Karl Kuhn on Fri, 11 Jan 2002 08:01:01 +0100 (CET)


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[Nettime-bold] Re: Chicago, know your .histories


Lachlan,

Hi. Thanks for your thoughts on the "commons" and "commonwealth". They are
important distinctions and I appreciate your bringing them to the fore.
While we felt a little silly when we realized that we fired the initial call
for participation off without a more thorough read by our allies here better
suited to position some of the historical points, your response is a great
reminder why we reached out in the first place.

So, we've been nose down in the tactical, myopic, soup of getting this thing
on and there are certain clarification issues that have not been nearly as
realized as they maybe should be by now. Our goal is to provide an arena for
a swell of people that can focus and examine this dialogue, we are not the
group to provide a detailed historical analysis or all the critical input.

That's where you come in. I am very interested to here more about your work
and how you think you can contribute. We are re-working the symposia ideas
as I type this and in the next few days will push you some more information,
if you are interested. They are pretty, um, "global" (ie soft) because we
are looking for the participants and moderators to run with them.

The music, films, installations, sound art gallery, net object gallery,
gallery and alternate performance space tours and after hour parties are
going to be incredible. We think the symposia and various publications of
works will be as well. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks again taking for taking the time to comment.

Peace,

Karl

Ps. Hello to everyone else on your cc list. Yo, don't make other plans for
April 18-20



On 1/10/02 2:10 PM, "Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com> wrote:

> 
> No, this is not right. Its important to
> know your .histories (small h or repressed histories rather than History) as
> the 
> confusion over the meanings of 'commons'
> and common-wealth' is an outcome of these repressed histories.
> You can't know where you are at until you
> know where you came from, Once you know
> both, you know where you are going.
> 
>> The term /digital commons/ is derived from >the Common Law movement in
>> England in the 1600s. The movement called
> for >the protection of shared
>> public spaces - the "commons" - its tools and >resources. Often, larger,
>> private interests overran the commons, and >this failure of the
> communities to maintain their public resources is known in the discourse as
>> "the tragedy of the commons".
> 
> 'The Commons’ is NOT an outcome
> of radical thinking in England in
> the 1600s. The idea of ‘Common-Wealth’ is. It’s an important idea that
> inflected all 
> radical thinking in the English speaking
> world including the foundation of
> New England colonies and the American Revolution.  ‘The Commons’ is a
> part of a tradition of ‘common law’, the ‘commons’ being the colonized English
> under the feudal Lordship of the Normans,
> or the ‘Norman Yoke’. If one wonders
> what Heath Bunting is doing leveling enclosures, and leading the way for
> hundreds of Agfhani refugees to illegally enter Britain through the Channel
> Tunnel,  
> he is, among a number of others, merely embodying a deep tradition of dissent,
> revolt and cultural revolution in English,
> and British life. Some of this may be
> relevant to other cultural contexts,
> some of it may not.
> 
> I note that Mute magazine’s editorial to
> its Leveller and Digger inspired issue also
> made this error possibly due to hasty or
> foggy abridgement somewhere down the line (probably Sean Cubitt) of Lachlan
> Browns 
> paper “Love is the Law: the passion of
> revolt” which was written in 1993-94  and published in Public #10, a rather
> obscure and sometimes irrelevant
> Canadian art and theory journal published
> in Toronto.
> 
> The paper drew upon substantial research in
> the period by Christopher Hill, in particular “The World Turned Upside Down”
> recommended reading for all would be
> revolutionaries, as well as relevant contemporary cultural theory.
> 
> I wrote the paper at the outset of my
> research into the field of digital culture
> to allegorise the threads, themes and issues the ‘digital revolution’ might
> parallel during the ‘long revolution’ we are presently engaged in. The idea
> was to contrast a distinctly radical historical instance where publishing was
> associated with ‘reading communities’ or nascent publics, including some
> distinct feminisms, with claims applied to ‘the digital revolution’ and to map
> out some of the issues it would have to address if it was to meet the
> honorific 
> ‘radical’.
> 
> I’ll come to Chicago to deliver the
> original paper if you like, (there were several important sections including
> the relevance of anti-colonial movements in
> the New Model Army and The Leveller Party
> in 1647 to contemporary post-colonial
> thinking edited out of the published paper) and to discuss how mediation and
> distribution are related in new modalities of publishing.
> 
> 
> When I began my research into the cultural implications of Internet I was
> interested 
> in possibilities for alternative or radical publishing. The 'culture of the
> press pamphlet' in England during our Civil War
> and failed Republic (hijacked by the ‘Independents’ or Puritans, and
> ultimately abandoned in a compromise with conservative forces) threw up a
> tremendous range of ‘proto-englightenment’ ideas
> some of which were millenarian (or religio-aesthetic), some of which were
> political and some that were economic. Ultimately The English Revolution of
> the mid seventeenth century merely helped make the world safe
> for The Hudson Bay company, The East India Company The American Republic, and
> hence 
> IBM and Microsoft, but many of the ideas of the time have relevance for
> radical thinking today.
> 
> Its important to get these .histories (and
> the Leveller and Digger movement was for centuries  repressed (small h)
> .history) right. Some of the ideas and movements that appeared during the
> period are highly relevant to the contemporary cultural situation during the
> War, or dare we call it contemporary cultural revolution?
> 
> The 'digital commons' is an idea from
> 'common law'. The notion of 'common-wealth' (all things in common for the good
> of community) has resonances in the ecological
> debate, the political debate about uneven development, distribution and access
> to resources and wealth, as well as the present
> 'open source', shareware, and copyright debate.
> 
> 
> As I say, you can't know where you are at until you know where you came from.
> Once you know both, you will already be half way to where you are going.
> 
> If there is confusion over 'the digital commons' and 'the common wealth' well,
> there's is a distinct hegemonic reason for this obfuscated history, and of
> course I 
> will discuss this too.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Lachlan
> 
> 
> 
> Lachlan Brown
> Toronto
> T. (416)  826 6937
> Voice Message (416) 822 1123
> 
> Cultural Studies
> Goldsmiths College
> University of London
> 

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