fugitive imagination

I am writing my MA thesis at McMaster University on Internet music communities.  I have posted a Web questionnaire here.

Basically it asks a bunch of questions about your surfing habits as related to finding out about music, communicating with fans, and filesharing.  There is an introductory page here and you can read the full thesis proposal PDF here.  I hope that you might take the time to fill out the survey, the more info the better!!

In other news, I was inspired by my friend Basil who asked: “Are dissident voices silenced?” to write a bit about democracy and dissent.  This is what I came up with…

To my understanding “democracy” as a concept has always meant (especially in the Republican [not the party] or Federative senses) the development of an axis of trust where I, as an elector, trust reasonably that my elected representative will make decisions in accordance with my own ethics, will represent the desires of the geographic region in which I live, etc., etc. I have never really taken democracy to mean the “direct rule of the people” or rule by majority consensus for that matter, which are often the contexts in which it is understood now. Of course, we can talk of the principals of democracy, and I believe in addition to the reasonable execution of governmental duties, that at the heart of the democratic ideal is this idea of trust. Indeed, the reason that I think we are in a state of democratic haemorrhaging is that over time those who have gained the trust of the electorate have abused it so much that it has become the norm - hence the endemic mistrust of politicians of any stripe. Perhaps one of the fundamental flaws of democracy is the profound belief it places in the notion that human beings are essentially trustworthy; it seems like the whole enterprise hinges on this.

My first thought when I read the questions was “what constitutes a dissident voice?” or “what types of dissidence?” Indeed, the contract established between electorates and their representatives suggests that it is a compromise of sorts, within which it is agreed that certain types of dissidence are not given voice, while others are permitted (e.g. the “dissent” of paedophilia is silenced while the “dissent” of those who are pro-privatisation of health care is not). Of course, I understand this to be part of the way in which allowing for the public airing of disagreement can actually reinforce the status quo of power by making a powerful elite seem open to dissent, while really allowing it to be mainly a social safety valve of sorts. In any case, it might be actually impossible to truly “silence” (in the active sense implied by the question) any type of social or political dissent, this is borne out in the numerous grotesque and abhorrent actions that human beings are capable of (disregarding, for the moment, issues of sociopathy and mental illness - even still, doesn’t “mental illness” imply a normative state of mental health?).

Michel de Certeau develops an interesting notion of dissent surrounding the idea of “La Perruque”, essentially meaning “work one does for oneself in the guise of work done for an employer” (The Practice of Everyday Life, 1984). In this way he suggests that dissent against the production/profit driven aspects of labour and capitalism are destabilised when, for example, someone uses company time to make photocopies of posters for their band’s gig, or uses their trades skills to repair or create something for one of their co-workers. In this moment, the purpose of the labour is shifted away from the direct relationship to the company’s well-being, and instead moves into a parallel “gift economy” based less on the growth of capital and more on exchange- or use-values. It is something completely unrelated to the idea of working for the good of the corporation. Of course, de Certeau acknowledges that at times, La Perruque is tolerated, a blind eye turned, by “the management” because it is understood that, so long as it doesn’t impede corporate progress too much, then it keeps the workers happy in thinking that their pulling one over on the boss. Now we see the parallels with charity and permissible dissent.

I think what we are really talking about is access to the public political spectrum. Perhaps we are less worried in this moment in the abstract of “which dissent, by who, and in the interests of whom?” In this sense then I think we are absolutely bound up in the flow of information, what counts as knowledge, and how these things are mobilised. Stephen Lax suggests that while access to information has certainly provided greater awareness, public action on this information has largely remained stable, with things like the Internet simply strengthening the resolve and making more efficient the political activities of the already involved. Not to say in necessarily reinforces the status quo, but the suggestion is that if you were already pro-environment, your tools are just better now; if you were already apathetic or disengaged you have remained so. (Lax, in Web Studies, Horsley & Gauntlett, 2004) That said, Naomi Klein, in her Francis-Fukuyama-inspired “Farewell to the End of History” suggests that:

[…] recent mass protests would have been impossible without the Internet, what has been overlooked is how the communication technology that facilitates these campaigns is shaping the movement in its own image. Thanks to the Net, mobilizations are able to unfold with sparse bureaucracy and minimal hierarchy; forced consensus and laboured manifestos are fading into the background, replaced instead by a culture of constant, loosely structured and sometimes compulsive information-swapping (Naomi Klein, “Farewell To ‘The End Of History’ http://www.yorku.ca/socreg/Klein.htm)

This does kind of get back to question of “which types of dissent”, placing in opposition the notion of universal consensus towards a “cause” (like all lefties believe this…, and all righties believe that…) and the more modern notion of dispersed and tangentially related social concerns. I think what’s key in this statement is the idea that modern dissenting voices in a sense mimic the technology that enables them (OR, is it the other way around, or a combination of both? I prefer this).

I think that dissident voices haven’t been “silenc-ed”. I’d like to add though that there are actions on the part of powerful elites which are having various degrees of success in “silenc-ing” these voices, and also that there are many voices out there that for some reason or other (and not always because of the actions of the elite, sometimes as a result of their own apathy) are “silen-t”.

Thoughts, anyone, given the recent US elections, and the impending provincial municipal ones?