[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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