Media Assemblages "A media theory and history blog diagramming how media form assemblages of people, populations, technologies, meanings, and sensations. The evolution of these assemblages, their non-linear dynamics, their affects, and self-organizing capacities are what is explored in these postings."
---> A tour de force of various post-structuralist thinkers as they relate to media ecologies. An amazing mix of cut-up, hyper-text, youtube, diagrams, pictorials, and the like. Definitely worth taking a look at.
For those of you following the continuing Tarnac 9 saga, this piece adds a rich layer to the already complicated Sarko tar-and-feathering of "anarcho-autonomists" via ever more expansive 'anti-terror' laws.
And for the rest of us, a rare and beautiful rendering of politics...
My comrades and I are only a variable in this adjustment. One suspects us like so many others, so many “youths,” so many “gangs,” of having no solidarity with a world that is collapsing. On this one point, one doesn’t lie. Fortunately, this heap of swindlers, impostors, industrialists, financiers and prostitutes; this entire Mazarin’s court full of neuroleptics, Disney versions of Louis Napoleon, and Sunday shows that grip the country for an hour lack an elementary sense of dialectics. Each step that they take towards total control brings them closer to their fear. Each new “victory” with which they flatter themselves spreads a little further the desire to see them defeated in their turn. Each maneuver that they figure comforts their power ends up rendering it detestable. In other words: the situation is excellent. This isn’t the moment to lose courage.
which also reminds me of the recent (non)response to New School's continued attempt to bring down disciplinary action on those who have participated in continued occupations.
the whole thing's a pleasure to read, but here are some snippets:
(c) At what point did the occupiers indicate that they would leave the building peacefully?
Clearly, the moment when the occupiers announced their peaceful intentions to leave the building was on the rooftop after they dropped the OCCUPY EVERYTHING banner but before they unfurled the APRIL FOOLS MOTHERFUCKER banner, as they waved black and red flags in masks and read the pamphlet “Anti-Capitalism at the New School” by New School Schwarz und Rot from a bullhorn to the crowd below, which started with a line from Walter Benjamin that said: * * The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency.
(e) What was the reaction of the occupiers?
Inside: Occupier X: Hey, Y, are we occupying this building unlawfully, as he said? Occupier Y: Yes. Occupier X: Well, how come we didn’t get a permit first, and occupy it lawfully? Occupier Y: Because you’re a fucking idiot, X.
This blog serves as a transparent point of discourse for You Are Here--a Columbus collective that grew out of the Comparative Studies Undergraduate Group at the Ohio State University. It consists of people from all academic and social backgrounds with an emphasis on social theory. Most succinctly put, it is creative scholarship in affect--whether it be from academia, popular culture, art, language, or personal observation. The ideas expressed in this blog are by no means reached by consensus and do not necessarily reflect those of other members. The comments doubly so. Feel free to critique, question, or agree with any views expressed. You don't have to reside in or be familiar with the city of Columbus. As far as we're concerned, you are here.
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