User:Tancre/Special Issue 8/Notes

Networks & Ideology

Notes on the texts of Special Issue 8

Special Issue's texts

ART & DEMOCRACY | Chantal Mouffe

art as an agnostic intervention in public space public space as a battleground for the hegemony of a project vs reconciliation. Artistic practices can subvert the hegemony visualizing the repressed and destroyed by the consensus of post-political democracy.

Can art still be critical when compromised by advertising and atists become part of capitalist production? // I think yes but in a weak way, by showing its weakness

Boltanski, Chiapello - the new spirit of capitalism, 2005 demands for autonomy of the '60s has been used in the development of post-fordist networked economy and transformed in new forms of control. >> counterculture, authenticity, self-management, anti-hierarchicality, promote the new capitalist regulation vs the disciplinary framework of the fordist period.

Artistic and cultural production and critique, central role in capital valorisation through 'neo-management'. >> impossibility of art to be critical because automatically neutralized // in this way it is critical but paradoxically. weak criticism VS Andre Gorz - when self-exploitation central role in valorization, production of subjectivity as terrain of central conflict. by contrast it appear as a political dimention, extention of the capital, and rise the possibility of a resistance. // showing a flat and always same political dimention is a symptom of weakness and passive resistance >> opening of new strategies of opposition (living, consuming, collective appropriation of common spaces and everyday culture) // this is still a weak criticism

modernist avant-gard ideas are abbandoned but // a good way could be to rethink the avant-gard >> undermine the imaginary environment of total social mobilization of capital by inteveining in social spaces // is the intervention in social spaces a situationist reappropriation, so avantgardistic? it seems a weak act without memory, the ultimate act of screaming its sufference in a self-sacrification Brian Holmes - art as chance for society to reflect on the imaginary figures it depends, for its understanding and consistency // are the imaginary figures the very objects of art? does this means what is a space, form, color and how they are relate to each other and to the human being. are those the only things on which art really depend?

Possibility of critical role of art but only through understanding the dynamics of democratic politics, acknowledge the political in its antagonistic dimension and contingent nature of any type of social order. Only in this way is possible to grasp the hegemonic struggle of democratic politics where art can play a crucial role. // the real relation between art and human being create a political knowledge of how control methods are applied both to science and art compromising them. it is not only about understand the politics but about a understand better what is art, related to design and science to create a political system that doesn't exploit how those works. Let art develope its own ideology VS impose an ideology on art

The political as antagonism Difficulty in the post-political age to envisage problems in a political way. Political qeustions not as mere technical issues to be solved by experts (neo-liberal point of view) but choice between conflicting alternatives. Liberalism as philosophical discourse based on rationalism and individualism (wittgenstein - family resemblance) unable to grasp the pluralistic nature of social world, because there is no a rational solution but dimension of antagonism. Liberalism negate the antagonism as it see harmony in the totality of pluralities, and rationalise belief in the possibility of a universal consensus based on reason, while antagonism reveals the very limit of rational consensus.

Politics as hegemony In an ever-present possibility of antagonism, politics, requires coming to term with the impossibility, undecidability of a final ground, hegemonic nature of every kind of social order and society as order in a contingent context. Political as hegemonic insitution. In this sense political is different from social, sedimented practices that conceal their contingent political institution, taken for garanted as self-grounded and constitutive part of any possible society. Social and political as existentials (heidegger) as necessary dimensions of any social life. Political as hegemonic, involves the visibility of the acts of social institutions revealing its order from the temporary and precarious contingent practices VS logic exterior to itself (forces of production, laws of history, development of Spirit). Things can be always otherwise and every order exclude others. >> Political because expression of a particular structure of power relations >> Power as constitutive of the social Natural order in a given moment as a result of sedimented hegemonic practices, no deeper objectivity >> every order is political and based on exclusion of other possibilities that are repressed and can be reactivated. This process of order is a hegemonic practice, and every hegemonic prder can be challanged by a counter-hegemonic practice that attempt to disarticulate the existing order and install another hegemony.

Agonistic struggle as the core of a vibrant democracy, very configuration of power relations around which a society is structured. Struggle based on the opposition of unreconcilable hegemonic projects. In this optic, democracy requires to comes to term with the contingent hegemonic politicoeconomal articulation of a given society in a given moment. Precarious and pragmatic constructions that can be disarticulated and transformed in the agonistic struggle vs adversaries.

Liberal Models vs Recognize that society is always politically instituted and each hegemonic interventions is the autcome of a previous hegemoic practices that is never neutral. This is why it denies the possibility of a non-adversarial democratic politics and criticize who ignore the political dimension reducing it to a set of supposedly technical moves and neutral procedures.

the public space agonistic model of democratic politics for artistic practices, in visualizing the public space. Conception of public space as the terrain where consensus can emerge VS battleground where different hegemonic projects are confronted without possibility of riconciliation.

• Public spaces are always plural and the agonistic confrontation on multiple discursive surfaces.
• No unity or a predetermined center to this diversity of spaces. Diverse forms of articulation among them. no dispersion as post-modernist thinkers or 'smooth' space (Deleuze).

>> Public spaces are always striated and hegemonically structured, result of a specific articulation of a diversity of spaces. Hegemonic struggle as an attempt to create a different articulation between public spaces.

Habermas - public space as public sphere, place where deliberation aimed at a rational consensus takes place. But regulative idea, improbability to reach consensus. << but conceptual impossibility as ontological impediments, not empirical, because it would require the possibility of a consensus without exclusion, for the agonistic approach is impossible.

Arendt - agonism without antagonism. Emphasis on human plurality and politics deal with the community and reciprocity of human beings which are different. To think politically is to develop the ability to see things from a multiplicity of perspectives. ref to Kant - 'enlarged thought', so her pluralism is not fundamentally different from the liberal one, because inscribed in an intersubjective agreement, so a procedure to accertaining it in the public sphere. << but no plurality as the origin of antagonistic conflicts

Both envisage the public space in a consensual way. Zerilli - Arendt consensus results from the exchange of voices and opinions, streiten, agreement through persuasion VS Habermas rational discours, Kantian disputieren, exchange of arguments constraied by logical rules But neither of them is able to acknowledge the hegemonic nature of consensus and antagonism, the moment of wiederstreit (Lyotard - the differend). Both find their inspiration in Kant but they priviledge the beautiful in the aesthetic and ignore the sublime. this is related to their avoidance of the differend.

critical artistic practices and hegemony art and politics not as two separated fields but aesthetic aspect in politics and political in art. >> useless to distinct political and non-political art. In the theory of hegemony art maintain or challange the given symbolic order and this is its political aspect. The political concearn the symbolic order of social relation (lefort - mise en forme) and this is its aesthetic dimension. Which are the different typologies of critical art? those who advocate the creation of agonistic public spaces to unveil the repressed forms from the dominant consensus. vs artistic practices for consensus. Critical art foment dissensus by giving a voice to the silenced. Richard Noble - 4 distinct ways of making critical art

• engages critically with political reality (kruger, haacke, sierra)
• explore subject positions or identities defined by otherness,marginality,oppression,victimization (feminist art,queer art,ethnic or religious minorities art, wodiczko)
• investigates its own political condition of production and circulation (fraser, muller, dion)
• utopian experimentation, attempts to imagine alternative ways of living (hirshhorn, deller,gormley)

>> agonistic interventions in the public space with the aim to don't do a total break with the existing state of affairs to create something absolutely new. Avant-garde is no possible anymore for radical critique but not a reason to proclaim that their political role is ended, is needed the idea of be political means to offer a radical critique. this is intended badly as a neutralization such as who intend radicality as transgression or art in moralistic terms. But those approaches are anti-political because unable to grasp the specificity of the political. With the theory of hegemony you can see how artists play an important role in subverting the dominant hegemony by bringing to the fore the repressed character and contributing to the construction of new subjectivities, crucial dimension of the radical democratic project.

Notes from RADICAL NETWORKS

themes
mass surveillance & over-commercialization of the www/ free and open internet/ computer networks/ DIY networking/ offline networks/ portable web servers/ mesh networks/ internet gateways/ localized networks/ experimental applications/political activism/ network security/ artistic use of networks/ personal networks/ bringing connectivity to rural areas/ experimental social networks/control and ownership of networks/ ethical hacking/stup own VPN/sniff packets/ map complex networks

questions
What would you do with your own network?
Why does it matter to understand how networks work?
Why do community networks matter?
How could free, open local networks benefit people?
What can networks be used for other than social networking and commercial use?

DECENTRALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENT | Sarah Friend

what is there outside of centralization that is still centralized?

political movements > decentralized socialism (mao) economical > free-market internet > re-decentrilize the web because early internet was decentralized (ARPANET / USENET) //idea of clusters or density

ARPANET - decentralization for survive catastrophic events but military motivation //theme of survive massive segmentation

quantifying decentralization intersectional decentralization, interrelatedness

do people want decentralization? and which?

decentralized manufacturing > liber router / raspberry pi / 3d printer

can we decentralized the building of centralized networks? specialization and centralization as connected concepts

Notes from PERVASIVE LABOUR UNION

Issue #1 | Terms of service

• the commodification of the image > the invisible body of terms of service
  

//how burocracy is hidden inside the software, exploits the soft part of software(code) has hard to read, burocracy as a formal code?

• network effect, life bounded with networks, exploitation hidden under 'social',
  

>>user data control and transparency from a bottom- up perspective, where users push for data controllers to respect their rights by means of negotiation, rejecting the fake binary approach upheld by social media monopolies

Issue #9 | XMPP

daniel gultsch - conversations
xmpp / omemo
trust not mediated by an app + scale from large-centered services to small-decentralized

FEMINIST SERVER MANIFESTO | Constant

control that allow insecurity? need of a safe space Paranode > nodecentrism, we focus on the node in a network, but multitude of paranodes in between which dont conform to the organising logic of network, and cannot be seen through the algorithms of the network. Not utopia, it is not nowhere but somewhere (beyond the nodes). Not a heterotopia, ince it is not outside the network. Paranodal as Atopia because it constitute a difference that is everywhere. ...

RW&RM texts

from SELECTIONS FROM THE PRISON NOTEBOOKS | Antonio Gramsci

HISTORY OF THE SUBALTERN CLASSES

Unity of the ruling class is realised in the state and their history. not only as juridical and political but results from the organic relations between state (political society) and civil society (see 'state and civil society').
Unification of subaltern classes is only possible in becoming a State, while their history is interwined with civil society, and history of states. necerrasy to study:
1. objective formation of subaltern social groups, developments/transformations in economic production, quantitative diffusion, origin and pre-existing social groups (mentality, ideology and aims).
2. their active or passive affiliation to the dominant political formations, attempts to influence the programmers of those to press claims of their own,and consequences in determining processes of decomposition/renovation/neo-formation
3. birth of new parties of the dominant groups to conserve the assent of subaltern groups and maintain control over them
4. formations in subaltern groups to press claims of a limited and partial character (trade unions)
5. formations which assert autonomy of the subaltern groups, but within the old framework (reformist parties)
6. formation which assert intgral autonomy (communist)

THE CONCEPT OF IDEOLOGY

Ideology was an aspect of sensationalism (1700 french materialism). 'science of ideas' which analyse ideas, investigation of ideas. Ideas had to be broken in their original elements that could be just sensations. Ideas derived from sensations.
but sensationalism associated with extreme belief of 'power of the spirit' and its 'immortal destinies' (manzoni) even after its conversion. Chatolicism adhere in principle to sensationalism until philosophy of rosmini.
How historical passage from 'science of ideas' to 'system of ideas'?
Freud as the last of ideologues and also De Man (interest of Croce and Crocean)
Bukharin - popular manual, trapped in ideology whereas marxism as a distinct advance and historically in opposition to ideology. Ideology in marxism as negative value and excludes ideas as sensations for its founders, but in phisiology. Ideology must be analysed historically as a superstructure.
Element of error in assessing the value of ideologies because name ideology in both
necessary superstructure of a particular structure / arbitrary elucubrations of particular individuals
The bas sense has become widespread with the effect of a modified and denatuirates analysis of this concept. The process leading to this can be resumed:
1. ideology identified as distinct from the structure, and assertion that ideology changes the structure and not viceversa.
2. it is asserted that a given political solution is ideological (not sufficient to change the structure althought it thinks that it can, so it is stupid, useless)
3. assertion that every ideology is pure appearence, useless,stupid

But one must distinguish between historically organic ideologies (necessary to a given structure) and ideologies that are rationalistic, arbitrary, willed. To the extent that ideologies are historically necessary they have a validity that is psychological, organise human masses, create terrain on which man move, acquire consciousness of their position,struggle ... While the arbitrary creates individual movements, polemics and so on (tho not completely useless, since they function like an error which by contrasting with truth, demonstrates it).
Marx 'solidity of popular beliefs' as a necessary element of a specific situation, a popular convinction often has the same energy as a material force.
Analysis of those propositions tends to reinforce the conception of historical bloc in which material forces are the content and ideologies the form, tho distinction between form and content has didactic value, since material forces would be inconceivable historically without form and ideologies individual without material forces.

CULTURAL THEMES:IDEOLOGICAL MATERIAL

study of how the ideological structure of a dominant class is organized:material organization to maintain/defend/develope the theoretical or ideological 'front.' Most prominent and dynamic part is the press: publishing houses (which have an implicit and explicit programme and are linked to a particular tendency), political news, periodicals, bullettin...
This study in a national scale would be gigantic but in a city or more. A news editor should have this study as outline for his work, make his own version. Press as the most dynamic part of ideological structure, but not he only one. Everything which is capable to influence public opinion, directly or not: libraries, schools, associations, clubs, architecture, the layout and names of streets.
Position in the Church in modern society through the constant effort to develope continuously its material structure ideology. Very importance of this study!!! living historical model + accustom to a more cautious and exact estimate of the forces acting society. What resources can be used against this formidable complex of trenches and fortification of the dominant class? Spirit of scission, progressive acquisition of the consciousness of its own historical personality, aim to spread itself from the protagonist class to the potential allies classes. All this requires a complex ideological labour, exact knowledge of the field that must be cleared of its element of human 'mass'.

THE RULING CLASS AND THE RULING IDEAS | Marx & Engels

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas
who rule the material force of society (means of production) automatically rule the intellectual force (mental production).
Ruling ideas > ideal expression of the dominant material relations.

Individuals in the ruling class possess consciousness and think.
As they determine the extent, compass of anhistorical epoch, regualte production and distribution of the ideas of their age > ruling ideas of the epoch (presented as eternal laws ex. 'separation of powers').
Division of labour (one of the chief forces of history) manifests itself also in the ruling class:

• mental - formation of the illusions of the class
• material - passive to the illusion but active members of the class

If conflict that endangered the class, automatically vanish, and vanish also the appearence of the ideas as not the idea of the ruling class because distinct power from the power of the class. Existence of revolutionary ideas presuppose revolutionary class.
If ideas are independent but the class gives to those ideas universality presenting them as the only rational, to carry their interest as the common interest, expressed in ideal forms.

The class making revolution comes forward only if opposed to a class, not as a class but as the representative of the whole society VS one ruling class. It can do this because pressure of existing condition while not yet being able to develop a particular interest of a particular class. Its victory benefits individuals of other classes, not as dominant but enable them to raise into the ruling class. (Frenche revolution could have allowed proletarian to raise). Every new class achive domination only on a broader basis than the one before, but also more sharply and profoundly opposition.
This determine the fact that all the struggle against this new class becomes more radical negation of the previous conditions of society than all previous classes could have.
This whole appearence of the rule of aclass as only the rule of certain ideas, comes to and end with the end of class rule as form in which society is organised, when it is not necessary to represent a particular interest as general or general interest as ruling.

Once ruling ideas separated from ruling individuals and material relations, with the conclusion that history is always under the sway of ideas, it is very easy to abstract 'the Idea' as the dominant force in history, and separate ideas as 'forms of self-determination' of the main concept. So all the relations of man cames from the concept of Man (speculative philosophy, Hegel).

Trick of proving the hegemony of the spirit in history confined in 3 attempts:

• separate ideas of those ruling for empirical reasons, empircal conditions and as corporeal individuals, from these rulers, and thus recognise the rule of ideas or illusions in history
• order into this rule of ideas, prove mystical connection among the successive, by regarding them as 'forms of self-determination of the concept'
• remove mystical appearance of this 'self-determining concept' it is changed into a person 'self-consciousness' or series of persons who represent the 'concept' in history, into the ideologists as the manufacturers of history, 'council of guardians', as the rulers. Eliminate materialistic elements from history and given to the speculative steed.

This method reigned in Germany, illusion of ideologists in general, dogmatic dreamings and distortions, explained from theis practical position in life, job, division of labour.
While shopkeeper can distinguish between what somebody professes to be and what he really is, historiograph has not this insight and takes what words about itself says of an epoch as truth.