<underfire> re Total War and Total Images, or the Blind Originary Event of Peace

[Ryan Bishop]

Total War and Total Images, or the Blind Originary Event of Peace

Total war, much as described through Negar’s quotations of a former US marine, entails a targeting of citizens. The rationale, as we all know, runs along the lines of the following: if every segment of a given society is mobilized in a war effort, as was the case during WWII and the Cold War, then any aspect of that society is a legitimate target for attack. During the British air raids on Germany, the strategy was called “dehousing the work force,” a nice euphemism for civilian targeting. The role of targets in urbanization and militarization, which cannot be separated from the movement of neoliberal markets and the deployment of information tele-technologies, is something that I have spent a good bit of time working on with my colleagues and friends Greg Clancey and John Phillips (as Under Fire 2 exhibited through Jordan’s kind auspices).

Negar’s evocation of images of the veils in relation to Reading Lolita in Tehran foregrounds the veil’s manifest polyvalence, or perhaps just good old fashioned double bind (as in, either veiled or unveiled, the women in countries that don veils somehow embody the stakes of long standing struggles regardless of their own desires). Within a specific representative regime, the veil is the target. I am reminded of the long reach of this targeting, a parabolic arc that takes us back to Homer’s Iliad. The word for veil and battlement in the ancient Greek are the same, so when Andromache stands on the city’s walls to see her husband’s body defiled in death being dragged through the dirt beyond the city gates, she removes her veil, letting it fall from her head and body, signifying the fall of the city walls as well. Both she and the city are undone. In a moment of terrible beauty, Homer brings the veil and battlement together, both as target. Both reveal the profound  paradox of security. Only that which is valuable is protected, and that very protection draws attention – it attracts through the act of providing security. The defense itself is a lure. Defense and security undo themselves through their very enacting. 

The veil has long become a target. Perhaps now, in an age of network-base warfare and total global surveillance, the screen functions rather a lot like a veil: a target of total war by total images. 

The veil. The screen. The image. The target. Veils, screens, images, targets.

Nestled between prefix and suffix, the word veil resides in the very heart of the word surveillance. Though the etymologies of the terms come to English in largely unrelated ways, the role of covering and uncovering in surveillance is key to its operation, as well as to its self-defeating deployment. But perhaps more to the point, with the veil, we return to the question of epistemology and violence, for the veil and unveiling relate to truth as aeltheia, or truth as ongoing unconcealment.  In the veil, as in the screen and the image, we find the material and immaterial means of thinking through the epistemology of violence. But I do not think we will find the means for engaging critically with epistemological parameters in them, nor am I convinced they exist in experimental art, though I wish they did. However, the latency mentioned by Wolfgang does adhere with a delay or lag that is found in the effects of the most powerful avant-garde art work of the early 20th century, much of which we find manifesting itself in contemporary military technology. One could not have predicted these effects at the time. We had to wait for the century to unfold, to reveal itself. So perhaps Wolfgang is looking in the right place. However, if there is a power in latency, in delay, in lag, in effect, then we will not and cannot foresee what the outcomes will be. If we can see that which will become the originary event of peace now, then that will not be the event later. It will have been veiled from the outset; we will have been blinded to it.   



-----Original Message-----
From: underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org on behalf of Wolfgang Sützl
Sent: Wed 11/8/2006 8:24 PM
To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
Subject: Re: <underfire> re fluid borders, structured chaos, weak discipline
 
Sarah, Bracha, Ryan,

in response to your postings, may I offer some more thoughts on the 
possibility of an "originary event of peace" -

I have long been concerned with the question of peace as a historical 
reaity beyond the prevailing understanding of it as the negation of war. 
That negating thing invariably bears the traces of what it seeks to 
negate, and peace born out of war only lives as peace that goes back to 
war. Brecht writes in his "German War Primer" "THOSE AT THE TOP SAY: 
PEACE AND WAR Are of different substance. But their peace and their war 
Are like wind and storm. War grows from their peace Like son from his 
mother He bears Her frightful features. Their war kills Whatever their 
peace Has left over."

If peace is to be peaceful, it could not be a mere opposite of war. So 
the question of the originary event of peace - peace ocurring, without a 
presupposed violent reality that it negates - would be a "postive" 
peace, but also a much more fragile, time- and place-bound, pluralist 
conception of it. As such, it is different from the metaphysical, 
solemn, out-of-this world, awakward notions of the "big peace" that we 
have inherited from traditions (and which, with its symbolism of 
solemnity, matches the war agenda, which is the one that gets "down to 
business"). However, such a "eventual" peace can never be "secured" 
without ceasing to be what it is. It can only be constantly re-creataed.

I agree with Ryan that this opens epistemological questions. And I add - 
we cannot address these questions from within the existing 
epistemological parameters, but, I would suggest, only through a radical 
questioniong of these parameters, as it happens in experimental art. I 
am not so clear about the withheld thought. If the eventual peace is one 
that can historically manifest, it would be interesting to see the 
significance of latency in it.

Bracha,

 >> The originary event of peace is compassion.

I love the nobility of this (communicated!) thought. There are people, 
including Vattimo, who have suggested understandings of the "eventual" 
peace as "caritas" (lat.), which survives in "charity" (engl.) or 
"caridad"(esp.). It has the root of the verb "to care" in it. Compassion 
is near to that, isn't it? But does it not presuppose a suffering, a 
"passion"? And would that mean if there is no suffering, than peace 
cannot occur? What would be your understanding of this? "Without care" 
is "se cura" in latin, and the root of "security". Nowadays we tend to 
understand care as "worry", something we want to be free from 
(carefree), and we tend to forget the meaning of care as "caring for". 
Is caring not an art?

Kate, your suggestion of
> peace is a relationship.

Would correspond to the notion of caring/compassion, but how does a 
relationship occur? To what kind of actions does it give rise that would 
be historically "real". This lead me back to the epistemological 
question. If radical and experimental art is the place whre we might 
look for an "event of peace", than perhaps that event of peace might 
include transforming modes of perception, storage, archivation and 
distribution of works. It would be a matter of radically re-inventing 
media.

Wolfgang



Southworth, Kate schrieb:
> Dear Bracha,
> 
> Thank you for your words 'the originary event of peace is
> compassion'.  They are beautifully simple words, that seem to mean
> just what they say, but which also seem to refer to your ideas of
> compassionate hospitality.  Your writing on compassionate hospitality
> suggests, to me, that peace is a relationship.
> 
> If it is appropriate, I would be very grateful if you could share
> with us here on this list some of your ideas about compassion and
> peace.  For me, it is only through attempting to understand the
> supplementary space that you articulate in your work that it is
> possible to imagine peace.
> 
> warmest regards,
> 
> Kate
> 
>> ---------- From: 	underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org on behalf
>> of bracha L. Ettinger Reply To: 	underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org 
>> Sent: 	Saturday, November 4, 2006 6:29 PM To:
>> underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org Subject: 	Re: <underfire> re fluid
>> borders, structured chaos, weak discipline
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Ryan replicates Wolfgand's question What would be an originary
>> event of peace and his reply is a thought.
>> 
>> 
>> For me there is no doubt about this. And I do not stop writing
>> this, again and again.
>> 

>> 
>> Bracha L. Ettinger
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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