jim submits:

"Bothersome Reality"

Thomas Zummer

. . . all bothersome reality appears as if wiped away.
-- Alfred Polgar, 1912

It is 2003.

In 1912, Alfred Polgar had been speaking of the cinema, drawing a comparison
between its economies and those of the stage, where the possibility of
puncturing the illusion of theater is always in potentia directed to a
fragile and unstable image. Perhaps we have to return, again, to such
instances to remind ourselves of the genealogical chain of virtualities by
which media stabilizes its image -- that is to say, its world -- putting the
world into a picture, as Heidegger might have said, advancing a tactical
isomorphism, as a reflection, a conduit to the realities that are taking
place. In, for example, a war.

The problem is that there are TOO MANY reasons for the attack...
Slavoj Zizek is correct in pointing out that there are far too many reasons
for the United States to have invaded Iraq. Each reason standing in for
another, so that the stabilities of persuasion operate in a deferred
circumlocution. In other words, that as soon as one argument meets
objection, or insuppressable contrary evidence, there is a default to
another closely aligned public argument. No matter that such arguments might
be, at one level at least, contradictory, they are all 'good reasons.' And
they all address the question 'why?' with an entailing rationale.

(pre)tending the war

Of course it is a question of media, of mediation. Reality comes to us by
way of a fictional fashioning--it is an artifact--but it is the heuristic
criteria for determining the disposition of such artifacts--the truth of
media--that has come under assault, or more precisely, is caught up as just
another casualty, the tacit allusion to the telling of a lie or the
withholding of a truth (military disinformation) holding place for,
occupying the space of truth. Such things are not simple or singular, their
affectivity does not rest upon some sort of clarity or persuasion, or a
recourse to evidence. Just the opposite. Neither are they a very new
phenomenon. We the presumed Âconsumersº of the war, find a subtle
familiarity in our collusion with reports of 'a dying regime,' of a
'dictator's last days,' of 'Operation Iraqi Freedom,' of 'our brave men and
women at the front,' and so on. It is as if we, the audience, can pretend
once again to Âfight the good war,º a war whose image has been shaped in
terms of nostalgia and presumption, under the names of values and ethics
that are, and should be, a common allegience in the public sphere. But who
is being addressed?

It is necessary to perceive that the time and content of an address is
artificially produced. It is an artifact. Telepresence--'Live'
transmission--is an artifact, as are we who occupy the position of its
subject. Jacques Derrida points out that, within the framework of media, as
soon as you speak, in the very moment of enunciation, your words are no
longer your own, they have been swept away, transported in the very moment
of their emergence, to another place and time, outside of your own control,
under the control of another. Speech in the very moment of its production is
an artifact which does not belong to you. In a sense Foucaultºs idea of an
Âauthorial functionº has suffused everything, and, in a strange series of
successions from divinity to anonymity, casts 'us' into a position where one
may have recently mourned the 'death of the author' and now find ourselves
somewhere else, mourning the 'death of the public.' The 'audience' in its
classical configuration, in what we thought was a receptive/reactive, even
analytic or critical posture, is also a recent casualty, though its malaise
may have been preternaturally drawn out.

The question again, is 'who is being addressed?'

There is a sort of 'default-judgement' that comes into play when we are put
into--or find ourselves in--a position of familiarity which requires a
certain
kind of response, in order to break the arrestment, and move on. The idea,
as we are told, that once the 'war has commenced,' that once such an 'event'
has taken place--no matter that it is far removed from our own judgement,
intent, desire, trepidation, etc.-- we must 'rally behind the president' and
'support our troops in the field.' But who are we who are being addressed in
such a manner? We who 'disappeared' when such judgements as to invade Iraq
were made? Who is being addressed when we march (with our legal permits) in
the streets, with clever signs and slogans (no longer forms of communication
at all, it would seem), and make our oppositional presence known (but to
whom?)? Who is the addressee of public demonstration? Certainly it is not
the rulers. Neither is it to an immanent, substantive and effectual entity
presumed to be the 'public,' such that there is recourse to public opinion,
the possibility of communication, persuasion, freedom of debate. Nor is it
even to ourselves, though we and those close to us may feel some immediate
release, and gratification, in making noise and waving our arms around.
Sadly, we are just a 'crowd,' a mass, as Benjamin has put it, already, in
the very moment of our imanence, an artifact. And all that we say and do, in
the very moment of its articulation is swept away, not ours. It is my
intention to also include the soldiers, the technicians, military men and
women who are deployed--much like pawns--and persuaded to believe in a
course or purpose not their own, upon which they have not been consulted.

Another
mediated 'crowd.' The 'unconscious optics' of the camera seem like such a
quaint, even charming, notion when cast into the consumptive sphere of
contemporary media. Apparently the only viable position offered is to align
oneself with/against a phantasmatic, imaginary substantitive community:
America.

What of sentiment and nostalgia? In whose service are these reflexes,
impulses which originate within us, secured and assigned? In whose name, and
to what purpose?

To fuel what poll?

Consider the 'embedding' of journalists and camera crews with the military
in the Iraqi desert, in command centers, and vehicles throughout the
theater. It is a form of total surveillance. There is no 'freedom of access'
which is not coextensive with immediate control of transmission. The moment
of free speech is precisely alloyed to a condition of mediation and control.
Whether we are here or there, there is everywhere a desperate clinging to
notions of the subjectivities, the figures and tropes, the individuals and
public, the good people, that we all think we still are. 'Embedded media' is
little more than crowd control. The reports from the field are, in a sense,
'true' in that journalists report what they see, and experience, shaped by
tacit contract with military/political authority. There is an identification
with those young men and women whom they share cramped spaces in tight
vehicles, food and water, something like a complex pattern of psychoanalytic
transferences, between subjectivities, subject-positions, and phantasmata
(that is, the superimposition of what are essentially fictional positions,
or subjective identifications with mass-collective or institutional
dispositions).

It is not even necessary for someone like George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, et
al/inter alia to understand this, to have thought it through or to even have
a clear grasp of how it works, for their programme to be effective. In fact,
such clarity might even be detrimental to their aggressive opportunism. On
the other hand, theirs is also a virtual opportunism, pre-emptively
reactive, aways ready, foreshadowed in a number of documents, policies,
legislations and consulting bodies which have already divided the potential
spoils for the aftermath and reconstruction of Iraq, of North Korea, Iran,
Syria, Venezuela, etc.

And what of we small people, who have been able to do very little, we who
still have an archaic faith in the value of asking questions?

For example, what is the current definition of 'interests'? What is the
definition, and here I mean a pragmatic one, of 'American interests'? I will
leave aside for a moment the problem of consensus, since it involves forms
of communication that may no longer be possible. Does the term "Americaan
interests" imply economic, that is to say, corporate interests? And how are
those corporate interests expressed globally? And what does this
'authorise,' setting aside -- once again -- questions of legality or right? One
might be very concrete and ask of -- and name -- the corporations involved, and
those precluded from potential profit.

If we glance back at those questions of legality, what is to be done with
Article I, section 8, of the Constitution of the United States of America?
Last year the U.S. Congress, with leaders of both parties, surrendered their
warmaking power to George W. Bush, an act which in itself is unlawful. The
founding fathers (one of the most common usages of the trope apostrophe) had
most emphatically placed the power to make war in the hands of Congress.
They did not want some arrogant or brooding successor to King George III to
plunge their country into war. Instead they wanted a collegial body of many
elected representatives to decide openly whether war was necessary,
appropriate, legan or right. Unfortunately, there is now no judicial remedy
for any citizen to challenge assigning the warmaking power to the President.
C'est fait accompli -- the default-judgement of an absent public has already
accepted this state of affairs.

What would an analysis of the reaction of the contemporary global,
mass-public be to the articulation of the inevitability of an American
neocolonial empire? Even an abstract study of the nature of inevitability
would, I think, reveal another order of phantasmata and illusion in the
economy of tropes and phrases by which the US press is describing the
situation in Iraq. It is an address to a non-existant public, or rather to a
presumed collusion in the inevitability of US policies on Âourº part, we who
stand in place, in that evacuated space, of what we may once have been
called conscience, free will or polity.

What has become of categories such as 'the Right' and 'the Left'?

How might one analyze the current regime in Washington? It seems to act,
like a corporation, without serious consideration of public and consensual
checks and balances. Like a corporation if aggressively protects its
'interests.' Like a corporation, it does not make allies, but engages in
'hostile takeovers' and acquires subsidiaries. Commerce and free enterprise
are global. You are a consumer, or you are a target. There has been a
'regime-change' in America--look up the definition of 'regime'--but it
continues to call itself something else, something familiar: democracy.

Who will pay for this war (it is not even a 'war,' since it was undeclared,
but a pre-emptive 'authorized military action')? Obviously the Iraqis with
their resources, will have to subsidize a great deal, if not all, of the
intended reconstruction of their nation, directed by a U.S.-assigned private
sector. It is, to some - -those petroleum, communications and energy
corporations who were positioned to benefit contractuall -- a win/win
scenario. How does a promise (of tax cuts, bills for appropriation of monies
for 'homeland defense' or to offset the cost of public support of the war)
secure our collusion [sentiment, outrage, nostalgia, etc.] and mask the
corporate interests already busily at work on Iraqi soil?

Who is next?

Shock and Awe -- how do we disengage the conjunction between two terms that do
not seem to 'rhyme' with each -- or any others? Where do we situate this 'and'
in order to demonstrate the presumed affinity between the shock of the
people who see (themselves under) relentless attack, and those who
experience awe of what had been thought, so very recently, could never have
come about. Again it is, among other things, a question of who is being
addressed. One must see that it cicumscribes two distict points of address:
shock to Iraq, and awe to the rest of the world, a tacit and exemplary
communique to Iran and Saudi Arabia, Syria and North Korea, the European
Community and the United States of America. A conjunction that veils a
threat: that there is a commutability between these two terms, that the
conjunction is a 'two-way street,' and 'obstruction' carries a risk.

The real shock and awe, in terms of effect, may have been when George W.
Bush 'assumed' the presidency of the United States of America.

Who is empowered to render a judgement to not recognize consensual
international authority, like the UN, NATO, international law, treaties,
agreements, the 'rule of law,' or the sovereign governments of nations?
Saddam Hussein? Slobodan Milosovic? George W. Bush? Donald Rumsfeld? Paul
Wolfowitz?

What is a 'rogue state'?

How much can we trust what is told to us by such 'leaders'? People who no
longer even bother with evidence, but ask us to rely on their 'gut feeling'
of the rightness of their actions [ "I feel this is right because (I feel)
this is right"] and the events that they precipitate. Isn't the acceptance
of this a matter of faith? That is to say, a default judgement which is the
precise opposite of 'democracy'? It is a bit like the logic of the Christian
zealot, who always has an authoritative recourse to "I know in my heart [a
heart suffused by Jesus] that...etc." [One is always tempted to answer "I
know in my heart that you are wrong"]

What about such things as free speech, privacy, and freedom of information
when there are apparently blockages (technical and/or political) of internet
sites and addresses which convey undesirable data and images, or come from
foreign sources? Are you having problems with access?

How do we, small people who lose our voice every time we open our mouths,
who have no access to data or evidence or indeed any measure of what
transpires, how do we attend to the world? What possible criteria can come
into play to determine what is really at stake? Or how long an agenda has
been operating? Or where or when? Or for whom? There is no direct evidence
(not only is there no place left to go in the contemporary world, but there
is no evidence of anything, a situation masked by rather safe academic
disputations about 'simulation,' the 'post-modern' and 'hyper-realities.'
Perhaps these definitions are in a sense important after all, holding place
like a stone where something absent has left its remains, marking a place
where something might still be thought?

But what if -- slowly and relentlessly, and on all fronts -- the image is
punctured? What if the mediated illusion of American policy under the Bush
agenda is revealed to be something quite radically other than it says it is?
And what if the means by which thinking progresses are shown not to be
natural, reflexive, inviolable, true and right, but insidiously regulated
for certain interests? What would happen then?