[iDC] "recursive publics"

Anna Munster A.Munster at unsw.edu.au
Sat Jul 11 01:44:51 UTC 2009


>

David, Jodi, Chris,
> David Clark's phrase 'We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We  
> believe in: rough consensus and running code', in other words the  
> 'test of worth' of functioning software together with the witnessing  
> of that performance which will give a technical consensus to the  
> solution to a (usually) technical problem. This I think helps  
> unpacks the notion of 'justice' within particular spheres and allows  
> us to look for moments when a test is being made, and whether that  
> test has legitimacy and is accepted by the participants.
>
>

But isn't the presumption above still toward 'consensus' and then the  
dynamic is one that wants to achieve some form of 'rough' consensus as  
its outcome? Hence we are still operating in some very embedded way  
around a notion of  the social contract, with all of a particular  
'public' working toward an agreed goal, and in which a liberal  
framework of 'justice' finds its origins (if Foucault is right, then  
this is also the basis for neoliberalism and hence market-propelled  
forms of sociality).

Wouldn't recursion insert an unpredictable - hence the potential for  
nonconsenual - element into the mix? Surely this is immanent to the  
dynamics of 'dynamic' (Terranova on the 'incompatible' in network  
dynamics, Spehr on the right to withdraw in 'free cooperation')?

If we are looking for moments when a test is being made we surely need  
to focus on the inventive failures (and noninventive ones too) that  
are produced in the wake of a test's 'crash or when a dynamic takes  
the sphere in an unpredictable direction. Otherwise we end up back  
with a notion of a public made up of 'user-testing', on a product that  
is in some way already 'agreed upon' . Sounds very much to me like  
prosumer-based capitalism!

best
Anna


>
>
>
> Dean, Jodi wrote:
>>
>> Jodi says:
>>     Another way to put this: the justice of the market is not the  
>> same as political justice.
>>
>> Chris replies:
>>
>> okay, i'll bite, what is the difference?
>>
>>
>> Jodi:
>>
>> in a market, the agreement of buyer and seller makes something  
>> just; this is understood as price (under the assumption that  
>> markets achieve equilibrium).
>>
>> there are different versions of political justice. some of these  
>> versions meet up and conflict with price, so:
>>
>> --justice requires that some things not be sold, that some things  
>> have no price
>> --justice requires an equal outcome
>> --justice requires participation in the constitution of the site of  
>> exchange
>> --justice requires basic conditions that come prior to exchange
>> --justice requires mindfulness of the long term/future generations
>>
>> with the last one, we get into different kinds of justice
>> --justice in rectifications
>> --justice in the distribution of responsibilities and rights
>> --the characteristics of just laws and procedures
>>
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>
> -- 
>
> Dr David M. Berry
>
> Media and Communications Department
> School of Arts
> University of Wales Swansea
> Swansea
> SA2 8PP
> Wales, UK
>
> Email: D.M.Berry at swansea.ac.uk
> Tel: x2633
> Web: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/academic/Arts/berryd/
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A/Prof. Anna Munster
Assistant Dean, Grant Support
Acting Director Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics
School of Art History and Art Education
College of Fine Arts
UNSW
P.O. Box 259
Paddington
NSW 2021
612 9385 0741 (tel)
612 9385 0615(fax)
a.munster at unsw.edu.au











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