nettime: Everybody knows

[McKenzie Wark <mwark@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au>]

There's a song by Leonard Cohen that goes something
like: "Everybody knows the dice are load. Everyone
keeps their fingers crossed." It strikes me as an
apt way of talking about criticism in this post
critical age. I want to add a few thoughts to the
discussion of English, but first, i think its
appropriate to say something about criticism, since
misunderstandings usually start with questions of
genre.

Let's be blunt: i think criticism is useless. 
Finished. And a bad idea in the first place. But what
do we mean by criticism, in this context? I mean 
the practice of critical *negation*, the undoing of
seemingly self evident statements, and the revealing
of a repressed or hidden other, lurking within those
statements. The other of class, power, phallocentrism,
repressed desire. Criticism requires that the critic
stand somewhere else, outside of the veil of 
language where these errors are going to be rooted out.
AS is well known, criticism is in crisis. Most of the
attempts to ground it in some other place, some 
unmediated, uncontaminated zone from which it can
do its critical, negative work have failed. So many
such attempts have failed, that nobody has much faith
in those that remain as yet unrefuted. That criticism
is also a veil, a false consciousness, is becoming
clearer and clearer. This is the signficiance of the
turn to Nietzsche -- the last critic. The one who
rooted out the rather twisted other lurking in criticism
itself. Its *resentment*. Its refusal of responsibility
for itself. 

Criticism is dead. We can all laugh about it now. Dance
about on its grave. Only criticism does not yet *know*
that it is dead. Its the ghost that walks and can never
die. It is the spectre haunting Europe, the spectre of
the false consciousness of criticism.

Should we mourn for the death of criticism? I don't think
so. After all, everybody knows. It has very little to
tell us any more. Everybody knows capitalism is fucked.
Everybody knows the state is a monster. Everybody knows
minorities get a bum deal. Everybody knows the very
sign and word 'woman' is the site/sight/cite of endless
double dealings. Everybody knows. 

And yet... what's the result? Hard hearted militants --
and hard headed ones too. God knows, they have their
uses. And yet -- would you really want them to *win*?
We all know just how easily militant oppositions become
the state they once opposed, and oh so easily. Either
by seizing it in its moment of crisis, or most likely,
by easing into it by a process of osmosis, becoming
part of it. Like the invasion of the body snatchers.

Yet miltants are a damn good thing to have around. To
keep the state on its toes. To remind everybody of
what everybody knows -- but keeps forgetting. To give
intelelctuals and artists a hard time whenever they/we
pretend that doing whatever it is we feel like doing
is also 'political'. 

But the strange thing is that while everybody knows, nobdoy
really does much about it. Its what Peter Sloterdijk called
'cynical reason' and 'enlightened false consciousness'. 
Everybody knows -- and yet divides the part of themselves
that knows from the part that goes on being a good boy/girl,
being 'productive' at work and at play. Criticism has become
the secular ideology of the educated classes. No longer made
to feel guilty by religious, now we have criticism instead.
Everyone makes a pious little genuflection in its direction.
Buys the latest critical book -- and leaves it conspicuously
displayed on the coffee table.

Criticism produces this divided self, because criticism is
nothing but the negative relation to the other. No longer
able to ground itself in any one secure vantage point, from
which to see everything as other, as a false double or copy
of the true, criticism has become free floating, relative,
pervasive. It is everywhere and no where. Its the nagging,
self defeating, echo of every attempt to make something
happen. Whatever you do, you've excluded or repressed or
erased or silenced something or someone. Whatever you do,
someone will see in it the shadow of some other in it. 
Everything is made to revolve around these phantom others.
Others who are always spoken for by criticism, which
never quite seem to get to speak for themselves.

No longer anchored to a positive project -- the revolution
against the state, against repression of desire, against
the exploitation of the workers, against the imperial
domination of the '3rd world', against patriarchy and
phallocentrism (make that phallogocentrism) -- criticism
becomes merely negative, a kind of free floating moral
trump card that anyone can play, either by speaking
as if one where the aggreived other, or by an act of
self laceration, beating one'se self up for its sins.
Then of course, business as usual: the other half of
one's divided self goes out and works for its own
advantage -- as everybody knows. 

Now, there are of course lots of real grievances that
people may have. The world's fucked. We all know that.
Criticism likes to blackmail us into thinking that if
we don't think critically and negatively all the time
then we must be evil bastards and sell outs. Criticism
has effectively slandered every other way of thinking.
If you aren't a critic, then you must be a utopian. Or
you must be a determinist. Or you must be an agent of the
state/capital, etc. Two things can be said, not against
this -- what's the point of answering slander? -- but
as a way of simply ignoring criticism and starting
somewhere else. There are other, perhaps better ways,
of speaking out of the cramped spaces of poverty and
oppression. There are reasons to think that critical
thinking is best defence power ever had.

I'll take that last point first, because it seems so
counter intuitive. But think about it. What does
criticism say about power? It says: capital is
merciless, the state is a behemoth, the patriarchs
have the power of gods. Criticism is a long poem 
written on the inevitability of power. Not in praise
of power, obviously. These are modern times, times
when everybody knows, etc. People see through that.
But criticism -- that's the best ornament power ever
had. It *looks* like it is opposed to power, and 
indeed it thinks it is. (Fools!) Yet criticism talks
about nothing but the invincible strength of its
other. One waits without baited breath for the moment
when the 'transitional' states, somewhere between the
power of bureucracy and the bureaucracy of power, to
grasp this simple thing that both sides in the cold
war knew so well. Keep a few critics on the payroll
as an ornament. In the east, these sometimes ended
up in jail or the asylum; in the west, they suffered
the less threatening prospect of losing their newspaper
columns and teaching jobs. There is no comparison
between the industrial conditions of employment of
critics between the two regimes. But their role in
relation to the state was nevertheless the same.

In this age of generalsied, unanchored, freefloating
criticism, criticism no longer has much of a positive
alternative to the status quo. Criticism usually
agitates *in favour* of the stated ideals of state and
capital -- only more so. Democracy, freedom, equality,
a fair go for minorities -- these are all official
ideologies in the overdeveloped world. These are the
state's own stated beliefs. Criticism mostly is just
asking for more of the state, or for the state to be
more like itself, more self-similar. The state perfected.

Now, as I said, there is another way of speaking, of
thinking, of being. That of saying something else, thinking
otherwise, becoming otherwise. Forget about the Big Bad
Other. Making a fetish of it will only bring you down.
Rather than think only of what one lacks: i lack power
(because of the other) i am alienated form my desires
(because of the other). In place of this other, in which
one only comes to exist critically, negatively, as what
the other lacks. Something else. 

So far, of course, this is a criticism of criticism. 
All i have done is talk about what *criticism* lacks.
But from where am i speaking? How can i ground this, other
than in negativivity? I don't want to cringe and snivel
in the shadow of criticism. I want to dance on its
grave! 

The good news is: its not hard. Take a situation. Any
situation. One's situation in language. One's situation
in space. One's situation in a particular body. One's
situation in 'culture'. One's situation in time. Those
are some of the main ones. ASk yourself: what are the
powers, what are the *potentials* of this situation?
With what other situations can in combine, combine in
a way that adds to the range of potentials. Not just
'my' potentials, and the other's potentials, not
even 'our' combined potentials. Just *these* potentials.

Or don't think about it, just do it. Experiment. Rearrange
the furniture. Try not to get too romantic about it.
We're talking about practical things here. What happens
if i plug this particular idea together with that piece
of flesh and this modem here and that phone socket and
this little bit of my time and that little bit of somebody
else's money...

Now, there's a certain kind of ethic that goes with this.
Not the self-lacerating moralism of criticism, where
everybody gets up on the cross on sunday and goes back
t the office on monday. An ethic that makes no apologies
for its powers. On the contrary, which celebrates them.
But which recognises that the revolution that matters
is the one that makes it possible for any-every situation
to organise its relations with any-every other situation,
as mutually desired. 

Now, one does not bring that about through criticism, which
simply opposes oppressive power, mirroriing it, until it
becomes what it beholds. Rather than drawing a line in the 
sand, on one side stands power, on the other, moral
right. One draws quite a differnt line. The line of escape,
maybe -- out into open country. Or the subtle line, the
little difference nobody sees, unless they are part of
the quiet little situation that makes and remakes it. 

>From what are situations made? Wrong question. Situations
are a making, a process not a thing. Sometimes they
are very, very slow. Rome wasn't destroyed in a day. 
Sometimes one doesn't know where the free zone is where
a situation might get going until it gets going. Things
always seem to start in the middle. 

Take a situation like language: all i wanted to say about
English on the net is that i think i see a crack in it.
Its becoming a situation. Its changing, proliferating.
People are just getting in there and doing things with
it. Who cares who's language it used to be? Soon, it will
be out of control. Like it *always was*. And this is the
one thing i can say, as a native speaker, who loves this
language almost as much as my own life. I can say what
it is in my power to say: When criticism says this
language was *always and only* an imperial lanaguage,
something invincible, inevitable, a great machine that
contaminates all it touches -- that's a paranoid fantasy.
Its a fanasy of power, an ornamament to the very real
dangers of lingusitic conformity. 

English is an imperial language. I'm not denying it. I
sympathisse with anyone who finds it oppressive. I find
American English pretty oppressive myself. Nothing i can
do about that. Every day a little bit of *my* language
disappears. Australian English. Going, going, gone.
So what? Bring on the hearts and flowers. 

But enough of this -- criticism. let's do something real.
let's talk about the situation that opens up in this space
of global language. Alright, so my language is 'contaminated'
-- god, what a paranoid thought that is! But its true. Just
today i caught myself saying 'sidewalk' instead of 'footpath'
and in the restaurant i said 'check please!' rather than 'can
i have the bill please'. I'm having a hard time remaining who
i thought i was. My language makes me someone else, as bit
by bit it becomes someone else's language.

But enough already! There's a situation opening up here, and
i'm going to connect to it. Rather than make this knowledge
i have, of what's going on here, into a negation, i'm 
going to affirm it. I'm going to jump tongue first into
'Netlish', the English of the net. And look what's going on
here: the whole language is out of control. People *dare*
to write it every where way. Great! Rather a great babel
of English, in which my English is lost, than a universe of
Mirriam-Webster speak. 

Do you know something? English has a secret history. All
situations do. The secret history of English is that it was
always like this. It was always out of control. It was 
always a babel of foreign accents. Practically everybody who
ever wrote it -- who wrote anything worth reading in it --
found it a struggle. The exception is this period from
the turn of the century to the present. A generation after
the Education act of 1870, a unified speech appeared (much
later than in Germany, at least according to Kittler). The
first dictionary, produced privately by Dr Johnson, is also
a factor here. Then of course, the two empires of english,
which one can think of as the British Empire and Pax
Americana, or as the Radio Empire and the Television Empire.
Which brought RP, 'recieved pronunciation' to the world.

But that's an exceptional moment. And of course the result is
already prefigured, in Caliban's reply to Prospero, in
Shakespeare's The Tempest -- that testament from the very
beginnings of the English adventures in power and the sea:
"You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!"

Now, this could be the beginning of otherness, of postcolonial
criticism. Of the great homage postcolonial writers decided
to pay their old masters in reverse. Or soemthing else. 
The beginning of what Deleuze calls a 'minor language'. Now,
like most deleuzespeak in English, its a bad term. Too many
associations. Better to speak, as Deleuze does, of writing
in a 'cramped space'. He had in mind Kafka writing in German.
What he couldn't know is that it applies to Shakespeare writing
an English learned in the countryside of Straford, a bastard,
contaminated language, at the crossroads where several of its
situations met. It also applies to Joyce, writing with 'silence,
exile and cunning' in a language he knew very well, but which
still belonged to an enemy. Or to Salman Rusdhdie, one of the
first great exponents of English as a transnational situation.

In all these cases, the cramped space of writing is what makes
it work. Language escapes its own borders, wilfully contaminates
itself. Language hooks itself into things beyind itself, into
politics, the desires of whole peoples. Joyce is the no longer
so secret weapon of the Irish *within* the language of the
oppressor. But more important than these 'great' instances,
which after all get recaptured by 'English Literature'

NO CARRIER

-- fuck, i hate it when that happens! All i want tis (a) a
machine that will run PPP, Eudora and an ISP that doesn't
just quit when it feels like it! Ah well, there's always
limitations. One always lacks for something.

So i went down to the cafe and had some lunch. The woman next
to me was reading a volume of Bruce Chatwin that i didn't
recognise, so i asked her to show it to me. _Traumsfade, it
was, and i laughed out loud. A German translation of an
Englishman's attempt to understand the landscape of communication
that is the Australian desert, as Aboriginal cultures have 
practiced it for centuries. I'd call it the stone age internet,
only that would be demeaning. It always worked much better.
And still does.

Chatwin seems apropo. Now there was a writer who found a cramped
space or two, and who was not affraid to fail. Like little Roy
Eldridge, reaching for that high-C on his trumpet, not caring
if he made it, knowing that you'd hear the empty space where the
note ought to be -- and much more -- if he blew in that direction.

But to wind up this rather circumlocutory netletter: Netcriticism 
is what one would call a portmanteau word. The first half is
a new thing, the second half an old thing. In the light of the
new part, the old part has to go. I'm not sure what one would
put in its place. Net[.......] 

What's prompting me to embark on all this is an excellent essay
of Geert's that's coming. A sort of geneaology of nettime. 
Its not important whether i agree or disagree with it. Dialogue
is an overrated form of discourse. It always folds you back into
the borders of yourself. Singular writing, collective writing,
and the plotting of coordinates where writing passed other writing
by. Now those things make sense. But dialogue? So this is not
a criticism of Geert, or anybody. Its a trajectory that crosses
some lines with some other lines, that's all.

And an attempt to take certain lines further. Beyond the criticism
of media criticism, out of a desire to see it replaced with something
other than netcriticism. To see instead what's already here, this
net[.....]

Of course, the net is more than writing, and much more than English
writing. Nettimes in Dutch, German, Inuit! And nettexts on this
nettime list in any and every language. Please don't stop posting
here in Dutch and German, folks. All of this is mean as examples
of situations, productive, creative, self-organising situations --
and of the planes of consistency upon which they can occur. The vectors
of the net, the telesthesia of media, the babel of language. The
tight spots where those planes burst into life with situations:
where the going gets difficult, where language seems strange, even
to itself. 

One can name such moments from the past: Kafka, Joyce -- but those
are only proper names, too easily captured by things like Literature
or Art. (The reader is encouraged at this point to spit). What stands
behind those names are cramped spaces, collective productions --
'minimal situations'.

McKenzie Wark
Netletter #8
A sunday afternoon on a warm sunny day in Sydney, 1997

__________________________________________
"We no longer have roots, we have aerials."
http://www.mcs.mq.edu.au/~mwark
 -- McKenzie Wark 



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