Bulletin N° 602
Subject: ON REVENGE, REMORSE, AND REPLAY --A CYCLICAL
THEORY OF LIFE IN THE FAST LANE.
28
February 2014
Grenoble, France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
Every
school child knows that murdering terrorist suspects and their entourage serves
to create more terrorists for at least three reasons: 1) it incites revenge from
friends and relatives of the murdered victims; 2) it emboldens the murders on both sides to
kill more people, more often; and 3) it inspires young and immature minds to
imitate the acts of their “political leaders” and "heroes" by killing “bad guys” in order to
be really “cool” and to create the illusion of belonging to an elite, at a level somewhere above ordinary people.
The
famous conservative anti-psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, in his book, The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a
Theory of Personal Conduct, wrote that the 11th
Commandment is the most important:
Thou shalt
not get caught.
But
occasionally, people are caught: Michael Moore caught Presidents Bush and Obama and a
majority of US lawmakers in bed with former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs Henry Paulson and the
other Big Bankers.; Medea Benjamin, and Jeremy Scahill
caught Obama in his virtual slaughterhouse using Drones to murder
men, women and children by remote control around the world from high altitude.
The Real News
Network reports on the current status of Julien Assange,
founder of Wikileaks :
Documents Reveal NSA and GCHQ Efforts to
Destroy Assange
And Track Wikileaks Supporters
Today, 15 January 2014, WikiLeaks released the secret draft text for the
entire TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Environment Chapter and the
corresponding Chairs' Report. The TPP transnational legal regime would cover 12
countries initially and encompass 40 per cent of global GDP and one-third of
world trade. The Environment Chapter has long been sought by journalists and
environmental groups. The released text dates from the Chief Negotiators'
summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 19-24 November 2013.
Power,
wrote John Kenneth Galbraith in his book, The
Anatomy of Power (1983), is the
ability to make people submit to the will of another. With this pithy
definition of power, the famous Harvard University economist began to develop
an original descriptive analysis of power, as it has existed in human society,
and perhaps as it exists in the entire animal kingdom. Apes are not
capitalists, nor are dogs and rabbits ..., nor are most of us. Nevertheless the
lives of all of us are interwoven into power networks, of which we are more or
less conscious.
Galbraith
offers us some useful categories with which to examine this network of which we
are a part.
I
have been concerned to make wholly visible these constants –to identify the sources
of power in personality, property,
and organization and to see the
instruments by which power is exercised and enforced.(The
Anatomy of Power, p.2)
He
goes on to explain what he means by instruments
of power :
It
is a measure of how slightly the subject of power has been analyzed that the
three reasonably obvious instruments of its exercise do not have
generally accepted names. These must be provided: I shall speak of condign, compensatory, and conditioned power.(pp. 21-22)
According
to historic periods and specific situations, these concepts can be applied with
some measure of success. In 17th Century Europe, for example, we can
see how the power of charismatic personalities
of absolute monarchs and emperors, and how the pecuniary power of wages and
investments (i.e. property) which
created bonds between people in the political economy of mercantile capitalism
shaped people’s behavior. Later beginning in the second half of the 18th
Century, with the appearance of a new political economy of liberal democracy
and industrial capitalism, the power of personalities was displaced in large
part by another source of power, that of organization,
and with this displacement of the power source other instruments of power were
found to be useful: conditioned
behavior was more reliable than the fear of punishment (i.e. condign power); and, as time went on and
consumerism took over the cultural landscape, compensatory power lost its
monopolistic hold over many people. In short, in the contemporary political
economy to see power relationships as they really exist, we are advised to look
at organizations today (above all corporations, of course, but also churches,
the military, and other associations of highly disciplined people) as the
primary sources of power; the
dominant instrument of contemporary power being explicit and/or implicit
indoctrination, which creates individual habits and mass conformities that
secure individual and group submission to the will of others.
Galbraith
goes on to discuss “the dialectic of power” –how sources and instruments give
rise to a symmetrical oppositions—and how the concentration and diffusion of
power at any given time is decisive in achieving established goals, but always
with unforeseen consequences. His chief concern in the 1980’s is our concern
today: the condign punishment
administered by military/police organizations to make people submit to the will of
government policy makers, and the conditioned
power of corporate organizations (including the mass media) to impose the will
of the few on the population at large, with maximum private profits going to
the former while the latter suffer from the growing inequalities.
Galbraith,
as always, fails in his analysis to give priority to social class
relationships, but the concepts he offers are useful in demystifying the
every-day relationships we encounter in the institutions and neighborhoods
where we live and work.
The
14 items below offer CEIMSA readers an unmistakable diagnosis that
capitalism is sick and has contaminated all of us. The question we are
confronted with is whether or not to keep this comatose body alive using an
artificial life-support system (by employing conditioned and condign
instruments of power rather than exercising compensatory
methods) or to let the old body politique expire and
replace it with a democratic socialist
political economy which would be capable of giving birth to new creative
energies, inspiring hope, conviviality and wide participation. The answer to
this question must come from us collectively, before we find ourselves chained
to a stinking corpse.
Item
A., from The Nation, is an article by Tom Engelhardt on what Edward Snowden didn’t leak.
Item
B., from NYU Professor Mark Crispin
Miller, founder of New From Underground,
is an article by Norman Solomon on
Amazon.com $600 million contract with the CIA.
Item
C.,
from The Nation, is an article by David Sheen
and Max Blumenthal on the new racist
policies adopted by Israel against Black Africans.
Item
D. is an audio interview on Electronic
Politics with Dr. Stephen F. Cohen speaking
about the crisis in Ukraine.
Item
E., from Mother Jones, is an
article by Benjy Hansen-Bundy on the
coming extinction of the human species.
Item
F., from Jim O’Brien of Historians Against War, is a
series of recommended recent articles.
Item
G., from the Al Jazeera, is an article by Hyder Iftikhar Abbasi on the danger of reporting U.S. drone strikes.
Item
H., from Truth Out,
is an article by Tony Kashani on Bob Dylan and his recent collaboration with “Market Fascism.”
Item I., from Mark Crispin Miller, is an article by Samuel Bowles and Arjun Jayadev on the making of a police state
in the USA.
Item J., from The Guardian (UK), is a
January 2014 article by
Seumas Milne on 21st-Century
Fascism on the move in Ukraine.
Item
K.,
from Common
Dreams, is a follow-up article one month later by Jon Queally
on further destabilizations in Ukraine: Was President Viktor Yanukovich displaced by Astroturf
democracy or by an authentic grassroots movement? Will the new elections on 25
May 2014 bring positive change for the Ukrainian society or new bondage under
the yoke of transnational bankers?
Item L., from The Raw
Story, is an article by John
Byrne on the apparent epidemic of suicides among young bankers.
Item M., from Melanie Jones, is a Watch
Dog petition against the recruitment of suicide labor in Japan.
Item N., from UCSD Professor of Photography Fred Lonidier,
is an announcement of the national
exhibition on “The Health and Safety Game,” an artistic expression of how
corporate capitalism is "handling" industrial injury and disease,
featuring “Corporate Violence” by
Allan Sekula, who points to the
systemic character of everyday violence in the workplace depicted by Fred Lonidier.
And
finally we invite CEIMSA readers to view with us Jay Paul’s interview with Medea Benjamin on
The Real News Network :
“I Was Born
a Rebel” - Code Pink Co-Founder Medea Benjamin
on Reality Asserts Itself
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11487
Sincerely,
Francis
Feeley
Professor
of American Studies
University
of Grenoble-3
Director
of Research
University
of Paris-Nanterre
Center
for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements
The
University of California-San Diego
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/
_______________
A.
From The Nation :
Dates: 20 February 2014
Subject: Killing our own citizens ‘legally’.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
The revelations of whistleblowers lead us to believe that we know
a great deal about the secret world of Washington.
This is an illusion.
What
Edward Snowden Leaked Was Nothing Compared to What He Didn’t
by Tom Engelhardt
_______________
B.
From Mark Crispin Miller :
Dates: 14 February 2014
Subject: Amazon fulfilling CIA's assassination orders.
President
Obama is now considering whether to order the Central Intelligence Agency to
kill a U.S. citizen in Pakistan. That’s big news this week. But hidden in plain
sight is the fact that Amazon would be an accessory to the assassination.
Amazon has a $600 million contract with the CIA to provide the agency with
“cloud” computing services. After final confirmation of the deal several
months ago, Amazon declared: “We look forward to a successful relationship with
the CIA.” The relationship means that Amazon -- logoed with a smiley-face arrow
from A to Z, selling products to millions of people every week -- is
responsible for keeping the CIA’s secrets and aggregating data to help the
agency do its work. Including drone strikes.
If Obama Orders the CIA
to Kill a U.S. Citizen, Amazon Will Be a Partner in Assassination
_______________
C.
From The Nation :
Dates: 21 February 2014
Subject: Killing our own citizens ‘legally’.
Around
60,000 African migrants have arrived in Israel since 2006, fleeing unrest in
their home countries. But upon arrival in the ostensibly democratic country,
the migrants have faced intense persecution and have been branded as
"infiltrators" by right-wing politicians and activists.
Israel’s
New Racism: The Persecution of African Migrants in the
Holy Land
by David Sheen and Max Blumenthal
_______________
D.
From George Kenney :
Dates: 21 February 2014
Subject: Ukraine.
http://www.electricpolitics.com/
Dear Francis,
Last Saturday evening I interviewed
Dr. Stephen F. Cohen about the crisis in Ukraine. Because of timeliness I
thought it best to turn this interview around as quickly as possible, so here
it is. Steve has been an expert on things Russian for a very long time indeed
-- he was a professor at Princeton for about thirty years and taught at NYU for
about another ten years after that. You used to see him regularly on the news
but his brand of sympathy for the Russians has gone out of style. Well, more
than that really. Any sense of objectivity regarding Russia seems to be
forbidden these days. Thus you have Steve being sensible about the crisis in
Ukraine and 99.99% of the other commentators taking a "let's hate the
Russians and let's especially hate Putin" line. It reminds me very much of
the atmospherics surrounding the Yugoslav civil war, except at least in that
case a vocal minority in favor of a more objective approach was able to be
heard. This is much worse. If, indeed, I hadn't lived and worked through the
Yugoslav civil war I wonder whether I would be able to understand that the
public debate over Ukraine could be so tragically unbalanced!
This is an important show. I hope
you listen. And if you like the show please forward
the link.
Best,
g.
http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2014/02/the_ukraine_blues.html
_______________
E.
From Mother Jones :
Dates: 4 February 2014
Subject: Humans will be the death of us, and everything else, if we/they don't wise up RIGHT NOW!
In the meantime, says the acclaimed New Yorker
writer, we're causing the greatest mass extinction since dinosaur days.
Elizabeth Kolbert: "Humans Will Eventually Become Extinct"
by Benjy Hansen-Bundy
_______________
F.
From Historians
Against the War :
Dates: 20 February 2014
Subject: HAW Notes 2/20/14: Links to recent articles of interest.
http://server1.naffe.net/mailman/listinfo/haw-info_stopthewars.org
Links to Recent Articles of Interest
"Misremembering America's Wars: The Pentagon's Latest 'Mission Accomplished' Moment"
By Nick Turse, TomDispatch.com, posted February 18
On the Defense Department's website purporting to give a history of the Vietnam War
"Are Protesters Overthrowing a Brutal Despot, or Merely Bad Losers at the Polls?"
By Patrick Cockburn, Common Dreams.org, posted February 17
A short essay on the past year's demonstrations in Egypt, Turkey, Thailand, and Ukraine
"Does Nixon's 'Treason' Boost LBJ's Legacy?"
By Robert Parry, Consortium News, posted February 16
On private-channel maneuvers to sabotage a Vietnam peace agreement before the 1968 US election
"Distorting Russia: How the American Media Misrepresent Putin, Sochi, and Ukraine"
By Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation, March 3 issue
"The Talibanization of Hindu History in India"
By Jon Wiener, The Nation blog, posted February 14
The author teaches history at the University of California, Irvine.
"The Risk of Reporting US Drone Strikes"
By Hyder Iftikhar Abassi, Aljazeera, posted February 12
On the experiences of three human rights advocates in Yemen and Pakistan
"Clapper Reads from the Bush/Cheney/Nixon Playbook to Fear-Monger over Transparency"
By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept, posted February 12
The Intercept is the new on-line publication started by Glenn Greenwald along with Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill.
"In the Darkness of Dick Cheney: The Smile of Secret Power"
By Mark Danner, TomDispatch.com, posted February 11
From the New York Review of Books, the first part of an essay based on Cheney's memoirs
"The Illusion of AIPAC's Invincibility"
By Trita Parsi, Huffington Post, posted February 8
On three defeats suffered by the American Israeli Public Affairs Council in the past year
"JFK, RFK, and Some Myths about American Foreign Policy"
By William Blum, CounterPunch.org, posted February 7
Argues that President Kennedy would have continued the Vietnam War
Thanks for Steve Gosch, Rosalyn Baxandall, Mim Jackson, Chad Pearson, and an anonymous reader for suggesting articles included in the above list. Suggestions can be sent to jimobrien48@gmail.com.
_______________
G.
From Al Jazeera :
Dates: 12 February 2014
Subject: Killing our own citizens ‘legally’.
Yemen researcher says he received a death threat
after investigating deadly wedding-convoy attack.
The risk of reporting US drone strikes by Hyder
Iftikhar Abbasi |
_______________
H.
From Truth Out :
Dates: 15 February 2014
Subject: Bob Dylan & Market Fascism.
On
Sunday, February 2, 2014, according to most reliable news sources, 111.5
million people (mostly US residents) participated in viewing the imperial
spectacle known as the Super Bowl XLVIII. To be sure, this Super Bowl was not
dissimilar to its predecessors; a made-for-television event of commodification, showcasing a package of mediocrity with a
mind-numbing violent team sport to be utilized for selling useless junk.
According to Bill Wanger, executive vice president
for programming and research at Fox Sports, "Big-event
television is a great way for people to have a communal event,
to talk about it socially and to talk about it as a group."
Bob
Dylan and the Ethics of Market Fascism
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21853-bob-dylan-and-the-ethics-of-market-fascism
by
Tony Kashani
_______________
I.
From Mark Crispin Miller :
Dates: 15 February 2014
Subject: The Great Divide, a series about inequality.
One Nation Under Guard
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/one-nation-under-guard/
by
Samuel Bowles and Arjun Jayadev
_______________
J.
From The Guardian
(UK) :
Dates: 29 January 2014
Subject: Ukraine I.
The
story we're told about the protests gripping Kiev bears only the sketchiest
relationship with reality.
In Ukraine, Fascists,
Oligarchs and Western Expansion Are At The Heart Of
The Crisis
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/29/ukraine-fascists-oligarchs-eu-nato-expansion
by Seumas Milne
_______________
K.
From Common Dreams :
Dates: 20 February 2014
Subject: Ukraine II.
From plotting a 'coup' to endorsing fascist elements of opposition, the
Obama administration accused of playing with fire in Kiev
In
Ukraine, Chaos and Violence Hide Nefarious Role of US
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/02/20-3
by Jon Queally
_______________
L.
From The Raw Story :
Dates: 19 February 2014
Subject: The death of bankers.
After five banker deaths in January, a sixth: J.P.
Morgan exec jumps in Hong Kong
by John Byrne
_______________
M.
From Watch Dog :
Dates: 22 February 2014
Subject: Abolish suicide labor recruitment in Japan: A Petition.
Dear
Francis FEELEY,
Private
labor contractors in Japan are "recruiting" homeless men and men to
work in the disaster area of the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant, taking
advantage of their desperation to pay them less than minimum wage and with no
proof that their health is being protected.
In a devil's bargain between organized crime bosses and the nation's top
construction firms, laborers are exploited by these contractors as they take
in state funds for the cleanup, giving them miniscule cuts for the
dangerous untrained work and then subtracting
more for food and lodging.
We call on the government of Japan to investigate this shady practice, ensuring
these workers are properly protected from the radiation and being
well-compensated for the dangerous work. Don't let these companies keep preying on the homeless
to expose them to radiation — write the Japanese government now!
PETITION
TO JAPANESE GOVERNMENT: Protect your country's homeless from being exploited
and exposed to dangerous radiation levels. Investigate construction companies
to make sure they're paying a fair wage and training and protecting their
workers.
Click here to sign -- it just takes a second.
Thanks,
-- The folks at Watchdog.net
P.S.
If the other links aren't working for you, please go here to sign: http://act.watchdog.net/petitions/4158?n=58163524.ldEgik
_______________
N.
From Fred Lonidier :
Dates: 28 February 2014
Subject: The systemic character of everyday violence in the workplace.
http://www.essexstreet.biz/exhibition/50
THE HEALTH AND
SAFETY GAME
FRED LONIDIER
UFCW Local 1222
office, August 1978, San Diego, CA
February 27 -
March 30, 2014: Hours: Thu - Sun 12 - 6 P.M. and by appointment FREE
A Reception and
Discussion will be held on Sunday March 9 at 2 P.M.
Simultaneous
with the artist's participation in the 2014 WHITNEY BIENNIAL.
http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/2014Biennial
Corporate Violence
by Allan Sekula
A
small group of contemporary artists are working on an art that deals with the
social ordering of people's lives. Most of their work involves still
photography and video; most relies heavily on written or spoken language. I'm
talking about a representational art, an art that refers to something beyond
itself. Form and mannerism are not ends in themselves. These works might be about
any number of things, ranging from the material and ideological space of the
"self" to the dominant social realities of corporate spectacle and
corporate power. The initial questions are these: "How do we invent our
lives out of a limited range of possibilities, and how are our lives invented
for us by those in power? If these questions are asked only within the
institutional boundaries of elite culture, only with the "art world,"
then the answers will be merely academic. Given a certain poverty of means,
this art aims toward a wider audience, and toward considerations of concrete
social transformation.
We
might be tempted to think of this work as a variety of documentary. That's all
right as long as we expose the myth that accompanies the label, the folklore of
photographic truth. The rhetorical strength of documentary is imagined to
reside in the unequivocal character of the camera's evidence in an essential
realism. I shouldn't have to point out that photographic meaning is
indeterminate; the same picture can convey a variety of messages under
differing presentational circumstances. Consider the evidence offered by bank
holdup cameras. Taken automatically, these pictures could be said to be
unpolluted by sensibility, an extreme form of documentary. If the surveillance
engineers who developed these cameras have an esthetic, it's one of raw,
technological instrumentality. "Just the facts,
ma'am." But a courtroom is a battleground of fictions. What is it
that a photograph points to? A young white woman holds a submachine gun. The
gun is handled confidently, aggressively. The gun is almost dropped out of
fear. A fugitive heiress. A kidnap
victim. An urban guerrilla. A
willing participant. A case of brainwashing. A case of rebellion. A case of
schizophrenia. The outcome, based on the "true" reading of the
evidence, is a function less of "objectivity" than of politics
maneuvering. Reproduced in the mass media, this picture might attest to the
omniscience of the state within a glamorized and mystifying spectacle of
revolution and counterrevolution. But any police photography that is publicly
displayed is both a specific attempt at identification and a reminder of police
power over "criminal elements." The only "objective" truth
that photographs offer is the assertion that somebody or something - in this
case, an automated camera - was somewhere and took a picture. Everything else
is up for grabs.
Someone
once wrote of the French photographer Eugene Atget
that he depicted the streets of Paris as though they were scenes of crime. That
remark serves to poeticize a rather deadpan, nonexpressionist
style, to celebrate the photographer in his role as detective, searching for
clues. Documentary photograph has amassed mountains of evidence. In this
pictorial presentation of "fact," the genre has contributed much to
spectacle, to retinal excitation, to voyeurism, and only a little to the
critical understanding of the social world. A truly critical social documentary
will frame the crime, the trial, and the system of justice and its official
myths. Artists working toward this end may or may not produce images that are
theatrical and overtly contrived, they may or may not
present texts that read like fiction. Social truth is something other than a
matter of convincing style.
A
political critique of the documentary genre is sorely needed. Socially
conscious artists have much to learn from both the
successes and the mistakes, compromises, and collaborations of their
Progressive Era and New Deal predecessors. How do we assess the close
historical partnership of documentary artists and social democrats? The cooptation of the documentary style by corporate capitalism
(notable the oil companies and the television networks) in the late 1940's?
How do we disentangle ourselves from the authoritarian and bureaucratic aspects
of the genre, from its implicit positivism? (All of this is evidenced by any
one second of an Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite telecast.) How do we
produce an art that elicits dialogue rather than uncritical pseudo-political
affirmation?
Looking
backward, at the art-world hubbub about "photograph as a fine art,"
we find a near-pathological avoidance of any such questioning. A curious thing
happens when documentary is officially recognized as art. Suddenly the audience's
attention is directed toward mannerism, toward sensibility, toward the physical
and emotional risks taken by the artist. Documentary is thought to be art when
it transcends its reference to the world, when the work can be regarded, first
and foremost, as an act of self-expression on the part of the artist. A cult of
authorship, an auteurism, takes hold of the image,
separating it from the social conditions of its making and elevating it above
the multitude of lowly and mundane uses to which photography is commonly put.
The culture journalists' myth of Diane Arbus is
interesting in this regard. Most readings of her work careen along an axis
between opposing poles of realism and expressionism. On the one hand, her
portraits are seen as transparent vehicles for the social or psychological
truth of her subjects; Arbus elicits meaning from
their persons. At the other extreme is projection. The work is thought to
express her tragic vision (a vision confirmed by her suicide); each image is
nothing so much as a contribution to the artist's
self-portrait. These readings coexist, they enhance
one another despite their mutual contradiction. I think that a good deal of the
generalized esthetic appeal of Arbus' work, along
with that of most art photography, has to do with this indeterminacy of
reading, this sense of being cast adrift between profound social insight and
refined solipsism. At the heart of this fetishistic cultivation and promotion
of the artist's humanity is a certain disdain for the "ordinary"
humanity of those who have been photographed. They become the
"other," exotic creatures, objects of contemplation. Perhaps this
wouldn't be so suspect if it weren't for the tendency of professional
documentary photographers to aim their cameras downward, toward those with
little power or prestige. (The obverse is the cult of celebrity, the organized
production of envy in a mass audience.) The most intimate, human scale
relationship to suffer mystification in all this is the specific social
engagement that results in the image; the negotiation between photographer and
subject in the making of a portrait, the seduction, coercion, collaboration, or
rip off. But if we widen the angle of our view, we find that the broader
institutional politics of elite and "popular" culture are also being
obscured in the romance of the photographer as artist.
Fred
Lonidier is one of a small number of photographers
who set out deliberately to work against the strategies that have succeeded in
making photography a high art. Their work begins with the recognition that
photography is operative at every level of our culture. That is, they insist on
treating photographs not as privileged objects but as common cultural
artifacts. The solitary, sparely captioned photograph on the gallery wall is a
sign, above all, of an aspiration toward the esthetic and market conditions of
modernist painting and sculpture. In this white void, meaning is thought to
emerge entirely from within the artwork. The importance of the framing
discourse is masked, context is hidden. Lonidier, on
the other hand, openly brackets his photographs with language, using texts to
anchor, contradict, reinforce, subvert, complement, particularize, or go beyond
the meanings offered by the images themselves. These pictures are located with
a narrative structure. I'm not talking about "photo essays," a
cliché-ridden form that is the noncommercial counterpart to the photographic
advertisement. Photo essays are an outcome of a mass-circulation
picture-magazine esthetic, the esthetic of the merchandisable column-inch and
rapid, excited reading.
Fred
Lonidier's Health and Safety Game is about the
"handling" of industrial injury and disease by corporate capitalism,
pointing to the systemic character of everyday violence in the workplace. Some
statistics: one in four American workers is exposed on a daily basis to death,
injury and disease-causing work conditions. According to a Nader report,
"job casualties are statistically at least three times more serious than
street crime." (So much for T.V. cop shows.)
An
observation: anyone who has ever lived or worked in an industrial working-class
community can probably attest to the commonness of disfigurement among people
on the job and in the street. I can recall going to the Chicago Museum of
Science and Industry and visiting the coalmine there. Hoarse-voiced men,
retired miners, led the tourists through a programmed demonstration of mining
technology. When the time came to deal with safety, one off the guides set off
a controlled little methane expulsion. No one mentioned black-lung disease in
this corporate artwork, although the evidence rasped from the throats of the
guides.
Lonidier's
"evidence" consists of twenty or so case studies of individual
workers, each displayed on large panels laid out in a rather photojournalistic
fashion. The reference to photojournalism is deliberate, I think, because the
work refuses to deliver any of the emphatic goodies that we are accustomed to
in photo essays. Conventional "human interest" is absent. Lonidier is aware of the ease with which liberal
documentary artists have converted violence and suffering into esthetic
objects. For all his good intentions, for example, Eugene Smith in Minamata provided more a presentation of his compassion for
mercury-poisoned Japanese fisherfolk than one of
their struggle for retribution against the corporate polluter. I'll say it
again: the subjective aspect of liberal esthetics is compassion rather than
collective struggle. Pity, mediated by an appreciation of great art, supplants
political understanding. It has been remarked that Eugene Smith's portrait of a
Minamata mother bathing her retarded and deformed
daughter is a deliberate reference to the Pieta.
Unlike
Smith, Lonidier takes the same photographs that a
doctor might. When the evidence is hidden within the body, Lonidier
borrows and copies x-ray films. These pictures have a brutal, clinical effect.
Each worker's story is reduced to a rather schematic account of injury,
disease, hospitalization, and endless bureaucratic run-around by companies
trying to shirk responsibility and liability. All too frequently we find that
the end of the story the worker is left unemployed and undercompensated. At the
same time, though, these people are fighting. A machinist with lung cancer
tells of stealing samples of dust from the job, placing them on the kitchen
griddle in a home-made experiment to detect asbestos, a material that his
bosses had denied using. The anonymity of Lonidier's
subjects is a precaution against retaliation against them; many are still
fighting court cases.
Lonidier's presentation is
an analog of sorts for the way in which corporate bureaucrats handle the
problems of industrial safety, yet he subverts the model by telling the story
from below, from the place occupied by the worker in the hierarchy. The
case-study form is a model of authoritarian handling of human lives. The layout
of the panels reflects the distribution of power. Quotes from the workers are
set in type so small that they are nearly unreadable. The titles are set in
large type: "Machinist's Lung," "Egg-Packer's Arm." The
body and the life are presented as they have been fragmented by management.
Injury is a loss of labor power, a negative commodity, overhead. Injury is not
a diminishing of human life but a statistical impingement on the corporate
profit margin.
The
danger exists, here as in other works of socially conscious art, of being
overcome by the very oppressive forms and conditions one is critiquing, of
being devoured by the enormous machinery of material and symbolic
objectification. Political irony walks a thin line between resistance and
surrender.
Nevertheless,
Lonidier's work documents monopoly capitalism's
inability to deliver the conditions of a full human life. One realizes that the
health and safety issue goes beyond the struggle for compensation, enforcement
of safety standards, and improved working conditions. Against violence of this
scale, violence directed at the human body, at the environment, and at working
people's ability to control their own lives, we need to counterpose
an active resistance to monopoly capitalism's increasing power and arrogance.
Copyrighted
1976 - Allan Sekula
Reprinted
with permission of the Estate of Allan Sekula
_______________________________
THE
HEALTH AND SAFETY GAME
has previously been
exhibited at
Long
Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA, 1976
Mandeville
Art Gallery, University of California, San Diego, CA, 1976
San
Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA, 1976.
Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York City, 1977
Rutgers
University Labor Education Center, New Jersey, 1978
AFSCME
District Council 37, New York City, 1978
New
Haven Central Labor Council, New Haven, Connecticut, 1978
Real
Art Ways, Hartford, Connecticut, 1979
Santa
Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA, 1979
Alberta
College of Art Gallery, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 1978
Federal
Building, Los Angeles, CA, 1979
Occupational
Health & Safety Conference, Craftsmen Hall, San Diego, CA 1982
Gallery
1199, Hospital Workers Union, "Union Made," New York City, 1983
Amelie
A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY/College at Old Westbury, Long Island, NY, 1983-84
Dowd
Fine Arts Gallery, SUNY/Cortland, NY, 1984
Walter/McBean Gallery, S.F. Art Inst., San Francisco, CA 1992
Upcoming:
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2015
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