and other such technologies, that will itself address the deindustrialization and hollowing-out we have noted by making their industry competitive both with cheap labor and other nations’ advanced technology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They will be putting their capital to work rather than exporting it” (417).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Caffentzis, on the other hand, asserts quite the opposite: that all capital, including technological capital, cannot produce value, so capitalists are reluctant to invest in new technologies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Technology only becomes attractive to capitalists as a means for working with the workers they already have and as an alternative to “find[ing] a completely new sector of the working class to exploit” (33) which is becoming increasingly difficult.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, technology supports the continued exploitation of labor to extract surplus value.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without extracting surplus value from the laborer, there is no profit, and further, without the laborer-as-consumer, products will not be sold and profits will disappear.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">So which is it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Will increased technology enable competition with cheap labor, replacing the need for most types of labor, thus freeing individuals from the work they don’t want to do anyway (Murphey 412)?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or will increased technology lead to “an increase, not a decrease in work” (Caffentzis 31), albeit different types of work and, in particular, different means of exploitation?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reflecting on my own job, I am inclined to go with the latter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, it is true that the technological capital “employed” at the restaurant enable me to accomplish my tasks far more expeditiously without a commensurate increase in wages, thus creating greater profits, and it could be said that this is not necessarily an unacceptable form of exploitation since it supposedly makes my own job easier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what it also does is effectively chain me to the technology developed to help me, and I lose more and more of myself in the process.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Specifically, as a service worker, my job is to facilitate consumption, and this insight was reinforced last night during an interaction with a Starbucks “barista."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than gathering resources and producing products, we use the technology provided, acting as mediums between the technology and the material product and the material product and the consumer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without technology at this point, we would not be able help the consumer consume.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We do not have the skills to work in any other way than within the parameters defined by technology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In effect, we lose whole parts of ourselves, whole ranges of ability, as we are funneled into performing tasks directly dependent on technology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, the only (limited) agency we have is in how we enact the transaction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The barista was amused by some of my comments and said I was the most interesting customer he had experienced all day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said that was good to know, but thought to myself, “all day, he is so limited by his enslavement to technology that he rarely gets to be his human self, so much so that he relishes any extemporaneous, unscripted interaction.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I then thought of my own job and how limited I am by the services I provide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although these limitations are materially different than the limitations experienced by laborers in technologically-poor industries and countries, psychologically, they have a similar effect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I become what my job wants me to be, and I lose myself in the process.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Technology, then, is not the savior of the laborer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is just another means to enslave the laborer, to exploit her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do not have a suggested savior in its place, but I am thinking about it and questioning what I have for so long accepted uncritically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There has to be a way for technology to foster the humanness of the laborer rather than dehumanizing her under the pretense of “liberating” her from labor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Caffentzis, C. George.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Why Machines Cannot Create Value; or Marx’s Theory of Machines.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism and Social Revolution</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ed. Jim </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><st1:city><st1:place>Davis</st1:place></st1:city>, et al.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>London</st1:place></st1:city>: Verso, 1997.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>29-56.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Murphey, Dwight D.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Robotics: </span><st1:street><st1:address><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">A Route</span></st1:address></st1:street><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> to the Survival of Advanced Societies?”</span> <i>The Journal <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i>of Social, Political, and Economic Studies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">32:4 (2007): 397-420. <i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></span>ProQuest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Web.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:date day="7" month="10" year="2012">7 October 2012</st1:date>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504995612018814638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2981154630072584676.post-18069914128838379462012-10-02T08:56:00.000-07:002012-10-02T08:56:13.054-07:00Has Capitalism Subsumed Communism? Free Labor in a Capitalist Society<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To be sure, pure capitalism and pure communism cannot coexist, but with the rise of information-based labor, the very foundations of our capitalist society have drastically changed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tiziana Terranova cites Richard Barbrook in terming this a “mixed economy.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Barbrook, “the future of capitalism lies in the commodification of information,” but at the same time, “money-commodity relations play a secondary role to those created by a really existing form of anarcho-communism” in which laborers are free to “collaborate with each other without the direct mediation of money and politics” (qtd. in Terranova n.p.).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Looking at the breadth of choices in how we can “work” and/or “play” with the information available to us, Barbrook’s suggestion appears apposite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It involves a division between informational work and play, where one is allotted to sustaining capitalist pursuits and the other toward an antithetical, “high-tech gift economy” which will “overcom[e] capitalism from the inside” (Terranova).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this way, users’ appropriation and consumption of information technologies for their own personal ends subverts the capitalist aim of commodifying those technologies, and this can be seen as a communistic counter to the capitalist machine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">For Terranova, however, it is possible to see these seemingly disparate and oppositional forces operating dialectically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At times one appears to subvert the other, but all along, they are blending, conversing, and transacting as they develop and sustain an evolving economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She describes free labor not as exploited, but rather as voluntary and participatory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">It is just as possible, though, that another alternative has come to be: namely that informational “play” and free labor <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">appear</i> to undermine capitalism by promoting the voluntary and unpaid, but "free" exchange of ideas and connection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This cannot be so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It does not account for the extreme limitations placed upon users in terms of what they can access to play with, in terms of what is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">made available </i>to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, users are free to choose from an apparent wealth of information, but as Webster explains, “information will … be produced and made available only where it has the prospect of being sold at a profit” (135).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the surface, this seems incorrect: once users gain access to the information network, they can consume as much and whichever information they choose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, based on “market criteria” (Webster 135), only certain kinds of information are available.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Worse yet, the plethora of options simply deludes users into thinking they are choosing from all there is to choose from, rather than realizing that they are choosing from a very select set of options predetermined by corporate interests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are free to consume as we please, but only what they choose to put forth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even personal Youtube clips and blogs, seemingly independent of profit-making in their voluntary and free nature, actually support the narrowing of our information options and the maintenance of a capitalist system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Further, although users are free to access whatever they choose, it is implicit that they must first gain access.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Could it be that hegemonic forces are not concerned with the details of what users freely consume as long as they pay into the existing system of information consumption?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">There are, of course, strategies to overtly undermine the commodification of information, but all of these require buying into the system in the first place, and do not necessarily involve direct intervention in the path of technological innovation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until the powers (particularly, the funding) for innovation are stripped from a narrow set of corporate and political interests and made available more democratically, our “free labor” will continue to be exploited without our really knowing it; capitalism will pretend to tolerate communism even as it feasts upon it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Terranova, Tiziana.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>London</st1:place></st1:city>, 2003. </span></div>
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<a href="http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/technocapitalism/voluntary"><span style="color: purple; font-family: Times New Roman;">http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/technocapitalism/voluntary</span></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">. Web.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Webster, Frank.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Theories of the Information Society</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>3<sup>rd</sup> Ed. Routledge: <st1:city><st1:place>London</st1:place></st1:city>, 2006.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504995612018814638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2981154630072584676.post-57858893037171320922012-09-30T09:42:00.002-07:002012-10-02T08:52:15.379-07:00Analysis One: Managing the Message<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">With the ubiquity of technological innovation and reformation, modern media are far from simple. Even the most straightforward medium contains in its form layers of remediations of other (older or newer) media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This same straightforward medium also contains layers of cultural, historical, and political mediations in its content, purpose, and effect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because media can <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">appear</i> unadulterated, direct, and immediate despite their complex relationship to other media, and because they can be packed so densely with complex messages and employ myriad rhetorical strategies, they make excellent conduits for political, social, and cultural messages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, this oft-veiled complexity has resulted in a plethora of public relations professionals, ‘spin doctors,’ and ‘media consultants’ (Webster 190).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although the availability of “new” and advanced media has intensified this tendency, it is not a uniquely contemporary phenomenon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Effective spin doctors existed even in seventeenth century <st1:place>New England</st1:place>, particularly during the Salem Witch Trials of the late 1690s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cotton Mather’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wonders of the Invisible World</i> is an “account” of these trials, and in its title page alone, its form, content, and purpose have both overt and covert political and social implications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Although its explicit purpose is to educate an already-knowledgeable Puritan public, this piece of information functions on another level as a multi-layered rhetorical appeal to a particular type of public for a very particular effect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mather deems it an “Account;” refers to “Observations upon the Nature, the Number, and the Operations of the Devils;” suggests the need for a course of action, and concludes by introducing “a brief Discourse” (Mather Title page).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This language presupposes an audience receptive to forthright information rather than sensationalism, a public interested in facts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As members of a public sphere, the audience appears to fit with Jurgen Habermas’ ideal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He explains that, with the development of a capitalist, bourgeois class, the public sphere became and should be “a sphere of private people come together as a public” to address their common interests through “the public use of their reason” (Habermas 27).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Habermas sees enlightened society as contingent upon a knowledgeable public participating in rational discourse, and this type of public cannot exist without sufficient information. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mather aims to remedy a dearth of information by using a traditional medium (a plain, un-illustrated cover page comprised of a title, an outline of the information, and publication information), and this will ostensibly facilitate rational discourse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">In addition to the medium’s appearance, Mather relies heavily on linguistic strategies, employing what Jay<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Bolter and Richard Grusin define as “remediation.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They explain that “The goal of remediation is to refashion or rehabilitate other media” (56), and in his effort to appear as though he is working with a rational public capable of rational discourse, Mather relies on rational language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Specifically, he remediates scientific language, incorporating it into a non-scientific public document, to lend credibility to his assertions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He would have no need to do this if his audience was not assumed to be information-savvy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Puritan public was indeed literate; they had access to certain types of information so they could knowledgeably practice spiritual self-assessment, a bulwark of their faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, Mather does not intend merely to inform the public and instigate discourse; rather, he intends quite the opposite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By incorporating one medium into another, Mather’s remediation of language “can be understood as a process of reforming reality as well” (Bolter and Grusin 56).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He elevates his non-secular opinion by conveying it through a “factual” medium, shaping rather than stimulating public discourse, which in turn, shapes social reality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">If the discourses of the public sphere can be shaped by remediation, then it follows that rational public discourse can be obstructed at the expense of Habermas’ ideal, enlightened public.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Habermas addresses this, calling it “Manufactured Publicity” (211).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Specifically, he explains that “the ‘opinion leader(s) in public affairs’ are usually wealthier, better educated, and have a better social position than the groups influenced by them” (213), and therefore, the former are more able to shape public opinion according to their political agendas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Webster refers to this as “information management” or “the spread of the means, and of the consciousness of purpose, of persuading people” (190).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He cites Howard Tumber’s analysis that this use of “‘information has become paramount for governments in their attempts to manipulate public opinion and maintain social control’” (qtd. in Webster 190).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Looking at the social and political context of Mather’s book, as situated in late-seventeenth century New England, information management is just as pervasive as it would come to be centuries later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the final execution in 1692, the Puritan public began to doubt the validity of their government’s actions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mather was requisitioned by the governing body to explain the situation to the public in order to smooth over the burgeoning dissent (Hovey and Jackson 509). The implications of Mather’s strategic use of language can be characterized by what Habermas refers to as a shift from public opinion to mass opinion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He defines public opinion as a heteroglossia and free exchange of rational ideas, as opposed to mass opinion, which entails “far fewer people express(ing) opinions than receiving them” (Habermas 249).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In effect, it is “a shift … towards an acceptance of the massage and manipulation of public opinion by the technicians of public relations” (Webster 191). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The disingenuousness of the political maneuvering we see today which creates an information-saturated but knowledge-poor society is painfully evidenced by this single, “simple” medium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With a history like this, it is no surprise public discourse has consistently, and in some ways progressively, fallen short of Habermas’ ideal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Works Cited</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Bolter, David J. and Richard Grusin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remediation: Understanding New Media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>Cambridge</st1:place></st1:city>: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">MIT, 2000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Habermas, Jurgen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Bourgeois Society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1962.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trans. Thomas Burger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>Cambridge</st1:place></st1:city>: MIT, 1989.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Hovey, Kenneth A. and Gregory S. Jackson. Introduction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Cotton Mather 1663-1728.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Heath <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anthology of American Literature</i>. 5<sup>th</sup> ed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vol. A. Gen. ed. Paul Lauter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>Boston</st1:place></st1:city>: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Houghton Mifflin, 2006.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>507-9.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Mather, Cotton.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Title page.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wonders of the Invisible World</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:place>New England</st1:place>, 1693. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Google <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Images</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Web. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>25 September 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Webster, Frank.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Theories of the Information Society</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>3<sup>rd</sup> Ed. Routledge: <st1:city><st1:place>London</st1:place></st1:city>, 2006.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504995612018814638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2981154630072584676.post-62146494544021182362012-09-22T08:28:00.002-07:002012-09-22T08:28:17.089-07:00Becoming a Global Citizen<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I often read the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Los Angeles Times</i> as a respite from homework during meals at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do so mostly for its entertainment value, and as a writer, to reflect on the rhetorical strategies employed in its often-editorialized coverage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A couple of things came to mind this morning as I read Benjamin Barber’s Op-Ed piece, “Think Globally, <st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place>America</st1:place></st1:country>.” First, I realized I would have skipped this piece entirely had I not just spent the early morning reading about globalization in Frank Webster’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Theories of the Information Society</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I generally skip over the “world news” section because of its seeming irrelevance to my life and the reality that “we” already have enough problems here in the <st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place>United States</st1:place></st1:country> as it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Webster’s discussion of globalization primed me to have a more open mind, so I didn’t skip Barber’s piece just because of its title.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Barber sums up his position:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Political conventions won't take up global issues until politicians are willing to do so; politicians won't think or talk like cosmopolitans until citizens applaud them for global realism; and citizens won't be ready to cross the traditional national frontiers that have defined their parochialism until an information-grounded media help them grasp the meaning of interdependence, which is about bridges not walls, cooperation not frontiers, commonality not exceptionalism.<span class="MsoFootnoteReference"> <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2981154630072584676#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">In pointing out the deficiencies at each level of political activity, he offers a means to remedy them, a means which starts with individual Americans having access to globally-relevant information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Specifically, this is a call to American media sources, our primary information-providers, to alter the breadth and depth of their coverage to create a more world-savvy public, a public which knows its fate is inextricably linked with the fates of those beyond our immediate borders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">An hour earlier, Webster had already introduced me to this connectedness: that globalization “signals the growing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">interdependence </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">interpenetration </i>of human relations alongside the increasing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">integration </i>of the world’s socio-economic life” (69).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although Webster does not propose a plan of action like Barber, he similarly concludes by calling attention to the role of information in our evolving global society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He explains that the economics and politics of our relatively cocooned “nation state” are dependent on “conditions [which] are increasingly rare in the days of global marketing, frenetic foreign exchange dealings and enterprises located at multiple points around the world” (74-5), and that, as information has facilitated many of these innovations, so is it integral to adapting to the consequent changes (97).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>With this fresh in mind, I could not help but reflect on my position in relation to globalization and my heretofore perspective of isolationism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This led me to my second realization: that every day when I skip sections of the paper, I undermine Barber’s position by undermining the “information-grounded” media’s ability to reach me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course not all that purports to be “world news” is worth a critical eye, and I do not think my local newspaper is exactly the best source, but my attitude thus far has been clear: I would rather stay secure in the problems with which I’m familiar than take the risk of exposing myself to the reality of the world around me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As both Webster and Barber point out, my world is changing, and to understand and appreciate my agency in this changing world, I must have access to information. There seems to be no dearth of information; now I just need to choose to access it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Barber, Benjamin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Think Globally, <st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place>America</st1:place></st1:country>.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Op-Ed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Los Angeles</i></st1:place></st1:city><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Times</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:date day="20" month="9" year="2012">20 Sept. 2012</st1:date>: A19.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Webster, Frank.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Theories of the Information Society</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>3<sup>rd</sup> Ed. Routledge: <st1:city><st1:place>London</st1:place></st1:city>, 2006.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2981154630072584676#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: x-small;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> <span style="font-size: 10pt;">Here is a link for the rest of Barber’s text:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span></span><a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-barber-interdependence-20120921,0,5337193.story"><span style="color: purple; font-family: Times New Roman;">http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-barber-interdependence-20120921,0,5337193.story</span></a></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504995612018814638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2981154630072584676.post-21185711424669872022012-09-14T18:18:00.003-07:002012-09-14T18:18:46.744-07:00The Voting Public: Power and Mass Culture<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">According to Bolter and Grusin, remediation of the self involves the reflexive influencing of media by social conventions and of social conventions by media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Adorno and Horkheimer, conversely, see the remediations of the self by media as a direct result of society’s power structure perpetuating itself by appropriating media for the purpose of shaping “selves” into “the masses.” Specifically, in their chapter, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” they explain, “It is claimed that standards were based in the first place on consumers’ needs, and for that reason were accepted with so little resistance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The result is the circle of manipulation and retroactive need in which the unity of the system grows even stronger” (1113).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For them, the culture industry functions as a means for social control by remediating consumers’ needs to suit the political and economic objectives of the few in power who wish to stay in power.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This shaping of individuals into consumer identities has social and political implications in a much more direct sense as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In his discussion of voting behavior and public ideology in <em>Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society</em>, Jurgen Habermas provides the following excerpt:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Were one to compress into one sentence what the ideology of mass culture actually amounts to, one would have to present it as a parody of the statement, “Become what you are”: as a glorifying reduplication and rejustification of the state of affairs that exists anyway, while foregoing all transcendence and critique (216).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The excerpt is followed by an end note, and I incorrectly assumed that it stemmed from an earlier reference to Raymond Aron.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the same, I could not help but write “A&H” in the margin, and as it happens, I did so for good reason. When I looked it up, this statement did indeed come from Theodor Adorno.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>With this reference, Habermas links voter participation and the political decisions of the public with already established power structures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Habermas connects political ideology to mass culture, and from there, calls upon Adorno to connect mass culture to the stifling of public incentive to action.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The insidiousness of the phrase, “Become what you are,” lies in its apparent espousing of the greatness of being yourself while it simultaneously implies that there is no need to attempt improvement, no room for personal change or growth. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like the consumers who believe their cultural preferences reflect who they are as individuals, voters recognize themselves the most when supplied with ideology in line with what they already think. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hearing their own views simply “generate(s) a rather homogenous climate of opinion” (Habermas 213), and from that perspective, hearing opposing views only realigns voters all the more with theeir own party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The prescience of Habermas’ observation is striking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here we are, over forty years later, approaching an intensely polarized and hostile presidential election: both the party leaders and the voting blocs which pledge allegiance to them have abandoned any pretense of fostering a public united in its efforts toward a common good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, each party strives for extremism because their constituents know their way is the right way so the more extreme their opposition to their foes, the more justified and righteous they feel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The majority of the voting public is aligned with one or the other extreme position, whether they believe in them in their entirety or not, just as sports fans are aligned with teams and consumers are aligned with particular brands, both without question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Identification leads to loyalty, loyalty fuels identification, and how and with what we identify shapes who we are and how we act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than practice a critical self- and social awareness, these voters sustain their senses of who they are by sustaining the status quo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Works Cited</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Bolter, David J. and Richard Grusin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remediation: Understanding New Media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>Cambridge</st1:place></st1:city>: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">MIT, 2000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Habermas, Jurgen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Bourgeois Society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1962.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trans. Thomas Burger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>Cambridge</st1:place></st1:city>: MIT, 1989.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Deception.” Excerpt from Dialectic of Enlightenment. 1947.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Norton Anthology of <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Theory and Criticism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. 2nd ed. <st1:state><st1:place>New York</st1:place></st1:state>: Norton, 2010.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1110-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">1127.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504995612018814638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2981154630072584676.post-69053694064409113472012-09-10T15:41:00.001-07:002012-09-14T18:44:37.843-07:00Remediating Identities<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> In <em>Remediation</em>, Bolter and Grusin write: <span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">“This is the claim implicit in most cultural studies analyses of popular media: that film and television embody or carry economic and cultural ideologies and that we should study media principally in order to uncover and learn to resist their ideologies (Kellner, 1995).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although it is true that the formal qualities of the medium reflect their social and economic significance, it is equally true that the social and economic aspects reflect the formal or technical qualities” (67-8).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">To understand this conclusion, we first must accept Bolter and Grusin's theory of the reflexive nature of the relationship between older and newer media. Specifically, newer media contain vestiges of older media, re-forming them in order capitalize on audiences' existing attraction to them as well as their desire for something more immediate, an improvement upon the sense of immediacy provided. This relationship is reflexive, though, because older media are just as capable, and in order to stay relevant, just as likely to remediate newer media. The result is a dialectic of remediation which blurs the lines between older and newer media. </span><span style="font-size: small;">The above quote is an extrapolation of this theory of reflexivity to apply to the relationship between media and identity.</span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here's an example: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVyBdz3kHm60Hj-uHpRjCyt2z5dAgHbGVQSVcnsi06tchLVwwdzZW372mjzzsKwJFvWTMJcFdNbTU7RQUiHxKOPbm1LnPexbPI5FuWc6DloWsuyvRj6hnOAsuzwOk43jHPbkNpiOEXK2wI/s400/EPSON003.JPG" width="290" /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The image constitutes the cover of an older medium: the ink and paper magazine. This older medium remediates the even older medium of written language by juxtaposing it in a hypermediated way with the medium of "realistic" photography. The remediations don't stop there, however, as the reflexive relationship of remediation is pronounced by the language of the text: "Life is a series of reboots." Here, the older media of written language and paper magazines remediates the language of computer technology. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In line with the notion that media contain social and economic significance, this remediation of the language of newer media functions as a remediation of the real. By reframing "life" in the context of computer speak, the creative forces behind this image imply an intrinsic connection between our immediate experience and computer technology. Our sense of ourselves in the "real" world is shaped by this association, and it is hard not to proceed from there to the idea that we are then more inclined to further understand ourselves in relation to computer technology and other "newer" media. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Although Bolter and Grusin seem to almost defend the innocence of media by suggesting an equality between media shaping and being shaped by culture, this reflexivity is all the more reason why culture and media should be analyzed together. There is no need to blame media for shaping culture any more than there is a need to blame culture for its media, but using the material evidence of media--both what it represents and what message that representation sends--we can better understand how and why our culture functions as it does.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As the above image illustrates, there is a valuation of newer media as more related to our lives today than older media, and this valuation appeals to the sophistication of users of newer media to get them to use this older media. The reverse is also possible: users of older media (e.g. magazine readers) gain a sense of authenticity in the hypermediacy of realizing they recognize a technological reference--they are more technologically savvy than they might have thought. Either way, the attraction of newer media is valued even in an effort to protect the value of older media, and</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> this is indicative of both a representation and the further shaping of contemporary cultural values. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Bolter, David J. and Richard Grusin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remediation: Understanding New Media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>Cambridge</st1:place></st1:city>: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">MIT, 2000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17504995612018814638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2981154630072584676.post-922969971982865142012-09-05T09:03:00.001-07:002012-09-14T18:44:56.304-07:00Linked Media: Hypermediacy, Immediacy, and Remediation<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The very fact that the "new media" of video games, social networking sites, and movies simultaneously achieve both immediacy and hypermediacy, and that this can be assessed in terms of their remediations of other media, shows that there really is no "new media" at all. Using Bolter and Grusin's <em>Remediation</em>, we first analyzed the online video game, ATV Pizza Delivery from Freeaddictinggames.com. </span><br />
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<a href="http://www.freeaddictinggames.com/game/atv-pizza-delivery/"><span style="color: purple; font-family: Times New Roman;">http://www.freeaddictinggames.com/game/atv-pizza-delivery/</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">In its remediations of older home-console video games, and even further removed, arcade games, it aims for a degree of authenticity through immediacy: the car follows the basic physics of driving by spinning out or stalling out upon collision with other vehicles, and there is an immediacy in the response of the car to our manipulation of the keys that attempts to replicate the experience of manipulating the controls of a vehicle. However, hypermediacy dominates, as is typical of most internet-based media. There are advertisements popping up around the game's window, and there is not only the option to stop the game, skip games, and replay the game, but also to open up a whole new window and explore other media without completely leaving the game. Further, what seems like a poor attempt at immediacy--getting the car to do what we wanted by pressing the keys--actually functions as hypermediacy in its calling attention to the game's frustrating limitations. But, circling back, the limitations of this "contact point" (30) between us and the "car" provide a double sense of immediacy by replicating the experience of driving a car at high speeds (since they are difficult to control), and further, by manufacturing an authentic and immediate experience of frustration that corresponds to what is commonly felt while driving in traffic. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Next, we looked at Sasha Ordowskij's profile page on Facebook:</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/sasha.ordowskij"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/sasha.ordowskij</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This, too, screams of hypermediacy, and only through this hypermediated experience do we achieve any semblance of immediacy. The immediacy of photography is called upon and remediated into digital photography that is then incorporated into a hyper-(re)mediated collage of information including other pictures, videos, text comments, and links to a remediated resume and a remediated biography.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This experience of Sasha, however, is not diminished by hypermediacy; rather, the saturating barrage of information purportedly selected by her provides an immediate sense of “knowing” her that surpasses the degree of knowledge one would gain just by meeting her face-to-face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once again, remediation replicates authentic experience in the interplay between hypermediacy and immediacy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Finally, we watched a scene from <em>Leon, the Professional</em>:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQZlHnwqhgM&t=1m48s">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQZlHnwqhgM&t=1m48s</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This appears to be more immediate than the video game and Facebook page in its timely and realistic dialogue, its grittiness, the design and furnishing of the living space, and the expected interactions and reactions of the characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This immediacy is achieved through the filmic remediation of photographic technology with each shift in camera angle and the editing and cutting of scenes facilitating the progression of story and time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hypermediacy is also used in the service of immediacy in the process of remediation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance, the hypermediacy of products available at a typical grocery store is remediated into Mathilda’s immediate experience of shopping which rings true for viewers who expect shopping to be like that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">These three “new media” certainly offer avenues toward an authentic experience, but evidently, none of them are actually “new.” As Bolter and Grusin explain, “Media are continually commenting on, reproducing, and replacing each other” (55), and this shows the dependence of what we think of as “new” media upon what is “old” as well as how “old” media can remediate what is “new.” This, in turn, highlights the interdependence of the concepts of immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are defined by each other, just as newer media is defined by its relation to older media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each medium attempts to create an authentic experience by appealing to its audience’s desire for relation and connection; that two seemingly opposing strategies must be used in tandem reveals how complex modern rhetoric must be in reaching a diverse audience.<br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Bolter, David J. and Richard Grusin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remediation: Understanding New Media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>Cambridge</st1:place></st1:city>: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">MIT, 2000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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