Terms such as “ mapping,” “borders,” “hacking,” “trans-nationalism,” “identity as spatial,” and so on have been popularized in recent years by new media theories’ celebration of “the networks”—a catch-all phrase for the modes of communication and exchange facilitated by the Internet. We should proceed with caution in using this terminology because it accords strategic primacy to space and simultaneously downplays time—i.e.,… return to article
-
subscribe to print magazine
-
email this article to a friend
-
Reader Comments (12)Page 1 of 1 pagesIs this a parady? Even for ITT, the BS content of this article is stunningly high! But it does have lots of buzz words and polically correct references. . .
Posted by whatALoad on Dec 16, 2004 at 6:36 PM Strong points by Fusco. But in our “Bullies Without Borders” era, how much does it matter?
For a laugh check out the song parody below (to the tune of an old Mamas & Papas song).
Posted by Jim Newman on Dec 16, 2004 at 8:12 PM What is this heretofore unknown non-networked past? The very first paragraph of this essay betrays ignorance of what “network” means. Network theory and in fact, the majority of computer science has very little to do with computers or computer networks. Its true that the Internet is an implementation of these ideas, but it is notable not because it is the first, but because it is extremely fast. As for denial of history, communications networks predate human civilization.
The idea that network theorists style themselves as Gibson-esque fantasy characters is laughable considering the rather boring, somber reality of mathematicians in academia who do the heavy lifting and that media depictions of actual hacking dumbed-down for the masses are the object of scorn for real hackers.
Ms. Fusco identifies various activities that have occured in the political sphere as evidence of the historical nature of networks. As it is readily acknowledged that social networks are a feature of society itself, this is completely unnecessary. Advances in computing technology have enabled social networks to proliferate across previously established boundaries, and although this is generally the case with all advances from the development of language until now, they all profoundly influence social change, often providing a catalyst.
However, there are some things that are unique about our current era. Our understanding of the mathematical principles of networks enables us to be somewhat more prescient about the proliferation of social change. For the first time in history, the theoretical underpinnings of a medium are at least partially understood before its broad implementation. Scientists have been successfully applying this understanding to networking problems that model social problems. While not explicitly network-related, the mathematical principles of Game Theory have been successfully applied to economic problems for decades.
As I see it, there are three unique circumstances surrounding digital networks:
1. Advanced knowledge of mathematical networking principles.
2. Rapid and accurate measurement of the network.
3. Widespread deployment of knowledge in the network about the network. In other words, meta-knowledge about the operation of the network that accelerates optimal use.
Posted by MrTeacup on Dec 17, 2004 at 2:45 AM I’m very sympathetic to Coco Fusco’s analysis here and have admired her performative work since her “Couple in a Cage” performances with Guillermo Gomez-Pena.
Unfortunately a difficulty for me is that there are a lot of very vague assertions and little attempt to historically map (in an essay defending temporal awareness against spatial critique) or specifically identify the problems/offenders.
Additionally, this form of blanket critique also ignores the wonderful critical work being done through subversive mappings and spatialized politics.
Coco, thanks for the provocative statement, could you refine it some more?
Posted by Thivai Abhor on Dec 18, 2004 at 2:28 PM If you think this article is a collection of “buzz words and polically [sic] correct references,” then I would say there’s a higher-than-average chance that you don’t have a clue about what is being argued over, and that you have no grasp of the ongoing academic conversation to which Fusco is responding.
Teacup: network theory may not refer exclusively to the interweb, but it when it comes to theorizing networks as tools of [or forms of] contemporary, transnational movements of resistance, then guess what: they ain’t talking ‘bout tincans and string. But it seems clear that your criticism is less about problematizing Fusco’s argument and more about allowing you a chance to pontificate [full disclosure: I only skimmed your boring comment].
As for the complaint that the article is too superficial: 1) it was adapted from a lecture she gave rather than a more developed book form and 2) if In These Times even had the space to let Fusco “refine it some more,” then even more idiots on these boards would roll their eyes and complain because the mag wasn’t running an article on why Bush is like Hitler.
Posted by Chill Shorties on Dec 18, 2004 at 4:13 PM Are you trying to imply that temporal representations of reality correspond to conclusions of equivalence between Hitler and Bush, whereas spatial representations of the same simply blur the boundaries of our common conceptual canons of cultural coincidence?
Posted by oy vey... on Dec 18, 2004 at 11:09 PM Chill Shorties, allow me to summarize using simpler language: Ms. Fusco’s ignorance of mathematics causes her argument to run aground.
Its hard for me to conceive of a truly interdisciplinary approach to social problems that doesn’t afford the field of mathematics the same respect as art history or philosophy. By way of example, its no accident that Noam Chomsky is also a towering figure in the field of theoretical computer science.
Ignorance of mathematics will eventually cause you to be left out of the debate, and some artists are starting to really feel that. That’s what happens when you simplify learning into a left-brain/right-brain duality.
Posted by MrTeacup on Dec 19, 2004 at 12:12 AM I like anything that chips away at the Technocentric fantasy, so I think that Coco’s argument could be better advanced by pointing out that mathematical/technical tools are actually being used rhetorically - by mathematicians and artists alike. Yes, they are buzzwords - but you can’t win the prize without pressing on the buzzer.
Korzybski’s saying the “map is not the territory” was extremely popular during the earlier periods of activism - and it fits quite nicely with the post/.... whatever view of representations of reality. There is a long history of dealing with the flawed fantasies induced by maps.
Maps and networks are just forms of representation. As flawed as any other form of representation, they do not correspond directly to the territory described but to other maps.
Technical terminology and artifices are deployed rhetorically - and ignorance of rhetoric will eventually cause you to be left out of the debate just as much as ignorance of mathematics will. In fact perhaps there is less of a difference between the the two than we think… (its as simple as 2 + 2 = 4).
Posted by aNetworkedEntity on Dec 20, 2004 at 4:53 AM As a critic it’s important to read your peers, and try to assess the pertinence of your own work in the mirror of theirs. So I was curious to read Coco Fusco’s article on mapping. However, I must say that her continuous assertions of cultural authority leave me feeling highly ambivalent. On the one hand, the threads of historical memory she brings up are extremely welcome. On the other, her unwillingness to engage with current conditions and projects tends to reduce the past to a complaint: Why isn’t it the present anymore?
It’s true that the raw fact of being older than the majority of the people in a given crowd can make you feel uncomfortably lucid. When I went to a conference on so-called “locative” or GPS-based media at the RIXC center in Latvia, I found most of the projects quite naive, developing a few stylistic traits of situationist psychogeography in the absence of any geopolitical critique of power relations, or any philosophical critique of instrumental rationality. In effect, a Cartesian worldview has been built into the computerized technology of graphic information systems, which are undergirded by megaprojects of military origin, or what I call “imperial infrastructure.” But rather than just giving a disciplinary lecture with all the answers stated in general terms, I tried to show how changing conditions had made the once-subversive traditions of psychogeography quite superficial, to the point where the aesthetic forms the artists were using seemed to render the very infrastructure of their projects invisible. And when I recently published that paper out of context in Springerin, I took the time to name all the artists and projects in question, so as to establish the precise referents of the critique [www.springerin.at/dyn/heft.php?pos=1&lang=en]. I wish Coco Fusco would make that kind of minimal effort, as it would bring her sharp observations into contact with actual projects, and open up a space of possible transformation.
More to the point: When I began my work on mapping, about four years ago now, as a direct result of involvement in demonstrations against the policies of the WTO and IMF, I too felt that the most important reference was the history of the Third World movements of national liberation, in their relations to the Western civil rights and new left movements of the 60s and 70s. In an early text that was finally published in the book Moneynations, I tried to show how the very concept of the Third World, and then above all, the reality of the Movement of Non-Aligned Nations, acted to open up new imaginary and real spaces within the dominant bi-polar map of the Cold War [http://2002.memefest.org/en/defaultnews.cfm?newsmem=15]. I asked the question whether the emergence of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre could be compared to the Bandung Conference in 1955. Obviously, the answer was that it could not: both because the current antisystemic movements do not (yet) have the strength that Bandung represented, and because the operative modes of opposition may well have changed fundamentally since 1955.
The global importance of the Third World movements lay in the new kinds of international solidarity that they helped provoke. But something important remains unstated in Fusco’s references to these movements, and this is the fact that the major links that tied them to the First World do not exist anymore (nor, indeed, do the movements themselves, for we are talking about specifically national movements in the period of decolonization). One of these links was an aspiration to create a non-Stalinist form of communism, according to the examples given by the successful Cuban and Vietnamese guerrilla insurgencies, and also by Yugoslav self-management (one must remember that the non-aligned movement came officially into existence in Belgrade). Another powerful link was the notion of cultural authenticity, or inherent difference from the Western norm, as a liberating foundation upon which newly independent nations could be built. This Third World concept served as a basis for the struggles toward a multicultural society in the First World. Today, however, the egalitarian aspiration to a self-managed communism has no objective touchstone in reality, leaving those who feel its lack in a deep state of ideological disarray. At the same time, the notion of cultural authenticity has been largely usurped by nationalist or fundamentalist projects which, although they have fortunately not eradicated all work towards equal rights in a multicultural society, have nonetheless made it very difficult to raise the banner of cultural or ethnic difference as a rallying-point for international solidarity.
Instead of relying on the old internationalist slogans (Third Worldist or proletarian), the transnational movements of dissent that gathered strength throughout the 1990s tried to use the communicative power of the discourses of human rights that had gained currency in the 80s, largely through the resistance of people in the former Eastern bloc to totalitarianism, and in Latin America to dictatorship. It was subsequently necessary, in the late 90s, for the Western participants in these transnational movements to take the further step of putting their own bodies on the line, of taking direct action against the international economic institutions, in order to go beyond the abstract character of the human rights discourse. This was a way of responding, in the overdeveloped countries, to the sacrifices of the many “IMF riots” that had been held, often at great cost of life, in what was now being called the Global South. Anyone who believes this step was taken by middle-class white kids acting on internet fantasies, in the absence of direct input from social movements around the world, quite obviously didn’t go to any of the demonstrations and paid no attention to the planning process or the reports.
The point, however, is not to suggest that a brief flare-up of worldwide protest has brought about any substantial change. It is rather to recall what a difficult and long-term effort is really needed, both to grasp the way that transnational state capitalism now functions, and to articulate large-scale resistance. When Josh On [www.theyrule.net] or Bureau d’Etudes [http://utangente.free.fr/index2.html] make their complex charts of contemporary power relations, one can be assured that the cold and abstract character of the results is very painful to them. I can testify, particularly in the second case, that they are acutely aware of what is missing from such documents: namely, some affective indication of resistance from below, who does it, how they work and why. What has been achieved in such cartography projects, however, is a contribution to the very large-scale effort to rebuild a critical grasp of the oppressive forces that create the dominant map of the world. This kind of power-mapping is a necessary prelude to any effective resistance or counter-proposition. The fact that the difference between such efforts and the current military maps used by the Pentagon does not appear clearly on American TV is hardly something you can blame the artists for! There is a difference between general culture critique and constructive critique directed toward people carrying out specific projects.
Somewhat like Coco Fusco, I often wonder why contemporary artists appear so broadly unable to infuse the dominant map with representations of - or even better, direct links to - the many and diverse dissenting groups and alternative philosophies that are now emerging in the world, or that have remained active over decades. Unlike Coco Fusco, however, I don’t think it’s useful or necessary to berate artists today for not having been born earlier. The great philosophical frameworks of national liberation and egalitarian self-management that were able to articulate far-flung resistance movements in the past are inoperative in our time. The urgency is for real individuals of all generations, on all continents, to put their heads and hearts together and create new articulations. The specific job of writers and organizers is then to give those articulations conceptual clarity and popular currency, so that they can effectively challenge the absurd world-views presented on American TV.
As to artists, for whom the naked power structures of the contemporary world must now be quite visible, I encourage them to delve more deeply into the diverse efforts that are being made to resist the imposition of a homogeneous control structure on the entire world. This requires looking outside the boundaries of class, ethnicity and nationality, as certain artists and intellectuals of previous generations effectively did. To live up to the great examples of the past then means imagining something quite different for the future. Need it be said that certain kinds of imagination can serve as the first steps towards a transformation of reality?
Posted by Brian Holmes on Dec 23, 2004 at 4:02 PM All of the above could have been condensed into one simple statement:
Academics are the secular clerics of the postmodern state.
Posted by oy vey... on Dec 24, 2004 at 2:18 AM well, mad props to the secular clerics of the postmodern state, then.
Posted by chaizzilla on Mar 13, 2005 at 6:59 AM “It’s not even clear what the Camp David 2000 offer was, or even whether there was one, officially. The US produced no formal position. Israel made several proposals, but it’s not clear how official they were, or even exactly what they were. Maps were published in Israel, and here, but unofficially. It’s rather striking that the media and journals here apparently published no maps—at least, none I’ve been able to locate—though it’s perfectly obvious that to evaluate the offer and its much-hailed “magnanimity” and “generosity,” one has to look at a map and see what is actually being proposed. I presume that that lapse was not accidental. A mere look at the maps that do exist (which are consistent) reveals that the offer hardly merited such terms.” -Noam Chomsky
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=2053
Posted by Martin on May 11, 2005 at 8:23 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
register a new account »Posting Security
Also by Coco Fusco
- Questioning the Frame
Thoughts about maps and spatial logic in the global present
Popular Discussions
- The 9/11 Faith Movement
Many Americans believe 9/11 was a conspiracy by the U.S. government
1979 posts since Jul 11 06 - What’s the 411 on 9/11?
891 posts since Dec 21 05 - Democrats: It’s the War
659 posts since Nov 1 05 - Was the Presidential Election Stolen?
462 posts since Jun 19 06 - A Fundamental History Lesson
The rise of National Socialism proved politics and religion don't mix
427 posts since Oct 10 05
© 2004 In These Times | Reprint Policy | Privacy Policy | Powered by Expression Engine | RSS Feeds
