Tuesday, November 30, 2004Cultural Studies (Part II)
i've been wanting to write something about my neighborhood for a while, and i was trying to focus on the contrast between this bizarre illuminated construction site that's right across a six-foot concrete-block wall from a children's playground, on the same block. there's this huge tractor crane that kind of hangs-looms over the wall. anyway, instead i'm going to illustrate another contrast. recently two hand-made signs went up in my main lobby/central stairshaft entrance:
"Fight Back: This is Whack!
Please contact our local police precinct to report the unsafe conditions on our block. There have been a number of muggings @ GUNPOINT! at the corner of Bushwick and McKibbin. We must protect ourselves from threats of violence and make this building safe. The local precinct is
[precinct #]
[precinct phone number]"
Please contact our local police precinct to report the unsafe conditions on our block. There have been a number of muggings @ GUNPOINT! at the corner of Bushwick and McKibbin. We must protect ourselves from threats of violence and make this building safe. The local precinct is
[precinct #]
[precinct phone number]"
and
"END POLICE OPPRESSION!
Dont tolerate this kind of grandstanding for authorities. We should be teaming up with the local poor, not excoriating them for resorting to alternative industry.
Give me a break pansies. Where did you think you moved? Boardwalk? Check your rent. Housing in this neighborhood is inexpensive but believe it or not there are still people who live here who struggle to afford it. You grabbed a piece of here. So theyre going to grab a piece of yours. And they go and grab their piece.
[drawing of a gun and a peace logo]
-- Peace"
Dont tolerate this kind of grandstanding for authorities. We should be teaming up with the local poor, not excoriating them for resorting to alternative industry.
Give me a break pansies. Where did you think you moved? Boardwalk? Check your rent. Housing in this neighborhood is inexpensive but believe it or not there are still people who live here who struggle to afford it. You grabbed a piece of here. So theyre going to grab a piece of yours. And they go and grab their piece.
[drawing of a gun and a peace logo]
-- Peace"
posted by Lars @ 7:41 PM
12 comments
12 Comments:
it's not about justifying armed robbery. it's about resisting the pussy impulse to call the cops on our own apartment building.
talk to me after you've lived in the world. i'm sick of you continually advocating willful ignorance out a stubborn idea that people have no responsiblity to discover what's new and different. your art and your ideas seem to be at total odds. you complain that artists have no resource other than an ongoing spiral of self-reference but when you talk about social dynamics you seem to prefer surrounding yourself with the same mores you've grown up with and will get into a chicken-scratch debate with anyone who suggests you'd at least be able to observe more depth in the world if you'd take your head outside your box. it makes no sense. liberal education has nothing to do with it. all it takes is a step outside and a stroll down the block.
foolish luke who is assuming
where do my ideas begin and where to they end? online? who is binary? who presents an either or? either an idea agrees with yours or is so simple as to be a product of education instead of informed thought? where have i lived? white communities or black communities? native america? seattle? new york? madison? ann arbor? is my mind my own? or is authenticity a falsehood? what is art? is it yours? or mine? or nobodies? can any of these questions have answers? if they do, binary oppositions must be real arguable things? if not, i'm right. guess what? you may not be wrong. but you're definitely the one suffering from naivety.
all you have to do is imagine something other than yourself
i'm not really talking about empathy vs selfishness as much as an idea of difference. i used to feel very solipsistic -- that is, i felt it was impossible to see beyond the limits of myself, indeed had no access to anything other than my own mind. but now i feel like living in difference and that leaves me in view of everything at once. i don't think that's a liberal western education speaking into my art, i think it's a kind of divination from life and thought, in how i've discovered it and enjoyed it.
i think there are ways of looking at layers of external and internal levels without considering them hierarchies, or of creating models in which there are connections of cause or influence that flow non-linearly. the logic of organization may be the way our brains handle information instinctually or mechanically, but it doesn't mean our brains aren't capable of discerning and judging (or even if they're incapable, it doesn't mean there aren't incomprehensible) other models of organization. i don't think saying, for example, that eveything has value or everything is art is the same thing as saying that the value of everything is equal. i'm not suggesting the second flier is better or even righter. but i think it engages a common problem by looking for something other than socially prescribed solutions, like the establishmentarian police. if i go into the woods and get attacked by bears, i'm not saying i would just let the bear eat me, but i admire someone who doesn't insist on dragging a park ranger around just for safety. find a solution among the bear, yourself, the environment. it's about taking responsibility for yourself which i think is very in line with using judgement and the power of the individual. after all, what good is difference if there's no identity to negotiate difference with? in my mind, however, exploring difference is a preferred way of defining identity, rather than merely exploiting familiarity (comfort, in this case, or instructed solutions).
Are you serious Afghanistran? Tell the story.
Skimming through the discussion, I don't think you are, but supporting that second flyer is ridiculous. I like the juxtaposition of the two sides. But if you shouldn't call the police when someone robs you, why not save the poor people the trouble of robbing you and just ring their doorbell every once in a while and give them all the money you have in your pocket? Or is the fight that would ensue between the robbed and the robber be the part they're talking about? Is it okay to kill the robber if you can when they're trying to rob you? I'd say no, so call the police. Whatever.
The flier talks about "alternative industry" isn't that the drug trade? I don't know that the flyer is necessary talking about robbery. And in that sense I sort of agree. Don't call the police on a drug dealer just for dealing drugs. If they create dangerous situations and rob people, then I'd say do it. But the drug war seems to persecute and prosecute the blacks trying to sell drugs to the white kids. The white kids get a night in jail and a small fine. The black "dealer" gets years.
Anyway.
yes hierarchies can be complex -- it just depends on how you emphasize the "higher" part of the word
anyway, sorry my internet connection has been sporadic lately. sam, you obviously object to violence. and we've talked about this before but i think there needn't be an innate evil in person-to-person violence. wars are wrong, i think most of us agree, and it's because abstract political entities enforce their power with the material life and death of soldiers who have nothing or little to do with the real conflict. in other words, the translation from the general cultural/national level to the local interpersonal level of organization presents a problem in uniform expression of violence. so yeah. give peace a chance and all that. but when you break it down to one or a few person(s) exacting violence on a person (deserving or not) who is then individually responsible for his or her defense, the consequences only involve those individual, not manipulative global powers and so forth. i think in those cases it's fair to evaluate violence in the real sense, instead of bring the lesson from war and automatically finding the violent act repulsive.
so we punch our enemies and rob our neighbors: it's as human an expression as we have.
luke we've been through it, and i've been through both.
i meant to add also, the obvious extention of that, which is most important here: police are an example of the kind of abstract establishmentarian force that ought to be rebeled against. no matter your opinion on local robbery, police are never the answer. never ever ever ever ever.
This is my favorite Luke thread ever.
End Hipster Oppression!
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