[-empyre-] Re: empyre Digest, Vol 5, Issue 5

[ryan griffis <grifray@yahoo.com>]

i very much relate to Kate's desire to activate "transgressions" as a 
way of moving beyond borders. but i wonder about the de facto 
acceptance of the border that is to be transgressed. i don't mean to 
suggest a utopian notion of "thinking our way out of the problem," but 
maybe there are ways of being/acting/communicating that are opposed to 
forms of oppression, but aren't defined by them.
for example, while the EFF, ACLU and other civil rights groups - not to 
mention other direct action coalitions - are extremely important (can't 
emphasize this enough) in the US, i'm also really interested in 
projects that seem to have little value for capital P politics (a 
system of oppositions and allegiances rooted in ideology), but are 
political propositions nonetheless.
http://mydailyconstitution.org/
some of my thoughts here stem from critics of spatial politics, like 
Rosalyn Deutsch, who point at the patriarchal position of most 
criticism of the diminishing "public sphere" and its tendency to suffer 
from agoraphobia and amnesia - i.e. neglecting the historic differences 
that were forcefully excluded from those public spaces many critics see 
as currently under attack. Jackie Stevens' "Reproducing the State" is 
another interesting approach to considering borders and other 
directions.
http://jacquelinestevens.org/
i'm interested in the implications of this for the way the "public 
resource" of the internet is being shaped, especially with notions of 
the "commons" and other historic spatial metaphors being used as 
arguments.
hoping this makes sense,
ryan

> > I wanted to use the term 'transgressions' in connection with 'border
> > crossing' for this month's discussion because for me, carried within 
> > the
> > concept of 'transgression' as a human activity, is the idea not just 
> > of
> > questioning and challenging boundaries - laws, norms, behaviours, 
> > values,
> > categories, systems, identities - but of actually finding ways of 
> > moving
> > beyond them. 
> >