Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Why is the approval rating for Congress so low?

roachboy · 10-19-2007, 06:48 AM

i wanted to post a copy of jg ballard's short story " the secret history of world war iii" in response to loquitor's post above, but sadly i could not find an etext.
it is included as an appendix to the re/search edition of ballard's atrocity exhibition, which is a fine book worth tracking down for a host of reasons.
now there is another.

==============
it is strange to consider the scenario in no. 19 as outlining the way in which video footage reframes the branches of government simply by reproducing elements of their occurance (a branch of government being a process or framework rather than an object)...transparency is reduced to chaos or babble because the process that is being performed as transparent disappears behind the isolated images of people talking.

its not that these images are "wrong" in the sense that they are not factually incorrect--it is the case that for the duration of shot x characters 1 through 5 (say) try to talk over each other though attention is drawn to the odd behaviors of number 3 who waves a shoes about and seems apoplectic...(nice word)...but it is also true that characters 1 through 5 talk over each other because their actions are framed by a particular process, which does not appear in the footage, which cannot appear in footage because it is a process that unfolds in multiple registers simultaneously, is not contained within the congressional chambers but includes offices and staff and information flows and dynamics and may or may not include management of feedback loops from constituents and jockeying for position and/or votes and so is diffuse each time.

in the supreme court, there is an image of a more serence multiplicity fashioned through still photographs of judges sitting in chairs while wearing choir-like robes or making statements at a press conference or appearing as an elevated blur in those curious courtroom watercolors. here you have references to debate without the actual debate, references to deliberation without footage of the deliberation and so the court appears to be more orderly and mysterious than does congress.

in the person of the president, in the face of the president, you have a consistent illusion of unity. this is reassuring. a single face does not talk over itself, even if presidential control over grammar is such that certain utterances could be interpreted as originated from multiple subject positions mysteriously contained within the same face-frame. "o that's our george. a regular guy. my grammar sucks too." even if the presidential relation to text scrolling at speed across a teleprompter is distanced and uncomfortable, the presidential face is nonetheless a space for projecting a desire for single-ness, for narrowed information flows, for the absence of the cacophony of debate (which is all debate comes to when televised). the face of the president seems more open than the middle-ground between unity and diversity occupied by the supreme court. the face of the president is a type of transparency, a model for a type of transparency--that of a single individual who decides.

if you as a spectator despair of the direction the country is taking, it hardly sems plausible that you would dream of images of congressional chatter to address your despair...congress is a space of mutually exclusive propositions, of debate that sinks into itself, of paralysis. congress is terminally, uncomfortably multiple, and multiplicity only fits into a video frame in certain ways. but you, spectator: because you watch the news and conflate video footage of the world with the world, when you dream of redress for your anxiety you dream of the heroic individual who is able to rise above the cacophony of debate, who has a Will and is in a position to Exercise that Will.

this is why the carl schmitt view of democracy as endless babble particular to the bush white house resonates. it is fit nicely to the semiotics of television.

10-19-2007, 06:48 AM	#20 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i wanted to post a copy of jg ballard's short story " the secret history of world war iii" in response to loquitor's post above, but sadly i could not find an etext. it is included as an appendix to the re/search edition of ballard's atrocity exhibition, which is a fine book worth tracking down for a host of reasons. now there is another. ============== it is strange to consider the scenario in no. 19 as outlining the way in which video footage reframes the branches of government simply by reproducing elements of their occurance (a branch of government being a process or framework rather than an object)...transparency is reduced to chaos or babble because the process that is being performed as transparent disappears behind the isolated images of people talking. its not that these images are "wrong" in the sense that they are not factually incorrect--it is the case that for the duration of shot x characters 1 through 5 (say) try to talk over each other though attention is drawn to the odd behaviors of number 3 who waves a shoes about and seems apoplectic...(nice word)...but it is also true that characters 1 through 5 talk over each other because their actions are framed by a particular process, which does not appear in the footage, which cannot appear in footage because it is a process that unfolds in multiple registers simultaneously, is not contained within the congressional chambers but includes offices and staff and information flows and dynamics and may or may not include management of feedback loops from constituents and jockeying for position and/or votes and so is diffuse each time. in the supreme court, there is an image of a more serence multiplicity fashioned through still photographs of judges sitting in chairs while wearing choir-like robes or making statements at a press conference or appearing as an elevated blur in those curious courtroom watercolors. here you have references to debate without the actual debate, references to deliberation without footage of the deliberation and so the court appears to be more orderly and mysterious than does congress. in the person of the president, in the face of the president, you have a consistent illusion of unity. this is reassuring. a single face does not talk over itself, even if presidential control over grammar is such that certain utterances could be interpreted as originated from multiple subject positions mysteriously contained within the same face-frame. "o that's our george. a regular guy. my grammar sucks too." even if the presidential relation to text scrolling at speed across a teleprompter is distanced and uncomfortable, the presidential face is nonetheless a space for projecting a desire for single-ness, for narrowed information flows, for the absence of the cacophony of debate (which is all debate comes to when televised). the face of the president seems more open than the middle-ground between unity and diversity occupied by the supreme court. the face of the president is a type of transparency, a model for a type of transparency--that of a single individual who decides. if you as a spectator despair of the direction the country is taking, it hardly sems plausible that you would dream of images of congressional chatter to address your despair...congress is a space of mutually exclusive propositions, of debate that sinks into itself, of paralysis. congress is terminally, uncomfortably multiple, and multiplicity only fits into a video frame in certain ways. but you, spectator: because you watch the news and conflate video footage of the world with the world, when you dream of redress for your anxiety you dream of the heroic individual who is able to rise above the cacophony of debate, who has a Will and is in a position to Exercise that Will. this is why the carl schmitt view of democracy as endless babble particular to the bush white house resonates. it is fit nicely to the semiotics of television. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 10-19-2007 at 06:52 AM..