[Reader-list] Fwd: Afterimage call for papers

pratap pandey pnanpin at yahoo.co.in
Mon Oct 29 14:02:46 IST 2001


4 crr!T!cs und ozzer cr!tters
ewhen as crayters
o-pen up loverrs hayters
wrr!te now, nicht layters
pp

Afterimage call for papers/contributions: Alternative
technologies

"'Dialectic' is a way of evading the always open and
hazardous reality 
of
conflict by reducing it to a Hegelian skeleton and
'semiology' is a way 
of
avoiding its violent, bloody and lethal character by
reducing it to the 
calm
Platonic form of language and dialogue."

Michel Foucault, from Power/Knowledge

Contents:
Introductory overview
Call for papers/contributions

+++++Introductory overview+++++
It is common practice that sailors and soldiers
launching bombs and 
missiles
in Afghanistan these days often decorate them with a
written message 
for
their recipient. Usually underwritten by phobic
statements from the 
American
vocabulary, these deliberately offensive exclamations
obviously 
reiterate
some close affinities between warfare and discourse.
However, while
insulting words are often delivered for a destructive
effect they are 
rarely
backed by such explosive power: with every message
dispatched in 
Afghanistan
any notion of impact acquires an added meaning. The
sight of language
dispersed along with shrapnel has caused many cultural
critics and 
artists
to lament the lack of power and potency in the
relations of meaning 
they
have carefully crafted. But to actually mourn such a
loss must come 
with a
recognition that any dialectic always aspires to a
combative model. If 
words
have supposedly lost their impact, to recall the blast
of a previous
sentence, it is only because they were, from the
outset, launched from 
a
linguistic command that calculated their syntactical
path and semantic
trajectory with purposeful precision. Discourse, in
other words, is 
always
caught up in the power relations made explicit by
warfare. The point is 
made
even more poignant by the Anthrax-laced letters
arriving at various 
U.S.
institutions. Handwritten manifestos have forwarded a
lethal concoction 
that
is both a subject of the text and a definitive
enclosure. These words 
are,
as with the correspondence taking place in
Afghanistan, dispatched and
backed by a substance that brings them into effect.
The question is: 
are we,
as critics, writers and artists, really "jealous" of
bombs or toxic 
agents
to the extent that we, in understandable despair,
surrender words to 
the
role of a futile supplement, even when words remain
such a compelling
addendum for warlords and terrorists alike? At the
moment, the American
bombs, combining insults and munitions, along with the
anonymous 
letters,
blending threats and poisons, are horrible compromises
on 
communication. Let
us instead address the struggles, strategies and
tactics of present
discourse/warfare with a sharpened pencil.

+++++Call for papers/contributions+++++
Let me offer some incomplete and inadequate fragments
to elaborate on 
this
call for papers and contributions in the context of
recent events. It
becomes more apparent with every GPS-guided missile
and ground 
operation
guided by night-vision equipment that this "war on
terrorism" is fought 
both
with and over certain technologies. In the "wrong"
hands, technology 
has a
destructive potential, as witnessed on a macro level
by the September 
11
hijackings, renewed concern over the nuclear
capability of Pakistan and 
the
capacity to produce Anthrax spores with a levitating
density. In the 
"right"
hands, technology exudes a redeeming promise of global
justice 
(administered
the American way), economic affluence and ideological
supremacy. But 
the
battle of and over technology, interpreted here in the
widest sense, 
may of
course also extend to the removal of new Osama Bin
Laden footage from
network television over fears that he could send some
secret signal-a
destructive code made possible by his mere presence-to
accomplices 
around
the world. American media outlets have accompanied
this move toward a 
dated
caricature of the enemy with segments on the "lies"
spread by headlines 
in
the Pakistani press (reporting on Taliban news
conferences) and 
"misleading"
information distributed by broadcasting networks in
Arab nations. It 
may
furthermore include the capture of this very email
message by the joint
project Echelon that monitors communication channels
and intercepts 
those
parcels containing key words from a filtering list (I
have no doubt 
made
this shortlist). This latter point was further
exacerbated by the 
recent
U.S. anti-terrorism bill, passed on October 26, which
makes invasion of
privacy, through searches, and the constant
surveillance of phone and 
email
communications, what is commonly referred to as a
gathering of
³intelligence,² a largely uncontested right of certain
government 
agencies.
The technologies now pronouncing war are, without
doubt, the same
technologies that we are actually fighting over, and
the unbalanced 
contrast
between the current adversaries could not be stronger:
on one side, a 
global
power, and on the other, a devastated place
derogatively referred to as 
a
remnant of the Stone Age. Technological progress, or
prowess, is quite
horrifically celebrated through this questionable
display of military 
might,
but it is also seen, usually in the foreboding CNN
suspense that 
accompanies
a dark night made visible in the moments before
explosive impact, as a
regulating and disciplining apparatus extending from
certain 
conjunctions of
power and knowledge to cover everything from your own
home to the 
entire
globe. 

In a broad call for papers and contributions,
Afterimage, the journal 
of
media arts and cultural criticism
(http://www.vsw.org/afterimage), 
seeks
work that wishes to profoundly engage and challenge
the use and 
distribution
of technology with alternative visions and functions.

Please forward your requests for further information
or proposals to 
the
editor, Are Flagan, areflagan at mac.com.


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