I read this today in one of my many email alerts, and it reminded me of Zizek's discussion of torture (page 50): below we have an open discussion AND a law about the limits of extra-judicial killing!
EXTRAJUDICIAL TARGETING OF AMERICANS CHALLENGED
Two civil liberties organizations said they will file a legal challenge against the government's suspected targeting for assassination of an American supporter of Al Qaeda, arguing that under the U.S. Constitution no citizen can be "deprived of life... without due process of law."
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights first filed suit against the Treasury Department, which said they needed a "license" in order to act on behalf of Anwar al-Awlaki, who has been designated as a terrorist. After the lawsuit was filed yesterday, the Treasury Department said the license to proceed would be granted.
Meanwhile, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and several House colleagues introduced legislation last week "to prohibit the extrajudicial killing of United States citizens."
"No United States citizen, regardless of location, can be 'deprived of life, liberty, property, without due process of law', as stated in Article XIV of the Constitution," their bill said.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said yesterday that the targeting of al-Awlaki was not done entirely without process. "There's a process in place that I'm not at liberty to discuss," he said.
"If... we think that direct action [against terrorists] will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that," then-DNI Dennis C. Blair told a House Intelligence Committee hearing (pdf) on February 3, 2010.
But the Kucinich bill said that "No one, including the President, may instruct a person acting within the scope of employment with the United States Government or an agent acting on behalf of the United States Government to engage in, or conspire to engage in, the extrajudicial killing of a United States citizen."
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Zizek: The Reality of the Virtual (film)
If you are a Netflix subscriber, you can enjoy this lecture given by the man himself in London, 2003.
The first 15 minutes or so are spent clarifying his understanding of Lacan's Imaginary, Symbolic, Real triad. I did not stay up late enough last night to watch all the way through to the end, but will finish the movie tonight.
Netflix has other documentaries on or including Zized available through the mail. You Chicagoans might want to plan a watching party!
TDR
p.s. awesome talk last night. thanks to all for persevering over the technology hurdles. we might all have a bit of the revolutionary in us, yet. Happy reading!
The first 15 minutes or so are spent clarifying his understanding of Lacan's Imaginary, Symbolic, Real triad. I did not stay up late enough last night to watch all the way through to the end, but will finish the movie tonight.
Netflix has other documentaries on or including Zized available through the mail. You Chicagoans might want to plan a watching party!
TDR
p.s. awesome talk last night. thanks to all for persevering over the technology hurdles. we might all have a bit of the revolutionary in us, yet. Happy reading!
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Agamben
Hi campers,
I'm happily following up on our discussion from last week with a reference that came up. Around page 258 in Latour, we started to question the limits of his description of the law, and how well his case for the law's stability functions when applied to, for example, developments in European law leading up to WWII. We were looking at the section where he establishes that the difference between police and thugs depends on the entirety of the law (a fabric of sanctions and decrees makes the act of search and arrest legal rather than an act of thuggery -- there is a lot to unpack).
There is a footnote on Vichy in Latour, but not much else to contextualize what his conclusions here regarding the Council of State might say about systematic removal of civil rights, states of exception, and so on, which led me to mention Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer. 'Homo sacer' is a feature of Roman law, a person who can be killed but not sacrificed. It does take a book to sort out what that means, a paradox in which someone is excluded from the law and thereby included and identified under it -- in Roman law it applied to banishment, and today we would also talk about it in terms of stripping civil rights. Agamben looks at the early roots of these laws regarding the 'sacred man' and in particular at developments in European law leading up to WWII.
So if you finished Latour thinking, 'What about ..' -- this book may add to the conversation.
Happiness with a cup of tea and Zizek in hand to you all --
Annie
I'm happily following up on our discussion from last week with a reference that came up. Around page 258 in Latour, we started to question the limits of his description of the law, and how well his case for the law's stability functions when applied to, for example, developments in European law leading up to WWII. We were looking at the section where he establishes that the difference between police and thugs depends on the entirety of the law (a fabric of sanctions and decrees makes the act of search and arrest legal rather than an act of thuggery -- there is a lot to unpack).
There is a footnote on Vichy in Latour, but not much else to contextualize what his conclusions here regarding the Council of State might say about systematic removal of civil rights, states of exception, and so on, which led me to mention Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer. 'Homo sacer' is a feature of Roman law, a person who can be killed but not sacrificed. It does take a book to sort out what that means, a paradox in which someone is excluded from the law and thereby included and identified under it -- in Roman law it applied to banishment, and today we would also talk about it in terms of stripping civil rights. Agamben looks at the early roots of these laws regarding the 'sacred man' and in particular at developments in European law leading up to WWII.
So if you finished Latour thinking, 'What about ..' -- this book may add to the conversation.
Happiness with a cup of tea and Zizek in hand to you all --
Annie
Monday, August 2, 2010
Lost Causes from Rio
Hey campers. I am back online and looking forward to Tuesday at 8 (Chicago time/10 Rio time). I will read to about page 100. I figure we can give this book five weeks, as it is long and we did not choose a September book. As this book touches on just about every book and movie ever made, there are lots of connections to past readings. No doubt there will be lots to talk about. Viva la revolution (at least ones that pose deeply inspiring and motivating symbolic value to the world outside the brutality and specificity of violence-as proposed by Zizek)!
Tuesday,
Amber
Tuesday,
Amber
Monday, July 19, 2010
Making the Law
Bruno Latour is a curious spectrum shift from Bucky. While Fuller offers a (historically imaginative) totalizing world view, Latour give is a microscopic look at French Administrative law. He outlines the movement, the verbs of the place-where people stand, how chairs move, how the files rotate, the organization and shifts in the mailboxes and the redirection in conversation. Latour is the HOW of how power moves, whereas Fuller is a broad stroke why.
The contrast is startling, but...useful. The frustration at Fuller's obsessive need to fit every bit of everything into his call to throw one's self into the cause of humanity is matched by an underlying frustration that Latour seems to be purposefully obfuscating his position as an agent and collector of information. He simply states what he sees at movement, or like an active verb, instances of shift or change, but refuses (so far p. 175) to make any broad social or narrative assumptions based on his observations.
Latour's openness to observe an institution is remarkably refreshing. I just hope it is not like so many modern novels where the words just end, right in the middle of a some larger narrative left for the reader to interpret. And yet, that is so often how it really is.
Somewhere between grand narrative and hands off narrative could be a good spot for me.
Amber
The contrast is startling, but...useful. The frustration at Fuller's obsessive need to fit every bit of everything into his call to throw one's self into the cause of humanity is matched by an underlying frustration that Latour seems to be purposefully obfuscating his position as an agent and collector of information. He simply states what he sees at movement, or like an active verb, instances of shift or change, but refuses (so far p. 175) to make any broad social or narrative assumptions based on his observations.
Latour's openness to observe an institution is remarkably refreshing. I just hope it is not like so many modern novels where the words just end, right in the middle of a some larger narrative left for the reader to interpret. And yet, that is so often how it really is.
Somewhere between grand narrative and hands off narrative could be a good spot for me.
Amber
And So Bucky
So we all agreed Bucky deeply stumbled when it came to accuracy or implementation. Yet, we found a deeply generous spirit towards humanity that was intriguing enough to keep us reading.
Below are Annie Heckman's musing/notes (slightly abridged).
Over-emphasis on technology
Top-down approach
Convoluted
Self-aggrandizing
Gems throughout notes – marked with *
*Local information gatherer
*Problem-solver
Globally active – act local think global
Omni – absolute
Perhaps he overused this word, just a little, every other sentence or so? (AG comment)
Jane Jacobs/Direct articulated lens/Areas of city healthy/unhealthy
Fuller – work for all of humanity
Things that humans all share globally: gravity, sunlight, air
Resources generous but finite
*Posture of abundance and generosity
*Counteracting a fear of limited resources
Mother hen
20th century Ben Franklin
history of power
documenting history
owning things
*power of one
*local efforts
*apply yourself
*methodology of creating
art and design
research and development
burden of development on the individual in the art world
design process more closely follows collaborative practice in architecture
architects who don’t want doors in their offices because it slows down collaboration
*taking responsibility
*interest in honoring what the individual directly experiences as a source of data
*setting out personal principles
*personally developed way of life
credo
*consciously creating your own worldview independent of how you were raised
impressed with his ego
*believing that smaller things that happen along the way will be somehow important in the future/ once the process is realized
sometimes we might tend to labor away and downplay the importance of the backwork
*valuing background work enough to document it
*finding useful reminders of the relationships between thoughts and actions
*idea that the universe regenerates and that using this it is possible to recreate within the system
technology emphasis is a mistake
it’s not technology that saves us but the implementation of technology
weaponry livingry
*his way of figuring out how to get things done
*examining the process of invention
obsessive documentation
the idea that if you say it often enough it will be true
OMNI
All, every
Binaries
world game
World-wide energy grid
Dome – gravity
NPR piece about $2,000 sustainable living space for Haiti, inventor who wants it to be helpful
Colonialism
One person
Engineer
Creating new problems
Involving the whole neighborhood
Not being aware of the law of unintended consequences
The whole idea of having a world plan
Chris Rock bit about jobs vs. careers
*Influencing us to Find little things we can do to change things – why don’t I just do this?
*Open possibilities
burden of humanity
*allowing small things to be important to the whole
Marianne Williamson
Fear is that we’re powerful
Rebecca Solnit -- Hope in the Dark
Larry Kramer – having a plan, idea that there are people with awful intentions who have made careful plans and therefore it is your responsibility to make your own even if the idea of making a master plan seems in itself wrong
Relating the idea of master plan to efforts in US to further strip LGBTQ rights
Good intentions
Stepping back and seeing how much things have changed
Happier to live in 2010 than in 1927
Seeing the changes that have been made
Life work
*Having a cause - 1 thing that you care about deeply
too many things in the world for everyone to mind everything
*finding out what needs to be done that is more important than what we’re actually doing
what are you spending your time doing?
*Idea that if everybody worked on it, it would be better
Don’t forget to do, and not just think
DO-ing got complicated for Bucky
Dealing with unintended consequences
Awareness of the things that we’re working on
Below are Annie Heckman's musing/notes (slightly abridged).
Over-emphasis on technology
Top-down approach
Convoluted
Self-aggrandizing
Gems throughout notes – marked with *
*Local information gatherer
*Problem-solver
Globally active – act local think global
Omni – absolute
Perhaps he overused this word, just a little, every other sentence or so? (AG comment)
Jane Jacobs/Direct articulated lens/Areas of city healthy/unhealthy
Fuller – work for all of humanity
Things that humans all share globally: gravity, sunlight, air
Resources generous but finite
*Posture of abundance and generosity
*Counteracting a fear of limited resources
Mother hen
20th century Ben Franklin
history of power
documenting history
owning things
*power of one
*local efforts
*apply yourself
*methodology of creating
art and design
research and development
burden of development on the individual in the art world
design process more closely follows collaborative practice in architecture
architects who don’t want doors in their offices because it slows down collaboration
*taking responsibility
*interest in honoring what the individual directly experiences as a source of data
*setting out personal principles
*personally developed way of life
credo
*consciously creating your own worldview independent of how you were raised
impressed with his ego
*believing that smaller things that happen along the way will be somehow important in the future/ once the process is realized
sometimes we might tend to labor away and downplay the importance of the backwork
*valuing background work enough to document it
*finding useful reminders of the relationships between thoughts and actions
*idea that the universe regenerates and that using this it is possible to recreate within the system
technology emphasis is a mistake
it’s not technology that saves us but the implementation of technology
weaponry livingry
*his way of figuring out how to get things done
*examining the process of invention
obsessive documentation
the idea that if you say it often enough it will be true
OMNI
All, every
Binaries
world game
World-wide energy grid
Dome – gravity
NPR piece about $2,000 sustainable living space for Haiti, inventor who wants it to be helpful
Colonialism
One person
Engineer
Creating new problems
Involving the whole neighborhood
Not being aware of the law of unintended consequences
The whole idea of having a world plan
Chris Rock bit about jobs vs. careers
*Influencing us to Find little things we can do to change things – why don’t I just do this?
*Open possibilities
burden of humanity
*allowing small things to be important to the whole
Marianne Williamson
Fear is that we’re powerful
Rebecca Solnit -- Hope in the Dark
Larry Kramer – having a plan, idea that there are people with awful intentions who have made careful plans and therefore it is your responsibility to make your own even if the idea of making a master plan seems in itself wrong
Relating the idea of master plan to efforts in US to further strip LGBTQ rights
Good intentions
Stepping back and seeing how much things have changed
Happier to live in 2010 than in 1927
Seeing the changes that have been made
Life work
*Having a cause - 1 thing that you care about deeply
too many things in the world for everyone to mind everything
*finding out what needs to be done that is more important than what we’re actually doing
what are you spending your time doing?
*Idea that if everybody worked on it, it would be better
Don’t forget to do, and not just think
DO-ing got complicated for Bucky
Dealing with unintended consequences
Awareness of the things that we’re working on
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Tuesdays become Latour-days
Good evening everyone.
Soon a Bucky re-cap will be posted. I just need to be in the same physical space for more than a few days.
So onto Latour and French Administrative law. If you like files and listening in on closed door conversations, this could be the text for you.
Still, every Tuesday at 8pm, Chicago time.
Amber
Soon a Bucky re-cap will be posted. I just need to be in the same physical space for more than a few days.
So onto Latour and French Administrative law. If you like files and listening in on closed door conversations, this could be the text for you.
Still, every Tuesday at 8pm, Chicago time.
Amber
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