Re: [-empyre-] race, net-art, strategy

["Ian Stevenson" <audile@bigpond.com>]

Thanks Danny for making an opening for saying what I had wanted to say. Many
race political works are alienating for a white racist such as myself. It's
the process of identification, which is what creates much of the positive
aesthetic effect in the work which I respond positively to, that makes me
turn away from these works. It is often the characteristics of others, in
which we see ourselves mirrored, that we dislike most. I find much political
art boring - I find race political art disturbing and difficult. We are all
situated within power structures. I look forward to the race political art
that finds the subtlety to engage the confused and only partly self-aware
racists such as myself. The net has the potential to be a medium for this
kind of multivalent expression.

Ian S


----- Original Message -----
From: "Danny Butt" <db@dannybutt.net>
To: <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2003 12:57 PM
Subject: [-empyre-] race, net-art, strategy


> tV wrote on 24/7/03 2:09 PM:
>
> >> much at all of what they have been giving for centuries
>
> > Critically, isn't the problem this "they" though?
> > Ie not essentialising a human based on colour, over generations?
>
> Kia ora koutou - de-lurking here thanks to all for an interesting
discussion
> in an area of critical importance - as a few have noted our methods for
> exploring race in new media are so undeveloped, the languages and forums
> available so transitory. It annoys the hell out of me that race gets so
> little discussion in so many supposedly "political" forums which -
surprise!
> - happen to be dominated by white guys. So much to be done! Thanks to the
> empyre crew for getting this moving.
>
> I wanted to comment on Tobias' point above, because the rhetorical move he
> makes here is to my mind actually "the problem": shifting discussion from
> particular power relationships (say, between whites and negroes)  to
> abstract, "universal" phenomena (say, "racism"). It's a move which
attempts
> to take us as subjects out of the relationship: to seek a space where we
> *don't need to think about race* because we are not complicit in its power
> relationships, we are not "essentialising", "oppressing", or doing any
bad,
> racist things.
>
> Now while that's nice and everything, surely our cross-cultural
interactions
> show this to be unrealistic. We are always white, brown, black, male,
> female, wealthy, poor, educated, *in relation* to another person. This
> difference or solidarity creates a power dynamic. I think to seek flight
> from this power dynamic is to relegate it to the subconscious and place it
> out of conversation/negotiation. This is a standard default strategy if yr
> white and male because we are aware that in any discussions of that
dynamic
> we are in positions of privilege not of our own choosing, and this makes
us
> uncomfortable, and probably racist! Who wants that? So white male culture
> presents itself as not cultural - in Sharon Traweek's terms white male
> culture is the "culture of no culture" - it's just the "way things are".
We
> seek to move discussions into abstract terms, rather than, like linda,
> acknowledge the very personal ( and often excessive and uncontrollable)
> emotions these power imbalances cause. So to avoid doing bad things, we
> withdraw into a "safe" position - but it is that withdrawal which is the
> engine of race conflict! That move to my mind also becomes a bit
> paternalistic if it privileges a "universal ethics" (e.g. essentialism is
> bad) - a white ethics! - through critiquing a specific intervention like
> damali's. In the *realpolitik* of race relations, our abstract ideals are
> challenged through the lived experience of our relations to one another.
My
> view is that understanding our experience of those relations in their
> fucked-up, messy, unbalanced, irrational, unfair, and inherently
*political*
> specificity is the way the relationships can move forward. And I think as
a
> contribution to *that* project, Damali's rent-a-negro.com is a significant
> initiative.
>
> best,
>
> Danny
>
> --
> http://www.dannybutt.net
>
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