[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> the language of tactical media

["David Goldschmidt" <dgoldsch@tampabay.rr.com>]

Michael-

Clearly you profess to have an intimate understanding of JoAnne's motives,
conclusions.  But, IMO, you only provide me with more evidence that the
inherently paranoid only see the ulterior motive.  If your not paranoid then
you are under the delusion that your previous interactions with her have
given you the insight to critique her for now, and forever.  All I can do is
applaud her.  I hope she ignores you, Michael.  She is the author ... you
are nothing but a critic.   She took her time to deliver a dispassionate and
eloquent arguement (with proper citations) that was very enlighening
(especailly for those of us who think the anti-globalisation folks are full
of shit and just looking for a fight).  And you, as a simpleton, rebuff her
out-of-hand.  You think you're so clever with your insider information ...
but you're not ... you either missed (or ignored) the big picture.

As a very liberal democrat, I keep waiting for the anti-globalisation freaks
to offer an alternative to the status quo ... but you never do.  If they
ever offered the first first idea on how to "better" govern then I would be
their greatest champion ... but all I  ever see is criticizism.

It may not mean much ...but I would like to thank JoAnne.  The perspective
she presented may have been "obvious" to Michael but it was new to me.

david goldschmidt


----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Benson" <michael.benson@pristop.si>
To: <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>
Sent: Thursday, July 04, 2002 11:34 AM
Subject: Re: <nettime> the language of tactical media


> Joanne:
>
> Reading your text on tactical media reminds me of the experience of seeing
> a group of Ljubljana skinheads aggressively singing the words to the
> Slovenian national anthem the other day. One would think that the effect
> would be nationalistic, which is what they intended, but the lyrics kept
> on tripping them up -- only they themselves didn't know it. (The words
> call for equality and peace among nations) So in the skinhead's case,
> there was a kind of inadvertent monkeywrenching or Adbuster-style action,
> but one where the subversion which crept into the mix was there to begin
> with: it was only the context of the racist nationalists singing it that
> gave it a nice reversal only apparent to an outside observer. And so what
> was meant to be menacing was actually funny, its racist/nationalist
> delivery subverted not by its subtext but by its text. It was the song
> that detourned the singers.
>
> In your case, what was meant to read as incisive analysis, couched in a
> hard-edged, dispassionate variant of the academese everyone's familiar
> with, is a kind of fog concealing exactly what you inaccurately accuse
> Godard of: it has "nothing to say" -- beyond its citations. If there's any
> kind of revelation in this post it's in your uneasy fascination with
> Godard's film about the Palestinian cause. (Right -- the same one I got to
> refamiliarize myself with because you lent me a tape of it when you were
> in Ljubljana. For the record.) "Here & Elsewhere" doesn't have nothing to
> say -- rather it's the only film document I know of that accurately
> conveys the complexity of the Palestinian/Israeli disaster, for which
> there are exactly no easy answers, and maybe no answers at all. But when I
> accuse you of having nothing to say it's also not quite right, because
> there's something fascinating about the coexistence of your ambivalent
> observations about his film with your other observations, all of which
> lead to a conclusion in which fellow travelers are advised to drop the
> metaphors of warfare, something (we're told) that's not a cop-out but
> instead shows "the vigilance of continuing to think, beyond the
> obvious..." Are we beyond the obvious here? Didn't "Here & Elsewhere"
> already signpost an alternative to what you call the apocalyptic vs.
> utopian "sense" of the media, 30 years ago? Isn't that, more than
> approximately, the very voice of Godard's film I detect, rising like a
> stale but at least believable truth in your conclusion? I detect "nothing
> to say" in your post beyond what you inherited from those you'd accuse of
> the same.
>
> Regards, MB
>
>
>
>
>
>
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