Gabriella "Biella" Coleman on Sun, 18 Jun 2017 09:15:08 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> Can the Left Meme? |
On 2017-06-15 05:16 PM, t byfield wrote: > Lots of bad bits too. No amount of theory can paper over basic flaws > in analysis. Thanks for your points below. But I am just not seeing the connection between your analysis of left vs right language politics and the basic flaws in the analysis. Could you elaborate? Others (Tilman/Florian) have raised historical examples that might contradict Matt's arguments and I can't speak for Matt (who maybe will speak up?) but his piece seems concerned with the contemporary moment not with making an argument about the whole of the historical left and transgressive imagery. Some of his own work has even looked at the transgressive practices of the avant garde artistic left. Nagles book (http://www.zero-books.net/books/kill-all-normies), which I have not yet read but am keenly waiting for, traces how the left's recent obsession with the politics of language purity has helped embolden certain transgressive strains among conservatives (if I am reading the reviews corrently), so it's directly relevant to some of the points Matt makes and the discussion around language. > Leftoids can "counter-mirror" (IOW, parrot or even ape) rightist > techniques as much as they want, but it won't work very well because > the left has a fundamentally different view of the relationship > between speech and violence. The mainstream left, and even most of the > radical left at this point, has completely forsworn violence as a > legitimate political strategy. Agree, many, likely most quarters do reject violence but you seem to be deliberately excluding Antifa, which may not be experiencing a surge of popularity but they are quite visible now, even featured in the mainstream news recently thanks to their battles with the Alt-right. They may not be dominant but they are a long standing radical strain popular in parts of Europe that have certainly not forsworn violence as a legitimate political strategy. The literal punching of Nazi's after all became both a much beloved viral video and flash point to debate some of the issues you raise around language and violence. b -- Gabriella Coleman Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy Department of Art History & Communication Studies McGill University 853 Sherbrooke Street West Montreal, PQ H3A 0G5 http://gabriellacoleman.org/ 514-398-8572 # 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: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: