Keith Sanborn on Sun, 19 Aug 2007 16:51:20 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> Criminalization of critical academic research and political engagement |
It seems fairly clear that the translation of a "trust rating network for political artists" is basically a way of saying: how do I know that the police were not correct in arresting this person? Everyone must of course inform themselves, but living in the current political conditions in the United States, it is sobering to realize how much simply being an intellectual is a crime in itself outside the US. Here it has been a crime at least since the 1950s-yes I mean McCarthyism-and possibly earlier. In Germany this is a very serious matter as the very mechanisms which were put in place to prevent the resurgence of the kind of totalitarianism of the middle part of the last century may be twisted to actually reinstate it. The assault on "constitutional guarantees" in the United States has advanced so far, that there is little resolution to turn it back the other way. And please forgive my naive belief in the importance of "constitutional guarantees." I admit it is at best a stopgap measure against the assault; more trenchant measures are appropriate. Are "terrorists" the new "communists"? Yes. Every politician loves a scapegoat and it is certainly more important that one "guilty" "terrorist" go free-and I make no judgments either way here-than that the entire system be subverted by those who excuse their assaults on liberty by the simple formula of a state of exception. Surely people on this list must have read at least the Wikipedia version of Agamben. Epistemological flux breeds ugly uncertainties. We needn't fall victim to them. Keith Sanborn # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@kein.org and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org