(Notes on) Politics, Theory & Photography

AI ~ Science for Human Rights: Human Rights Monitoring for the 21st Century.

2012-01-27T10:18:00.007-05:00

Beirut City, Lebanon, After (l) and Before (r)
Bombing by Israeli Forces (2006).

I suspect Colin Powell's duplicity and dissembling about WMD in Iraq will have made many skeptical about the uses of aerial (actually satellite) photography to document phenomena on the ground. But one should not identify a technology with any particular one its uses. I've noted some of the uses of aerial imagery here before. Skeptics might follow this link for a demonstration of how Amnesty International is using aerial photography as an aid to visualizing the consequences of violent conflict. Amnesty is not alone in this enterprise; you can find interesting discussions of the broader intersection of human rights work and aerial imaging technology here and here too. (Thanks for the idea Will Moore!)

On the Uses of Bridges for (Democratic) Politics

2012-01-27T00:10:00.001-05:00

At The Guardian today is this report on various extremely creative protests against authorities in Russia. Among the most creative is pictured in the sequence images above. It is a really big penis hastily painted by the group Voina on a drawbridge in St. Petersburg. As the bridge was raised the member appeared to become aroused and poked out directly facing the building housing the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB). Apparently, the bridge stays up for several hours each night to facilitate traffic on the river.

You can more detailed report on the June 2010 action - apparently entitled "Dick Captured by the FSB" - in an earlier piece here in The Guardian, here at Der Spiegel and here at The New York Times. Among the fun facts revealed there are that last April the Russian Ministry of Culture awarded Voina a €10K contemporary art prize for this "project" and that, subsequently, a Russian Court issued an international arrest warrant for Oleg Vorotnikov, one of the group's leaders, on charges of hooliganism. That has prompted solidarity protests like the one captured in the image below of the Charles Bridge in Prague last November.

Having said all of that, it is important to keep one's focus on the politics here and not write all this off as silliness, just the antics of idiosyncratic personalities. This is not, in other words, a matter of aesthetics or of law - those are the terms in which the Culture Ministry and the Courts respectively frame Voina's actions. What is at stake, and what Voina calls attention to, is the lack freedom and democracy in Russia.

Thinking With Data Graphics ~ Fewer Unionized Workers = Lots of Crappy, Low Paying Jobs

2012-01-26T13:18:00.008-05:00

In light of recent political events in the U.S. - specifically Obama's State of the Union yammering about the need to generate good jobs and the continuing assault by Republicans on labor unions - these graphics (and the report they partly summarize) are telling. Recently The New York Times ran a pointed editorial on the interaction; the essay nicely deflates ideological claims about the dire consequences of unionization. You can find it here.

The clear question is what differentiates the U.S. from similarly low-union-density countries like Japan and New Zealand and from moderate-union-density-but-nonetheless-low-wage economies like Germany. Unions, in other words, are only part of the story. That said, the U.S. is an outlier both in terms of the percentage of low wage jobs and percentage of non-unionized workers. No coincidence there.

New Book ~ Parvati Nair on Salgado

2012-01-23T12:10:00.005-05:00

After a week visiting with Susan's family in the UK I returned to a pile of mail. By far the most pleasant item in the pile was a copy of Parvati Nair's new, insightful study of Sebastião Salgado.* To the best of my knowledge this is the first full-length examination of Salgado's monumental body of work and so is long overdue. My problem is that it is the start of term and I am going to be tempted to set aside the corresponding demands in order to leap into the book!
____________
* Parvati Nair. 2011. A Different Light: The Photography of Sebastião Salgado. Duke University Press.

Appropriate Contrast

2012-01-22T22:55:00.000-05:00

Prescience ~ José Saramago

2012-01-20T12:38:00.006-05:00

I've spent this past week in Manchester (UK) with Susan visiting her family. I've spent a bunch of time reading this novel - Seeing - by Portuguese writer José Saramago (1922-2008).* The novel, first published in 2004, is not easy going - it is a bit disorienting stylistically - but definitely worth plunging in to. It relates the series of increasingly draconian, largely uncomprehending reactions on the part of a central government to the apparently uncoordinated statement made by the electorate in an unnamed capital city; the "subversive" action that precipitates this government campaign is decentralized, leaderless, and entirely peaceful and the "movement," such as it is, articulates no particular demands. Sound familiar?
___________
* José Saramago. 2006. Seeing. New York: Harcourt.

Best Shots (190) ~ Leo Maguire

2012-01-20T07:39:00.003-05:00

(217) Leo Maguire ~ Fred, 2007 (18 January 2012).

Springsteen Invoking American Ideals, Again

2012-01-20T00:22:00.001-05:00

Well, here is a report from NPR on an in-the-works album by Bruce Springsteen. Something to look forward to - and that from someone (me) who has always resisted deification of Bruce. There is a link to a sample from the new album from the NPR page.

Democracy in Peril (2): United States

2012-01-19T17:34:00.002-05:00

"While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit." ~ Jonathan Turley (WAPO, 13 January 2012)

Democracy in Peril: Hungary

2012-01-19T16:15:00.004-05:00

Today The New York Times ran this Op-Ed by Gyorgy Konrad on the rapid, planned subversion of democracy by the governing right-wing party in Hungary. You can find an analogous essay by Konrad and a dozen other prominent politicians and intellectuals here at Open Democracy. And, in a series of guest postings at Paul Krugman's blog Conscience of a Liberal [1] [2] [3] Kim Lane Scheppele has presented detailed background to recent events. The situation is, to be blunt, dire.

Kodak is Kaput

2012-01-19T08:16:00.005-05:00

There is no way that the news for Rochester is good - the news being that Kodak is bankrupt. I have lived in Rochester for two decades and have watched as the once dominant employer and manufacturer missed opportunity after chance after innovation, mostly out of short-sightedness and complacency. It is safe to say that I've not been overly sanguine about the company or the city here, mostly because I watched the same process in the town where I grew up as General Electric and its successors treated the community with disregard. The New York Times recently tried to stick this happy face on the economic situation in Rochester; but if the reporter had taken a drive along St. Paul heading north from downtown, or North Clinton or any of several other main thoroughfares, he'd have been ashamed for the mis-representation he peddled. Like most of Western NY State, the city is, as I have mentioned here before, a mess; and the surrounding county is not far behind - think crime, crushingly bad public education, concentrated poverty, and so forth. This is the miracle of private enterprise at work.

SOPASTRIKE

2012-01-18T11:35:00.002-05:00

Mieko Mahi and the Enterprise of Ideology

2012-01-17T07:28:00.009-05:00

Abstract pipe rack. Photograph © Mieko Mahi.

I came across this brief notice of work by Mieko Mahi at the web page of ABC News. On her own web page she trumpets herself (putatively in the words of others) as 'the Annie Liebovitz of the oil and gas industry'. That seems apt to me. I've been pretty clear here that Leibovitz is a talented woman who places her efforts at the service of vacuous celebrity. Mahi herself notes that she "caters" to the energy industry in much the same way - producing glossy images to divert attention from the underlying mess. After all, extraction of oil and natural gas is not pretty. I recommend Mahi's work as an example of ideology - how to render the slippery, black, dangerous basis of pervasive degradation, penury, violence and conflict all sparkly and shiny and bright. No wonder the industry types love her work! Interesting too is how the folks at ABC present her beautifying enterprise more or less without comment.

Marines Not Fighting for "Our Freedoms"

2012-01-14T13:47:00.005-05:00

So, here is the latest installment in the media war. I've read a lot of excuses for this stupidity. 'These are just young recruits.' 'They are in a war zone fighting and it is difficult for them to draw boundaries.' 'This behavior does not reflect the "vast majority" of U.S.military personnel.' Blah. Blah Blah. All those excuses point to a failure in the U.S. military. The standard claim is that ours is a professional, disciplined military force. (and the Marines pride themselves on being the most disciplined of them all!) Well, the repeated, documented bad behavior on the part of American troops surely brings that into question.

All of that said, the one line of excuse that I find especially pathetic is one that goes like this: 'You have no business criticizing U.S. troops because they are off fighting to protect you and your freedoms.' More blah, blah blah ... The problem is that this line of reactionary twaddle has no basis in reality.*

First, Iraq: We were in Iraq on false pretenses. BushCo lied their way in. Period. And all the death and devastation, for Americans and Iraqis, were a waste. The war there had nothing to do with "our freedoms" or protecting them.

Second, Afghanistan: In Afghanistan, there may have been some rationale - Al Qaeda allegedly was operating from there. But that rationale, if it ever were persuasive, is now moot insofar as Osama bin Laden is dead. (And, he, you'll recall, was killed in Pakistan.) In other words, even if these four morons had reason to be in Afghanistan before bin Laden was killed, there is no reason for them to be there now.

Finally, the Bad Guys: Please remember too, that al Qaeda didn't give a lick about our freedoms. They were pissed about U.S. military deployments in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. The problem with al Qaeda, in other words, has nothing to do with "our freedoms." And, I will add, two more things. (1) The problem with the Taliban (a bunch of ruthless thugs, but arguably no more ruthless or thuggish than many others) is in no small part an American creation. (2) The Taliban represent zero threat to the U.S. or our much vaunted freedoms.

So, these Marines are not fighting for me or my freedoms or for you and yours. They are fighting because someone said "go fight." They were trained to not ask questions and to treat adversaries as other-than-human. And so, their behavior is wholly predictable. These guys too are a waste. And so too will be the conflicts (with more death and mayhem) that their actions encourage as this imagery circulates well into the future.
__________
* I'll leave aside the minor notion that we allegedly live in a democracy and citizens are supposed to be commended for speaking up and criticizing those who claim to represent them.

Havel & Kundera

2012-01-13T22:04:00.003-05:00

I came across this depiction of the drawn out, cross-genre disagreement between Václav Havel and Milan Kundera over politics and efficacy and moralism. When I teach Max Weber, I use Havel as an example of 'value rational' action, mostly to establish how rare the category actually turns out to be. For Weber, action is value rational just insofar as (1) it is undertaken with no hope of success and (2) regardless of the consequences to the actor. Havel's brand of dissent in the 1970s and early 1980s seems to fit the bill. But, as this description of the dispute with Kundera - who mocks such action as self-aggrandizing moralism - makes clear, it worked after all (at least it contributed mightily to the course of Czechoslovak politics in 1989 and thereafter).

Best Shots (189) ~ Simone Lueck

2012-01-10T00:15:00.001-05:00

(216) Simone Lueck ~ 'It's Mara's fantasy and she own's it' (8 Janury 2012).

Mobility Myth or Simply Ideology?

2012-01-09T15:02:00.005-05:00

I missed this story in The New York Times last week - the one about how, notwithstanding fantastic tales of merit winning out and entrepreneurship and bootstrapping oneself into a better life and so forth, "Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe."

Milton Rogovin, Dangerous Subversive? Ernest Withers, Shameful Collaborator?

2012-01-09T10:36:00.007-05:00

Two news stories caught my eye this morning. The Associated Press has released here a new story - actually containing very little news, simply confirmation of what is common knowledge - about the U.S. government surveillance and hectoring of Milton and Anne Rogovin over the course of several decades. And here is a review of a just-opened exhibition of work by the late Ernest Withers who, it turns out, collaborated with the FBI in reporting on the civil rights movement while he photographed it.

The AP story makes clear that the Rogovins withdrew from active left-wing politics in large measure to insulate their family. My understanding is that Withers agreed to collaborate in hopes of doing the same. My point in drawing this contrast is not to cast a morality play of heroes and villains. Instead it is to suggest how pervasive and insidious red-baiting has been. The surveillance and hectoring infiltrated lives of decent people in destructive ways. And it now continues to do so. (Was it really an "accident" that the censors neglected to redact Withers' name from files released under FOIA requests?) There are pointed lessons here for the ongoing operation of the U.S. government in the area of "national security."

Exclusion Zones (2) ~ Jake Baggaley

2012-01-08T11:40:00.005-05:00

A reader replied to my earlier post on convergences around the Chernobyl exclusion zones, suggesting that I check out work by a friend Jake Baggaley. Turns out that this was a great tip (Thanks Tom!). Baggaley is a talented young photographer who did a senior project on the "dead zone"; his work is really remarkable. You can find an interview with him here where he discusses doing the project.

Red-Staters, Red-Baiting, and their Enablers in the Press

2012-01-08T10:39:00.005-05:00

STEPHANOPOULOS: Speaker Gingrich, you just heard Governor Romney...
(APPLAUSE)
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- make his case. He’s...
(APPLAUSE)
STEPHANOPOULOS: You’ve made the case on several occasions that he’s not the man to carry that message for the Republican Party.
Why not?
GINGRICH: Well, look, I think that’s a good message and I agree with him. A -- a little bit harsh on President Obama, who, I’m sure in his desperate efforts to create a radical European socialist model, is sincere.
(LAUGHTER)

That exchange from the Republican primary debate last night (WAPO transcript here) captures another instance from red-baiting of the President. Why did Stephanopolis not ask Gingrich what he means by the criticism? Why not ask wat reason or evidence might he provide for the assertion? How about Diane Sawyer the other moderator? After all, Newt is - as we continually hear - a real live intellectual!

Let's be clear. As I've repeatedly noted here I think the U.S. is worse off - politically and economically - for lacking a more robust socialist presence in politics. I hardly think the term is an epithet. Nor do I find socialist policies and ideals anathema. But red-staters do. Why allow them to get away with name calling?

Over at The Nation John Nichols indicates just how vigorously and explicitly Obama disavows socialist policies. But he also points out that as Newt the "historian" must surely know (even if he does not like it) there has been a persistent socialist tradition in the U.S.. There is nothing anti-American about that and the press ought to do its job in calling out the Republicans when they suggest otherwise.

Constitutional Politics ~ Do the Parchment Barriers Sleep Above the Covers?

2012-01-07T14:10:00.006-05:00

Among my all-time favorite movie scenes is toward the end of Ghostbusters where Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) says of the demonically possessed Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver): "She's not my girlfriend. I find her interesting because she's a client and because she sleeps above her covers . . . four feet above her covers. She barks, she drools, she claws!"

Well, there may be those who think that the Constitution is a venerable document that hovers Barrett-like someplace well above everyday partisan politics. Right! Consider that the talking heads of the right are lining up to wail about Obama's recess appointments [1] [2] [3] while his old liberal Harvard professor has come to the President's defense [4]. If only those attacking the president had in the past demonstrated the least regard for the Constitution as something other than an inconvenience to be wholly disregarded (think torture, indefinite detention, Iran-Contra . . .) in the pursuit of this or that right-wing political fantasy. Then I might be willing to read their views other than incredulously.

Exclusion Zones

2012-01-07T12:00:00.013-05:00

In the Exclusion Zones*
Carolyn Forché

Ash over conifers and birches, over berry tickets. Resembling snow and
its synonyms. Silvered fields of millet.

A silence approaching bees of the invisible or the scent of mint.

One need not go further than a white towel hung in an open door.

~~~~~~~~~~

Chernobyl, Ukraine (2009) © Timm Suess.

Village cemetery, October 1998 © David McMillan.

Chernobyl, Classroom in Kindergarten #7,
"Golden Key", Pripyat - May 2001 © Robert Polidori.

I recently started to track down photographic work on post-Katrina NOLA and realized that Robert Polidori's project After the Flood apparently is very much of a piece with his somewhat earlier project Zones of Exclusion on post-nuclear-meltdown Chernobyl. And, as I searched for Polidori's images, I came across similar - extremely good - work by Timm Suess and David McMillan. (Follow links above to their pages.) All that then led me to recall Carolyn Forché' s poem. Funny how those convergences work themselves out.
__________
* From: Carolyn Forché. Blue Hour. Harper Collins, 2003, page 18.

Passings ~ Eve Arnold (1912 - 2012)

2012-01-05T17:44:00.002-05:00

Photographer Eve Arnold has died. You can find an obituary here at The Guardian.

Brawling Houses and Trees

2012-01-04T21:19:00.005-05:00

Both Images: New Orleans, 2005 © Katherine Wolkoff.

I've been asked to write an essay on politics and photographic depictions of post-Katrina New Orleans. There obviously is a pretty rich trove of photojournalism available. But I hope to avoid it. Instead I plan to pursue the work by photographers "art" like Chris Jordan, Larry Towell, Robert Polidori and Richard Misrach. My plan generally is to talk about the politics of landscape and rely on the typically depopulated scenes that all of these photographers produced.

In any case, I've started to collect materials for the essay and came across work by Katherine Wolkoff that I had not recalled. Although it is quite good I'm not going to say much about it here. But I wanted to contrast two of her images of collision because they suggest a certain madcap brawl between uprooted trees and houses departed from their foundations. There are bits of macabre humor in these depictions of disaster.

Kodak Circling the Bowl

2012-01-04T16:04:00.003-05:00

Well, it appears that Kodak is going to declare bankruptcy. You can read the WSJ report here. Beyond the photo relevance for some readers, this is bad news for many of the people in the Rochester area where I live and work. This has been coming for a long time. That does not make it any easier.

David Rubinger

2012-01-02T21:48:00.005-05:00

Israeli paratroopers, Jerusalem, Israel, 1967.
Photograph © David Rubinger.

The European: Your most famous picture depicts a group of paratroopers next to the Wailing Wall shortly after its conquest during the Six-Day War in 1967. Tell me the story behind that picture.

Rubinger: I had been on the southern front outside of El Arish on the previous evening when I heard that something was going on in Jerusalem. I jumped aboard a helicopter that was taking the wounded to Be’er Sheva, where I had parked my car. Around six or seven in the morning, I arrived in Jerusalem, went to see my family and then headed towards the historic city center. The Wailing Wall had just been seized and the old houses were still there, so everything was quite narrow.

I laid on the ground and shot upwards to get the Wall into the frame. As the three paratroopers passed, I shot three almost identical frames. Shortly after that, the Chief Rabbi of the army entered the scenery with a Torah and a shofar. The students took him on their shoulders, cheering. I thought I had the best shot of the day. When I developed the film at home looking at them with my wife – convinced that the one with the Rabbi was the best – she preferred the three frames with the soldiers. I said: “What are you talking about? Those are just three people randomly standing there…” As always, the woman was right.
The European: The photo brought you worldwide recognition. The State of Israel gave thousands of copies away without asking for permission. Are you bitter about the copyright violation?

Rubinger: I got the rights back in a lawsuit many years ago. I had given one of the frames to the military spokesman on the same evening I took the photo. Since I had been very secure and could move freely although I was not working for the military, I had wanted to express my gratitude. The military spokesman handed the negative to the press office and they got busy printing copies. Associated Press used it as cover picture for a book. One or two colleagues sent the prints to their agencies with their name on it. For many years, I was upset. But today, I must confess that I am deeply grateful to all those thieves.

__________
From: A 2010 interview here with Israeli photographer David Rubinger.

An Interview with Roberto Unger

2012-01-02T16:53:00.004-05:00

"The opportunity for change has already been largely squandered. But the opportunity for insight, not yet, and insight today can mean transformation tomorrow." ~ Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Unger made that statement regarding the current global economic mess in an interview on "The Future of the Left" with The European last fall.

Passings ~ Sam Rivers (1923-2011)

2011-12-31T10:47:00.002-05:00

Saxophonist Sam Rivers has died. You can find this obituary at The New York Times. A sad ending to the year.

Photojournalism & Its Uses

2011-12-31T00:18:00.001-05:00

At the BBC you can find this interesting segment on photojournalism and its ethical and business contexts - Jodi Bieber, Shahidul Alam, David Goldblatt, among others, comment in various ways on different dimensions of the complexities involved in the use of images. I've commented on Bieber - or at least the uses of her work - here more than a few times before. It is worth listening to what she has to say.

Pieter Hugo

2011-12-30T13:56:00.005-05:00

On route to Kigali International Airport, Kigali, Rwanda.
Photograph © Pieter Hugo.

Gatwaro Stadium, Genocide site, Kibuye, Rwanda.
Photograph © Pieter Hugo.

Some years ago I wrote this not-terribly-enthusiastic post comment on South African photographer Pieter Hugo and his work. Earlier in the fall seemed to be getting a fair share of quite positive exposure - from Sean O'Hagan here at The Guardian, for instance, or here at The New York Times Magazine - so I thought I'd see if it might do to reconsider. Hugo has done two major projects recently. One, Permanent Error, documents the environmental and human disaster of a massive dump outside of Accra, Ghana. The second, Rwanda 2004: Vestiges of a Genocide, focuses on just what the title suggests. I suppose there is nothing wrong with either of the two undertakings. Permanent Error seems fairly derivative - I think of Edward Burtynsky's images of computer salvage in the Chinese countryside or of Salgado's images of impoverished scavengers at massive dumps across the developing world. The same might be said of at least parts of the "vestiges" project - think of Nachtwey or Peress or Salgado. But there are some images of Rwanda that are strikingly provocative. These depict the Rwandan countryside, mostly now tangled overgrowth, all seemingly banal, where atrocities took place.

In the end, I have not updated terribly much. Hugo seems more able to resist the 'Africa as freak show' thrust of his earlier work. But he has now turned instead - with only mixed 'success' - to 'Africa as disaster zone.' (Note: in many respects the other photographers I mention above might be accused of falling prey to a similar pre-occupation.) He clearly is a talented photographer. But he is caught in the tropes that dominate photography of the African continent. I wonder if he might some day break out from those constraints. That, in my mind, would warrant some of the superlatives that rain down around him now.

There is an Interview with Philosopher Charles Taylor ...

2011-12-29T21:26:00.004-05:00

... on democracy and its perilous state here at Eurozine. The interviewer seems to find the current situation more dire than Taylor. And it is interesting to note how Taylor refers to the possibility of making markets work for us in, say, fighting climate change.

Sen on the Folly of Austerity

2011-12-27T20:51:00.004-05:00

At the Financial Times online you can find this text of a recent talk by Amartya Sen. He directs much of his analysis at India and its economic foibles of its government. But he starts out by castigating the popular austerity policies being peddle in the developed world.

"Like many board games that were developed in India, of which chess is perhaps the most important and famous, the game of “snakes and ladders” too emerged in this country a long time ago. With its balancing of snakes that pull you down and ladders that take you up, this game has been used again and again as a metaphor for life, telling us about our fortunes and misfortunes, and going further, about the consequences of good deeds and bad actions. Good decisions yield handsome rewards – taking us rapidly up a ladder – and bad moves yield severe penalties – making us suffer a precipitate decline through the mouth of a long snake, all the way down to its distant tail.

[. . .]

I begin with snakes. I cannot hide from this audience my belief that a great many countries in the West seem to be doing their best to go straight into the mouth of a fairly hefty snake. In an economic world that is still emerging very slowly from the gigantic crises of 2008, with the continuation of huge unemployment, very low growth, and languishing demand – as is the case in many of the traditionally rich countries, particularly in the bulk of Europe – it is hard to think that anything can be further from a ladder and as close to a snake as huge programmes of comprehensive economic austerity. It is certainly true that many countries in Europe need – and have needed for some time – a better system of economic accountability and more responsible management of the economy. But to regard large-scale cutting of every kind of government expenditure, including those that decimate the quality of vulnerable human lives and the bases of centrally important human security, and create havoc to the possibility of economic growth, would be a very odd vision of a ladder."

Sen, of course, advances a set of fairly broad criteria for assessing economic development. And he staunchly defends democratic politics against technocratic incursions. But the immediate point is clear.

News Flash! Jackass + Handgun = Felon

2011-12-27T12:30:00.006-05:00

Charles Diez. Photograph: Asheville, NC Police Department.

I recommend this piece in The New York Times today about how concealed weapons permits mix really well with mental illness, pot, alcohol, criminal behavior, domestic violence in particular, and, well, simply being a jackass. Mr. Diez, a (now-former) Asheville, North Carolina firefighter, seems to have started in the final category but has advanced to confessed felon. Apparently, it is a short step that jackasses regularly take. I've been pretty consistently clear here about the stupidity of handgun fetishes. (And no, you don't need a concealed carry permit to hunt. You need one only to shoot people.) In that sense, I suppose there is no real surprise in The Times report.

Republican Anti-Environmentalism as an Assault on "Unborn Babies"

2011-12-26T12:19:00.004-05:00

What better way to start in toward a new year than by pointing out Republican hypocrisy. It is impossible to be a Republican without voicing fealty to the putative claims of the unborn. It is commonplace to point out that pro-life concern for babies ends with birth. But let's think about those not-yet-born fetuses.* Here is a paragraph from Paul Krugman today:

Hat makers no longer use mercury (and who wears hats these days?), but a lot of mercury gets into the atmosphere from old coal-burning power plants that lack modern pollution controls. From there it gets into the water, where microbes turn it into methylmercury, which builds up in fish. And what happens then? The E.P.A. explains: “Methylmercury exposure is a particular concern for women of childbearing age, unborn babies and young children, because studies have linked high levels of methylmercury to damage to the developing nervous system, which can impair children’s ability to think and learn.”

And, then, referring to recently promulgated EPA regulations on mercury and other toxics, Krugman explains:

. . . the payoff to the new rules is huge: up to $90 billion a year in benefits compared with around $10 billion a year of costs in the form of slightly higher electricity prices. This is . . . a very big deal.
And it’s a deal Republicans very much want to kill.

So, it is OK to assault the unborn so long as it is 'good for business'? I love the Republican logic - which is driven by the irresistible urge to abandon or ignore virtually any commitment in order to suck up to the capitalists.
__________
* Please note that nothing I write here commits me to recognizing "life" as beginning at any time other than birth. I'm just taking "pro-life' reds at their word. I know, it seems unfair.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T18:38:00.007-05:00

Well, it is Christmas Eve. Douglas came out for dinner with his sweetheart Sam. He'll spend this evening with Sam's family and tomorrow with his mom. We had a brief skype - scattered and distracted as is usual - with August who is on the west coast with his mom. Following a trip to the Public Market this morning, Susan made a wonderful meal - roast leg of lamb (courtesy of our reliable source Rick Austin), veggies, potatoes, and lots of nibbly things before-hand. I think it was perfect. All in all a really nice way of sliding into the holidays.

In any case, Doug gave me this CD by Italian pianist Augusto Pirodda, featuring the recently deceased, very much lamented Paul Motian. The disc is really quite good. That said, it is a bit too understated and spacious for the other listeners currently at the house.

Best Shots (188) ~ Lukas Strebel

2011-12-21T15:11:00.004-05:00

(215) Lukas Strebel ~ Meus Volatus Magicus Supra Antoglyphum
(18 December 2011).

Andrei Sannikov ~ Political Prisoner in Belarus

2011-12-20T09:22:00.006-05:00

I have in the past noted persistent political repression in Belarus and those who've spoken out against it. This morning I came across this plea written for Andrei Sannikov by his sister. Sannikov has been sentenced to prison for five years in response to his lawful and peaceful political activities. It is nearly certain that he has been tortured while in captivity. You can find an open letter - signed by, among others, Ai Weiwei & Václav Havel - decrying political repression in Belarus here.

Passings ~ Václav Havel (1936-2011)

2011-12-18T09:25:00.004-05:00

Václav Havel, 1992. Drawing © David Levine.

Václav Havel has died. You can find obituaries at The New York Times and The Guardian here and here respectively. Regular readers will know that I've hardly hidden my considerable admiration for Havel. This is a sad day. While I thought many of Havel's political formulations were too fraught with metaphysics, it is important to note that he never subscribed to the mindless neo-liberalism that swept much of post-communist Central Europe. And throughout his public career he persisted in speaking out against political oppression and exploitation. This is a sad day.

Dateline Cairo

2011-12-17T12:51:00.003-05:00

Egyptian army soldiers assault and arrest a female protester during
clashes in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Saturday. Photograph © Reuters.

This photo is lifted from The New York Times today. Ditching Mubarak for this? Where will the Obama administration be this sort of violence and repression?

An Appropriate Irony ~ Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

2011-12-16T09:56:00.002-05:00

Christopher Hitchens has died. You can find this obituary at The New York Times. He might have appreciated the irony that the war in Iraq "ended" at very nearly the same time [1] [2]. Thousands of lives squandered. Billions of dollars wasted. A multitude of causalities left behind. Every last death, dollar, casualty in vain. All on the basis of lies and bullshit from the Bush Administration. There is no irony in any of that.

Obama Shelves the Rule of Law

2011-12-15T23:12:00.004-05:00

U.S. President Barack Obama makes a statement from the
briefing room of the White House in Washington on
December 5, 2011. Photograph © 2011 Reuters.

This is an image from 10 days ago. In the intervening period Obama stepped back from a rare moment of impersonating an individual with political backbone. He has decided to sign the Defense Authorization Act and, with it, sign away the rule of law in the U.S.; not a bad turn around. Here is a statement on this from Human Rights Watch - initially set up to monitor bad behavior of the communists during the cold war. HRW is too polite by at least half.

Democracy Now ~ Russia

2011-12-13T22:24:00.004-05:00

Antifa youth, who battle the spread of fascism.
Photograph © Platon.

I lifted this image from a slideshow (with accompanying video interviews) at The New Yorker. Background: "In May, Human Rights Watch brought Platon to Russia to photograph activists." And now the magazine is publishing the work ~ a nice set of portraits (mostly) of people showing great courage under dangerous circumstances.

Turkish Political Scientist Büşra Ersanli Under Arrest

2011-12-12T12:26:00.004-05:00

Yesterday The Guardian ran this essay by Ayça Çubukçu on political repression in Turkey and, in particular, on the arrest of political scientist Büşra Ersanlı. Professor Ersnali was arrested under expansive "anti-Terror" legislation. You can find a post here from Amnesty International regarding her case and one from Human Rights Watch here. The bottom line is that Ersanli's arrest is part of a pattern in which individuals are being detained for taking part in peaceful and legal political activity.

Best Shots (187) ~ Ryan McGinley

2011-12-12T11:25:00.005-05:00

(214) Ryan McGinley ~ Amanda Falling, Marionville, Missouri
(11 December 2011).

West Coast Port Shutdown ~ Monday 12 December

2011-12-10T13:26:00.004-05:00

On Monday the OWS folk aim to mount a massive protest at ports along the West Coast of the U.S. from San Diego to Vancouver (the latter obviously not the United States!). The leadership of relevant unions (especially the International Longshore Workers' Union [ILWU]) has come out against the action. Legally they must do so or else risk being held liable in court for any costs of the shutdown. That said, they have gone beyond issuing disclaimers. The OWS folks claim to be working with rank-and-file workers. But union leadership criticizes OWS for lack of consultation, for by-passing the internal decision-making processes of the unions (the ILWU being among the most progressive and democratic of American unions), and so forth. You can find reports on and assessments of the action here at The Guardian, here at Mother Jones, here at Counterpunch.

No one has asked my opinion, but I think the action is a good idea. I think of the Occupy movement as seeking to initiate a national conversation about fundamental aspects of our political economy. State and local officials across the country have relied on coercion in a coordinated campaign to squelch any dissent. So, it seems to me that OWS is right to seek new spaces to press its case. I hope the action comes off and is wildly successful.

Art and the Eurozone Crisis

2011-12-10T12:15:00.004-05:00

Josh Neufeld & Martha Rosler ~ Pull Up Those PIIGS (Berlin, 2011).

The text reads "Pull Up Those PIIGS! Gotta Save Our Banks! Blame it on the Lazy Greeks. And the Irish and the Portugese and the Spanish and the Italians."

Passings ~ Jose Gaytan (1940~2011)

2011-12-09T22:07:00.003-05:00

Brooklyn photographer Jose Gaytan has died. You can find a appreciation here at Lens.

Picture Stillbirths, If You Can

2011-12-08T21:34:00.006-05:00

"Each day, 17 babies die before, during or shortly after birth in
the UK. That's one in every 200 births, a rate that has stuck at
that level since 1999." ~ The Guardian

Nearly a year ago I posted about a truly remarkable book entitled An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination. It was written by a woman, Elizabeth McCracken, about her grief and the rest of her life after she endured the stillbirth of her son. I highly recommend the book. I recommend it if your child has died. And I recommend it if you have not experienced that pain too. And, while I have not seen it myself, I also highly recommend the 17 exhibition which is on right now and not much longer in London. Why? So you might think about ways to successfully fight off the urge to cross the street to avoid grieving parents.

Political Theorists on OWS (5) - Stanford Crowd

2011-12-07T09:40:00.004-05:00

The folks at The Boston Review have posted a handful of short reflections by Stanford faculty on OWS. Here is one by Rob Reich & Debra Satz and here is another by Ken Arrow.

Art & the Limits of Neuroscience

2011-12-06T14:21:00.002-05:00

"What is striking about neuroaesthetics is not so much the fact that it has failed to produce interesting or surprising results about art, but rather the fact that no one — not the scientists, and not the artists and art historians — seem to have minded, or even noticed. What stands in the way of success in this new field is, first, the fact that neuroscience has yet to frame anything like an adequate biological or “naturalistic” account of human experience — of thought, perception, or consciousness." ~ Alva Noë

Political Theorists on OWS (4) ~ Raymond Geuss

2011-12-05T00:10:00.001-05:00

Well, you can find a clip here of Raymond Geuss addressing the student occupiers at Cambridge (UK) who are protesting - as he rightly notes - the Tory attempts to privatize higher education (among other things) in Britain. He dissects freedom and speech in very useful ways. The clip is a bit long, but it is useful and it reminds me of why I so enjoyed and how much I learned in Raymond's classes back in Chicago days.

Political Theorists on OWS (3) ~ Wendy Brown

2011-12-05T00:03:00.003-05:00

Theory & Event

Volume 14, Number 4, 2011 Supplement

Occupy Wall Street:

Return of a Repressed Res-Publica

Wendy Brown

For three decades, American populist politics have been largely reactionary, instigated and instrumentalized by monied interests. What finally triggered this left revolt against neoliberal deregulation and corporately bought democracy? Why didn't it erupt in 2008 when the government bailed out teetering investment banks but not their victims-those holding subprime mortgages or gutted retirement funds? Why not in 2009 when gigantic bonuses were handed around to the very investment bankers who had crashed the system with their derivatives games? Why not in spring 2011 when the Supreme Court overturned limits on corporate contributions to Political Action Committees (permitting corporations to flood the electoral process) and then essentially killed off class-action lawsuits (workers' and consumers' main line of defense against corporate fraud and abuse)? Why not at any point in the last decade as mass access to higher education collapsed, infrastructure rotted, real income for the middle class plummeted, health care costs skyrocketed, while corporations, banks and the wealthy feathered their nests?

The OWS events this fall are the twin gifts of, on the one hand, the inspirational Arab Spring and, on the other, the colossal failure of the Obama presidency to place even a light rein on neoliberal de-regulation or install a modest interval of separation between Wall Street and Washington. If the first was an obvious trigger, the second should not be minimized: Had any of the promised Obama "hope" been substantially realized—early withdrawal from Iraq war, closing Guantanamo, stimulating economic recovery with jobs creation, repealing the Bush tax cuts, tightening regulations on finance capital, expanding access to affordable higher education, reining in health care costs—many Occupy Wall Streeters, especially the young, might have remained wedded to the electoral political process that engaged them so intensely just three years ago.

In addition to the galvanizing effects of the Arab Spring and the Obama Autumn, almost half a decade of recession fueled the fire with staggering unemployment (25% among recent college graduates), deteriorating wages, vanishing pensions, home foreclosures, scandalous rates of poverty and homelessness (1 in 5 children in the US are born into poverty) and accelerated destruction of public goods and services already slimmed by two decades of neoliberal defunding and privatization. Together these effects pooled the predicaments of the poor and the middle class, the young and the old, the working and the under- and unemployed: all are sacrificed as capital is propped, bailed, and continues to feast. Put another way, what makes this era unique is the unprecedented mutual identification among working middle class families carrying under-water mortgages, unemployed youth carrying under-water college loan debt, laid-off factory workers facing contracting unemployment benefits, public workers forced to shoulder ever growing contributions to their own "benefits" or losing long-promised pensions, and skilled and unskilled workers—from pre-school teachers to airline pilots—whose salaries for full-time work cannot lift their families above poverty level.

If neoliberal economic policies eliminating state benefits and public goods while plumping the nests of the rich have paradoxically joined the fates of heretofore diverse and often divided generations, job sectors, races and classes, neoliberal political policies aimed at breaking social solidarities have similarly paved the road for broad-based democratic uprising. Recent years have seen a plethora of state and federal court decisions assaulting the organized power of unions, consumers, welfare recipients, seniors, public sector workers, and the electorate as a whole. From AT&T Mobility v. Concepion (the Supreme Court decision permitting corporations to avoid class action litigation) to State of Wisconsin v. Fitzgerald et al (the Wisconsin court decision upholding a state law gutting the collective bargaining power of public unions), the last decade has seen the steady ratification and implementation of Margaret Thatcher's iteration of the neoliberal political ideal—"there is no such thing as society, only individual men and women ...."1 Yet paradoxically or perhaps (for those who still believe in it) dialectically, this very demolition of organized interest group power—combined with scandalous growth in income inequality, eye-popping wealth at the top and dismantling of public goods—has facilitated a new populist political consciousness. Out of broken traditional solidarities and assaults on democracy itself, a new ethos of the mass is being carved: modestly democratic, probably even more modestly egalitarian, but certainly contoured by more than individual, sectional or partisan interests.2

To put the problem a little differently, partly through these broken solidarities, partly through demonizing the 1%, and partly through explicitly forging this new populist ethos, OWS has managed in spirit, analysis and conduct to substitute justice talk for interest talk. And it has done so when the language of justice seemed nearly extinguished by a neoliberal rationality that refracts all conduct through the metric of human capital self-appreciation.3 "We are the 99%," far from participating in a discourse organized by interest or difference, overtly rejects the seizing of the nation by a plutocracy, by private rather than public interests. If the slogan is sometimes mobilized to cast this seizing as an effect of corruption and greed rather than neoliberal rationality in late capitalism (including the complete imbrication of Euro-Atlantic states with the fates and imperatives of finance capital), this is consequent not only to the wealth extremes the epoch has generated but to the necessary personification and theatricalization of all potent political discourse. (Even the Bolsheviks needed to feature the czars as the enemy!) Yet how difficult it has been for the mainstream media to grasp this new formation as promulgating a vision of justice, as issuing from educated political conviction and not only personal circumstance or individual rancor! It is a sign of our profoundly depoliticized vernacular of citizenship today that the stock interview question of OWS participants, "what brings you here?" is always intended to solicit a story of personal hardship or calamity. From CNN to NPR to the New York Times, the interviewers never know what to do with OWS answers that reference a decent, equitable and sustainable way of collective life, a sense of right and wrong, and an account of what we political theorists quaintly call The Good for the polity.

As splendidly surprising as the OWS movement has been, equally astonishing is the level of national endorsement for it: recent polls indicate that 62% of the country supports the movement and that more than a third of the super-rich (the 1%) are sympathetic.4 Regardless of the strategic challenges ahead for OWS as a movement, these facts alone brighten future prospects for a critical national discourse about democracy and capitalism. Occupy Wall Street has already generated something extraordinary in its successful challenge to the neoliberal image of the nation on the model of the firm, where profit is the only metric, competition the only game, private property the only rule, winners and losers the only outcome, and hierarchy and inequality the only form of organization. In place of that image, OWS has revived the classical image of the nation as res-publica, the nation as a public thing. The struggle ahead? To make the image real.

__________

Wendy Brown is Class of 1936 Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley where she teaches political theory. Her most recent book is Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (Zone 2010). Her political work is currently focused on preserving public higher education in the United States, in particular the University of California. Brown can be reached at wlbrown@berkeley.edu

Notes

1. "Wisconsin Court Reinstates Law on Union Rights," New York Times, June 15, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/us/politics/15wisconsin.html

2. Sure, the unions showed up qua unions at Zuccotti Square for a few days in early October but to "seize on this "crystallizing moment" in "talking about what's wrong with the system," not to organize labor. "Seeking Energy, Unions Join Protest Against Wall Street," New York Times, October 5, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/nyregion/major-unions-join-occupy-wall-street-protest.html?pagewanted=all

3. Michel Feher, "Self-Appreciation; Or, the Aspirations of Human Capital," Public Culture 21.1, 2009.

4. "Poll: Most Americans Support Occupy Wall Street," The Atlantic October 19, 2011 http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/10/poll-most-americans-support-occupy-wall-street/246963/ and "Over Third of Millionaires Argue 'Occupy' Protestors Make 'Good and Valid' Point" Huffington Post, November 3, 2011 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/03/occupy-wall-street-poll-millionaires_n_1074551.html

Political Theorists on OWS (2) ~ Bernard Harcourt

2011-12-05T00:02:00.005-05:00

Bernard Harcourt has written two extended pieces - this this one in The New York Times and this one at The Guardian - contending that the Occupy movement "represents a new paradigm of political resistance – what we might call 'political disobedience' – that demands a new vocabulary." He may well be correct - or at least he may be correct that absent some such new vocabulary the movement risks being absorbed into politics as usual (electoral or otherwise). That, of course is among the worries that Arundhati Roy articulates in her recent assessment of the movement and its potential problems. So, as a starter, Harcourt might resist the notion that the movement is "leaderless." Consider an analogy - proclaiming one's atheism is parasitic on the existence of theism. If the aim is to formulate a "new paradigm" leaving the central features of the old in place - however tacitly - seems to me a rather considerable mistake.

Political Theorists on OWS (1) - Bill Connolly

2011-12-04T17:24:00.001-05:00

Theory & Event

Volume 14, Number 4, 2011 Supplement

What Is To Be Done?

William E. Connolly

Occupy Wall Street, or better described, the 99% movement, represents a delayed reaction to the political economy of inequality, crisis, military adventurism, and corporate authoritarianism of the last 30 years. It carries the potential to energize the democratic left, to pull Obama and Blue Dog Democrats toward the left, to mobilize local energies, and to awaken a yet larger section of the American populace. Its immediate adversaries are Wall Street, the volatility of unregulated capitalism, Republican blockage of corporate regulation, jobs programs and existing tax policies, the right edge of the evangelical movement, the lack of labor and consumer representation on governing boards of most firms, the diffidence of the democratic party, campaign laws that flood the air waves with right wing disinformation, the right wing majority on the Supreme Court, and a 24-hours news media that uses distraction and scandal mongering to draw attention from the plight of the urban poor. The dynamics of this critical movement deserve much closer attention, but that will not be my focus today.

One question the media poses, now that it can no longer simply ignore this movement, is, "What do these people want?" "What do they stand for, anyway?" Below are a few interim answers to such questions. The interim answers are definitely at odds with the pure market fantasies of neoliberal capitalism. But they are compatible with capitalism per se, understood as production for profit, contractual labor, the primacy of the commodity form, a significant degree of competition between firms, and a large role for the state. A large state? In actual fact, every advanced capitalist country has a large state; they vary in the extent to which they support egalitarianism, unemployment benefits, health care, and sustainable modes of consumption over huge prison expenditures, intensive crime control policies, and gargantuan military budgets on the other. Capitalism per se has serious problems, dangers and limits, but that is not the focus now. Some policy responses, then:

1. A minimal objective is to transform the tax code so that capital gains taxes, now set at 15%, are equalized with other taxes. If you earn, say, over $300,000 in income, your capital gains will be taxed at the same adjusted rates as your income tax. This reform means that incomes gained from work and investment are treated equally. A much more progressive tax system is also required. And a transaction tax on derivatives is required that could bring in a few hundred billion over a decade, even as the myth that low taxes for the rich generate high productivity must be exposed. And the indispensability of the state must be acknowledged by the shape of a progressive tax system.

2. Banks must be required to set aside much bigger deposits for the loans they make, to reduce the chances of another bank induced world collapse. Investment and savings banks must be separated once again, prohibiting the casino approach to investment by banks. Housing foreclosures, most of which have been created by a crisis started at the top, can be stopped by renegotiating loans. Unemployment insurance must be extended.

3. State policies must be introduced to press banks and corporations to invest the huge amount of capital they have on hand. How? One approach would be to reward institutions that invest their funds in productive ways with modest tax breaks while hitting those which curtail growth with tax increases. As this is done, it is essential to publicize to the broader populace how the most immediate barrier to job growth today is the current unwillingness of private institutions to invest their capital.

4. A general jobs program, alone, is not sufficiently focused. State action must aim at reconstituting the general infrastructure of consumption that now sets the frame of possibility in which everyday consumption is set. By building fast transit systems, trolleys, trains, and bike paths you shift a large portion of current state expenditures and subsidies from roads, highways and airports toward more egalitarian alternatives; you open up new possibilities of production; and you introduce less expensive consumer choices for travel. By creating a state health care system you increase the competitive position of America in the world (in which most advanced countries have such systems); you relieve these burdens from consumers and businesses; and you improve the long term health of the populace. By subsidizing and publicizing food production that is healthy you provide new jobs for many as you reduce the medical costs and health burdens of the populace. By providing incentives for sustainable and efficient energy production you increase the independence of the country, decrease pressure for military expenditures, speak to the desires of innumerable consumers, and take important steps to forestall climate warming. Such a list can be extended indefinitely, with each item to be judged by its capacity to equalize the ability of citizens to participate in the larger

5. What else besides tax policy and significant shifts in the established infrastructure of consumption can be done to reduce the extreme inequality we now have? Well, one answer is to set up competition between firms in each large sector-- including health care, automobile production, banks, universities, schools, police forces, and so on, so that the firms in each sector that make the most progress in reducing the gap between the highest and lowest paid workers receive tax credits. Then, as the most successful firms in each domain demonstrate the possibilities available, other firms in that zone can be given penalties and incentives to meet it. Think of this as policies aimed at the income distribution system that replicates some of those applied now, with so much fanfare, to welfare recipients. Given the examples of other countries, such as Denmark, Canada, Germany and Japan, there is ample room in the States to promote both a highly productive economy and a much less unequal one. In fact, the two go together, no matter what Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Mitt Romney keep saying everyday.

This, of course, is merely a preliminary set of programs. And the 800-pound gorilla of global warming has not even been mentioned. But even it will take a broad based, highly energized movement to push it through. It, of course, sounds outrageous to those who pretend that they favor a small state while in fact supporting a huge, punitive, military state system tethered to the fantasy of unregulated capitalism. But an unregulated economy and a small state is in fact discernible nowhere; the fantasy of it keeps getting punctured by each new crisis. And, increasingly, it has lost its power to convince. New experiments and adventures are required.

We have not noted here a series of small and local initiatives and movements that are also critical to the success of the 99% movement. They are at least as important, generating the initiatives and energies needed to keep this movement alive. It is when local initiatives, larger social movements, church assemblies, blog activity, university teach-ins, and state policies amplify each other that things will start moving.

__________

William E. Connolly is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor at Johns Hopkins University where he teaches political theory. His recent books include Capitalism and Christianity, American Style (2008); and A World of Becoming (2011). In Capitalism and Christianity, American Style, he argued that the "evangelical-capitalist resonance machine" is carrying us to a probable crisis, and addressed a militant politics to respond to it. He is currently working on a book entitled The Fragility of Things, the first chapter of which will appear in Theory & Event in early 2012, under the title "Steps toward an Ecology of Late Capitalism." Connolly can be reached at pluma@jhu.edu

Arundhati Roy on OWS

2011-12-04T16:27:00.003-05:00

A few days ago The Guardian ran this interview with Arundhati Roy on, among other things, her assessment of OWS. As is usual, Roy speaks bluntly and raises uncomfortable questions - not just for the wealthy and powerful but for those, in this instance, who make up what they call the 99%.

Phillip Glass Meets OWS

2011-12-04T12:33:00.006-05:00

The other night OWS attended (outside on the sidewalk) the opera Satyagraha at Lincoln Center and afterword, composer Phillip Glass joined the protesters to read/repeat (as is his wont) this brief passage from the Bhaghavad Gita:

"When righteousness withers away and evil rules the land, we come into being, age after age, and take visible shape, and move, a man among men, for the protection of good, thrusting back evil and setting virtue on her seat again."

I have to say that Glass orchestrated this in a superbly democratic manner.

Staff List ~ The Year in Photos 2011

2011-12-03T19:57:00.003-05:00

I don't typically go in much for rock-n-roll concert photography - especially when I've never heard of most of the performers and it's a good bet that many of them would demur at the categorization - but here is "The Year in Photos 2011" from the folks over at Pitchfork.

Best Shots (186) ~ Massimo Vitali

2011-12-02T23:14:00.002-05:00

(213) Massimo Vitali ~ Sarakiniko, Milos (27 November 2011).

The Lesson of Ivan Jirous

2011-11-30T10:02:00.010-05:00

Earlier this month I noted that Czech cultural impresario Ivan Jirous has died. Yesterday The Guardian ran this obituary which gives me an opportunity to note his passing once again and to offer Jirous as an example for current politics.

As a result of an unlikely friendship and political alliance with Václav Havel, Jirous was a key figure in what ultimately became the demise of Communism in Eastern Europe. His arrest and trial in 1976 provided an animating event in the emergence of open coordinated dissent in what then was Czechoslovakia.

There is a lesson here for contemporary politics. Here is how Havel describes overcoming his own skepticism about Jirous and other denizens of the cultural and musical underground he inhabited in the 1970s:

"Suddenly I realized that, regardless of how many vulgar words these people used or how long their hair was, truth was on their side. Somewhere in the midst of this group, their attitudes, and their creations, I sensed a special purity, a shame, and a vulnerability; in their music was an experience of metaphysical sorrow and a longing for salvation. It seemed to me that this underground of Jirous' was an attempt to give hope to those who had been most excluded."*

In other words, Havel overcame his skeptical and patronizing attitudes and persuaded others in the "the official and officially tolerated opposition" (what we might term the 'respectable' dissidents) to take seriously and to listen to the young and disenfranchised and vulnerable. The consequences for progressive politics were immensely important. This seems like a lesson that established progressives in the U.S. might learn from OWS.
__________
* From: Václav Havel. 1991. Disturbing the Peace. NY: Vintage, pages 126f.

Chicks With Guns ~ Still Dim

2011-11-27T09:04:00.008-05:00

Alison, Marlee, Lee & Morgan with Boss 20-gauge side-by-sides.
Photograph © Lindsay McCrum.

I came across this review in The Los Angeles Times of a new book by Lindsay McCrum. I have written here numerous times about guns - and about how, generally, I don't get the attraction or the point and how, specifically, I think those who insist on toting guns in inappropriate places (e.g., political meetings, church, Starbucks, etc.) are defective socially, cognitively, morally, or maybe all three.

Here is my view. I don't hunt but don't object to those who do or who do so with guns. Beyond that, it is pretty clear that having a gun in the house does not make one safer. I won't go on again about the knuckleheads who insist on bearing arms at town meetings and other public events. All those claims apply when the gun owner is a "chick" too. In this instance, though, I'd add that a practice or tradition does not necessarily get any less dim simply because "chicks" are engaging in it.

An Intellectual Experiment ~ Ethics and Improvisation

2011-11-26T13:59:00.003-05:00

I came across this lecture by philosopher Arnold Davidson and subsequent discussion that focus on the intersection of improvisation and ethics, jazz and philosophy. The philosophical sources of the lecture are Foucault, Hadot, and Cavell (channeling Emerson, Throreau, Wittgenstein). Unfortunately. Davidson is ill-prepared time-wise and skips nearly all the musical examples he had prepared, sticking instead to familiar terrain of philosophical texts. Even then he gets to the punch line late (starting around minute 30:00 or so) - there he says “ . . . Since improvisation is the free creation of differences, it challenges and calls for intelligibility. These differences in intelligibility are a source of discomfort.” And various forms of improvisation are an aid in the face of such discomfort too insofar as they evidence both fluidity and coherence they can, by generating work that is “fluid but not amorphous, coherent without being frozen” help establish and reestablish intelligibility by, I think, generating and settling discordance. I think this is plausible and will try to hunt down more refined versions of the argument as they appear. Interesting, Davidson is collaborating with the esteemed musician/composer.historian George Lewis [1] [2] on a broad project here.

Best Shots (185) ~ Annie Leibovitz

2011-11-26T11:50:00.003-05:00

(212) Annie Leibovitz ~ Georgia O'Keefe's Pastels (22 November 2011).

Danny Gutherie Succeeds

2011-11-25T09:01:00.006-05:00

Top: The Proposition (2009); Middle: Adam & Cain (2010);
Bottom: The Appraisal (2007). All three images © Danny Guthrie.

A faculty member in photography at Michigan State University, Danny Gutherie, evidently is being swept up in a ruckus about the propriety or otherwise of his work - which includes images like those I've lifted above. Here is part of a statement about the work from Gutherie's web page:

My interests in making these pictures are both political and personal. Certainly subject matter such as this is politically charged. In the last couple of decades many female artists have investigated the personal landscape of their sexuality, as a means to seize control of their own representation within a culture milieu whose imaging of women has a long track record of idealization and exploitation. Taking my cue from this work, through direct and indirect references to classical painting and photography, my intent is to acknowledge these various traditions and debates, twisting and blurring the codes of classical aesthetics, contemporary rhetorically motivated art, and even erotica. In particular, I want the viewer to know I am investigating a history and practice of representation where the roles of viewer and viewed, seducer and object of seduction, are examined and perturbed. In short, I hope to move beyond simplistic notions of viewer and victim, exploring the possibility of a complicated exchange of power that informs the way these pictures come about.

This is not work - despite Gutherie's view that it is "edgy" - I find especially interesting or provocative. That said, I don't see why anyone ought to be getting their knickers in a knot about impropriety. According to news reports, these are not students from Gutherie's classes, they have input in the decision as to whether the images are displayed, and the University seems to be on top of the process by which models are solicited and treated. In particular, there apparently have been no complaints from the people who actually appear in the photographrs. A Google search generates a slew of news reports (the confluence of wire services and some slow news days): The headlines all assert that Gutherie's photographs ". . . stir debate," ". . . prompt questions," ". . . draw attention," ". . . stir up controversy," or some such theme. Guthrie, it seems, has been successful. That, I suspect, says less about the work than about the moral anxieties and aesthetic norms of those who are complaining about it.

The Efficient Choice in Economic Policy

2011-11-24T13:58:00.003-05:00

Cartoon © Mr. Fish

On UC Davis

2011-11-23T14:04:00.003-05:00

Over at The Nation, Jon Wiener has written this nice piece - I had thought of doing a similar one myself - contrasting two You Tube videos taken at UC Davis last week. The first is the notorious video of Officer John Pike pepper spraying students. The second is of Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi exiting the central admin building on campus accompanied by a campus Chaplain and passing through a group of students. Katehi had claimed to be threatened by the students and refused to leave the building - hence the presence of the Chaplain. The silence is deafening as he Chancellor departs.

This pair of videos speaks to the anxiety and fear that elites experience in the face of democratic, peaceful dissent. They are truly eye opening. And I must say that in both instances the students at Davis displayed exemplary sorts of courage and restraint.

Passings ~ Paul Motian (1931-2011)

2011-11-23T09:52:00.007-05:00

Drummer Paul Motian has died. You can find an obituary here in The New York Times. It is difficult to say how much I admired Motian and how much I owe to his wonderful music. So this is truly sad news for me on top of being an immense loss to the world of music.
_________
P.S.: Here is a very nice remembrance of Motian. And another here.

Our Occupiers, The Mayor & Rochester's 13 %

2011-11-22T21:41:00.005-05:00

What follows is the text of this short Op-Ed Susan and I published in the City Newspaper this week.

GUEST COMMENTARY: Our Occupiers, the mayor, and Rochester's 13 percent

on November 22, 2011

BY SUSAN ORR AND JIM JOHNSON

After protracted conflict and numerous arrests, Mayor Tom Richards and Occupy Rochester reached an accord allowing the protesters to stay in Washington Square Park. Their agreement is crucially important because absent access to public space, effective freedom to speak and assemble, and along with them democracy, wither.

That said, the mayor has not actually engaged with our Occupiers. He claims, after all, that while sympathetic to many of their concerns, most fall far beyond the purview of his administration. Is it so difficult to see how "We Are the 99%!" is relevant to Rochester?

The Brookings Institution just issued a report tracing the growth since 2000 of concentrated urban poverty in America. The basic concept is this: Someone lives in concentrated poverty not just if she herself lives at or beneath the officially defined poverty line, but if 40 percent or more of all those residing in the same census tract as she also live at or below the official poverty level. In 2010 the official poverty level was $22,300 for a family of four.

Using this metric, the situation in Rochester is grim. Of the primary cities in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in America, Rochester ranks third in concentrated poverty. In relative terms Rochester is just ahead of Syracuse (fourth) and significantly ahead of Albany (20th) and Buffalo (29th). In absolute terms, Rochester has a population of 202,644, of whom 56,813 live at or below the poverty level. Of that poor population, 26,705 reside in concentrated poverty. That is just over 13 percent of the city's entire population.

Concentrated poverty has negative consequences. It tends to depress educational quality, real estate values, and private economic investment while placing upward pressure on crime rates, the cost of living, and local government expenditures. Each of these trends is disturbing. Shouldn't Mayor Richards consider them to be central to his concerns? According to the Brookings report, those living amid concentrated poverty confront a "double burden" - their individual poverty is compounded by contextual features of "the place in which they live." This, in turn, "complicates the jobs of policymakers and service providers working to promote connections to opportunity and to alleviate poverty."

The Brookings report, however, neglects other crucially important factors. Concentrated urban poverty has dire political consequences. While it does not break down the Rochester numbers by race, the report notes that, nationally, "African Americans remained the single largest" racial group experiencing concentrated poverty. There is no reason to suspect that Rochester diverges from that pattern.

Political scientists Cathy Cohen and Michael Dawson have demonstrated that African Americans who live in concentrated poverty are more likely to believe that politics works to the advantage of the wealthy and white. And they are less likely to participate in politics in various ways. As in the Brookings report, these findings identify a contextual impact over and above the burden of individual poverty. Significantly, Cohen and Dawson use a much lower threshold (30 percent) to measure the effects of concentrated poverty. So, given the levels the Brookings report establishes, it is likely that the negative political consequences of concentrated poverty in Rochester are especially pronounced.

Put bluntly, concentrated poverty like that found in Rochester is bad for our democracy. It reduces political participation among the least advantaged, making it unlikely that the political system will be responsive to their interests and values. Like their counterparts elsewhere, Occupy Rochester decries economic hardship and the highly skewed distribution of wealth and income. The concerns they articulate point directly to the plight of many city residents. This should not be hard for the mayor to understand.

Susan Orr is assistant professor of political science at the SUNY College at Brockport. Jim Johnson is professor of political science at the University of Rochester.

You've Heard of Naked Self-Interest? Well, Here are Instances of Naked Solidarity

2011-11-22T18:39:00.009-05:00

This is an image Aliaa Magda al-Mahdy, a young Egyptian woman living in Cairo, recently posted on her blog. You can find a report here at The New York Times and another here at The Guardian. Unsurprisingly, she has received scant support from any end of the political spectrum in Egypt. Conservatives are pressing charges, liberals are running away fast and far. But she has received solidarity from this group of Israeli women.

Israeli women posing for a photograph in Tel Aviv, to show
solidarity with Egyptian blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahdy.
Photograph © REUTERS/Anat Cohen.

And this, apparently is simply one instance of a virtual epidemic of such bare solidarity. In China, authorities have accused Zhao Zhao, an assistant to artist Ai Weiwei, of possessing pornography because he had pictures on his camera of Ai naked with several women. And today, his friends and supporters stripped in support of the artist. You can find reports here and here in The Guardian. And here are, respectively, the offending photo and a sample of the the subsequent expressions of solidarity.

Listen, Chinese Government： Nudity is not Pornography

Best Shots (184) ~ Jodi Bieber

2011-11-21T23:14:00.005-05:00

(211) Jodi Bieber ~ Bibi Aisha, 2010 (20 November 2011).

I typically post entries from this series at The Guardian without comment. But since I've written a bunch of posts on this one already, I feel I should link to them. You can find them here. For now, let's just say I am not a fan of Bieber on this one or of TIME virtually ever.

Poet v. the State

2011-11-21T22:55:00.003-05:00

Authoritarians since Plato have distrusted poets. Here, from The New York Times last weekend, is a report of one recent encounter.

#Occupy as Symbolic Politics

2011-11-20T10:17:00.005-05:00

This nice article appears in The New York Times today on what I reluctantly call the "branding" of Occupy Wall Street. This is the second article by Alice Rawsthorn that has caught my attention lately. Here she takes a designer's eye to OWS. While Rawsthorn notes a variety of precedents, she might have focused more on ACT UP not only for having pioneered the LOGO [Your Location Here] style, but for the incisive use of graphics to convey complexity. That said, her analysis is politically useful as a way to both assess symbolic politics and anticipate the emergence of cliche.

The New York Times Peddles Stereotypes of Economic Insecurity

2011-11-19T16:33:00.007-05:00

Belinda Sheppard and two adult children live above the poverty line, and
barely cover their bills. Photograph © Doug Mills/The New York Times.

So, among the things that is surprising is that just as the OWS protesters are raising a ruckus about political-economic inequality in the U.S., there has been a steady stream of news reports about just how dire matters actually turn out to be. So, here is a report from The New York Times on recent numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau showing the creep of economic insecurity beyond the usual suspects (undereducated, unemployed, racial minorities) and the usual places (desolate urban and rural enclaves).

Patched together a half-century ago, the official poverty measure has long been seen as flawed. It ignores hundreds of billions the needy receive in food stamps, tax credits and other programs, and the similarly large sums paid in taxes, medical care and work expenses. The new method, called the Supplemental Poverty Measure, counts all those factors and adjusts for differences in the cost of living, which the official measure ignores.

The results scrambled the picture of poverty in many surprising ways. The measure shows less severe destitution, but a bit more overall poverty; fewer poor children, but more poor people over 65.

Of the 51 million who appear near poor under the fuller measure, nearly 20 percent were lifted up from poverty by benefits the official count overlooks. But more than half were pushed down from higher income levels: more than eight million by taxes, six million by medical expenses, and four million by work expenses like transportation and child care.

Demographically, they look more like “The Brady Bunch” than “The Wire.” Half live in households headed by a married couple; 49 percent live in the suburbs. Nearly half are non-Hispanic white, 18 percent are black and 26 percent are Latino.

You'll notice that roughly half of those among the "near poor" - meaning they are above the official poverty line, but just, and that they are one mishap or mis-step away from the precipice - are white. This is an important story about the "suburbanization" of economic hardship and insecurity.

Unsurprisingly, right-wingers want to invoke euphemisms to mask the extent of the problem. (Why even bother to ask mouthpieces from the Heritage Foundation?) But the real questions I have are for the "liberal" reporters and editors at The Times: Why put a black face on this predicament? And why not a married couple instead of a single parent? The photograph at the top of the page appears just below the story headline.

It is not that I want to discount the hardships of Black Americans, but politically, it is too easy and too common to identify poverty as "Black" or "Hispanic" and so as not "our" problem. The visuals matter.

OWS Violence?

2011-11-19T15:08:00.007-05:00

Elizabeth Nichols, Occupy Portland Protester Pepper Sprayed (17 November 2011).
Photograph © Randy Rasmussen/The Oregonian.

At this point I plan to simply collect images of the "violence" of OWS protests. A sort of informal archive establishing how the protesters threaten the gladiator-like law enforcement officers and so need to be subdued forcibly.
__________
P.S.: Here is a story in The Guardian of just released footage from a couple weeks back in Oakland - again of an unprovoked attack on a protester by Darth Vader wannabes.

P.S.2:

Occupy activist Dorli Rainey, 84, after being hit with pepper spray during
a protest in Seattle (16 November 2011). Photograph © Joshua Trujillo/AP.

Where is the OWS "Violence" Coming From?

2011-11-19T12:37:00.006-05:00

This image shows an officer from the UC Davis police force nonchalantly dousing students with pepper spray because they refused to comply with orders. The story is here at Mother Jones.

This is authoritarianism in action. Put a normal guy (who is well paid with benefits and looking forward to a state pension, by the way) in uniform and he nearly always loses all sense of proportion. Watch the video - the riot-gear-clad, armed-to-the-teeth campus police are essentially driven off peacefully by the outraged students.

One thing that has astonished me listening to news reports about OWS protests across the country is the presumption on the part of the media that protests will be violent. More specifically, the presumption seems to be that when there is violence that the protesters will be the perpetrators. From what I can tell that is simply elite anxiety. Nearly every instance of violence that has come to my attention has been perpetrated by law enforcement. Sometimes they are just using their own bad judgment, sometimes they are acting on orders from elected officials. But this episode in Davis is a perfect example of how law enforcement escalates conflict in the most casual of ways. The kids were sitting on the sidewalk for Christ sake. Pepper spray?!?
__________
P.S.: There is a YouTube of the officer "warning" the students that they will be subject to "force" if they don't move (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGagKL_tvS8). To be blunt, this sort of procedural butt covering does not justify the actions he then takes. He might as well be saying: "I warn you, if you don't do what I order I am about to take totally disproportionate action against you!"

Democracy is Not in the Streets

2011-11-19T11:52:00.006-05:00

I've stolen this image from Michael Shaw here at BagNewsNotes who, as always, has a very keen eye for the ironies swirling around what passes for American democracy. As the police beat and arrest protesters who step off the sidewalk this financier strides confidently down the middle of the street. I suspect his obliviousness is studied. Look closely and you'll notice the ear buds - an iPod usefully filtering out the any indication of the consequences his activities generate.

Benetton's Unhate Sucks the Air Out of Politics

2011-11-18T08:26:00.017-05:00

"What does UNHATE mean? UN-hate. Stop hating, if you were hating. Unhate is a message that invites us to consider that hate and love are not as far away from each other as we think. Actually, the two opposing sentiments are often in a delicate and unstable balance. Our campaign promotes a shift in the balance: don’t hate, Unhate."

That is the rationale, such as it is, for the new Benetton "campaign." I've lifted one of five digitally manipulated images of kissing world leaders. As is typical of the Benetton crowd, this one is safely diffuse, risque without actually risking offense or taking a stand on any political issue. It bemoans a presumably "natural" human propensity, not politics. Have I mentioned that the commercialization of "dissent" is bad news? And, of course, the design idea is not new; here is a poster from the Gran Fury collective of ACT-UP New York, designed in 1989 to go on the side advert panels of city buses.

So, the spoof actually predates the real thing. Notice three things besides the two-plus-decade lag. The Gran Fury design (1) addresses a specific controversial issue, (2) it is about causality and responsibility (it took sides on the issue of what was turning a disease into a catastrophe) and finally (3) Obama and Hu Jintao might as well be kissing their grandmothers ("No tongue!") whereas the folks in the ACT UP graphic are seemingly into it. Gran Fury offered incisive commentary on public fear and misunderstanding in the time of an epidemic. Benetton offers a Hallmark-like "let's just all get along" greeting which assumes there are no actual issues at stake in politics, no interests, commitments or attachments worth disagreeing or fighting over. So, for some perspective, I selected the particular image from the Unhate campaign above precisely in light of this news out of Australia this week. (Thanks Angad - I hope this passes muster!)
__________
P.S.: According to this report in The Los Angeles Times, the White house objects to the Unhate adverts not because they are political, but because they use Obama's image for commercial purposes. And the homophobes at the Vatican more or less immediately threatened legal action to suppress images that depicted a smooching Pope Benedict. Predictably Benetton immediately caved in the face of the threat. There is some political backbone for you! Here is the offending image:

OWS & the Democratic Party

2011-11-17T00:08:00.007-05:00

Yesterday in The Guardian Barbara Ehrenreich criticized elites in the Democratic party, including President Obama, of selling the OWS movement down the river. When I first read her piece I thought it was on point. Turns out, however, that her criticism was too understated by half. If the biggest problem were that Obama and other Democratic elites have been silent regarding the Occupy movement things might be better. After all, we now know (reported, for instance, by AP here and Mother Jones here) that the evictions in Portland, Oakland, Atlanta, NYC and so forth are part of a concerted and coordinated strategy by - predominantly Democratic - elected officials to dismantle the movement. Of course they seem to have acted with the full connivance of Obama's Department of Homeland Security, but that has not been definitively established. The local concerns about public health and safety are - regardless of the DHS angle - all just so much bullshit.

Michael Bloomberg concluded his rationalization for attacking the OWS folks in NYC with this statement: "“Protestors have had two months to occupy the park with tents and sleeping bags. Now they will have to occupy the space with the power of their arguments." The problem? Bloomberg has not argued with anyone. He sent out the armed (and, in the event, pretty brutal) NYPD. Just as the other mayors have done. That said, it is important to recognize that (as reported here at Democracy Now!) some local officials have in fact resigned in response to the heavy-handed response by the various mayors.

The image above captures the real problem for government officials - including our Democrats. It is a screen shot of this map from The Guardian, showing the location of various Occupy outposts world-wide.

Michael Ramirez Impersonates Pravda Cartoonist

2011-11-16T11:23:00.008-05:00

Now, I get the fact that cartoons are meant to amplify or magnify this or that aspect of reality for comic (and substantive) effect. But last I knew, outright falsification is not part of the game. Where to start with this piece of disinformation? Well, we might first note that the "violence" surrounding the OWS protests is virtually always perpetrated by "law enforcement." But we might also ask what percentage of the Tea Baggers are employed - how many are retirees living on those dastardly "socialist" programs (Medicare & Social Security)? I won't go on - life is too short. Of course, this piece of propaganda ran this morning in our very own Gannett paper The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.
__________
P.S.: So, it turns out that Tea Baggers - about 18% of the American population - tend to be richer, whiter, more conservative, angrier and male(r) than the rest of the population. Oh, and did I mention that they tend to think the plight of American racial minorities is overstated? (Call that stance what you will!) No surprise that Michael Ramirez thinks the Tea Baggers are more representative than they are - those are precisely the characteristics of the folks who pay his salary.

99 from the 99%: OWS Protraits

2011-11-16T10:25:00.006-05:00

Regular readers will know that my youngest son is named August. Well today I came across this post at Lens featuring the work of another August - August Bradley - who has done this impressive set of portraits of folks at OWS. Bradley's work carries on an emergent tradition of sorts - if two photographers, Joel Sternfeld and Marc Vallée, (with perhaps a nod to Dorothea Lange) can constitute a "tradition." All this work is a creatively appropriates portraiture, a genre that traditionally has been an instrument for the rationalization of elite power.

What Gives with Conservatives?

2011-11-15T19:26:00.003-05:00

Is it just me or are the conservatives at The New York Times stable of columnists falling over themselves to excuse the behavior of those who were enablers of accused pedophile Jerry Sandusky? Today we had David Brooks and yesterday it was Ross Douthat. Stop making excuses!

Best Shots (183) ~ David Trood

2011-11-15T00:08:00.000-05:00

(210) David Trood ~ Crazy (13 November 2011).

Shahidul Alam - My Journey as a Witness

2011-11-14T18:59:00.006-05:00

"A lot of the work that I do makes me unpopular with my government."
~ Shahidul Alam

Today npr ran this interview with Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam. The interview is occasioned by the publication of a collection of Alam's work - My Journey as a Witness. The opening quote above gives an incisive counterpoint to much of what passes for journalism in the United States. And it sheds understated light on the risks - that I have noted here before - Alam and other photographers regularly take in their effort to depict for us the wide world.

Local Event ~ Susie Linfield at UR (11/17/2011)

2011-11-14T00:37:00.000-05:00

I have posted here multiple times about Susie Linfield and her smart analyses of contemporary photography. Well, she will be speaking on the University of Rochester campus Thursday evening November 17th - details here. Linfield's recent book The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence is very, very good. She will be talking on "Photojournalism and Human Rights." The talk is free and open to the public.

Reading Around

2011-11-13T23:03:00.005-05:00

To start, I want to call your attention to an incisive assessment of the Obama presidency by my colleague Robb Westbrook that appeared early this fall in The Christian Century (20 September 2011). It is entitled "The Liberal Agony: Why There was No New New Deal." Robb does so much in so short a space that I won't try to indicate the good bits. Unfortunately, the essay is behind a wall and it only just showed up on the UR library subscription this past week. This is a must read analysis!

There is an interview with the always smart and entertaining Cornel West here at The Washington Post. Annotation: I like the distinction he draws between "a deodorized Martin Luther King Jr. who is easily assimilable to the American mainstream" and "the real funky Martin" who "was a threat," who "created unease." I've made a similar point here on numerous occasions but not as eloquently.

There is an interesting interview here at In These Times with economist Nancy Folbre in which she advocates for "on stronger collective commitments to the development of human capabilities and efforts to strengthen families and communities."

There is a long-ish set of reflections here by Rebecca Solnit in which she looks hard at OWS and why eschewing violence makes the movement "unconventionally dangerous" - threatening in precisely the way Dr. West depicts MLK.

Passings: Norton Dodge (1927-2011)

2011-11-13T13:52:00.002-05:00

Norton Dodge, an economist who smuggled dissident art out of the former Soviet Union, has died. An obituary is here at The New York Times. Those scandalized by the finances of art collecting will be interested in the role Warren Buffett plays in this story.

No Surprise, Masterpieces Follow the Money: On Crystal Bridges and the Demise of Public Institutions

2011-11-12T13:49:00.012-05:00

Today, it seems, is the opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, brain child of Walmart heiress Alice Walton. This morning, npr ran this segment on the way various denizens of the East and West coast art world establishments have gotten their noses out of joint about Walton's various acquisitions and near-acquisitions. Now, I have no great fondness for the unimaginably wealthy, especially when they have inherited and not actually "earned" their wealth, and even more especially when whomever did "earn" the family fortune did so more or less brutally on the exploitation of workers and destruction of local communities and ecologies. So, no love for Alice on my part. That said, it is difficult to have much sympathy for the art-world types who forget that many of the big established museums and galleries have been in bed with Alice-like characters for ever. As Rebecca Solnit wrote in this incisive piece in The Nation on Crystal Bridges several years ago: "Art patronage has always been a kind of money-laundering, a pretty public face for fortunes made in uglier ways." Just so.

Solnit's essay was occasioned by Alice's acquisition from The New York Public Library of Asher Durand's 1849 painting Kindred Spirits. A good question, one that, as far as I can tell, none of the people yacking about Alice actually articulates, is just why it is that our public institutions are in such dire financial straits that they feel compelled to place artistic treasures on the market in the first place. (To be clear the npr correspondent never poses the question either!) Perhaps the poverty of the NYPL and various colleges and universities is the converse of the concentration of income and wealth in the very highest reaches of the American population?

Passings: Magor Jirous (1944-2011)

2011-11-12T13:07:00.002-05:00

Czech dissident Magor Jirous has died. You can find a report here at Reuters.

Making "Art" at the Expense of Someone Else's Dignity: Maria Abramović Has Another Go

2011-11-12T12:51:00.005-05:00

I have been pretty clear here that I think Maria Abramović (and her propensity to recruit co-performers) is a pretty thoroughgoing travesty. This report and this one too on her upcoming "performance" at LA MOCA simply confirms my view. The response, however, renews my faith that in some corners of the art world there are people capable of exercising everyday common sense.

A Pie Chart to the Face of Each of Republican Presidential Candidates

2011-11-11T12:11:00.006-05:00

Source: CBS News

In addition to the clear political absurdity of Republican voters, there is the media's insistence on committing a graphical faux pas - using a pie chart.

"Tables are clearly the best way to show exact numerical values, although the entries can be arranged in semi-graphical form. Tables are preferable to graphics for small data sets. A table is nearly always better than a pie chart: the only thing worse than a pie chart is several of them, for then the viewer is asked to compare quantities located in spatial disarray both within and between pies ... Given their low data density and failure to order numbers along a visual dimension, pie charts should never be used." (Ed Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 178).

In combination this makes it difficult to see that none of the front-runners could decisively beat "someone (anyone?) else" even among avowed Republicans!

Veteran's Day Lyric

2011-11-11T09:07:00.006-05:00

It is Veteran's Day again. And, once again, Tom Waits supplies an appropriate lyric. The actual performance of the song pulses harshly with adrenaline and the sort of barely contained hysteria that comes from knowing there are people, visible and not, willing and hoping to kill you. And then you are "home?"

Hell Broke Luce
Tom Waits*

I had a good home but I left
I had a good home but I left, right, left
That big fucking bomb made me deaf, deaf
A Humvee mechanic put his Kevlar on wrong
I guarantee you’ll meet up with a suicide bomb
Hell broke luce
Hell broke luce

Big fucking ditches in the middle of the road
You pay a hundred dollars just for fillin’ in the hole
Listen to the general every goddamn word
How many ways can you polish up a turd
Left, right, left, left, right
Left, right
Hell broke luce
Hell broke luce
Hell broke luce

How is it that the only ones responsible for making this mess
Got their sorry asses stapled to a goddamn desk
Hell broke luce
Hell broke luce
Left, right, left

What did you do before the war?
I was a chef, I was a chef
What was your name?
It was Geoff, Geoff
I lost my buddy and I wept, wept
I come down from the meth
So I slept, slept
I had a good home but I left, left
Pantsed at the wind for a joke
I pranced right in with the dope
Glanced at her shin she said nope
Left, right, left

Nimrod Bodfish have you any wool
Get me another body bag the body bag’s full
My face was scorched, scorched
I miss my home I miss my porch, porch
Left, right, left

Can I go home in March? March
My stanch was a chin full of soap
That rancid dinner with the pope
Left, right, left

Kelly Presutto got his thumbs blown off
Sergio’s developing a real bad cough
Sergio’s developing a real bad cough
Hell broke luce
Hell broke luce
Hell broke luce

Boom went his head away
And boom went Valerie
What the hell was it that the president said?
Give him a beautiful parade instead
Left, right, left

When I was over here I never got to vote
I left my arm in my coat
My mom she died and never wrote
We sat by the fire and ate a goat
Just before he died he had a toke
Now I’m home and I’m blind
And I’m broke
What is next
__________
* From: Bad as Me (Anti, 2011).

Reading Around

2011-11-10T23:29:00.003-05:00

A new Op-Ed by Dani Rodrik here on the rise of right-wing politics in Europe as a consequence of festering political-economic crisis.

An essay by Amartya Sen & Jean Dreze here on the dire pattern of growth without development in India.

A criticism here by Henry Farrell & Cosma Shalizi of the technocratic policy reform advocated by Cass Sunstein & Richard Thaler.

Donna Ferrato

2011-11-09T09:54:00.003-05:00

Over at Lens you can find this sobering retrospective of work by Donna Ferrato who has spent decades documenting domestic violence.

John Rawls Occupies Wall Street?

2011-11-08T00:00:00.002-05:00

You can find a podcast here of an nice interview Josh Cohen on John Rawls and Occupy Wall Street.

Best Shots (182) ~ Mitch Epstein

2011-11-07T23:23:00.005-05:00

(209) Mitch Epstein ~ Martha Murphy & Charlie Biggs,
Pass Christian Mississippi, 2001 (6 November 2011).

Ai Weiwei as the Al Capone of China

2011-11-06T11:37:00.005-05:00

It is well known that the U.S. Government convicted mobster Al Capone of tax evasion when they couldn't get him for running liquor during Prohibition. Well, the Chinese government has convicted Ai Weiwei of tax evasion too rather than charge him with some nefarious political infraction. Now, according to this report in The New York Times, Ai Weiwei also is head of something like a money laundering gang!

Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951

2011-11-05T12:56:00.005-05:00

This exhibition opened yesterday at The Jewish Museum in NYC. It seems like it will be worth a trip sometime. It is interesting to see the ongoing tension between politics and art surrounding not only the original work, but what one finds in the notices of the opening. I lifted this image by Jerry Liebling from The Lens blog where the post stresses how both politics and aesthetics inflected work by members of the League. (The caption here is interesting compared to other places you can find the image on the web as "Union Square, New York, 1948.") But the post itself is trying hard to rescue members of the Photo League from the imagined charge that they were simply propagandists. Hence the resolution of the discussion in how members were committed to making beautiful images.

"Settlers" in the West Bank: What Do We See?

2011-11-03T19:51:00.000-05:00

A Jewish settler folded clothes among a pile of personal belongings and remains
of structures demolished by Israeli troops, in the illegal Jewish settlement
outpost of Ramat Migon, a hilltop site near Ramallah in the West Bank.
Photograph © Tara Todras-Whitehill/Associated Press.

Over at The New York Times recently I've come across some striking images made by Tara Todras-Whitehill of Israeli settlers in the aftermath of having their homes demolished. I've lifted one of these images above.

What I find interesting is the pathos of the images and the way that the caption does not quite name the "settlers" as criminals. These are people who, in fact, are violating the law and who are not being "removed" and so simply rebuild. What we see is the perseverance of apparently isolated settlers. This, at best, is a partial view.

What we tend not to see - or perhaps I am simply overlooking the images that actually appear - are photographs of the settlers rampaging against Palestinians and their supporters who seek to defend their land in the territories. Nor are we seeing the true scale of the illegality here - the systematic land grab that is going on with at least a wink-and-a-nod from and often with the active connivance of the Israeli government.* Likewise, we are not seeing - same caveat - the conflicts between the settlers and the Israeli troops who are sent to demolish illegal construction. By contrast the stereotypical shot of Palestinians is of youth throwing rocks at Israeli security forces. Have I just missed the broader depiction of the dynamic in outlets like The Times?

For a harrowing first hand report on the scale of the Israeli building program in the West Bank and a harrowing account of the violent reaction to anti-settlement protests I recommend this two part post by David Shulman at the NYRB.blog.

In closing I want to be clear that I am not criticizing Todras-Whitehill here. In fact, her work is quite impressive. I am raising questions about the appropriation of particular images by mainstream press outlets. And perhaps I am raising questions about the possibilities of actually photographing the sorts of things I mention.
__________
* In the first of the posts I recommend, Shulman offers this sketch: "According to the statistics compiled by Peace Now, in the ten months following the end of the “as-if” freeze on building in the territories in October 2010, work began on 2,598 new housing units; 2,149 new units were completed, and building continued on at least another 3,700. The rate of housing construction per (Israeli) person on the West Bank was double that in Israel proper. If you drive south from Jerusalem along Road 60, the main north-south artery, you see signs of building by settlers everywhere." We are not dealing with isolated violations.

Same S*&%, Different Day - Or, How to Rationalize Really Bad Behavior.

2011-11-02T09:44:00.003-05:00

I lifted this from Colin Penter at FB whom I am pretty certain borrowed it from elsewhere. Sounds about right to me.

COAL+ICE

2011-11-02T08:13:00.005-05:00

At The New Yorker you can find this report on what looks to be an exciting exhibition opening in Beijing (In know! Not exactly my neighborhood.) The show, curated by Jeroen de Vries and Susan Meiselas is called COAL + ICE and includes work by a bunch of remarkable photographers from both China and abroad. It tries to establish visual links between various links in the process of extracting and using fossil fuel - specifically coal. So, we have images from mining to pronounced, large-scale environmental change. The exhibition is up through November 28th.

(Notes on) Politics, Theory & Photography

AI ~ Science for Human Rights: Human Rights Monitoring for the 21st Century.

On the Uses of Bridges for (Democratic) Politics

Thinking With Data Graphics ~ Fewer Unionized Workers = Lots of Crappy, Low Paying Jobs

New Book ~ Parvati Nair on Salgado

Appropriate Contrast

Prescience ~ José Saramago

Best Shots (190) ~ Leo Maguire

Springsteen Invoking American Ideals, Again

Democracy in Peril (2): United States

Democracy in Peril: Hungary

Kodak is Kaput

SOPASTRIKE

Mieko Mahi and the Enterprise of Ideology

Marines Not Fighting for "Our Freedoms"

Havel & Kundera

Recommended Reading: Pragmatic Utopianism as "The Future of Black Politics"

Best Shots (189) ~ Simone Lueck

Mobility Myth or Simply Ideology?

Milton Rogovin, Dangerous Subversive? Ernest Withers, Shameful Collaborator?

Exclusion Zones (2) ~ Jake Baggaley

Red-Staters, Red-Baiting, and their Enablers in the Press

Constitutional Politics ~ Do the Parchment Barriers Sleep Above the Covers?

Exclusion Zones

Passings ~ Eve Arnold (1912 - 2012)

Brawling Houses and Trees

Kodak Circling the Bowl

David Rubinger

An Interview with Roberto Unger

Passings ~ Sam Rivers (1923-2011)

Photojournalism & Its Uses

Pieter Hugo

There is an Interview with Philosopher Charles Taylor ...

Sen on the Folly of Austerity

News Flash! Jackass + Handgun = Felon

Republican Anti-Environmentalism as an Assault on "Unborn Babies"

Merry Christmas

Best Shots (188) ~ Lukas Strebel

Andrei Sannikov ~ Political Prisoner in Belarus

Passings ~ Václav Havel (1936-2011)

Dateline Cairo

An Appropriate Irony ~ Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

Obama Shelves the Rule of Law

Democracy Now ~ Russia

Turkish Political Scientist Büşra Ersanli Under Arrest

Best Shots (187) ~ Ryan McGinley

West Coast Port Shutdown ~ Monday 12 December

Art and the Eurozone Crisis

Passings ~ Jose Gaytan (1940~2011)

Picture Stillbirths, If You Can

Political Theorists on OWS (5) - Stanford Crowd

Art & the Limits of Neuroscience

Political Theorists on OWS (4) ~ Raymond Geuss

Political Theorists on OWS (3) ~ Wendy Brown

Political Theorists on OWS (2) ~ Bernard Harcourt

Political Theorists on OWS (1) - Bill Connolly

Arundhati Roy on OWS

Phillip Glass Meets OWS

Staff List ~ The Year in Photos 2011

Best Shots (186) ~ Massimo Vitali

The Lesson of Ivan Jirous

Chicks With Guns ~ Still Dim

An Intellectual Experiment ~ Ethics and Improvisation

Best Shots (185) ~ Annie Leibovitz

Danny Gutherie Succeeds

The Efficient Choice in Economic Policy

On UC Davis

Passings ~ Paul Motian (1931-2011)

Our Occupiers, The Mayor & Rochester's 13 %

GUEST COMMENTARY: Our Occupiers, the mayor, and Rochester's 13 percent

You've Heard of Naked Self-Interest? Well, Here are Instances of Naked Solidarity

Best Shots (184) ~ Jodi Bieber

Poet v. the State

#Occupy as Symbolic Politics

The New York Times Peddles Stereotypes of Economic Insecurity

OWS Violence?

Where is the OWS "Violence" Coming From?

Democracy is Not in the Streets

Benetton's Unhate Sucks the Air Out of Politics

OWS & the Democratic Party