<underfire> chaos and illusions, generation, and a comparison with the anti-Viet Nam movement
Christiane Robbins
cpr at mindspring.com
Wed Nov 1 20:04:34 EST 2006
I'd like to enter the fray here in response to both Loretta's and
Trevor's recent posts. I have been away and am catching up = apologies
in advance if I may have missed or replay some critical points that
have already been raised.
It is without question that the war in Iraq continues to be shockingly
costly - in every form of currency exchange with which one engages:
socio-economic, political, cultural, religious, our own sense of
humanity and compassion, etc. It is also without question that the
collective response to this war has been shockingly displaced,
disaffected and repressed in the USA. The complexity of issues forming
a response as to why that is the case, has been the fodder of
innumerable academic and personal discussions, blogs, posts, articles,
books +++. A number of these issues have been raised in Loretta's post.
However, drawing an analogy to the war in Vietnam and the response it
engendered in the sixties and seventies is simultaneously beneficial
and deceptive. It strikes me that this period has set the stage for
the rerun of that time ever since. That we are participating in a
drawn out play of the post-sixties ( not only in fashion but in the
hard-hitting political landscape - more like a 45 record having been
digitized and constantly remixed into a looping extended dance
track....one which has finally exhausted its audience ... no matter how
many pharmaceuticals are ingested.
Not only must the USA ( and the rest of the world ) endure the
devastating results of the misguided psychological dynamics of the
former Nixonians in their ill-fated attempts to win what they feel was
taken from them during their downfall 30-40 yrs ago, we are expected to
blindly share their mediated and institutionalized self-delusions as
the key to our happiness.
I'm uncertain of other peoples response on the day of 9/11 as I can
only speak to my own. And my own was predicated on the research and
work that I had been doing on a collaborative project with Jackie Orr (
a Sociologist, Professor and Performance Artist ) the title of which
was " Keep Calm ... in the Cold War. " We ( primarily Jackie ) took a
look at the contemporary militarization of U.S. civilian psychology in
the context of World War II and Cold War efforts to target the psychic
and emotional life of civilians as a battlefield component of ‘total
war.’ Selectively tracing the entangled histories of academic social
science, the mass media, military technologies, and U.S. government
agencies, we posited that the post-World War II emergence of the U.S.
national security state is founded in part on the calculated promotion
of civilian insecurity and terror. From the televising of U.S. atomic
bomb tests in Nevada to ‘Operation Alert’ exercises (1954-57) when
thousands of civilians participated in a simulated response to Soviet
nuclear attack, strategies for productively frightening the U.S.
population have become a significant feature of U.S. political history
and popular culture.
The militarization of civilian psychology—that is, the psychological
re-organization of civil society for the production of violence—becomes
historically visible as an administrative imperative of U.S.
government. This visibility is paramount in interrogating and
intervening in the complex politics and cultures of terrorism
today.
I pasted a project description below in an attempt to lend yet another
perspective to how we might engage with the issues at hand
Keep Calm, a cross disciplinary installation tracing and interweaving
the cultural socio-economic forces revolving around the legacy of the
cold war, its relationship to the ascent of technology, the resulting
subterranean presence of anxiety ( both real and constructed ) and the
prosperity of the Cold War California suburb as represented through the
ubiquitous presence of mid- late 20th century photographic narratives
and related media. Imagine 1954: It is the height of the cold war.
Troops march uneasily along the border between North and South Korea.
The United States congress is holding hearings about immorality and
treason in government. Many conservatives believe that a secret cabal
of godless communists is trying to create a New World Order. There are
rumors that aliens have landed, and UFO reports abound. 1997: The cold
war is over--and we won! Or did we? Some people believe "black
helicopters" watch them, because they know too much. Aliens from
Roswell, N. M. are alive and abducting new people every day. A "New
World Order" is coming, promoted by the godless humanist conspiracy, or
the United Nations, or both. X-Files ( the television show) shows a
government divided against itself, with covert agents of a mysterious
something (the New World Order?) pursuing their agenda and concealing
their presence. The Cancer Man is pulling strings, Deep Throat is dead,
and Mulder and Scully never quite seem to be able to bring it all out
into the light.
Recall September 11, 2001.... as the media has repetitiously stated,
things can never be the same ... the imaginary of our national
landscape has been altered and the flatness of the viewing screen has
made it even more unfathomable.
Where did all of this come from? What does it mean? " The truth is out
there. "
The "war" is over, but the language and imagery of the war continue to
shape our thoughts, our fears, our collective and gendered imaginary.
Through this installation and database, we will offer a
visual/cultural analysis of the rhetorical devices through which the
people of the United States came to understand themselves and the world
during the Cold War. In addition, we will explore the function such
rhetoric serves and begin to learn to evaluate the rhetoric for what it
reveals and confuses in our world, our culture, our relationship to
technology, our economy, our society, and ourselves--both in the
Fifties through the turn of the century.
Now ... of course the question begs as to why this installation has not
yet been realized during the years following 2001 ...
Could it be that a consensual hallucination (resulting from
cinematic/media/sonic narratives ++++) offers an augmented reality that
resides in our collective consciouness that is activated by issues
mentioned already on this list as well as the direct defunding of
education in USA ?
I've taken the liberty of attaching a couple of images: the first
depicts the game simulations for military training at the Institute of
Creative Technologies - with some of you may be familiar; and 2. a
screen shot of some "silo" info one could grab off the internet prior
to 9.11. Just for your viewing pleasure -
1. Guerilla Warfare Training on the streets of an unspecified Middle
Eastern City, 2001
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2.
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All best,
Chris
On Wednesday, November 1, 2006, at 02:15 AM, Loretta Napoleoni wrote:
> I would like to draw the attention to a major issue, why the war in
> Iraq and in Afghanistan, which is clearly an un-just, illegal war, a
> war which is costing US taxpayer $380,000 per extra minute, has not
> generated an opposition movement similar to the one triggered by the
> Viet Nam war?
>
>
>
> The most common answer is there are no sufficient body bags coming
> back home. Modern war technology makes it possible for the military to
> avoid a large number of casualties. Soldiers wear a body armor which
> protects their vital organs, so we do not have so many deaths but we
> have a phenomenal number of injuries, some permanent. Body bags are
> also no publicized, the media does not show them coming home; it does
> not show the funerals, the parents and the loved ones crying.
>
> The other argument is the national draft. Young people do not feel
> threaten by the war because they are not at risk of ending up > fighting.
>
>
>
> I believe that this is a simplistic answer. For sure the public
> display of death soldiers and the draft was an incentive in the 1970s
> to demonstrate against the war, but there are other important factors
> which lead to the mass anti-war demonstration.
>
>
>
> InGenerations, culture and society,June Edmunds and Bryan S. Turner
> (OUP, Buckingham, 2002) gives the following definition of generation:
>
> a collection of people born at the same time who as a result of a
> major event (war etc) develops a collective consciousness which
> results in social change. An active generation changes the society in
> which they live.
>
> A passive generation accepts a given culture.
>
> This characterisation of generations must be challenged, and
> understood as an outcome of changes in the projections of mass media.
> Indeed, there is passivity, but there is much evidence to suggest the
> simplicity of political news, the complexity of modern issues and the
> narrow bracket of debate allowed in the mainstream media have fed this
> passivity.
>
>
>
> The 1960s generation was an active generation.
>
> In the 1960s and most of the 1970s, poverty in the US was falling and
> the US middle class was getting a larger share of the GDP. People were
> overall satisfied with their life and had great hopes for the future.
> Against this background Post war generation (sixties generation) was
> shaped by the Cold War, the rise of communism, the rise of consumerism
> and the sexual revolution. This led to them becoming very active and
> prompting secularization, the women’s movement and a move towards
> global economy including a more technological and service orientated
> workforce. They were the first “global generation” because of advances
> in communication technology.
>
> Sixties generation was characterized by anti-establishment movements
> eg. The civil rights movement, feminism and the anti-war campaign.
>
> Changes in attitude towards sexuality, race, divorce and the family
> combined with changes in attitude towards religion were also a feature
> of the period. Theses were in opposition to the oppression of the
> 1950s.
>
> Divisions occurred between the sixties generation and its predecessor
> to a great extent as a result of the sixties opposition to the Vietnam
> War and their condemnation of the Cold War politics that had produced
> McCarthyism. This was exacerbated by a rapid increase in the number of
> university students which led to student activism and youth movements.
>
> Youth movements were characterized by the role of popular culture
> which spread through rock music and film, the widespread nature of
> these commodities made the first mass culture.
>
> The media played a major role in promoting the 1960s generation
> revolution and in exposing the faults of the establishment. One could
> say that the mainstream media was antiestablishment. Who can forget
> Dan Rather standing in the Viet Nam jungle accusing the US army to use
> napal against the viet cong?
>
>
>
> The present generation is a passive generation.
>
> Income inequality is rising, poverty is rising and the middle class is
> struggling to make ends meet because of massive debts and job
> insecurity. Young unemployed Americans, from poor and middle class
> areas, are joining the army because they have no other way to earn a
> living (see the stats from www.nationalpriorities.com). They are the
> soldiers who fight in Iraq. Secularization has been replaced by a
> rising tide of ‘cheap spirituality’ from New Age gurus to Christian
> fundamentalism. Islam, a solid monotheistic religion, is on the rise
> everywhere in the West with numbers of converts increasing in all
> European countries. Advance in communication and technology, in
> particular the internet, foster physical isolation, people do not
> socialized as they did before, thus the idea to gather en masse to
> demonstrate against the establishment is not so appealing as it was in
> the past. Attitude towards politics is marked by disillusion,
> politicians are all corrupted, opposition is lead by comedians (see
> Michael Moore) as if politics was a joke, people who are unable to
> project an alternative strategy, to put have a vision of how the
> future should be.
>
> The media is responsible for the passivity of the present generation.
> It has avoided presenting the truth about terrorism and Bush war
> against terror but it has also glamorized the life of the super rich,
> the so called celebrities, and fed reader and viewers with a high
> dosage of junk reality shows.
>
>
>
> Middle and Poor America is becoming a media addict, dreaming to win
> the lottery and join the life of the super rich and while waiting for
> such destiny to unfold, watching (voyeuristically) realities shows
> which publicized the personal tragedies of people belonging to their
> social class. Can you be more passive than that?
>
>
>
> Loretta Napoleoni
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
<image.tiff>
>
>
> From:underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org
> [mailto:underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org] On Behalf OfAllan
> Siegel
> Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 6:30 PM
> To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
> Subject: <underfire> chaos and illusions
>
>
>
> There is so many useful important threads to follow here and I kept
> wondering where to start or jump-in. So...
>
>
>
> Michael Goldhaber has stated the following:
>
>
>
> “We see and are directly affected by suffering because it is so much
> more central our own humanity than killing is. Statesmen only barely
> are beginning to understand this. One thing the Internet has already
> done is enlarge this contact with “the other side.” I don’t see any
> easy way for this trend to stop. Nor do I believe that anywhere in the
> world where such images are available they will not have effect.
>
> This new form of war is entirely opposite of that that prevailed in
> WWII, where entire cities were demolished to make a point. There was
> not good war reporting in Japan, for instance, so the allies felt
> justified in fire-bombing Tokyo, heavily bombing other cities, and
> then using A-bombs against Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki,
> just to make a point that might affect the Japanese war cabinet. Today
> such destruction would be seen immediately throughout the world, and
> the onus of evil would fall on the bombers, at least mostly.”
>
>
>
> I am not so sure that today’s new form of war is so different than the
> past. The technology has changed (its glamour increased?), the
> destructiveness more targeted or contained but, “when push comes to
> shove” the number of recent examples of rampant destructiveness
> employed simply “to make a point” are quite plentiful.
>
>
>
> Furthermore, I am not so sure that statesmen today have evolved from
> where they were 50 years ago or a hundred. Statesmen both in the past
> and in the present have shown themselves to be quite capable of
> obfuscating the truth when it suits their ‘higher calling’ of needing
> to achieve goals not easily grasped by the ‘common folk.’ And, what we
> can easily see is the consistent lack of transparency by statesmen
> when it comes to articulating clear political objectives. Truth is not
> even on the table.
>
>
>
> The abundance of information (and disinformation) on television and
> the internet about the bombing of Lebanon did little to deter an
> institutionally organized act of terror. In fact the “representational
> fog” that now engulfs ‘the other/s” has tipped the discursive balance
> of power towards those most able to render ‘the enemy’ as: at best
> invisible, certainly ignominious and hopefully evil incarnate.
>
>
>
> There has been a consistency of this kind of dualistic rhetoric since
> the advent of the Cold War. The ‘us’ and ‘them’ kind of mentality that
> so easily seeps through the American political landscape. And, sorry
> to say, this kind of binary attitude is just as prevalent on the Left
> (side A) as on the Right (side B). It is not so much that this
> descriptive language tarnishes but rather that - in its own depressing
> way - it renders discourse ineffectual, impotent. How sad (even with
> all those blogs out there) and how symptomatic of the devolution of
> the journalistic public sphere that in the U.S. so many people still
> think (somewhat desperately) of the NY Times as the singular focal
> point for ‘informed’ news and information.
>
>
>
> So, jumping ahead here, the language which we utilize (draw upon) to
> comprehend ‘this violence’ or ‘these conflicts’ is very much shaped
> (and distorted) by individual and institutional (corporate, religious
> or governmental) biases that are very much rooted in OUR vision of the
> world and OUR priorities etc.. These different groupings represent
> what Edward Said called communities of interpretation.
>
>
>
> One approach (obviously widespread in many corners of the globe) is
> simply that evil (in whatever form) must be vanquished. This is
> simplistic but attractive to many. Another approach is cloaked in the
> ‘higher values’ of the Enlightenment which, with diminished traction,
> somehow manages to persevere. (One of the primary illusions of
> liberalism is that it promotes as false sense of engagement with
> ‘important issues’ yet relies on political mechanisms gilded with a
> moral self-righteousness). More realistically, to approach events or
> people outside ideological frameworks that are slowly imploding is
> quite difficult. Perhaps, from wherever our vantage point, this is
> because we are struggling to find a new vocabulary and forms of action
> (activity). The tentativeness of this process is compounded by what
> seems to be both an abundance of information and, as Loretta has
> stated, an equal surplus of illusions.
>
>
>
> At times it feels as if I am stuck within one of those conundrums of
> post-modernity where the past is suspect, the future uncertain and the
> present damn uncomfortable. The steps to extricate oneself from this
> predicament are awkward (maybe ineffectual) but necessary. They arise
> from evolving paradigms that are both descriptively and theoretically
> innovative.
>
>
>
> Allan Siegel
>
> _______________________________________________
> Under Fire http://underfire.eyebeam.org
> 16 October - 10 December 2006
> International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville
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> no commercial use without permission
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Christiane Robbins
J e t z t z e i t
Los Angeles l San Francisco
CA l USA
... the space between zero and one ...
Walter Benjamin
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