Hall of Fame...

[debela]

vrijedi procitati po cijim kriterijima?

(mozes izbrisati pitanje i odgovor, ako ga bude, ako ti se ne uklapa u semu teme)

[debela]

aha, dobro. hvala. vidjecemo razvoj da sad ne naslucujem

[danas]

znam samo da je stari feral...



Stade se cvijece Rosom kititi,
Stade se Cibo s Tutom tutiti,
Stade se Ejup s Beljom lizati,
Stadose most iz rijeke dizati.

Gledam ja Tudjmana i Aliju,
Dojucer ustasu i baliju,
Gledam ja - jedan drugog cjeluju,
Vidim ja - abnormalno djeluju.

Niko mi nije tako zavuko,
U rat me nahusko i navuko,
Da mu ja pola Bosne zapalim,
Pa da ja dusmanina zazvalim.

Vidim ja - dobro sam ga spusio,
Vidim ja - nizasta sam rusio,
Vidim ja da sam kurcu svirio
Ratovo da bih se pomirio.

[basta sljezove boje]

Pa, valjda vlastitim

dobro, Hasija, shvatili smo

[Nancy Drew]

...

[black]

Urota umjetnosti
Jean Baudrillard


Ako se u okolnoj pornografiji izgubila iluzija želje, u suvremenoj se umjetnosti izgubila želja iluzije. Pornografija više ništa ne ostavlja želji. Nakon orgije i oslobađanja svih želja, prešli smo u transseksualno u smislu transparentnosti seksa, u znakove i slike što brišu svaku tajnu i svaku dvosmislenost. Transseksualno, u smislu u kojemu ono više nema nikakve veze s iluzijom želje, nego s hiperrealnošcu slike.Jednako tako, i umjetnost je izgubila želju iluzije u korist uzdizanja svih stvari u estetsku banalnost, i ona je dakle postala transestetskom. Za umjetnost, orgija se moderniteta sastojala u radosti dekonstrukcije objekta reprezentacije. Za to je vrijeme estetska iluzija još veoma mocna, kao što je za seks mocna iluzija želje. Energiji seksualne razlike koja se nalazi u svim oblicima želje, odgovara u umjetnosti energija disocijacije realiteta (kubizam, apstrakcija, ekspresionizam), i jedna i druga, međutim, odgovaraju volji za svladavanjem tajnosti želje i tajnosti predmeta. I to sve do nestanka tih dviju snažnih konfiguracija – scene želje i scene iluzije – u korist iste transseksualne i transestetske opscenosti – opscenosti vidljivosti i transparentnosti neumitne u svim stvarima. U realitetu nema više pornografije koja se kao takva može odrediti, zato što je pornografija virtualno posvuda i zato što je bit pornografije prešla u sve tehnike vizualnog i televizijskog.No možda mi u biti samo igramo komediju umjetnosti, isto kao što su ostala društva igrala komediju ideologije, kao što se, primjerice, talijansko društvo (ali ono nije jedino) igra komedije vlasti ili kao što mi igramo komediju pornografije u opscenim reklamama sa slikama ženskog tijela. Taj neprestani striptiz, te fantazme otvorenog seksa, ta seksualna ucjena – da je sve to istinito – bila bi doista nepodnošljiva. No, srecom, odvec je sve to lijepo da bi bilo istinito. Transparentnost je odvec površna da bi bila istinita. Što se tice umjetnosti, ona je odvec površna da bi bila nešto ništavno. Mora da ispod toga postoji neka tajna. To je kao anamorfoza: mora postojati kut pod kojim citavo to beskorisno inzistiranje na seksu i znacima dobiva svoj smisao, ali za sada nam ne ostaje ništa drugo doli živjeti ga u ironicnoj ravnodušnosti. Tko zna, možda u toj irealnosti pornografije i u toj beznacajnosti umjetnosti postoji neka zagonetka u negativu, neka filigranska tajna ili možda ironicni oblik našega usuda? Ukoliko sve postane odviše evidentnim da bi bilo istinitim, možda ce ostati neka šansa za iluziju? Što se krije iza ovoga lažnog, transparentnog svijeta? Neka druga vrsta inteligencije ili konacna lobotomija? Umjetnost (moderna) mogla je biti dio uklete strane time što je bila jedna vrsta dramaticne alternative realnosti, time što je prevodila upad irealnog u realno. No što još umjetnost može znaciti u unaprijed hiperrealistickom svijetu, cool , transparentnom i reklamnom? Što uopce može znaciti porno u svijetu koji je vec unaprijed pornografiran? Što, osim da nam da posljednji paradoksalni tren oka – onaj tren oka realnosti koja se smije samoj sebi u obliku najveceg egzibicionizma, umjetnosti koja se smije sama sebi i svom vlastitom nestanku u obliku najvece artificijelnosti – ironije. U svakom slucaju, diktatura slike jest jedna ironicna diktatura. No sama ta ironija ne cini više dio uklete strane, nego dio prijestupa iniciranog, tog skrivenog i sramnog saucesništva koje spaja umjetnika koji se poigrava svojom aurom podrugljivosti sa zbunjenim i nepovjerljivim masama. Ironija također cini dio urote umjetnosti.

Umjetnost koja se igrala svojim vlastitim nestajanjem i nestajanjem svojega predmeta još je uvijek bila veliko djelo. No što je s umjetnošcu koja se igra svojim beskrajnim recikliranjem potkradajuci pritom realnost? Najveci dio suvremene umjetnosti bavi se upravo time: prisvajanjem banalnosti, otpadaka i mediokritetstva kao vrijednosti i kao ideologije. U tim bezbrojnim instalacijama i performansama nema nicega drugoga do igre kompromisa sa stanjem stvari, istovremenim sa svim prošlim formama povijesti umjetnosti. Jedno priznanje neoriginalnosti, banalnosti i ništavnosti (nullité) podignuto na razinu vrijednosti, to jest perverznog estetskog uživanja. Naravski, citavo to mediokritetstvo pretendira na sublimaciju prelazeci na drugu, ironijsku razinu umjetnosti. Ali sve je to isto toliko ništavno i beznacajno na drugoj kao i na prvoj razini. Prelaženje na estetsku razinu ništa ne spašava, vec naprotiv: to je mediokritetstvo s dvostrukom moci. Ono pretendira biti ništavno: “Ja sam ništavan! Ja sam ništavan!” – to je doista ništavno.

Sva dvolicnost suvremene umjetnosti jest u ovomu: revindikacija za ništavnošcu, beznacajnošcu i besmislenošcu, smjeranje na ništavnost onda kada si vec ništavnost. Smjeranje na besmisao kada si vec beznacajan. Smjeranje na površnost na površan nacin. Tako je ništavnost tajna kakvoca kojoj nitko nece moci povratiti znacajnost. Beznacajnost – prava, pobjednicki izazov smislu, razrješenje od smisla i umjetnost nestajanja smisla, iznimna je kakvoca nekoliko rijetkih djela koja cak i ne pretendiraju to biti. Postoji inicijacijska forma ništavnosti, kao i inicijacijska forma nicega ili inicijacijska forma Zla. Potom, postoji takozvani prijestup iniciranog, postoje falsifikatori ništavnosti, i snobizam ništavnosti, snobizam svih onih koji prostituiraju Zlo kao korisne ciljeve. Ne treba pustiti u miru falsifikatore. Kad Ništa (Rien) probija iz znakova, kad se Ništavilo (Neant) izdiže iz svojega srca sistema znakova, to je temeljni događaj umjetnosti. To je u pravom smislu poetska operacija kojom se Ništa izdiže u moc znaka – to nije banalnost ili ravnodušje realiteta, nego radikalna iluzija. Tako je Warhol doista ništavan, u tom smislu što opetovano uvodi ništavilo u srce slike. Od te ništavnosti i beznacajnosti pravi događaj koji transformira u fatalnu strategiju slike.

Drugi imaju samo komercijalnu strategiju ništavnosti kojoj daju reklamni oblik, “sentimentalni oblik robe”, kako je govorio Baudelaire. Ono se krije iza svoje vlastite ništavnosti, iza nestanka diskursa o umjetnosti koji velikodušno upotrebljavaju za promoviranje te ništavnosti kao vrijednosti (ukljucujuci tu, ocito, i tržište umjetnosti). U određenom smislu, to je gore od nicega, jer ne znaci ništa, a ipak postoji, dajuci sebi sve dobre razloge za opstanak. Ta paranoja koja je saucesnik umjetnosti cini da više nema moguceg kritickog suda, vec samo sporazumne podjele ništavnosti, nužno među clanovima istoga klana. U tome se sastoji urota umjetnosti i njezine prvobitne scene, koja otvaranjima izložaba, izlaganjima, restauracijama, kolekcijama, donacijama i špekulacijama osigurava svoj kontinuitet, i koja se ne može razmrsiti u bilo kojem znanom univerzumu, jer se iza mistificiranja slika sklonila pod zaštitu misli.

Druga strana dvolicnosti suvremene umjetnosti jest a contrario blefiranjem ništavila prisiliti ljude da tomu pridaju važnost i povjerenje, pod izgovorom da je sve to nemoguce, da je sve to toliko ništavno i da se tu mora nešto kriti. Suvremena umjetnost igra na tu neizvjesnost, nemogucnost utemeljenog suda o estetskoj vrijednosti i špekulira krivnjom onih koji ništa ne shvacaju ili pak onih koji nisu shvatili da se tu i nema ništa shvatiti. Isto je i s prijestupom iniciranog. No u osnovi jednako tako možemo misliti da su ljudi što poštuju umjetnost sve shvatili, jer svjedoce, samom svojom zapanjenošcu (stupéfaction), o jednoj intuitivnoj inteligenciji: svjedoce da su oni zapravo žrtve zlouporabe vlasti, da im se kriju pravila igre i da im se nešto namješta iza leđa. Drugim rijecima, umjetnost je ušla u opci proces prijestupa iniciranog, i to ne samo s tocke motrišta financiranja umjetnickog tržišta vec i u samomu upravljanju estetskim vrijednostima. Nije umjetnost jedina: i politika, i ekonomija, i informacija uživaju isto saucesništvo i istu ironicnu rezignaciju od “potrošaca”.

“Naše divljenje za slikarstvo posljedak je duga procesa prilagođavanja, koji se stoljecima odvijao, i to iz razloga koji vrlo cesto nemaju nikakve veze ni s umjetnošcu, ni s duhom. Slika je stvorila svojega gledatelja. U osnovi, to je konvencionalan odnos” (Gombrovic Dubuffetu). Jedino se postavlja pitanje: kako jedan stroj može nastaviti funkcionirati u kritickom gubitku iluzija i u komercijalnoj freneticnosti? I, ako može funkcionirati, koliko ce dugo trajati taj iluzionizam, taj okultizam? Sto godina, dvjesto godina? Hoce li umjetnost imati pravo na jedan drugi, beskrajni opstanak, nalik na opstanak tajnih služba, o kojima se odavna zna da nemaju tajne koje bi krali ili razmjenjivali, ali koje, hraneci mitološke kronike, i unatoc tomu nesmetano prosperiraju, usred praznovjerja o svojoj koristi.

Jean Baudrillard, L'complot de l'art (éd. Sens et Tonka, 2005).

[Nancy Drew]

...

[Vokri]

Cega je mjerilo Senad Pecanin?

[Vokri]

Zoran Bečić, bard bosanskog glumišta

Stvari su izmakle kontroli

Razgovarao: Senad Pećanin

DANI: Gospodine Bečiću, kao što znate, tema našeg razgovora je Viza za budućnost i Vaše učešće u njoj. Dakle, optužujem Vas da ste prihvatanjem uloge u takvoj seriji pokazali veliku neodgovornost prije svega prema vlastitom glumačkom i intelektualnom renomeu, a time i prema Vašim poštovaocima?

BEČIĆ: Pitanje je vrlo provokativno, ali se ne nalazim u podređenom položaju. Prije bi se reklo, mada je ovaj razgovor zakazan tačno u podne, da ćemo, zahvaljujući vašoj erudiciji, biti barem u ravnopravnom položaju. Ja bih odgovorio jednom malom zloćom: vrlo mi lijepo komplimentirate da sam ugledni umjetnik; ja o glumi ne mislim kao o velikoj umjetnosti, jer se više divim muzičarima, slikarima, vajarima... Međutim, petnaestak godina Dani nisu donijeli ni jednu riječ o nekim mojim ulogama koje su obilato bile nagrađivane. Ovog puta ste se našli zainteresovanim da osudite moje učešće u Vizi. Malo je nepravedno, a ja moram priznati da, ne zbog popularnosti koju ta serija uživa, ne smatram da sam oskrnavio glumački poziv i svoje umjetničko djelanje. Mislim da Viza ima jednu notu pučke zabave i ona je pravljena sa ciljem da zadovolji običnog gledaoca. Šta podrazumijevam pod "običnim gledaocem"? Uvjeren sam da ljudi koji dolaze na MESS, jednu vrhunsku smotru pozorišnog stvaralaštva, ne gledaju Vizu. Ali, vaš list nije pokazao nikakvo interesovanje za bar dvije-tri poslijeratne predstave koje sam igrao na sceni Kamernog teatra ili SARTR-a. Moram s ponosom istaknuti da su jedna Mira Stupica i jedna Marija Crnobori prodrle u garderobu da bi mi čestitale kada smo u Beogradu gostovali sa Ionescovim Stolicama. Titogradska štampa je našem gostovanju dala prostor koji je nezamisliv za sarajevske prilike. A Dani nisu donijeli ni jedan redak o Stolicama. Isto važi i za predstave u kojima igram sa koleginicama Nadom Đurevskom i Kaćom Dorić. Imam utisak da vi polazite sa tezom da Vizu treba osuditi. Ja ne mislim tako, mislim da taj zenički pisac piše tako - obično, jednostavno i ovom narodu blisko. A popularnost junaka te serije se osjeća ovog puta ne, kako smo mi glumci iz teatra navikli, u teatru, nego na ulici. Ta serija je zaživjela i ljudi je vole. Mislim da serija i nije duhovita koliko je istinita o Bosni kakva je momentalno. Priča možda nije lijepa, nije ugodna, ali je dosta tačna.

Ja se slazem da je vIZA oDRON, AL vIZA JE PECANIn...i PeCaninu Slicni...

[Vokri]

Bojkotiram, i njih, i njega, ali tebe necu...

[saki]

Zanimljiv clanak o Jevrejima i Jugoslovenima. Bas me zanima kakve ce biti reakcije.

[Vokri]

Kusturica u Kanu.

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117933 ... =kusturica

Posted: Sat., May 26, 2007, 9:11am PT

Continuing to play his brand of grotesquely exaggerated slapstick beyond all reason, Emir Kusturica actually manages to outdo the excesses of his previous pic, "Life is a Miracle," with his new slice of buffoonery about a peasant lad who finds true love, "Promise Me This." The only conceivable reason that this mess is included in the Palme d'Or lineup is as a nod during Cannes' 60th birthday to the two-time Palme winner, but it only serves to underline how far the helmer of "When Father Was Away on Business" has sunk.

[Nancy Drew]

...

[rashomon]

Urota umjetnosti
Jean Baudrillard

Hvala, ako imaš još nešto ovako na našem jeziku, nek ti ne bude mrsko...

[basta sljezove boje]

Dzanko zakon

[basta sljezove boje]

ne kontam koji su to Ibrini grijesi da ga se svrstava u "staru skolu Titovih kadrova", "sovjetski cirkus" ... mozda nekom od provincijskih lobbyja u nasem gradu smeta sto je Ibro pravi, fetivi Sarajlija

[basta sljezove boje]

Dobro je prošao, sve dok mu ne seru ispred vrata k'o tebi

ozbiljno ne kontam koji problem neko u Sarajevu moze imati sa radisnim i postenim Ibrom, ni kako to da on koji je uvijek bio u Sarajevu nikad nije dobio sestoaprilsku nagradu, a dobila ju je, recimo, Hasija Boric koja je pobjegla u Austriju cim je pukla prva puska u gradu

[Sogan]

Cirkus Sarajevo

Ibromensch: direktor, riba, ptica

Piše: Irham Čečo

Ima li u današnjoj Bosni i Hercegovini političara dovoljno moćnog da naruči policijsku pratnju u centru Sarajeva, sabere diplomatski kor najmoćnijih zemalja svijeta i gomile građana u ekstazi, ronilačku ekipu i stotine gostiju iz cijelog svijeta, sve to na najljućem mrazu u posljednjih dvadesetak godina? Naravno! Veteran stare škole Titovih kadrova, otporan na vremenske nepogode svih vrsta i prilagodljiv svakoj političkoj podlozi, okretan kao gumeni ljudi iz znamenitih sovjetskih cirkusa, Ibro Spahić je primjer čovjeka s talentom da od ničega napravi ništa i još to naplati.

Poput goraždanskog boema i estradnog umjetnika Aziza Ziska Gluščevića, Spahić je majstor "škole života" koja svojim svršenicima omogućava da "odlično žive, i ništa ne rade". Funkcije koje obavlja, vjerovatno ni sam ne zna u svakom trenutku pobrojati. Ali zato vrlo dobro zna izvući i okrenuti naopako svote konvertibilnog novca, kojima iz godine u godinu pokreće leteći kulturni cirkus poznat kao Sarajevska zima. Ove godine moto festivala je konfucijanski dubokouman: Bliski, daleki susjedi.

Na otvaranju, zbog kojega je čitav kvart blokirala policija kao da Clinton dolazi u Tešanj zaoprave, Ibro je mudro prozborio: "Ima jedna riječ koja spaja Sarajevo sa cijelim svijetom, a to je čista sarajevska voda: ko je se jednom napije, vraća se ponovo u ovaj grad. Ne prosipajte vodu, čuvajte je kao najveće blago svog života." Navodno čistu vodu Spahić je izronio sa dna Miljacke, jednog od tri najpoganija vodotoka u Evropi (drugi je, kažu, u Prištini, a treći u Černobilu), u punoj ronilačkoj opremi. Šta će biti sljedeće, možemo nagađati: skok s padobranom sa Bosmala, i tegla čistog sarajevskog zraka je realna opcija. Jer valja napraviti maglu koju ćeš prodati. A voda tu bez zraka ne ide.

BHDANI, broj 400, 11. FEBRUAR/VELJAČA 2005.

Buraz po lobbyizmu provincijalizma, ako i dalje citas ove diskusije, svaka cast za ovaj osvrt

[danas]

evo VODJE stanley fish



From the issue dated November 10, 2006
The Trouble With Tolerance

By STANLEY FISH

Some years ago, just after Salman Rushdie was made the object of a fatwa, I found myself at an academic conference listening to a panel address the issues raised by his situation. A member of the audience rose and, without a trace of irony, gave voice to this question/accusation: "What's the matter with those Iranians? Haven't they ever heard of the First Amendment?" The empirical answer to the question was maybe yes, maybe no. Some individual Iranians and many members of the Iranian legal community would have heard of (and studied) the First Amendment, but even those who had read it could not have been counted on to affirm the assumptions informing it — the assumption that expression as an abstract category is to be valued over the content of what is expressed; the assumption that no content is to be either stigmatized or embraced in advance of its having been subjected to the test of rational klix; the assumption that contents (ideas, ideologies, opinions, hypotheses) are equal before the law, and none is to be prohibited unless it is put into (dangerous) action; the assumption that religious pronouncements, even those that issue from revered authorities, are in no way privileged, exempt from criticism, or entitled to a place in the policy deliberations of the state; the assumption that the holding of views, however unpopular or even sacrilegious, cannot be a reason for the denial of rights, the withholding of privileges, or the distribution of rewards.

Each and every one of those assumptions was seen by the person who asked the question to have been flouted by the government of Iran, and that government, accordingly, was regarded as backward, retrograde, myopic, and hopeless. (How little has changed.) Ignored was the possibility that what appeared to be an entirely negative and unprincipled act might be the product of an alternative set of principles — preferring community to individual rights, positive morality to respect for all points of view, truth to tolerance, the sanctity of God to the sanctity of choice.

Earlier this year, pretty much the same scenario was played out around the publication in Denmark of cartoons poking fun at the person and beliefs of the prophet Muhammad. Many Western commentators were simply unable to see why mere words or pictorial representations could be received as grievously wounding — after all, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but..." — especially given that those who reacted most vehemently (and, on occasion, violently) were not directly the target of the cartoons (they were not being libeled, so what's the big deal?). The idea that you could be so identified with a religious creed that criticisms of it would lead you to actions that might be appropriate if you were being physically assaulted (there is, after all, the speech-action distinction, isn't there?) is simply inconceivable to those who have been taught (by everyone from Locke and Kant to John Rawls) that tolerance of views you oppose is the highest morality.

This has been going on for a long time, at least since Locke declared (in A Letter Concerning Toleration, 1689) that "every Church is orthodox to itself" and concluded that, in the absence of an independent mechanism for determining which among competing orthodoxies is the true one, toleration is the only rational policy. Locke then asked, What about the churches and orthodoxies that value tolerance less than they do the truth and political supremacy of the faiths they espouse? Do we tolerate them? The answer he gave is still being given today by the guardians of Enlightenment liberalism: "No opinions contrary to human society, or to those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society, are to be tolerated."

But the question of which opinions are "contrary to human society" does not answer itself, for if it did, if there were universal agreement on what views were simply beyond the pale, tolerance would be unnecessary. The category of interdicted opinions must be established by an act of authority and power, an act Locke performed later in the tract when he made his own list. He thus made it clear that in the liberal tradition he initiated, tolerance, rather than being a wholly benevolent and inclusive practice, is an engine of exclusion and a technology of regulation.

The triumph of toleration as the central liberal value, and the attendant inability of liberals to see the dark side of their favorite virtue, is the subject of Wendy Brown's insightful and illuminating new book, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (Princeton University Press). Brown sets out to understand "how tolerance has come to be such an important justice discourse in our time." The "conventional story," she reports, goes this way: "[T]he combined effects of globalization, the aftermath of the cold war, and the aftermath of colonialism have led to the world's erupting in a hundred scenes of local and internecine conflict, roughly rooted in identity clashes, and tolerance is an appropriate balm for soothing those conflicts." In a world where difference seems intractable and irreconcilable, parties are always poised for conflict (Brown notes the Hobbesian antecedents of this picture), tolerance appears to be a "natural and benign remedy"; natural because, given what men and women are (irremediably) like, it seems the only way to go, and benign because while it reins in differences, it accords those difference a space in the private sector. You know the commonplace aphorisms and slogans: Live and let live, different strokes for different folks, can't we all just get along?

Sounds good, but Brown isn't having any. Her critique of tolerance challenges the common assumption that the differences the sharp edges of which tolerance is supposed to blunt "took their shape prior to the discourse called on to broker them." No, she insists, those differences are produced by a regime of tolerance that at the same time produces a status quo politics built on the assumption that difference cannot be negotiated but can only be managed. When difference is naturalized, she explains, it becomes the mark not of an ideological or political divide (in relation to which one might have an argument), but of a cultural divide (in relation to which each party says of the other, "See, that's just the way they are"). If people do the things they do not because of what they believe, but because they are Jews, Muslims, blacks, or gays, it is no use asking them to see the error of their ways, because it is through those same ways — naturally theirs — that they see at all. When President Bush reminds us of '"the nature of our enemy,"' he is, in effect, saying there's no dealing with these people; they are immune to rational appeals; the only language they understand is the language of force.

"This reduction of political motivations and causes to essentialized culture," Brown says, "is mobilized to explain everything from suicide bombers to Osama bin Laden's world designs, mass death in Rwanda and Sudan, and the failure of democracy to take hold in the immediate aftermath of Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

And, she adds, it does more than that: It legitimizes, and even demands, the exercise of intolerance, when the objects of intolerance are persons who, because of their overattachment to culture, are deemed incapable of being tolerant. Live and let live won't work, we are often told, if the other guy is determined to kill you because he believes that his religion or his ethnic history commands him to. Liberal citizens, Brown explains, will be tolerant of any group so long as its members subordinate their cultural commitments to the universal dictates of reason, as defined by liberalism. But once a group has rejected tolerance as a guiding principle and opted instead for the cultural imperatives of the church or the tribe, it becomes a candidate for intolerance that will be performed in the name of tolerance; and at that moment any action against it — however violent — is justified. Tolerance, then, is a virtue that liberal citizens or those who are willing to act as liberal citizens are capable of exercising; and those who refuse to exercise it cannot, by this logic, be its beneficiary.

Nor, according to Brown, are the regulating and stigmatizing effects of tolerance limited to a nation's relations with foreign states and actors; the liberal state does the same thing to its own citizens, at least to those citizens who, by being identified as the appropriate beneficiaries of tolerance, are at the same time marked as deviant and potentially dangerous. If it is "a basic premise of liberal secularism that neither culture nor religion is permitted to govern publicly," Brown says, then those Americans who refuse to leave their sectarian beliefs and convictions of core identity at home when they venture into the public sphere — fundamentalist Christians, Orthodox Jews, strongly observant Muslims, gays and lesbians, etc. — must be made to understand that only by relaxing the hold of those personal commitments and promising to act as liberal citizens (rather than as Southern Baptists, Hasidic Jews, or citizens of the Queer Nation) in public spaces will they be welcomed into the fold. Should they resist the requirement to live a double life — apostles of individualism, progress, profit, and secularism in the courthouse and the ballot box, devout upholders of religious and cultural imperatives at home — they will either be tolerated and marked as "other" (the Amish) or made the objects of surveillance and profiling (anyone wearing a turban or a burkha) or detained and perhaps deported.

The state preaches tolerance, but because it has identified tolerance with those who have a certain set of (liberal, secular) beliefs, those who do not display such beliefs and the practices they subtend will be regarded with suspicion and become the "natural" subjects of intolerant actions: From roundups, detention, and deportation of illegal aliens to racial profiling in airport security searches, the state "engages in extralegal and prosecutorial actions toward the very group it calls upon the citizenry to be tolerant toward," Brown says. Moreover, as she sees it, that is not a contradiction of the tolerance the state proclaims, but an inevitable result of a tolerance that cannot itself tolerate persons or practices that do not respect the boundaries and distinctions — between secular/religious, public/private, mind/body — it presupposes.

To this point, I have been summarizing Brown's analysis of tolerance (not all of it; there are more turns to her argument than can be dealt with in a brief review) and her denial to that resonant word of the good press that it typically receives in the Western world. As my readers will no doubt have surmised, I find the analysis trenchant and the critique persuasive.

What follows from Brown's deconstruction (a term she uses) of tolerance? The question has an obvious answer if it is put to Herbert Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" (1965), an essay Brown cites as one of her two main inspirations (the other is Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality). Marcuse anticipates Brown when he declares that "the conditions of tolerance are 'loaded': They are determined and defined by the institutionalized inequality (which is certainly compatible with constitutional equality), i.e., by the class structure of society." Marcuse emphasizes the difference between a legal or procedural equality that treats persons alike ("constitutional equality") and the inequalities that result from long-in-place structures of privilege, discrimination, and inherited wealth. Those inequalities, he says, are left in place by a legal system that turns a blind eye to them. Brown sharpens and extends Marcuse's point by observing that when difference is essentialized in the liberal state and made unavailable to negotiation, it is also depoliticized, relegated to the private sphere, where it is at once above and below judicial klix. Hence its effects multiply in a political "underworld" where the damage done escapes official notice although millions experience it.

But Brown and Marcuse part ways when it comes time to draw a conclusion. Marcuse puts his up front at the beginning of his essay: "The conclusion reached is that the realization of the objective of tolerance would call for intolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed." That is to say, and Marcuse says it, anything the right does is bad and should not be tolerated; anything the left does is good and should be welcomed. Marcuse's reasoning follows from his wedding of tolerance and truth. ("The telos of tolerance is truth.") The argument has the form of a syllogism. Only the truth should be tolerated. Truth resides on the left. Therefore tolerance cannot be extended to the right. In a world where the forces of good and bad vie for supremacy, "suppression of the regressive ones is a prerequisite for the strengthening of the progressive ones."

Again Brown agrees with Marcuse that liberal tolerance, emphasizing as it does formal equality and the inclusion of all points of view, is unresponsive to the question of truth as it is posed by liberalism's opponents. She thinks it a mistake, as does Marcuse, to "retreat from substantive visions of justice," which makes room for fundamentalist social movements to rush in to fill the void created by liberal proceduralism. But Brown cannot embrace the logic of Marcuse's syllogism because she does not want to smite her enemy hip and thigh. She wants a more general, more theoretical yield. She wants a vision that is at once substantive and alert to the truth of things and inclusive and alert to the injustices done to marginalized peoples. It would hardly be an advance to replace the "othering" of minorities and foreigners with the "othering" of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians.

But unless she follows her critique of liberal tolerance and her embrace of substance with some statement of who and what should and should not be tolerated, Brown will be left with noble-sounding phrases like "the fashioning of a democratic culture," phrases that are vague to the point of being empty. Once she takes the notion of truth seriously — which means taking the notion of falsity seriously — Brown is in a difficult position. If she localizes truth — finds it here but not there, alive and well in Palestine but abandoned and dead in Israel and Washington — she abandons a capacious theoretical discourse for a narrowly partisan one. Either she is for truth in general and nothing particular follows, or she is arguing that the truth lies here not there. Either she's making a theoretical argument about tolerance, in which case her opponents are those who would describe tolerance differently, or she is making a policy argument, in which case her opponents are those who would advocate different policies.

What she wants is to be doing both; she wants to derive a specific policy from a general, theoretical account. But you can't get from a general account of a matter to a particular program of action because the general account, if it is really general and not already partisan, is descriptive not normative. It tells you what is, not what to do. A general account can be more or less accurate — when reading it, you can say to yourself, for example, "This is the way liberal tolerance works" — but it cannot generate a moral on the order of, "Now do this and not that." Brown's account of liberal tolerance tells us how it works not only in this instance, but whenever and wherever it is deployed; but it doesn't tell us whether liberal tolerance is a good thing, or whether there is something better.

Assume, for example, that you are persuaded (as I am for the most part) by Brown's analysis of tolerance and now believe that, far from being a simple, benign virtue, tolerance is the technology or governmentality (a word Brown borrows from Foucault) of an ideology that privileges some values — individual will, autonomy, choice, procedural (not substantive) justice, rationality, freedom of expression, freedom of markets — and stigmatizes or marginalizes others — group loyalty, religious obedience, the law of God, tribal traditions, the national ethos, blood, culture. It is perfectly possible that you could say, "Yes, now I see, thanks to Brown, exactly what substantive values inform liberalism despite its denial (at least in some versions) that it harbors any; but those values are fine by me, and I will continue to affirm them even if it means being intolerant toward those who reject them." Or, let's say you have read Brown's scintillating chapter on the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance and find yourself agreeing with her conclusion: The museum celebrates respect for different beliefs, but at the same time its exhibits identify Israel as the only Middle East actor that embodies that respect, and thereby authorize and justify Israel's disrespect (and worse) toward those it deems insufficiently respectful. You could think that Brown is right on target and still believe that the museum's message is the right one and that Israel should not change its policies until the Arabs mend their ways and get a better set of ideas. Or you could accept my argument, made at the beginning, that Western commentators are incapable of understanding (except as misguided, crazy, or evil) the motivations of those who passionately protested the Danish cartoons, and you could nevertheless conclude that their incapacity is all to their credit. My point is that the demonstration that an ideology — liberalism, organicism, whatever — will have effects favorable to some interests and injurious to, or dismissive of, others will not be a reason to repudiate it if the favored interests are yours.

But, someone might object, what about values that are universal rather than local or parochial? Shouldn't we be trying to identify them and work for their realization in the political structures of the world? One of Brown's criticisms of liberalism is that it pretends to just such a universality even though its recourse to toleration is an implicit acknowledgment of the many who dissent from it: Cultural "conflict itself exposes the nonuniversal character of liberal legalism." (Not as powerful a point as she thinks: The claim that liberal values are universal is not undercut by the millions, perhaps billions, who reject them. You can say that it's just a matter of time, or that they are blinded by a particularistic ideology, or a hundred other things. Whether or not a value is universal is a matter not of votes, but of arguments.) But it's not always clear whether Brown is rejecting universalism in favor of a particular policy — as seems to be the case when she suggests that we replace tolerance's "therapeutic" project (let's be nice even to those who have funny ideas and wear funny clothes) with a justice project — or whether she is rejecting liberalism's false universalism for a truer one — as seems to be the case when she talks of "developing deep knowledge of others in their 'difference.'"

On balance, I think it is the latter; she wants a better universalism than liberalism's, but her articulations of it are without content, as they will necessarily be if she thinks to derive it from her critique of liberalism and liberal tolerance. That critique, to repeat the point made earlier, tells you what liberal tolerance is made of; it doesn't tell you whether it is bad or good, and it certainly doesn't tell you what should be put in its place. A phrase like "deep knowledge of others" is a teaser: Deeper than what? Deep, how? How deep do we go? If the knowledge is deeper than the surface differences — of religion, ideology, culture, tradition — that now divide us, then what it brings us to is the "thin" personhood of liberalism and a politics in which substantive beliefs are subordinated to some form of Kantian proceduralism, precisely what Brown has been arguing against. And if the knowledge is deeper than the caricatures that fill our political rhetoric, and what we're supposed to do is really understand, say, the Islamic temperament from the inside, then we would either have to become Muslim (in which case we would inherit the exclusionary as well as the generous aspects of that faith), or we would have to view Islam from a perspective above all faiths, and that would again bring us to classical liberalism and its claim (denied by Brown) to occupy a position that is not one.

The same difficulties attend Brown's call for a "project of connections across differences." On what bridge? Built by whom? It's a little late to be saying (with E.M. Forster), "Only connect." Or consider this question, which Brown seems to believe is a call to action: "[W]hat if autonomy were recognized as relative, ambiguous, ambivalent, partial and also advanced by means other than law?" OK, I stipulate all those (theoretical) points, but now what? Do they direct us to do anything? Is the relativity or ambiguity of autonomy the answer to any question posed by circumstances in the world? If there is a particular problem to resolve or decision to make, is saying, "Autonomy is relative and ambiguous" going to help or point you in a particular direction? I think not. And what are we to make of Brown's hope that "liberal regimes" might become open "to reflection on the false conceits of their cultural and religious secularism, and to the possibility to being transformed by their encounter with what liberalism has conventionally taken to be its constituitive outside and its hostile Other"? If a liberal regime were to decide first that the procedural virtues it promotes — fairness, tolerance, formal equality — were in fact substantive, and second (this would be crucial) that the substance is one it wants to disavow, then it would no longer be a liberal regime. If the "conceits" (not a word Brown earns) it lives by were rejected as false, it would in that very gesture of rejection reconstitute itself as a regime informed by other conceits. In short, a softer liberalism, a liberalism alert to difference in a way that does not privatize or naturalize it, wouldn't be liberalism. It would be something, but what that something is Brown does not tell us.

Nevertheless, what she does tell us is valuable and illuminating. Her account of how liberal tolerance (and therefore liberalism) works is nuanced and bracing. The fact that her analysis does not (and in my view could not) deliver a program for improving the world (or even a set of reasons for rejecting liberal tolerance) makes it no different from any other effort (always doomed) to derive a politics from the discourses of postmodernism, anti-essentialism, and anti-foundationalism.

Brown is still trying in the final paragraph, when she declares that "we can contest the depoliticizing, regulatory, and imperial aims of contemporary deployments of tolerance with alternative political speech and practices." Yes, we can. Alternative political practices are always a possibility, but they will not be generated by the realization that the practices you oppose are regulatory and imperial. Rather, they will be generated by the realization that the regulations and the imperialism now in place take forms you dislike; and the alternative practices you urge will bring new regulations that are similarly imperial; the difference is that they will be yours.

Here and elsewhere in the book, Brown makes what I have called the "awareness" mistake (otherwise known as the mistake of theory, or the mistake that is theory), the mistake of thinking that awareness is a general condition of consciousness that, once achieved, enables you to see past and through what members of the Frankfurt School called the "prevailing realm of purposes." But it is within the prevailing world of purposes — the present one and the one you want to substitute for it — that awareness is possible. Awareness is a local not a global cast of mind, dependent always on constraints and limitations even as it attempts to overcome them. Awareness, in short, is particular and produces particular insights that are not universally generalizable.

Wendy Brown's book makes us aware of some important things; it alerts us, for example, to the fact that by privatizing and essentializing difference, the discourse of tolerance tends to prevent us from searching for the political and social solutions to the problems difference presents both locally and globally. It is a genuine service to have made that clear, and it is enough for one book, even if the book doesn't tell us, or even give us a hint of, what those solutions are.

Stanley Fish is a university professor and professor of law at Florida International University, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 53, Issue 12, Page B8

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i12/12b00801.htm

[danas]

i jos jedan... meni posebice mio...

Why We Built the Ivory Tower

By Stanley Fish--New York Times, 05/21/04

After nearly five decades in academia, and five and a half years as a dean at a public university, I exit with a three-part piece of wisdom for those who work in higher education: do your job; don't try to do someone else's job, as you are unlikely to be qualified; and don't let anyone else do your job. In other words, don't confuse your academic obligations with the obligation to save the world; that's not your job as an academic; and don't surrender your academic obligations to the agenda of any non-academic constituency — parents, legislators, trustees or donors. In short, don't cross the boundary between academic work and partisan advocacy, whether the advocacy is yours or someone else's.

Marx famously said that our job is not to interpret the world, but to change it. In the academy, however, it is exactly the reverse: our job is not to change the world, but to interpret it. While academic labors might in some instances play a role in real-world politics — if, say, the Supreme Court cites your book on the way to a decision — it should not be the design or aim of academics to play that role.

While academics in general will agree that a university should not dance to the tune of external constituencies, they will most likely resist the injunction to police the boundary between academic work and political work. They will resist because they simply don't believe in the boundary — they believe that all activities are inherently political, and an injunction to avoid politics is meaningless and futile.

Now there is some truth to that, but it is not a truth that goes very far. And it certainly doesn't go where those who proclaim it would want it to go. It is true that no form of work — including even the work of, say, natural science — stands apart from the political, social and economic concerns that underlie the structures and practices of a society. This does not mean, however, that there is no difference between academic labors and partisan labors, or that there is no difference between, for example, analyzing the history of welfare reform — a history that would necessarily include opinions pro and con — and urging students to go out and work for welfare reform or for its reversal.

Analyzing welfare reform in an academic context is a political action in the sense that any conclusion a scholar might reach will be one another scholar might dispute. (That, after all, is what political means: subject to dispute.) But such a dispute between scholars will not be political in the everyday sense of the word, because each side will represent different academic approaches, not different partisan agendas.

My point is not that academics should refrain from being political in an absolute sense — that is impossible — but that they should engage in politics appropriate to the enterprise they signed onto. And that means arguing about (and voting on) things like curriculum, department leadership, the direction of research, the content and manner of teaching, establishing standards — everything that is relevant to the responsibilities we take on when we accept a paycheck. These responsibilities include meeting classes, keeping up in the discipline, assigning and correcting papers, opening up new areas of scholarship, and so on.

This is a long list, but there are many in academia who would add to it the larger (or so they would say) tasks of "forming character" and "fashioning citizens." A few years ago, the presidents of nearly 500 universities issued a declaration on the "Civic Responsibility of Higher Education." It called for colleges and universities to take responsibility for helping students "realize the values and skills of our democratic society."

Derek Bok, the former president of Harvard and one of the forces behind the declaration, has urged his colleagues to "consider civic responsibility as an explicit and important aim of college education." In January, some 1,300 administrators met in Washington under the auspices of the Association of American Colleges and Universities to take up this topic: "What practices provide students with the knowledge and commitments to be socially responsible citizens?" That's not a bad question, but the answers to it should not be the content of a college or university course.

This is so not because these practices are political, but because they are the political tasks that belong properly to other institutions. Universities could engage in moral and civic education only by deciding in advance which of the competing views of morality and citizenship is the right one, and then devoting academic resources and energy to the task of realizing it. But that task would deform (by replacing) the true task of academic work: the search for truth and the dissemination of it through teaching.

The idea that universities should be in the business of forming character and fashioning citizens is often supported by the claim that academic work should not be hermetically sealed or kept separate from the realm of values. But the search for truth is its own value, and fidelity to it mandates the accompanying values of responsibility in pedagogy and scholarship.

Performing academic work responsibly and at the highest level is a job big enough for any scholar and for any institution. And, as I look around, it does not seem to me that we academics do that job so well that we can now take it upon ourselves to do everyone else's job too. We should look to the practices in our own shop, narrowly conceived, before we set out to alter the entire world by forming moral character, or fashioning democratic citizens, or combating globalization, or embracing globalization, or anything else.

One would like to think that even the exaggerated sense of virtue that is so much a part of the academic mentality has its limits. If we aim low and stick to the tasks we are paid to perform, we might actually get something done.

[danas]

aj majko...

[pitt]

robi je zakletva :D

[black]

STVARNE BITKE I PRAZNE METAFORE
Susan SONTAG


Od prošlog 11. septembra, Bushova administracija govori američkom narodu da je Amerika u ratu. Ali to je posebna vrsta rata. Čini se da je on, s obzirom na prirodu neprijatelja, rat sa nepredvidivim krajem. Kakav je to zapravo rat?
Postoje mu pandani. Ratovi protiv neprijatelja – poput raka, bijede i droga – razumijevaju se kao beskonačni ratovi. Jer, uvijek će biti raka, bijede i droga. I uvijek će biti odurnih terorista, masovnih ubica poput onih koji su počinili onaj napad od prije godinu dana – kao što će biti i boraca za slobodu (poput francuskog Pokreta otpora i Afričkog nacionalnog kongresa), koje su oni što su im bili protivnici nekoć zvali teroristima da bi im potom historija promijenila etiketu.
Kad jedan predsjednik SAD-a objavi rat raku ili bijedi ili drogama, mi znamo da je taj "rat" zapravo metafora. Misli li iko da je ovaj rat – rat koji je Amerika objavila terorizmu – metafora? A jeste, i to rat sa moćnim posljedicama. Rat je obznanjen, iako ne i objavljen, pošto se činilo da je prijetnja nešto što se samo po sebi podrazumijeva.
Stvarni ratovi nisu metafore. Stvarni ratovi imaju početak i kraj. Čak i užasni, okorjeli sukob između Izraela i Palestine jednog će dana biti okončan. Ali, ovaj rat protiv terora nikad se neće okončati. To je jedan od znakova da to i nije rat već prije mandat za širu upotrebu američke moći.
Kada vlada objavi rat raku, bijedi ili drogama, to znači da ona zahtijeva mobiliziranje novih snaga kako bi se riješio problem. To znači i to da vlada sama ne može učiniti puno toga da bi problem riješila. Kada vlada objavi rat terorizmu – terorizmu koji je multinacionalna i uveliko tajnovita mreža neprijatelja – to znači da vlada sebi daje dozvolu da čini šta joj volja. Kad poželi negdje intervenirati, ona će to i uraditi. Neće tolerirati ograničavanje svoje moći.
Američka sumnjičavost prema "upetljavanju" u dešavanje u inostranstvu veoma je stara. Ali ova je administracija zauzela radikalan stav da su svi međunarodni paktovi i sporazumi potencijalno neprijateljski usmjereni prema interesima Sjedinjenih Država – pošto se stavljanjem potpisa na neki pakt, sporazum, ili bilo šta drugo (bila da se radi o pitanju zaštite okoliša, ratovanja ili tretmana zatvorenika), SAD obavezuju da poštuju konvencije koje bi jednog dana mogle biti korištene u cilju ograničavanja američke slobode da se preduzme sve za što vlada smatra da je u interesu zemlje. Smisao sporazuma doista je u tome: ograničava pravo njegovih potpisnika na potpunu slobodu djelovanja u vezi sa predmetom sporazuma. Sve do sada, nijedna država koja drži do sebe nije to navela kao razlog što odbacuje sporazum.
Definiranje nove američke vanjske politike kao akcija koje se preduzimaju u vrijeme rata moćan je način odvraćanja od opće i učinkovite debate o onome što se uistinu dešava. Ta nespremnost da se postavljaju pitanja bila je očita i neposredno nakon napada 11. septembra. Oni koji su se protivili jeziku džihada što ga je koristila američka vlada (dobro protiv zla; civilizacija protiv barbarstva) optuženi su da zatvaraju oči pred napadima, ili bar da daju legitimitet nezadovoljstvu koje stoji iza napada.
Pod sloganom "Mi smo jedinstveni", poziv na razmišljanje izjednačava se s pobunom, pobuna s manjkom patriotizma. Indignacija je odgovarala onima koji su vodili Bushovu vanjsku politiku. Averzija prema debati među vodećim ličnostima dvije političke partije i sad je vidna – kako se približava dan obilježavanja godišnjice napada – ceremonija koje se doživljava kao dio daljnje potvrde američke solidarnosti u borbi protiv neprijatelja. Poređenje između 11. septembra 2001. i 7. decembra 1941. godine stalno je prisutno.
Jer, još jednom je Amerika bila žrtva ubilačkog iznenadnog udara koji je uzeo mnoge – u ovom slučaju, civilne – živote, više od broja vojnika i mornara koji su poginuli u Pearl Harboru. Međutim, ja sumnjam da je iko smatrao da su 7. decembra 1942. potrebne velike komemorativne ceremenonije kako bi se održao moral i ujedinila nacija. To je bio stvarni rat, i godinu dana poslije - on je uveliko trajao.
Govori Abrahama Lincolna nisu tek nadahnuta proza. Bili su smjele izjave novih ciljeva nacije u vrijeme jednog stvarnog, užasnog rata. Drugi inauguralni govor imao je smjelosti da zagovara i slavi pomirenje koje će morati uslijediti nakon pobjede Sjevera u Građanskom ratu. Prioritet je bio nastojanje da se okonča ropstvo – vrhunac slavljenja slobode u Lincolnovom Gettysburškom govoru. Ali, veliki Lincolnovi govori, kad se citiraju ritualno, ili se recikliraju na komemoracijama, postaju potpuno ispražnjeni od značenja. Tad su to tek geste plemenitosti, veličine duha. Razlozi njihove veličine pritom su irelevantni.
Takvo anahrono "pozajmljivanje elokventnosti" predstavlja slavnu tradiciju američkog anti-intelektualizma; sumnje u misao, u riječi. Krijući se iza fraze da je napad od 11. septembra bio previše strašan, previše razoran, previše bolan, previše tragičan da bi se mogao iskazati riječima, da riječi nikako nisu kadre iskazati našu bol i indignaciju, naše vođe imaju savršen izgovor da se "odjenu" tuđim riječima, ovaj put riječima sada bez sadržaja. A nešto reći moglo bi biti kontroverzno. Mogli bi zapravo skliznuti u nekakvu izjavu, a izjava može naići na odbijanje. Najbolje je ništa ne reći.
Ne sporim ja da mi imamo zlokobnog, odvratnog neprijatelja koji se suprostavlja upravo najviše onome što je nama tako važno – uključujući demokratiju, pluralizam, sekularizam, jednakost spolova, muškarce bez brade, ples (svake vrste), slobodu u izboru odjeće i, ako baš hoćete - provod. I ja ni jednog časa ne sporim da američka vlada ima obavezu da zaštiti živote svojih građana. Ono što ja sporim jeste pseudoproglašenje pseudorata. Jer, akcije koje su neophodne ne smiju se zvati "ratom". Nema beskonačnih ratova; ali ima izjava o beskonačnoj moći države koja vjeruje da joj se niko ne smije suprotstaviti.
Amerika ima sva prava da lovi počinitelje ovih zločina i njihove saučesnike. Ali ta odlučnost ne znači obavezno i rat. Jedan ograničeni, usredsređen vojni angažman nije isto što i "ratno stanje" kod kuće. Ima boljih načina da se iskušaju neprijatelji Amerike - manje destruktivnih po ustavna prava i međunarodne sporazume, ali načina koji služe javnom interesu svih – no što je stalno zazivanja opasne, lobotomizirajuće ideje beskonačnog rata.

[black]