Syndicate: banning

[martha rosler <navva@earthlink.net>]

i am primarily a lurker, hoping to learn something about the thought and
work of formerly east bloc artists and friends in respect to new
communications technologies and art. but i do read the list avidly and
can't resist making some observations.
I do not find it especially helpful to compare this situation to ancient
athens, for a myriad of reasons, the most direct being that we do not live
on the list, and net communications have a distinctly linear feel despite
all the hype. We do not live on it "in the round." In my observation, the
list ceases to be interesting in pretty direct proportion to nn's posts,
and it is somewhat arrogant to expect a participant to have to decode a
private orthography in order to "get it." I wouldn't mind the posts if they
didn't polarize and shrink the entire list to pros and cons about it.
Indeed, i used to enjoy some of them, delete the rest. But when I get my
email while traveling, i resent the endless "mutterings" that these posts
seem to constitute. (The endless nn yenta, always commenting on everyone
else, picking on their language, competes with a very nicely tuned nn
anti-corporate, anti-bullshit set of remarks.)
Freedom of speech is not the primary issue, and threats to sic the
correctness police on the list is an ironic reversal of oother
authoritarian tropes, i humbly suggest; a list is neither society nor the
public sphere in toto. I am not advocating asking nn to leave, for the
decision is not mine, but ask yourself, when you play a game, what happens
when the bully insists that it is always his/her turn at the bat; at a
forum, what if she/he jumps up for the microphone after every remark
someone else has made, simply to snipe,and not actually engage their
points? Of course, this analogy is poor, because only one person can speak
at a forum at once, but it is not wholly inappropriate. Pretty soon, the
discussion is about rules and personality, not about substatntive issues.
 I have been in many, many political gatherings where a bloc of extreme
leftists (or a strongly vocal single representative) stood up to denounce
the incorrect political "line" each speaker was espousing, according to the
commentator. This well-known tactic has a name: disruption.
even war has rules of engagement.
respectfully,
martha rosler
brooklyn, new york


-----Syndicate mailinglist--------------------
Syndicate network for media culture and media art
information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/syndicate
to post to the Syndicate list: <syndicate@eg-r.isp-eg.de>
to unsubscribe, write to <majordomo@eg-r.isp-eg.de>, in
the body of the msg: unsubscribe syndicate your@email.adress