[W]omen were not serving only as support workers, the habitual role to which they are relegated in protest movements. Egyptian women also organized and reported the events. Bloggers such as Leil-Zahra Mortada took grave risks to keep the world informed daily of the scene in Tahrir Square and elsewhere.
The role of women in the great Middle East upheaval has been woefully under-analyzed. Women in Egypt didn’t just “join” the protests – they were a leading force behind the cultural evolution that made the protests inevitable. And what’s true for Egypt is true throughout the Arab world. When women change, everything changes, and women in the Muslim world are changing radically.
The greatest shift is educational. Two generations ago, only a small minority of the daughters of the elite received a university education. Today, women account for more than half of the students at Egyptian universities. They’re being trained to use power in ways their grandmothers could scarcely have imagined: publishing newspapers (as Sanaa el Seif did, in defiance of a government order to cease operating); campaigning for student leadership posts; fundraising for student organizations; and running meetings.
Indeed, a substantial minority of young women in Egypt and other Arab countries have now spent their formative years thinking critically in mixed-gender environments, and even publicly challenging male professors in the classroom. It’s far easier to tyrannize a population when half are poorly educated and trained to be submissive. But, as Westerners should know from their own historical experience, once you educate women, democratic agitation is likely to accompany the massive cultural shift that follows.
The nature of social media, too, has helped turn women into protest leaders. Having taught leadership skills to women for more than a decade, I know how difficult it is to get them to speak out in a hierarchical organizational structure. Likewise, women tend to avoid the figurehead status that traditional protest has imposed on certain activists in the past – almost invariably a hotheaded young man with a megaphone.
In such contexts – with a stage, a spotlight and a spokesperson – women often shy away from leadership roles. But social media, through the very nature of the technology, have changed what leadership looks and feels like. Facebook mimics the way many women choose to experience social reality, with connections between people just as important as individual dominance or control, if not more so.
You can be a powerful leader on Facebook just by creating a really big “us.” Or you can stay the same size, conceptually, as everyone else on your page – you don’t have to assert your dominance or authority. The structure of Facebook’s interface creates what brick-and-mortar institutions, despite 30 years of feminist pressure, have failed to provide: a context in which women’s ability to forge a powerful “us” and engage in a leadership of service can advance the cause of freedom and justice worldwide.
Protevi: One of the striking concepts of your book is “insects as media.” How does that relate to this contemporary background in media theory?
Parikka: I wanted to reverse the idea of “media as insects” implicit in the “swarm” image into “insects as media.” So I traced how this particular brand of animals has been seen, since the formation of modern entomology in the 19th century, as a form of non-human intelligence and mode of perception – something very anti-McLuhan and foreign, but still very inspiring. I am thinking here how 19th century entomology and popular culture were enthusiastic about the ways in which insects inhabit the world differently – an alien form of being that does not move with two legs, does not think with the reflective brain but through a more instinctual enfolding with the milieu, and senses in a variety of different ways to that of the human. What David Cronenberg, or for that matter the film Microcosmos, have done in cinematic terms, I wanted to do as a slightly alternative cultural history and media theory.
Protevi: Who are some of the people whom you read in this respect?
Parikka: A good example is Roger Caillois, the French thinker close to the Surrealist movement. He was interested in a “New Science” that would move transversally across established disciplines. His famous writings on mimicry and the praying mantis gave huge inspiration not only to the artistic ideas interested in forms of perception and a space that is intensively devouring, but also such thinkers as Jacques Lacan. Whereas later writings of Caillois on typologies of game have been incorporated into game studies, I try to see how his thoughts on space, immersion, and psychic disorders (losing the sense of “I”) could be seen as foundational to new sensory realms. That is, I try to see what could be transported from his interest in insects to contemporary game spaces. We can use those ideas to make sense of the affect worlds, and affective capitalism, in which we are living in contemporary post-Fordist culture.
Protevi: This interchange of nature and technology is summed up in a second key concept of yours, “technics of nature,” isn’t it?
Parikka: Yes. Technics of nature refers to the way in which it is not only us humans who fabricate things, artifacts, to establish relations with the world; the whole of nature can be seen as such a dynamic process of relations, perceptions, durations, and cohabitation that is creative. Think of Darwin’s curious way of making sense of the dynamics inherent in nature, or the later architectural discourse at the turn of the 20th century, all that enthusiasm about how ingenious insects are in creating milieus of living. Or for that matter, take Bergson’s idea of “creative evolution.” These are the elements through which I try to argue that a media theory that starts with aesthetics – perception, sensation, memory, and the distributed nature of these processes in which the human is only one passing point – ought to look more not only at technical media, but at animals too. I just heard Mark Hansen [Literature Program, Duke] give a great talk at the Transmediale 2011 conference where he insisted that we need to turn to process-based media theory, instead of our focus on objects: this is however not only a theme we need to grasp through new ubiquitous media, but can find clues already much earlier – and in surprising contexts.
Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all! The reason: Canada regulators announced last week they would reject efforts by Canada's right wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news.
Canada's Radio Act requires that "a licenser may not broadcast....any false or misleading news." The provision has kept Fox News and right wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the "Fairness Doctrine" in 1987. Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the U.S. airwaves. When Stephen Harper moved to abolish anti-lying provision of the Radio Act, Canadians rose up to oppose him fearing that their tradition of honest non partisan news would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverage familiar to American citizens who listen to Fox News and talk radio. Harper's proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new right wing network, "Sun TV News" which Canadians call "Fox News North."
Harper, often referred to as "George W. Bush's Mini Me," is known for having mounted a Bush like war on government scientists, data collectors, transparency, and enlightenment in general. He is a wizard of all the familiar tools of demagoguery; false patriotism, bigotry, fear, selfishness and belligerent religiosity.
Harper's attempts to make lying legal on Canadian television is a stark admission that right wing political ideology can only dominate national debate through dishonest propaganda. Since corporate profit-taking is not an attractive vessel for populism, a political party or broadcast network that makes itself the tool of corporate and financial elites must lie to make its agenda popular with the public. In the Unites States, Fox News and talk radio, the sock puppets of billionaires and corporate robber barons have become the masters of propaganda and distortion on the public airwaves. Fox News's notoriously biased and dishonest coverage of the Wisconsin's protests is a prime example of the brand of news coverage Canada has smartly avoided.
Within the governance of national authorities, public service broadcasting was recreated across western European democracies and beyond in various forms. At the core of each was a commitment to operating radio and television services in the public good. The principal paradigm adopted to accomplish this mission was the establishment of a state-owned broadcasting system that either functioned as a monopoly or at least as the dominant broadcasting institution. Funding came in the form of license fees, taxes or similar noncommercial options. Examples of these organizations include the Netherlands Broadcasting Foundation, Danish Broadcasting Corporation, Radiodiffusion Television Francaise, Swedish Television Company, Radiotelevisione Italiana, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Australian Broadcasting Corporation. While the ideals on which these and other systems were based suggested services that were characterized by universality and diversity, there were notable violations to these ideals, especially in Germany, France and Italy. In some cases the state-owned broadcasting system became the political mouthpiece for whomever was in power. Such abuse of the broadcasting institutions' mandate made public service broadcasting the subject of frequent political debates.
I’m at a hearing of the immigration subcommittee, and the pseudo-congressman from Puerto Rico is going on about how “we” are a nation of immigrants. “We”? Puerto Rico is a foreign country that became a colony of the United States in 1898, no different from the French colony of Togo or the British colony of Uganda (or the U.S. colony of the Philippines). Congress granted residents of the island U.S. citizenship during World War I, but Puerto Ricans remain a distinct people, a distinct nation, with their own (foreign) language, their own history, their own culture. Like other remnants of late-colonialism (like Belize, Djibouti, Comoros, etc.), most Puerto Ricans don’t want independence at this point, because it would end the gravy train. But that’s not our problem — we need to end this unnatural situation and give the nation of Puerto Rico an independent state as soon as practicable.
In addition to a considerable level of ignorance about the history of Puerto Rico (it was never independent), and about the Puerto Rican influence on American life (there are more Puerto Ricans living in the continental US than in Puerto Rico), the comment really gives away the show about the question of legal vs. illegal immigration; Krikorian simply doesn’t care for foreign speaking people. As for cutting Puerto Rico lose against its will, I’d say we should entertain that policy around the same time that we give serious consideration to returning New Mexico, California, and Arizona to Mexico.
Skopje has long needed sprucing up. But opponents of Nikola Gruevski, who have long accused the prime minister of populist nationalism, will hardly be dissauded by the nature of the construction boom (which the government has christened Skopje 2014). With an election in the offing, Mr Gruevski will no doubt enjoy taking credit for the new structures mushrooming throughout the city centre.
In Skopje’s central square a massive plinth is being built. It will soon be topped with a huge statue of Alexander the Great. Many Macedonians could not give a fig for Alexander. But they will be delighted to see the Greeks, who have been blocking Macedonia's EU and NATO integration over an objection to the country's name, turn apoplectic with rage when it is unveiled. The Greeks accuse the Macedonians of appropriating Alexander and trying to steal their Hellenic culture.
But that is just one element. Museums, domes, a new foreign ministry, a bridge bedecked with statues of lions and [. . . ] a triumphal arch are all springing up, transforming the centre of town. Some of the buildings suit the landscape, but the new constitutional court, with its massive Corinthian columns, seems a trifle overpowering.
Skopje 2014, which we first wrote about last year, has accentuated bitter disputes between the majority Orthodox Macedonians and Muslim Albanians, who make up a quarter of Macedonia's population. Whenever someone suggests building or rebuilding a church in Skopje, the Albanians demand the same for a mosque. Tensions invariably mount.
The most vivid example brought small groups of Macedonians and Albanians to fisticuffs. Recently, a church-like steel skeleton appeared on the site of an old church inside Skopje's fortress (pictured). The authorities claimed they were merely building a museum in the shape of a church. But Albanians reply that under the original church is an older Illyrian structure; as, they say, they are descended from Illyrians, the site should be theirs. Construction has now stopped, but the issue reveals the delicate balance between Macedonia's two communities, in which religion, identity, land and power are all deeply entwined.
The erection of statues of historical figures and grandiose public buildings looks like an expression of ethnic Macedonian identity. But they are not the only ones; their structures are merely the most visible to outsiders visiting Skopje's centre. Visit Albanian districts in and around the capital and you come across hundreds of new mosques.
Macedonia’s Albanians have a reputation of being much more religious than their brethren from Albania or Kosovo. Their mosque-building has even begun to alarm Albanians from Albania, where they have been labelled as "Talibans" in television chat shows.
Yet the Democratic Union for Integration, a Macedonian Albanian party, which is in coalition with Mr Gruevski, has strictly secular roots. So one wonders whether there is a sub-plot to the mosque-building frenzy. In most cases, a new mosque declares not only the glory of Islam, but that the land on which is stands is Albanian. The paradox is that you can find Albanian-controlled town halls flying American flags a stone’s throw from new mosques sporting Saudi Arabian ones from their minarets.
This is one reason why the church-museum affair is so touchy. Many Macedonians say they keep quiet about the often illegally-built mosques for the sake of social harmony. That is why it irks them that an attempt to build something that merely resembles a church becomes a huge incident. Albanians, by contrast, see Skopje 2014 and related projects like the church-museum as a project designed to shove “Macedonian-ness” down their throats.
This British territory, largely undeveloped in the 20th century, became a playground for celebrities and the ultrarich as its reputation grew along with the easy money and loose credit of the boom years. In the last 10 years, dozens of new developments were started, almost all of them aimed at the most extravagant end of the luxury market. When the credit spigot was shut off, it didn't take long for things to screech to a halt.
The economic collapse was exacerbated by a charismatic and allegedly corrupt leader, Premier Michael Misick, whose actions helped drive Turks and Caicos into financial and political ruin, according to evidence presented by a Commission of Inquiry that was appointed by the local British governor at the recommendation of the British Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee. Once, condos couldn't be built fast enough to meet demand; now the money has vanished, and locals wonder whether there are enough prison cells for the former government officials being investigated by the British special prosecutor.
Around the world, the popping of the credit bubble has resulted in relatively few arrests. In countries such as Greece, Ireland, and the U.S., taxpayers are footing most of the bill for what happened in that murky zone between greed and criminality. The British have determined that here it will be different: There will be a full accounting, there will be consequences, and then this island nation will start over. In 2009, as the global economic chill hit Turks and Caicos, which had enjoyed a peak annual gross domestic product of $800 million the year before—65 percent from construction, finance, and tourism—the British announced that they'd found evidence of deep-seated corruption throughout the state. After public hearings two years ago, they dissolved the ministerial government, suspended parts of the constitution, and postponed elections. Civil and criminal investigations are under way.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootdancing_serpent