[iDC] Identification and dis-identification
Brian Holmes
brian.holmes at aliceadsl.fr
Mon Jun 15 20:01:50 UTC 2009
Ulises Mejias just offered a fascinating proposal for
understanding the structure of inclusion and exclusion in a
networked society, as well as the possibilities for voluntary
disengagement or dis-identification. That seems to me like a
great departure point, and I'm curious to see the full paper.
Just to remind you what's at stake, here's a key quote from his
short sketch:
"In my work, I argue that digital technosocial networks (DTSNs)
function not just as metaphors to describe sociality, but as full
templates or models for organizing it. Since in order for
something to be relevant or even visible within the network it
needs to be rendered as a node, DTSNs are constituted as
totalities by what they include as much as by what they exclude.
I propose a framework for understanding the epistemological
exclusion embedded in the structure and dynamics of DTSNs, and
for exploring the ethical questions associated with the nature of
the bond between the node and the excluded other. Contrary to its
depiction in diagrams, the outside of the network is not empty
but inhabited by multitudes that do not conform to the organizing
logic of the network. Thus, I put forth a theory for how the
peripheries of the network represent an ethical resistance to the
network, and I suggest that these peripheries, the only sites
from which it is possible to un-think the network episteme, can
inform emerging models of identity and sociality."
That last seems brilliant to me! But to really understand the
proposal we need to know what you're defining as a network,
Ulises. After all, the Internet itself is a network of networks;
and social network theory could distinguish other systems and
subsystems, not only online but in all sorts of offline relations
that networked information flows help to organize. So definitely
tell us more about this proposal as you develop it. Whatever
approach you take I'm sure it's going to be interesting, because
you raise what I think is the crucial question: that of
identification and dis-identification with networked society. At
this point I would say some kind of rupture, some kind of break
is essential. And that moment of dis-identification is all too
rare. In fact, that's exactly why Rancière says that politics is
rare.
For some people on this list, the networked society is making
great progress toward co-operative social interaction. For others
there is far too much consensus about contemporary society's
concepts of the good life and about its ways of obtaining it. One
of the reasons we disagree is that we define "networks" very
differently: some of us look only at the web itself, while others
look at the whole tissue of networked society. Another thing that
makes our discussions unclear is that we've been focusing almost
solely on "exploitation" to describe what's wrong with the
so-called "peer networks" of Web 2.0. I want to delve into both
those issues a little more closely.
Trebor has made a serious attempt to find cases of exploitation
happening via Web 2.0. His prime example is Amazon's "Mechanical
Turk": an interface for buying and selling of
information-processing services, where the buyer can easily take
advantage of geographical and class differences in the acceptable
rate of pay. It's interesting, particularly because of the image
that Amazon has used to promote the service. The "Mechanical
Turk" is an exotically racialized automaton, an elaborate
chess-playing machine which is actually a fake, and hides the
human being who makes the moves in reality. But isn't this just
the everyday experience of the consumer in the networked economy
of neoliberal globalization?
We navigate a web interface and order a product which is
delivered effortlessly to our door. Meanwhile we spend some more
time playing with social media, maybe talking with people on the
other side of the world. What we don't see and usually don't want
to see are the complex supply lines linking our consumption to
others' production. The educated middle classes are all excited
about becoming cyborgs, but the world around us, both near and
far, is full of flesh-and-blood human beings subject to labor
exploitation, ecological decay, police oppression and outright
war. The thing I don't get, Trebor, is why just look for
exploitation happening _on the web_, when there is so much
exploitation happening under the conditions of neoliberal
globalization, which as every study shows is inconceivable
without networked information flows?
The corollary of that is the possibility that our experience of
the Internet itself may in some way actually hide what's going
on, that it may serve to induct us into a privileged stratum of
global society and blind us to the need for radical change. The
corollary, in other words, is that Web 2.0 may be a locus of
ideology, a friendly kind of ideology that works very actively to
include as many people as possible. Obviously this is where I am
really struck by the message of Ulises' post. For the last
fifteen years my question - directed first of all at myself - has
been this: Why do we _tolerate_ being included in this networked
society? I think that there are cultural routines that blind us
to the dead-end path our societies are taking, and for that
reason I think that not only exploitation is an issue, but also a
technics, an aesthetics and an ideology that promote conformity,
that make dis-identification and dissent extremely rare,
especially in the USA.
Working with the same kind of material that Mark Andrejevic has
put together in his excellent-looking book iSpy (which I'm
looking forward to read by the way), I tried to define not only
the procedures of identification, but above all the structural
dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in the networked societies.
What I found is not only police techniques for identifying
deviants, criminals and terrorists, but above all a machinery of
seduction that tries to encourage and profit from the inclusion
of registered and channeled behaviors. And probably the most
impressive thing I found is the emergence of veritable control
architectures which use real-time information flows to transform
the urban environment in order to capture the desires of those
moving through it. The resulting text is called Future Map: or,
How the Cyborgs Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Surveillance,
and you can find it right here:
http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2007/09/09/future-map
Obviously I'm not convinced by the emancipatory possibilities of
really-existing corporate social media, despite the good things
about it which I don't necessarily discount or ignore. Like
Michael Bauwens, whose work is fantastic imho, I have never
thought it was enough to just get paid for gloom and doom, which
is something I dislike in a lot of post-leftist academic
production. The thing is to create dissenting and alternative
social relations, both on the hardware and protocol levels, and
also in subjective and affective experience where art can be such
a powerful and surprising force of dis- and re-identification. My
book Unleashing the Collective Phantoms: Essays in Reverse
Imagineering, is devoted to exactly that, with examples mainly
drawn from artists working the counter-globalization movements.
Now, clearly the artistic activism that I love involves something
like the kind of play that Pat Kane talks about (and amusingly, I
too have written about Schiller's aesthetics, I'll put that essay
online if anyone's interested). We are not squarely opposed, Pat,
but the difference is that I have always considered play to be an
ambiguous possibility, which can be used for both entrapment and
liberation. Just looking at, say, Disney Corp. ought to make that
pretty clear - as does Schiller's essay. The problem with being
an unequivocal or unambiguous proponent of homo ludens in the
post-68 societies is that you get led down the garden path by all
kinds of smart, witty and often deluded people. But those of us
who like dancing in the face of the cops and speaking pie to
power are not exactly averse to a little humor either! I've been
known to work with the Yes Men, Reclaim the Streets, EuroMayday
and so on, it can get pretty funny out there...
Recently I've tried to reframe this whole complex of questions in
cybernetic terms, in order to reply to the bleak situation
portrayed in Future Map, and to show how the social order we are
caught in can be replayed, if you will. To dis-identify, to
achieve a break, I think it's necessary to map out and then
actually flesh out alternative ways of living, which on the one
hand bring aesthetics and philosophy into play, but which are
also affective, fully embodied, social and operational. Delirious
too! That text is called Guattari's Schizoanalytic Cartographies:
The Pathic Core at the Heart of Cybernetics, and it's here:
http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/guattaris-schizoanalytic-cartographies
The discussion of identification and dis-identification on the
one hand, and of the tools, protocols and forms of alternatives
on the other, are what seem most promising to me among the themes
of this conference. I think it's a practical discussion for
people working in the universities and in the arts. What society
needs at every level are resistant minorities that can step back
from the norms, see how they function and make concrete proposals
for change, even while escaping the whole thing, embracing other
realities right here and now. If we can't acknowledge the immense
dangers of present-day society, and if we can't develop
alternative approaches at the highest technical, aesthetic and
philosophical levels, then what are we doing with our privileged
positions? That's the question I keep on asking...
best, Brian
More information about the iDC
mailing list