The Inauthentically Exhibitionist Technological Age

Exhibitionism is a key tendency in the technological age today: the technological age involves products that don't just use technology, but actively flaunt the inner technology in use. We have those rudimentary Apple computers which had see-through plastic exteriors that made the wiring and machinery visible. At that point in history, Apple's technology was not so advanced that they would want to genuinely flaunt it, rather, the exhibition of the wiring was done to create the fantasy of complexity. A lot of the sophisticated knowledge about devices today is at the level of wiring and not the 'sub-wiring' level, this is done in order to try and curb the effects of a more intense exhibitionist logic that would not have stopped at revealing the level of the wiring alone. Our impulses to destroy fragile wiring and machines is curbed by a fascinating knowledge of the wiring level. 

The dissection of frogs in biology is not relevant to learn about the frog, but rather we dissect frogs to prepare for the manipulation of the wiring of machines; but it is more a preparation for assembly-line technology-related jobs rather than advanced “bio-tech” jobs. The rise of the technological age has brought about changes in the education system that go beyond simple changes to the subject of "computer science," but impact all other subjects of study, especially all the sciences. Indeed, in an ironic vein, computer science itself seems to fall behind in the technological age.

The real logic of exhibitionism is not content with the revealing of naked flesh, but rather, beyond that, the revealing of the internal organs and ultimately the continuous “cutting up” of the outer layers that serve as clothing to reveal another layer of clothing within. It is “clothing all the way in” when it comes to exhibitionism, there is no truer authentic reality to reveal. The initial fascination with the insides of a computer must therefore be moderated by the understanding of the logic of exhibitionism: that the technology they see is not the more important, more serious, final reality. We are, in other words, inauthentic exhibitionists when it comes to our fascination with wiring.

Perhaps there will come a time when the exhibitionist logic gets so intense that the machines are broken apart, smashed and damaged, when we move beyond the fascination with their wiring and try to go deeper and deeper within the surface. Machines will eventually be seen in this scenario as "damage-prone" as they tempt us to destroy their exterior to look inside. Perhaps this exhibitionism towards the devices will outweigh our considerations of their “use-value.” A post-technological age could then begin.

The Age Of Concern For The Artist

Although today's trend of paying record-breaking prices for art work is criticized as capitalist “commodification” and superficial trade of art, the trend could well be an indicator of the faith in art work that the art world has. But even more so, this expensive trend demonstrates an attempt to “save” or “uplift” the figure of the artist in society. Even if the artist in question is already dead, paying large sums for his/her art work provides him/her with a legacy, a success story and an “ordinariness” regarding his/her relevance in the world today; the attempt is to make the artist feel safe. Paying record sums is part of a wider age in the art world: the age of showing concern for the artist.

One way in which the age of the concern for the artist has come about is through globalization. With globalization, what were previously close relations in the art world have gotten even more intimate. The artist, at the center of the art world of dealers, collectors, viewers and students, is now exposed and revealed to these identities in great detail. The artist is found to be problematic, not because of any specific malady, but because the image of a “problematic artist” can finally be properly employed given the possibility of intimacy and care for the artist. A kind of parental impulse in the art world can be satisfied by the artist figure who serves as the object of concern/attention.

The artist's status becomes more important than the art work he/she produces. The concern for the artist has moved beyond just attention towards him/her to outright scrutiny. In this scenario, the art work completely “hides behind” the artist, the work is deliberately made obscure, and if it happens to be displayed “prematurely” before the artist's “problematic years,” its value is deliberately taken to be small, for it has to be displayed at the right moment so that its trade may prove “therapeutic” for the artist. Today the art world around the artist is too eager to help the artist. 

As the display of the art work becomes the final act for the artist, the art work no longer becomes the point of production of information and knowledge about the artist's life and health. Beyond his/her art work is just silence, with the art work being “deterritorialized” from the art world, with the art work serving as the final statement beyond the communicative and enclosing/“territorializing” function of “art world language.” The art work fosters no communication but brings about a silence, and this silence is a result of complete ignorance towards the art work, because the art world has replaced art work as the artist's therapeutic object, with the artist's safety as top concern over his/her creativity and productivity.

True rebellion in the art world today would be focused on experimenting with the timing of the display of the art work: if the work is displayed “prematurely,” before an artist's “problematic years” or even"creative years," then its value will be lower in monetary terms, but the art work will also be very relevant as an object indicating the condition of the artist's life, and so premature display would produce communication about the artist through the discussion of his/her art work. This would go against having the art work stand as an end-point beyond which there is only an unproductive and awed silence on the part of the art world.  

Globalization And The Refugee Movement From Unprotected Territories

In hopeful depictions, globalization is seen as the movement of laborers or wealth freely across the world. This picture of labor and wealth mobility is inaccurate because it is increasingly becoming evident that globalization will be defined rather as the era of the mass mobility of human beings seeking security and safety. This much is seen in the mass movement of refugees, which increasingly looks like being the symbol which defines what globalization stands for. In the new globalization model, the western world will open its borders further not to invite working-age laborers, but to ensure the security and safety of populations seeking respite from warfare or natural disasters. All movement towards the west is a ultimately "refugee movement," it entails a "becoming refugee" of the moving individual or group. 

Any future policy by safer, western societies regarding the increase in immigrants in their territory will have mostly to do with ensuring that these immigrants are provided security and safety, but not much beyond that. Ultimately, as the securing/protecting of the population becomes the major concern, the progress and development of that population takes a back seat, because for securing powers, it is important that the secured population maintain a fixed character, and not become anything more that cannot be handled. In securing, the population is fixed in its level of development and prosperity; the population remains secure but stagnant.

The paternal, protective function which is supposed to be a standard across all territories is today absent in numerous territories; security is not a given right in many nations, mainly because the western peace project no longer goes outward to “fill in” war-torn territories with broad zones of peace, but rather seeks to invite inward to its shores those singular individuals who seek to live. Today peace is a project of protecting fortunate individuals and not the whole of the group which is being persecuted. Additionally, the militarization of the west does not mean that the whole world is a safer place, even though this is how it is usually thought for comfort, but western militarization only implies the safety exclusively of the west's own borders and territories.

The fulfillment of the Foucauldian idea of “construct live,” where the goal for individuals and societies is the prolonging of life and avoidance of death, increasingly requires that populations move away from their territories and move towards other more secure territories because not all territories are secure even though they have authority in place which continues to relay messages celebrating security. “Construct live” needs to be amended for the globalization age: living a longer life comes only if one's territory is abandoned for the west; living longer is only possible with mobility towards the west, with deterritorialization from one's homeland, a deterritorialization which is long-term, perhaps even permanent, because the west does not always give the chance of a proper rehabilitation/reterritorialization. The west itself will soon seek to be known for its protective function above everything else, protecting the few against weak threats being practically easier than actively developing whole weak societies. To protect oneself is not a “natural” aim which originates in the mind of the individual, rather, the west demands that the individual seek protection and hence travel to the west, but, problematically, protection is all the west will give.     

Development Of Infrastructure In Nepal As A Preparation For A War-Making Territory

War is a result of the process of “development,” where development means the “macro-projects” implemented by big international developers to build roads, food-making mechanisms and other basic infrastructure in a certain territory. War is made easy on a day-to-day basis through the use of infrastructure: war-machines are being driven in the modern, well-paved roads, and war soldiers are being provided the most nutritious food. Without a proper network of roads, such wars would not be possible, and without hospitals to treat the war casualties, these wars would not have a steady supply of fighters. Proper roads etc facilitate warfare, even more than providing for the populace a kind of higher quality of life and prosperity. Higher quality of life and prosperity are simply promises made by the macro-style development organizations. These developmental organizations' stated goals of prosperity and higher quality of life seem only to apply for western countries, in the rest of the world these goals have only enabled easy transition to a war-making entity.

Many problematic territories in the world have consistently disproved the link between development and peace. An important reason for the link between development and war may be the “foreign-ness” of development. War is waged in problematic territories with disregard and disrespect for foreign, western infrastructure, the roads are used ostentatiously for war-making purposes, even as this goes counter to the philosophy of the organizations that built these roads. This disregard and disrespect for infrastructure is possible because the infrastructure is not felt to be “community owned” but rather is felt to be “foreign made.” War-making entities seek the continuation of the roads and hospitals so that the war effort can be kept alive, hence, today's war-making entities would rather have the big developers provide humanitarian relief and develop infrastructure so that the war may be continued with ease after the developers leave. Increasingly, war will be stopped just for big development projects, this kind of temporary stop will be the definition of peace, and conflicts are likely to continue for decades if the parties use this model of “allowing the big development organizations into the war-zone periodically.”

Hence we find development organizations are obliged to speak of war out of guilt, because (unconsciously) they are making war possible with their infrastructure development projects. There is a positive correlation between a warring population's war effort and the level of development of infrastructure in that territory. But in today's developing world, the first thing that should provide the people with a common identity is their territory's infrastructure rather than their cultural similarities and natural resources. Hence, it is up to the people to collectively come to own the infrastructure that has made their lives easy. Ultimately, this may mean that foreign-made infrastructure itself becomes the object of contention: the big roads and hospitals are rejected, the food-making systems are ignored for alternatives designed by the community, the power-plants are replaced or reclaimed etc. Collectively making infrastructure would bring about unity between the populations of different territories or identities. The activities generating strong community ownership should be the number one priority within a wider infrastructure development project, rather than community ownership only being encouraged at the end of the project as some kind of added bonus.

Funerals In The “Cyber-Civil-War” Age

In Foucault, the state controls information so that it can ultimately control the behavior of the physical human bodies of the population. This model does not suffice, because today the superstate instead controls physical human bodies as information carriers, to control bodies in their ability to carry and hold information, not for how they behave. The state does not produce information seeking to control the population, but rather it controls the production of information by human beings themselves; the state becoming only a controlling entity, creating life or taking life but not in charge of the production of information, because state-like production of information is now in private hands.  

In the near future under this superstate, every physical body will already be in the cross-hairs of the superstate because these bodies will be the carriers of important information, and every body will always already be like a deviant if the information systems the superstate stores within the body become virus-laden or faulty. Without the innocent body's own fault, something such as a chip or a bar-code within it may deviate and cause the necessity to unjustly destroy or intrude on the body that simply carries the deviance/faulty device. Innocent lives will frequently be lost at the hands of the superstate only concerned with the management and maintenance of its devices. Another ethical question would emerge: does the superstate let the innocent life to live and have his/her virus-laden chips infect the whole of cyberspace, or should an innocent life be killed?

The superstate may deem necessary to retrieve and erase the deviant devices within the human body of its subject, giving rise to a “cyber-civil-war” in the future between the authoritative superstate and angry but innocent “deviant” carriers of information systems who feel intruded. In this war, the biological death of the citizen would not be the end objective of the superstate, because the body is not to be killed just in its movement and behavior, but must also be destroyed for the information that it carries within it. For the superstate, the body cannot simply be shot and let to lie in the street. Proper destruction of the body and not just its death would be the aim of the superstate, making the superstate effectively an entity that controls post-death funeral processes, that approves and administers some kinds of funeral processes over other kinds, depending on which funeral process enables proper destruction of the information systems within the body. The superstate will control the complete cremation of bodies in order that the information systems in those bodies are completely destroyed. Mass concentration camps will ensue where citizens are to go to die and be cremated in a way suited to the superstate. Killing the human body will become an activity performed on the way towards the deactivation of the foreign devices within that body; the worth and value of the human body will be judged based on the smooth functioning of the devices within it: if the device manifests a lot of bugs for some reason, the human body, no matter what its wealth and class, will be considered a weakness in the superstate's order. 

The superstate's complete control of funerals would be a great denial of freedom for the population to do whatever it feels like with its dead bodies. It would be problematic for a superstate if the mourning civilians were to get rid of cremation, to make the dead body productive and active through the information stored within it, to let the virus roam freely, to withhold the information contained in the dead from the superstate, to make it possible for others to extract data from the chip before the superstate does. In this civil war, the entombing of the dead and the use of open graves would resist the superstate's authorization of complete cremation. 

The Impossibility of “Private” Space Flight And The Desire To Be Lacanian Big Other

In the Cold War, we witnessed a space race between two superpowers, but the space race among governmental entities began long before then, with people from different religions and/or societies all trying to imagine space in their own ways, with certain people representing the figure of “state/governmental astrologer,” like the "state philosophers" loyal to authority that Deleuze and Guattari found problematic. Space has always been the object of contesting theories and ideas, but so far these ideas and theories have been produced by governmental authorities linked to the state and not private citizens. But what ultimately motivates these space races is the desire to be the Lacanian big Other of society, to be that individual who is literally at a distance from the earth in outer space and hence distant from all of its societies and cultures, Big Other in a way that no place in the earth can today afford to produce, totally distant from symbolic coordinates and known locations.

However, this desire to be the big Other does not manifest in astronauts who work for the government, for the government and state always maintain very clear, serious and authoritative communication between themselves and their astronauts in order to keep the astronauts within the symbolic order of earth, and hence being a big Other within a governmental organization is impossible, and being a big Other implies a rejection of government. Hence we understand the need for formal and serious jargon from earth's "mission control" while communicating with governmental astronauts to keep them engaged within the earth's symbolic order. Informal “human” and “emotional” and even "philosophical" language is discouraged by authorities such as NASA despite the momentous and epic space travel, because the informality may inspire in the astronauts a sense of being free, and it is only a matter of a small push before zero-gravity is able to actually free oneself from the constraints of the earth's symbolic order. But only once private individuals travel to space can they come close to experiencing the status of big Other, since for private individuals their disengagement with earth will be close to complete.

Unlike the World Wars, the Cold War was itself never a contest to kill the small other of the enemy human being, but the Cold War logic was to try to be the big Other, distant from all of society, as in the case of the space race, spatially distant. Countering Foucault, the space race is evidence that power is not attained in a direct and competitive relationship with one's adversary, but rather by transcending the knowledge and capabilities of the adversary as it relates to an external object that is to be mastered. In other words, power is not the exercising of one's will over the adversary's being and possessions, but rather power is the mastering of what the adversary observes and senses.

However, it seems that being the big Other is not a permitted position in the eyes of the dominant and lawful father. And hence, in bygone years, when a very strict and dominant patriarchy was in place, there was a prevalence of authoritative governmental/state astrologers, who tried to imagine space theoretically and through fantasies from earth but had no intention of traveling and being in space alone as a big Other. In the past a theoretical engagement with space dominated, but today, with the law of the father in decline, the trend has very much become to build machines that can take one's body to space, so that one can directly be in space as a big Other of society.

It is this new-found fantasy to be big Other which motivates the construction of highly technical rockets and related machinery. Technical limitations are not the main reason why we don't travel to space. Indeed, as the myth goes, the computers that sent man to the moon were not even close to sophistication and power to even the most simple computers prevalent today, so it is not difficult to go to space if one is not forbidden to do so.

There aren't consumable objects that take one to space, rather, one is always to be attached to life-preserving machines if one is to be a big Other in space. The machines are attached to one's body, intimate and absolutely necessary for basic survival, and they cannot be treated as consumable objects can, that is, they cannot be thrown away. Thus, they are, for all purposes, a part of the body of the space traveler, and hence being the big Other involves a radical alteration of the body. Even so, being the big Other is still impossible today, even in the most freeing of space flights, because when the entrepreneurs of today claim that they will launch “private” space flights, they do not mention that figures from some governmental authority, such as NASA, will also “accompany” them, control their navigation and movements and monitor them thoroughly as patriarchal authorities do. The law is now articulated differently: being the big Other is allowed, but temporarily, for it is only allowed if the citizens are to return back to earth eventually. Thus the closest one can come to being the big Other via space-travel is by fantasizing that one is completely lost in space. In this regard, being the big Other is still only possible in fantasy.  

The International News Media's Birthing Of BRICS

Leaders from Brazil, India, China and South Africa (in short: the BRICS nations) meet regularly, cooperating with one another because their countries are claimed by the news to represent the economic and geopolitical powerhouses of the future. But the BRICS's economic performance and sociopolitical climate are far from steady to make the “powerhouse” label justified. Rather, the significance of “the BRICS arc” lies in the international news media "big business." This international news media big business has divided into continental offices and thus needs a nation to play the role of “leading continental powerhouse” to serve as the main character for their news-stories in a specific continent. China and India play the “powerhouse” characters in “Asia-Pacific,” while Brazil plays the same character for South America as South Africa does so for the African continent. A standardized and model narrative is in display for each continent, with the use of the “one core power per continent” story-line. If the specific proper names of BRICS countries are removed, the broadcast news in the “Asia-Pacific” region will resemble that in “Africa” or elsewhere to a great degree because of a kind of standard news template having been utilized by each continental office. Nations such as Nepal are not regular fixtures within international news channels, and so do not have roles to play, but for nations that are a regular fixture, there needs to be an arc or story in which they are placed as characters so that they can attract loyal viewers on a day-to-day basis.

The aesthetic orderliness of this simple idea of the one-powerhouse-per-continent arc makes it seem that the international news media shapes geopolitics in a way that makes the world seem pleasing to the audience: the goal of news being shaping geopolitics to make the news attractive, rather than relying on undramatic information-spreading. Also, the audience's demands for more relevant news-stories encourages the news media to build the story that each continent has its own powerhouse, a powerhouse which that whole continent can relate to and like or dislike. American power is in decline not only because of geopolitical tensions, but rather also because "America-as-sole-superpower" arc is no longer attractive for audiences of the international news media channels. The audiences have moved to appreciating a new kind of news-story, one where a regional nation takes up the role of regional powerhouse.

As so much of the news media's production relies on international relations, it follows that the news media are more invested in orienting international relations a certain way, in other words, the news media is not just invested in observing foreign nations, but rather is invested in actively monitoring and shaping the stories that emerge from foreign nations. The news media shapes geopolitics from behind-the-scenes in this way because it is good for business: it can expand its viewership and operate its offices in “Asia-Pacific” or “South America” if it can produce news that will keep South American viewers tuned in in South America and the African viewers tuned in in Africa and so on.