2. Baudry founded his critique of the cinematic appa-
ratus on its inheritance of Quattrocento perspec-
tive construction, which, he claimed, constitutes
a viewing subject as centre and origin of meaning.
Cinematic camera movement only serves to aug-
ment the viewer’s feeling of power and control. For
Baudry, the spectator identifies less with what is
represented on the screen, than with the apparatus
that stages the spectacle. The crucial illusion that
cinema fosters, then, is not so much the illusory
world represented, as the fantasy it engenders of a
‘transcendental subject.’ Just as the infant in Lacan’s
mirror stage assembled the fragmented and unco-
ordinated body in an imaginary unity, so also the
imaginary transcendental self of cinema unites the
discontinuous fragments of film into a unified sense
Margaret Iverson, The Discourse of Perspective in the
Twentieth Century: Panofsky, Damisch, Lacan, Oxford Art
Journal 2005 28(2):191-202 perspective in a typical snapshot
3. Bentham's Panopticon is the architectural figure of this com-
position. We know the principle on which it was based: at
the periphery, an annular building; at the centre, a tower; this
tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner
side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells,
each of which extends the whole width of the building; they
have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the
windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows the
light to cross the cell from one end to the other. All that is
needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and
to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man,
a worker or a schoolboy. By the effect of backlighting, one can
observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the
light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery.
They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which
each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visi-
ble. The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make
it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. In
short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its
three functions - to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide -
it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full
lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than dark-
ness, which ultimately protected.Visibility is a trap.
Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison trans Alan Sheri-
dan (NY:Vintage Books 1977) pp. 195-228
4. Aristotle: the political animal
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/a8po/
Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and
that man is by nature a political animal
Hobbes: Bellum omnium contra omnes
the war of each against all
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/hobbes/thomas/h68l/
Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where
every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the
time wherein men live without other security than what their
own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal.
In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit
thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth;
no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported
by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and
removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of
the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no
society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of
violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
and short. chapter 13
Rousseau: the social contract
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/rousseau/jean_jacques/r864s/
Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under
the supreme direction of the general will; and in a body we re-
ceive each member as an indivisible part of the whole
5. Rawls: principles of justice
1. each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties
compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others
2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that
a) they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society (the differ-
ence principle).
b) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportu-
nity
John Rawls (1971), A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard Uni-
versity Press
Habermas: Legitimation Theory, Communicative Rationality
The style of the formal arrangements and procedures of democracy is such that administrative
decisions may be taken relatively independently of the aims and motives of the citizens . . . This
is brought about by a process of legitimation which secures the loyalty of the masses but avoids
participation. In the midst of a society which is political in itself the citizens enjoy the status of
passive participants, with the right to withhold their approval. Private liberty to decide on in-
vestments is complemented by the people’s position as merely private citizens. Jürgen Habermas
1976 [1973]), ‘Problems of Legitimation in Late Capitalism’, in Paul Connerton (ed), Critical Soci-
ology, Penguin, Harmondsworth.363-387.
6. Modern democracy’s specificity lies in the recog-
Routledge, Londo: 30.
On the Political
Mouffe, Chantal (2005)
nition and legitimation of conflict and the refusal
to suppress it by imposing an authoritarian or-
der. Breaking with the symbolic representations
of society as an organic body. . . a pluralist liberal
democratic society does not deny the existence
of conflicts but provides the institutions allow-
ing them to be expressed in an adversarial form.
It is for this reason that we should be wary of
the current tendency to celebrate a politics of
consensus, claiming that it has replaced the sup-
posedly old-fashioned politics of right and left.
A well functioning democracy calls for a clash of
legitimate democratic political positions . . . Such
a confrontation should provide collective forms
of representation strong enough to mobilize po-
litical passions. If this adversarial configuration is
missing, passions cannot be given a democratic
outlet and the agonistic dynamics of pluralism are
hindered. The danger therefore arises that demo-
cratic confrontation will therefore be replaced
by a confrontation between essentialist forms of
identification or non-negotiable moral values . . .
nationalist, religious or ethnic forms of identifica-
tion
7. Cosmopolitanism
Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto; “I am human: nothing human is alien to me.” Terence c.160 BCE
The Satanic Verses “celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and un-
expected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelisation and
fears the absolutism of the Pure. Mélange, hotch-potch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the
world.” (Salman Rushdie)
“The Law of World Citizenship Shall Be Limited to Conditions of Universal Hospitality” Hospitality means the
right of a stranger not to be treated as an enemy when he arrives in the land of another. One may refuse to
receive him when this can be done without causing his destruction; but, so long as he peacefully occupies his
place, one may not treat him with hostility. It is not the right to be a permanent visitor that one may demand. A
special beneficent agreement would be needed in order to give an outsider a right to become a fellow inhabit-
ant for a certain length of time. It is only a right of temporary sojourn, a right to associate, which all men have.
They have it by virtue of their common possession of the surface of the earth, where, as a globe, they cannot
infinitely disperse and hence must finally tolerate the presence of each other. (Kant, Perpetual Peace
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm)
Realism vs idealism
9. Sovereign is he who decides on the exception
Schmitt, Carl (2004), Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans George D. Schwab, intro Tracy B. Strong, Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, Chicago. Original publication: 1922, 2nd edn. 1934, MIT Press, 1985.
10. the ultimate ground of the ex-
ception here is not necessity but
the principle according to which
“every law is ordained for the
common well-being of men, and
only for this does it have the
State of Exception
force and reason of law; if it fails
trans Kevin Attell, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
in this regard, it has no capacity
to bind”. In the case of necessity,
the vis obligandi [power to bind]
of the law fails, because the goal
of solus hominum [the individual
man] is lacking. . . . it is a question
of a paerticular case in which vis
and ratio of the law find no appli-
cation (p. 25)
Agamben, Giorgio (2005),
pp 3-4
11. old new
unequal exchange peer-to-peer (P2P)
universality diversity
consensus post-identity
territory, networks
territorialisation post-community
security precarity
privacy publicness
monopolies on power multitude
rhizomes, nomads, swarms
12. The social landscape . . . is characterized . . . by a flowering of free coop-
eration, where individuals experience their own identity intimately related
to others with whom they create the networks through which they built
their connective world. This is a functioning anarchy, understood as vol-
untary cooperation built on mutual trust. Though, it's a bourgeois anarchy,
one which exists within the domiinant system, rather than as a revolution-
ary alternative to it. This development takes place through an infrastruc-
ture whose very design aggregate power in the hands of those who control
the foundation of this new landscape: means of communication. And, this
takes place within the framework of the state rebuilding its legitimacy
around an authoritarian core promising security against the vagueries of
free cooperation.
Whether or not this makes the glass half full or half empty is a meaning-
less question, we are currently pouring into it as water is leaking out.
The key question when we try to think about a world without privacy is
how we can promote free cooperation, which involves a high degree of
visibility and identifiability of individuals, while limiting social sorting
and preventing the state to rebuild itself around a deeply authoritarian
core. If we manage that, I believe we can really say: goodbye privacy.
To: nettime-l {AT} kein.org
Subject: <nettime> Our New Public Life: Free Cooperation, Biased Infra-
structures and Authoritarian States
From: Felix Stalder <felix {AT} openflows.com>
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 12:48:36 +0200
slightly edited (original on your CD-ROM)
13. millan, Basingstoke, 2004.
Lectures at the Collège de France 1978-1979, ed Michel Senellart, trans Graham Burchell, Palgrave Mac-
The Birth of Biopolitics
Michel Foucault
the problem of liberal policy was precisely to de-
velop in fact the concrete and real space in which
the formal structure of competition could func-
tion. So it is a matter of a market economy without
laissez-faire, that is to say, an active policy without
state control. Neo-liberalism should not therefore
be identified with laissez-faire but rather with per-
manent vigilance, activity and intervention (132)
in the social contract, all those who will the social
contract and virtually or actually subscribe to it
form part of society until such a time as they cut
themselves off from it. In the idea of an economic
game we find that no one originally insisted on be-
ing part of the economic game and consequently it
is up to society and to the rules of the game im-
:
posed by the state to ensure that no one is exclud-
ed from this game in which he is caught up without
ever having explicitly wished to take part (202)
14. . . . either the rights of man are the rights This is what the democratic process implies:
of the citizen, that is to say the rights of the action of subjects who, by working the
those who have rights, which is a tautol- interval between identities, reconfigure the
ogy; or the rights of the citizen are the distributions of the public and the private,
rights of man. But as bare humanity has the universal and the particular. Democ-
no rights, then they are the rights of racy can never be identified with the simple
those who have no rights, which is an domination of the universal (Rancière 2006: 61-2)
absurdity Rancière, Jacques (2006), Hatred of Democ-
racy, trans Steve Corcoran,Verso, London: 61
Politics is not made up of power relationships;
it is made up of relationships between worlds.
(Rancière, Jacques (1999), Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans Julie Rose, University of Minnesota
Press, Minneapolis: 42)
15. In 1943, in a small Jewish periodical, The Menorah Jour- It is worth reflecting on the sense of this analysis,
nal, Hannah Arendt published an article titled "We Ref- which today, precisely fifty years later, has not lost any
ugees." In this brief but important essay, after sketching of its currency. Not only does the problem arise with
a polemical portrait of Mr. Cohn, the assimilated Jew the same urgency, both in Europe and elsewhere, but
who had been 150 percent German, 150 percent Vien- also, in the context of the inexorable decline of the
nese, and 150 percent French but finally realizes bitterly nation-state and the general corrosion of traditional
that "on ne parvient pas deux fois," Arendt overturns legal-political categories, the refugee is perhaps the
the condition of refugee and person without a coun- only imaginable figure of the people in our day. At least
try - in which she herself was living - in order to pro- until the process of the dissolution of the nation-state
pose this condition as the paradigm of a new historical and its sovereignty has come to an end, the refugee is
consciousness. The refugee who has lost all rights, yet the sole category in which it is possible today to per-
stops wanting to be assimilated at any cost to a new ceive the forms and limits of a political community to
national identity so as to contemplate his condition come. Indeed, it may be that if we want to be equal
lucidly, receives, in exchange for certain unpopularity, to the absolutely novel tasks that face us, we will have
an inestimable advantage: "For him history is no longer to abandon without misgivings the basic concepts in
a closed book, and politics ceases to be the privilege which we have represented political subjects up to
of the Gentiles. He knows that the banishment of the now (man and citizen with their rights, but also the
Jewish people in Europe was followed immediately by sovereign people, the worker, etc.) and to reconstruct
that of the majority of the European peoples. Refugees our political philosophy beginning with this unique
expelled from one country to the next represent the figure.
avant-garde of their people."
Giorgio Agamben
We Refugees
Symposium. 1995, No. 49(2), Summer, Pages: 114-119, English, Translation by Michael Rocke.
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/giorgio-agamben/articles/we-refugees/
16. if I know, for example, what the causes and effects of what I am doing are,
what the program is for what I am doing, then there is no decision; it is a
question, at the moment of judgement, of applying a particular causality. . . . If I
know what is to be done . . . . then there is no moment of decision, simply the
application of a body of knowledge, or at the very least a rule or a norm. For
there to be a decision, the decision must be heterogeneous to knowledge as
such (Derrida 2001: 231-2)
17. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 9
The Human Condition
Hannah Arendt, (1958),
the new beginning inherent in birth can
make itself felt in the world only because
the newcomer possesses the capacity of
beginning something anew, that is, of acting.
In this sense of initiative, an element of ac-
tion, and therefore of natality, is inherent in
all human activities. Moreover, since action
is the political activity par excellence, natal-
ity, and not mortality, may be the central
category of political, as distinguished from
metaphysical, thought.
18. QUESTIONS
How can media intervene in the relations between individuals and societies?
Is there an alternative to the mass aggregation of individuals in markets?
Is there an alternative to the nation as the primary source of political identity?
Can there be any democracy in the 21st century which is not mediated?
What should an ‘informed citizen’ be informed about?
In an increasingly fragmented world, what groupings and identifications could be brought about to
contest the political?
Is the network the characteristic new terrain of politics?