[iDC] The difference between privacy and anonymity

[Margaret Morse]

Dear  John,
Thanks for saying something I've been feeling.  So much has been  
written recently on the list that I can't/don't want to address it  
point by point.  My fundamental response is that distinction and  
individuation are something far older than capitalism and its link  
with commodities.  As someone from the beginning of second wave  
feminism personally would feel utterly suffocated if I had had to  
become less of an individual in order to become more of a group/ 
collective, etc.  I believe the contrary is true.  This doesn't mean  
that I haven't had that oceanic feeling or that I don't embrace social  
relations and social reality.  For me, thinking about collaboration  
allows a more dynamic and dialogic conception of the individual.

I have already made the point much earlier about having some ground up  
conversations--I believe this is a kind of theorizing too  This is not  
an attack, rather it is longing for more variety in my intellectual  
diet.

With respect,
Margaret Morse


On Sep 29, 2009, at 12:25 AM, john sobol wrote:

> This thread confuses me.
>
> On the one hand I find in it many interesting ideas, quite
> brilliantly described, and many useful and fresh insights into our
> world. And I understand that these insights are designed to yield
> results; that they are in the service of justice and some form of
> revolutionary authenticity, or are intended to be, and I very much
> respect that. But the conclusions that are drawn seem to me so
> curious that i struggle to make sense of the disconnect. For example:
>
>> Sean Cubitt wrote:
>>
>>> We cannot achieve public good without sacrificing
>>> both private property and identity.
>
> and
>
>> Brian Holmes wrote:
>
>> The first key  point you make is that the individual sense and
>> performance of a
>> private self is now deliberately (if rather chaotically) produced
>> to fit the needs of global corporate oligopolies...(snip)... You
>> draw an important conclusion: the focus on the
>> performative self and its "properties" is repressive.
>
>
> and
>
>>>
>>> Sean Cubitt wrote:
>
>>> Thesis: Privacy was only ever the privilege of a small proportion
>>> of the
>>> world's population for a brief period in history. For about 150
>>> years, the
>>> European bourgeoisie enjoyed private rooms, private water closets
>>> and a life
>>> distinct from the life of the street. That period is now over,
>>> thanks to the
>>> development of always-on, ubiquitous media. The only people left
>>> with a
>>> direct interest in privacy are wife-beaters and tax-evaders.
>>>
>
> and
>
>> Brian Holmes wrote:
>
>> under semiotic capitalism, your ultimate and perhaps your only
>> property is your personal name, your electronic signature. I am  
>> what I
>> sign.... And what's more, since the flux is globally shared, the
>> signature
>> becomes the only really identifiable difference.
>
> What I find most problematic in each of these statements is the
> willingness to make bold statements about how other people live that
> are so at odds with the way real people really appear to live.
>
> Because the people I know do not have to sacrifice private property
> and identity to achieve public good. I will give you that sacrificing
> private property is often - though by no means always - part of the
> equation, but identity is rarely disavowed where i find people
> achieving valuable public good. Surely I need not give examples.
>
> And the people I know do not seem to believe that the way they dress
> or think or talk or play music or have sex or eat or walk or run for
> mayor or play soccer or participate in listserv discussions – all of
> which involve the very intentional performance of identity – is
> inevitably experienced as repressive, as manipulative, as
> exploitation. Now, do many of them understand that our experiences as
> consumers, as workers, as lovers and all the rest play out in
> relation to the visible and invisible architectures of 'global
> corporate oligarchies'. Yes, to varying degrees, they do. But are
> those architectures not ambiguously negotiated by thinking, feeling
> beings?
>
> Well, it depends on your perspective I guess. Obviously I think they
> are. Whereas, to my mind, the stance that you celebrate in the Tiqqun
> writings, Brian, while entirely suitable for a self-centred teenager,
> is not really a mature perspective that recognizes life's
> complexities or the more subtle forms of human agency. And I don't
> mean that as an insult because we need those youthful rants and
> ravings, the Jim Morrisons and the Brothers Karamazovs and the Sex
> Pistols etc., all of which one grows out of somewhat but which serve
> a very useful purpose. Like this quote from the Tiqqun text: How Is
> It To Be Done? (http://tarnac9.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/how-is-it-
> to-be-done.pdf)
>
> "In a squat. In an orgy. In a riot. In an occupied train or village.
> We get
> together again.
> We get together again
> as whatever singularities. That is to say
> not on the basis of a common affiliation,
> but of a common presence.
> This is our
> need for communism. The need for nocturnal spaces, where we can
> get together
> beyond
> our predicates.
> Beyond the tyranny of recognition Which imposes recognition as a
> final distance between bodies.
> As an ineluctable separation.
> Everything through which ONE - my boyfriend, my family, my
> environment, my company, the state, the opinion – recognizes me is
> just that through which ONE takes me to be constrained.
> By constantly reminding me of what I am, of my qualities, ONE
> wants to extract me from each situation. ONE wants to extort from
> me, in every circumstance, a fidelity to myself which is but a  
> fidelity
> to my predicates."
>
> But do you still feel this way as an adult? Really? And if I don't
> feel this way anymore is it because I have willingly sold out my
> youthful ideals, or because I am deluded about my supposed maturity
> which is really cowardice and conformity to the global oligarchy? Or
> is it because while I still respect the transcendent spiritual,
> sexual and social orgy, I also now (at my occasional best) understand
> better its power and how to use it judiciously, not as an egotistical
> imposition on others but as an enabler of transformative connections
> that are attuned to individual and collective needs, strengths,
> dreams and scars? That to me is the rightful maturation of this
> youthful freak-out-and-fuck-off energy. Because in my experience not
> everybody should take acid or be in an orgy, not every community
> needs a revolution. But we all need to grow and find our deeper  
> selves.
>
> And the people I know do not think that privacy is passe or
> pointless. Has the Internet and surveillance culture radically
> restructured the practices of privacy? For many of us absolutely
> (though for many people in this wide world not), and clearly this is
> a vital trend and issue. But to actually argue that privacy is
> extinct and unimportant to anyone is just so bizarre. Sean, do you
> yourself no longer have a private water closet? You really pee in
> public?
>
> And the people I know do not think that their names or electronic
> signatures are the only difference between their identities. Let
> alone all the people in the world who have do not have electronic
> signatures at all. Does that mean they have no identities?
>
> OK, I understand that some of these positions may have been meant as
> speculative exploratory ideas. But if I have taken them at face value
> it is because they were all presented that way as well-considered
> critical positions by very smart people.
>
> And again, to preempt at least some of the criticism that is coming
> my way, should anyone care to take these points up, I am (really,
> really) not an anti-intellectual or antagonistic to revolutions of
> the body or the spirit. On the contrary. But I do think that we need
> our ideas about how to achieve such ends to be grounded in our lived
> experiences in order to have any hope of their gaining popular
> traction and to not remain perpetually (and often gleefully) marginal.
>
> Brian, from all of your posts I get the feeling that you must have
> had some really interesting experiences in various alternative
> movements in Europe over the years. And you are obviously highly
> passionate about both that past and its future. I wish you'd share
> more of that on this list. I'm sure it would be both fascinating and
> totally educational. In fact there are so many intensely smart and
> interesting people on this list I wish everyone would spend more time
> talking about themselves – their important experiences, their
> mentors, their mistakes, their dreams, their challenges, their gifts.
> And for that matter about the places they live, the people they meet,
> the things they do, art they see and make. All the important everyday
> stuff that feeds the ideas. I feel like I'm almost the only one left
> here who is more interested in life than theory, which I don't recall
> being the case in the earlier years of this list. If I really am
> alone here in thinking that distributed creativity means more than
> distributed theorizing I will likely quietly depart one of these days
> and stop bugging everyone, but I hope I'm not, because this listserv
> has generally been a fascinating place and has the potential to be
> much more so...
>
> Anyway, once again, from the tumbrel,
> John Sobol
>
> www.johnsobol.com
>