Pam Brown's Blog l emission - control. net

Constructing Memory in the Absence of History: Embodying Conflicting Narratives at Historic Brattonsville

The distinction between memory and history is subtle, often ephemeral, and rarely considered except at the moments when their invisible forms collide in material representation.  Conflict over representation is nothing new, but almost always seems to occur when collective memories come into contact, calling a present vision of the past into question in a way that makes obvious that it is the future that is somehow at stake.  No cultural form seems immune to questions about content and ideology, but museums seem particularly ripe for the picking.  Unlike films, novels, and artwork, for example, museums carry with them the expectation of historical accuracy, the belief that truthful representation of “reality” is possible.  As the postmodern realization that it is the present that contains both past and future has sunk in, claims on knowledge associated with museums have been called into question.  As Pierre Nora proposes, with the loss of history, we have only memory left.  This memory, like history, is collective in its nature, yet replaces tradition and ritual with representation in all its varied forms.  In this context, it seems only natural that conflicts over representation frequently have as subtext questions about power, ideology and group identity.  Further, it seems only natural that these conflicts tend to play out as struggles for control of and access to narratives.

The Beautiful Social Life of Non-Duality

Recently, I heard on TV that by the time you’re five years old you’ve already decided where you stand in relation to art. The source and surety of this statement may be suspect, but the general idea may actually hold true. It does appear that for some art occurs as an elixir; while for others, art is something to be pushed aside in favor of science, possibly admired, but nevertheless subjugated. Ultimately, this existential choice is really not a stance on art at all, but rather a stance on our human relationship to the realm of knowledge. Is knowing an individual activity or is it inherently a collective process? Does objectivity exist in “reality” or does it just appear that way due to the subtle workings of hegemony? Is it possible that knowledge is to be found in connecting, intersecting, overlapping subjectivities? This questioning is really about the essence of the social bond: is it found in reasoned organization or organic interconnectivity? The proposition that I want to make and observe through my reading of Eiko Ikegami’s Bonds of Civility is that duality is mediated through the arts, and artistic beauty occurs when duality is mediated. It is inside of the artistic act of pure subjectivity, that the object, and thus the other, disappears and we experience oneness. It is this sensibility that we refer to as beauty. It is this striving to express the beauty of this oneness on the part of the Japanese people that is the true subject of Bonds of Civility.

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Hiding Subjectivity in Narrative’s Shadow

In Coercion, Capital and European States, Charles Tilly takes on a twofold challenge: to understand why European states reached the same destination of “national state” form via distinctly different paths, and to validate his anti-narrative, “mechanistic” methodology for the social sciences. The wide scope of the book, both in terms of its thousand year span and its examination of numerous European countries, regions and colonies, provides a synthesized but detailed analysis, and substantial contribution toward understanding the European historical process. In the context of the intellectual tradition of which Tilly was a part, the work provides an alternate account of the dynamics of modernization, perceiving deeply historic roots that unintentionally led to current international power dynamics between states, as well as current citizen relationships to states. The work also stands as “a proposal of how to move ‘beyond the cultural turn,’” as well as a critique of the “big case comparisons” method of historical sociology (Norkus, 2007: 165). The book provides a challenge to understandings of what satisfies the requirements for sociological knowledge, proposing the detailed study of historical phenomenon coupled with a sociological stance that resists the creation of narrative links at the expense of accuracy. In this memo, I want to argue that in spite of the enormous contribution of the book, Tilly fails to satisfy his own objective of elucidating the “why” of European state formation, due to his failure to perceive the interconnectedness of narrative, time, memory, and thus, history. Ironically, although Tilly perceives the embeddedness of story in our social world, even calling for a study of the sociology of story, he does not perceive the futility of attempting to remove narrative, and its subjectivity from his analysis.

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Resonance: Neoliberal Ideology in an Attention Economy

I am working on a book based on my master's work in sociology of media that explores the reasons some ideas resonate in the current media environment and others do not.  The project seeks to incorporate theoretical ideas about media with practical political realities.

Abstract:

Over recent years, the American conversation has shifted from concern over equality to concern over freedom.  The turn toward ideals of freedom and individualism has been termed “neoliberalism.” Most research on this transition focuses on the political and economic conditions associated with neoliberalism, and not on the relationship between this transition and the revolutionary change our media environment has undergone simultaneously. The paper argues that although accounts that seek to understand neoliberalism as a part of an ongoing ideological debate between conservatives and liberals are partially true, these accounts fail to provide a satisfying explanation of why these ideas have resonated so strongly at this time. By perceiving the moving image as the foundation of a fundamentally different mode of production, and by perceiving neoliberalism as an outgrowth of the breakdown of the historic relationship between labor and capital, we can understand neoliberalism as a change to social ethic associated with new technology.

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Exposing American Power in a Networked World

If nothing else, the ongoing Wikileaks event has certainly been fascinating.  The recent event highlights the dynamics of power in a networked world, from the inside look at the arrogant manner in which our diplomats perceive their colleagues in other nations, to the exposure of corporate influence on state business such as in the case of Mastercard and Visa in Russia, and Shell in Nigeria, to the manner in which the US government has used its influence to persuade "independent" corporations throughout the world to deny access to services including commerce and web hosting to Wikileaks.  Following are my preliminary thoughts on the essence of the events unfolding around the release of Wikileaks from the perspective of changes we are seeing globally as network society grows.

The Corporate State

In the case of Russia, we can observe the infiltration of the corporate into state functions, where President Obama has intervened on behalf of Mastercard and Visa in an attempt to thwart the creation of a Russian owned credit processing agency.  The potential loss of business for globally dominant credit card processing agencies was not only a matter for the state, but for the president, himself.  In the case of Nigeria, which happens to be the 8th largest supplier of oil internationally, Nigerian government interests (which at least claim to operate on behalf of its people) are shown to have been subverted by the installation of Shell executives at all levels of governance. 

And the reverse operation, using state power to influence corporate actions, is also in full operation.  Senator Lieberman brashly intervened with Amazon such that they have refused to host the Wikileaks website, a Swiss Bank is pursuaded to close the Wikileaks account, apparently for legitimate reasons that may or may not have been exposed without US state intervention, Visa and Mastercard are likely encouraged to refuse service to Wikileaks, while continuing to allow donations to organizations such as the KKK, and PayPal openly admits that they were caused, via a letter they received from the US State Department, to view Wikileaks actions as illegal, and thus, in violation of their service agreement, in spite of the fact that there are still no charges against the organization.

Whatever Happened to Free Speech?

It's hard for me to understand the argument against net neutrality regulation.  It seems so obvious that restrictions on communication impinge on the "free speech" our democracy was based on.  The media corporations that control access to the internet have stated clearly that they intend to control traffic online, allowing some communication to move faster based on how much one is paying.  So many on the Republican side don't seem to appreciate that if money allows one voice to be heard (and causes another to be squelched), there is no freedom of speech in any practical sense in spite of us all having the ability to speak.  This is, of course, the same problem we're dealing with due to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.  The fact that the FCC has not taken strong and bold actions to protect the vast majority of "the people" from corporate domination online is a symbolic of where we are really at in the the United States. 

Chris Hedges says it best quoting Hannah Arendt:

“For a considerable length of time the normality of the normal world is the most efficient protection against disclosure of totalitarian mass crimes,” Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism. “Normal men don’t know that everything is possible, refuse to believe their eyes and ears in the face of the monstrous. ... The reason why the totalitarian regimes can get so far toward realizing a fictitious, topsy-turvy world is that the outside non-totalitarian world, which always comprises a great part of the population of the totalitarian country itself, indulges in wishful thinking and shirks reality in the face of real insanity. ...”

How Democracy Dies: Lessons From a Master

The time for compromise has passed on net neutrality

The Feeling of Fascism

I don't watch late night TV, but I saw the clip of David Letterman commenting to Bloomberg that he must be embarrassed to have appeared on the famous Forbes list as the 10th richest man in the world.  But Bloomberg stole the joke by saying that he wasn't embarrassed at all.  This actually stumped Letterman.  I don't know how rich David Letterman is, but I'm betting he's in the top 1%.  But even for someone with that kind of wealth, Bloomberg's unabashed greed was stunning.  Yes, Dave, he really is "laughing all the way to the bank".  What would he have responded if he were asked how he felt about being in a group that made 1.13 TRILLION dollars the same year that 10 million more Americans lost their health coverage and that 1 in 7 were classified as below the poverty line.  I think he probably would have said the same thing - after all his unique qualities as a human being got him there.  This is why he should be a third term mayor of New York, in spite of the fact that a two term limit was voted on by the actual people of this city.  Yet, anytime I use the "f-word" (fascism) people seem stunned - as if that's an extreme statement, when in reality it simply describes exactly what's happening.

I'm reading Paul D'Amato's The Meaning of Marxism and thinking a lot about the way that American society is today.  Has it really changed?  Has it really changed so much that there's cause for alarm?  When work was more plentiful and the stock market going up up up, were things really any different - in reality?  Or did they just feel different, like the way you feel different like after eating too big of a meal. The hunger is gone - replaced by a feeling of fullness that makes it seem like you'll never be hungry again.

It seems to me that many of the ideas about how the world we live in works are not really connected to reality.  I grew up at a time when the ideals of class mobility and meritocracy were hammered home in middle class families.  But there's no denying that those with a leg up, regardless of merit, fared better.  Have things really changed?  Or were these just a convenient beliefs we clung to?  Who was it really convenient for?  Ridding myself of these ideas, is like jumping into a bathtub filled with ice - it's hard, and painful, but the kind of sobering truth that the doctor ordered.  So, the question becomes what to do next?  What to do when we face that American fascism feels just like democracy and capitalism does...that in reality, they are actually the same.

Sharing and Generosity: the Future of Society

Network technology is fundamentally changing social relationships and dynamics toward the human needs of sharing and generosity.  As we witness and participate in the breakdown of the current social order, it's possible to envision a totally new future for humankind, in which society will be less rigid and formed based on communities coming together as collectives working toward shared goals that impact all humanity.

Why Can't We Face Reality?

Once again, we have employment data that shows fewer working Americans, and once again, we've immediately gone into denial.  The private sector isn't hiring, because they are not making their money off of exploiting labor time, but rather by exploiting capital.  Yes, it will help to strengthen manufacturing industries that are more dependent on labor, than service industries that are more dependent on brand, but this is a long term prospect -- one that's unlikely to be accomplished in a decade.  In Empowering Cities Through Service, Dr. Judith Rodin and NYC Mayor Bloomberg write:

Henry David Thoreau wrote that, "City life is millions of people being lonesome together." Viewed from afar, city life can indeed appear impersonal and isolated. But that view, to turn a rural cliché on its head, misses the trees for the forest. Most cities are really a collection of local neighborhoods, with their own identity, their own traditions, their own sense of community. And the values that are traditionally associated with small towns -- looking out for your neighbors, pitching in at local events, supporting civic causes -- are finding new footing in America's cities, thanks in part to President Obama's call for "a new era of service." In 2009, New York launched NYC Service, a program designed not merely to increase volunteering, but also to direct volunteers to the city's toughest problems -- and measure our success in addressing them. In just over a year NYC Service helped the city train over 50,000 New Yorkers in CPR, administer 160,000 H1N1 vaccinations, educate 4,400 students on emergency preparedness, send 3,500 care packages to New Yorkers in the Armed Forces serving overseas, and paint over 225,000 square feet of roof tops with reflective paint to help buildings reduce their carbon footprint. And our team of 175 specially trained AmeriCorps VISTA members -- the NYC Civic Corps -- mobilized more than 50,000 volunteers who served more than 700,000 of their neighbors. New York City was able to do more, better, and faster thanks to the help of volunteers, who often worked alongside city personnel to extend the reach and impact of city government. And especially during these tough budget times, having extra sets of hands is enormously valuable.

Well, what if we simply changed the paradigm of employment/unemployment?  Cities like NY could spearhead a movement that turns what has been considered "unproductive" labor into productive labor simply by paying "volunteers".  How are we going to have full employment in the new economy?  It's not likely that we will without a change to our attitude about what can and should constitute employment itself.  Wouldn't it be more productive to have a citizenship fully engaged in working for the betterment of our communities, rather than comprised of millions of discouraged workers?  Wouldn't a safety net of paid work that improves communities be better than living in denial?

Growing Disparity in the New Economy

One of the most under reported stories of the financial crisis is its impact on the disparity between African-Americans and whites.  Last fall, I had the fortune to hear Congresswoman Maxine Waters speak on the issue of how the mortgage foreclosure crisis would likely impact African-American communities by striping them of years of hard earned gains, and making it difficult if not impossible to rebuild.  But recently, Brandeis University published findings depicting an even more disturbing account showing a fourfold increase in the wealth gap between whites and blacks created over the last 23 years.  From 1984 a 20K disparity between blacks and whites ballooned into a 95K gap by 2007.  In real terms, this 75K differential is a child's college tuition or the savings to weather a job loss.  So, African-American communities were clearly in crisis before the crisis.

The disconnect between income and work that has culminated in the recent financial crisis has no doubt influenced this trend, and will no doubt widen the gap.  Since in our neoliberal capitalist society money is no longer primarily generated from labor, but rather money begets money to extreme degrees, the luck of birth will increasingly be the determining factor in an individual's future, unless we turn this tide and collectively figure out ways to stand against this type of social order.

The Racial Wealth Gap Increases Fourfold

White Families Now 95K Richer Than African-American Families on Average, According to New Study

Don't Blame the Dream of Homeownership