[-empyre-] art and ethics
Christina Spiesel
christina.spiesel at yale.edu
Mon Jan 25 04:45:11 EST 2010
No problem then with granting speech rights to a fictional corporate
person! BTW, there is a documentary film (I think called The
Corporation) that relates its development in part to the end of slavery,
anxiety about race, etc. -- Christina
Saul Ostrow wrote:
> Eg identifying and endowing the ex-slave (whose being is that of
> expropriated property) as a citizen with rights, is equivalent to
> granting citizenship to property
>
>
> On 1/23/10 2:49 PM, "Christiane Robbins" <cpr at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> No worries especially as there's no difference of opinion here. I
> was simply trying to draw out your clarification below as I
> thought it to be a significant point. And ... clearly, emailing
> and texting do not lend themselves to delving into deep
> (historical) context.
>
> To my mind, this all is circulating around legal fictions -
> initially that a " freed slave" was considered as an entity apart
> from that of an "American," to that of a corporation being
> considered as a person, and to the permutation that the aspect of
> financing (monetization) of "free speech" has now been concretized
> into our legal system as one and the same as the guaranteed right
> of individual free speech or utterance.
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> C
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> On Jan 22, 2010, at 10:08 PM, Jun-Ann Lehman wrote:
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> Saul: Yes. Something along those lines.
>
> Christiane: Sorry for the opacity. Emailing on mobile phone is
> hard.
> To clarify. A special amendment should not have been necessary
> to guarantee the basic rights of freed slaves as long as freed
> slaves were recognised as full-Americans, which of course,
> they weren't. The 14th amendment almost reads as absolution
> for enslavement. Should the 14th amendment, therefore, in this
> day and age, be regarded as a form of segregation for
> descendants of freed slaves and abused by corporate America
> which has the funds to pay lawyers to rake through the
> constitution for commercial advantage.
>
>
> On 23/01/2010, at 1:16 PM, Saul Ostrow wrote:
>
> Perhaps the 14th amendment should have been an affirmation
> of the rights of all citzens of the United States,
> regardless of color, religion or national origin
>
>
> On 1/22/10 5:43 PM, "Christiane Jetztzeit"
> <cpr at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Your point is well taken. However, I find your
> statement somewhat opaque: "But the thing is, u hv to
> ask why a special amendment isn't required to
> guarantee the basic rights of regular Americans."
>
>
>
> On Jan 22, 2010, at 1:58 PM, Jun-Ann Lehman wrote:
>
>
>
> Perhaps the reasons for introducing the 14th
> amendment were flawed. Freed slaves shouldn't hv
> needed to be singled out as a separate entity
> requiring basic rights if they had been regarded
> as a part of the mainstream post -constitutional
> American population in the first place.
>
> If the 14th amendment was challenged, it could
> solve a lot of problems. The thing is, no one
> would dare because it guarantees basic rights for
> freed slaves. But the thing is, u hv to ask why a
> special amendment isn't required to guarantee the
> basic rights of regular Americans. Freed slaves
> should hv been regarded as Americans protected by
> the American constitution. Perhaps that's what the
> 14th amendment should hv sought to achieve - the
> INCLUSION of freed slaves, not their exclusion.
>
> jun-ann lehman___ junann at junann.com ___+61 410
> 506 559___
>
> On 23/01/2010, at 7:44, Gerry Coulter
> <gcoulter at ubishops.ca> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Not to worry Christiane -- Americans will
> continue to get the politicians they deserve
> (as do we all)
>
>
>
> best
>
>
>
> gerry
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> [empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On
> Behalf Of Christiane Robbins [cpr at mindspring.com]
> *Sent:* January 22, 2010 12:20 PM
> *To:* soft_skinned_space
> *Subject:* Re: [-empyre-] art and ethics
>
>
>
>
> Actually, I find the unleashing of
> corporatist art to be among the very least of
> worries as a result of yesterday's ruling.
>
>
>
> I'm certain that others can offer a far more
> delineated and informed accounting. However,
> in the interim, for those of you unfamiliar
> with this stunning ruling ( some are referring
> to it as a coup ) from January 21, the US
> Supreme Court basically has overtly
> transformed our democracy to that of an
> oligarchy - all under the aegis of the
> guaranteed right of free speech to all "
> individuals , " including "corporate personhood."
>
>
>
> Specifically, and in abbreviated form, the
> Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution
> was created at the conclusion of the Civil War
> granting basic rights to freed slaves. Since
> that point in time it has often been utilized
> by attorneys representing corporate interests
> to extend additional rights to businesses far
> more frequently than to freed slaves. Prior to
> 1886, corporations were referred to in U.S.
> law as "artificial persons." However, in 1886,
> after a series of cases brought by lawyers
> representing the expanding railroad interests,
> the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were
> "persons" and entitled to the same rights
> granted to people under the Bill of Rights.
> Since this ruling, the States have lost the
> legal structures that allowed for people to
> control corporate behavior. In other words,
> corporations came to acquire rights reserved
> for individual citizens.
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> The US Supreme Court ruled yesterday that
> corporations (and unions, lest they not be
> counted!) now have no limits on their
> financing political campaigns to any political
> campaign or candidate. Connecting the dots is
> rather a simple task in this situation. And
> this was all done to ensure free speech...
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> I'm hoping that others can parse this issue
> for a better understanding -
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> Chris
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> On Jan 22, 2010, at 8:26 AM, Timothy Murray
> wrote:
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> Nick, could you explain your reference to the recent Supreme Court
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> ruling to our -empyre- community, since a major proportion of our
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> -empyreans- live outside the US? I'm also wondering why you think
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> that a ruling regarding political lobbying (if this is what you're
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> referencing) would unleash a genre of corporatist art.
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> Thanks so much.
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> Tim
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> international participants...but how to de-link these states seems
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> impenetrable - like the recent Supreme Court ruling that will
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> certainly unleash a whole new genre of freely circulating
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> corporatist art, no?
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> nick
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> From: Johanna Drucker < <mailto:drucker at gseis.ucla.edu>
> drucker at gseis.ucla.edu>
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> To: <mailto:jhaber at haberarts.com> jhaber at haberarts.com;
> soft_skinned_space < <mailto:empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>
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> Sent: Mon, January 11, 2010 8:12:46 PM
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> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 62, Issue 13
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> John,
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> Much different. I agree.
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> I do want to make a space for art that is not tasked with being the
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> moral conscience of the culture too.
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> Johanna
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> On Jan 11, 2010, at 4:09 PM, John Haber wrote:
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> The analogy to rebranding is very interesting indeed, in an excellent
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> post. Let me ask more about it, though. Now, to me it's only an
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> analogy, and of course whatever venting we may wish to have about
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> torture and Israeli policy aren't instantly illuminating regarding art
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> except as a kind of red flag. (Hey, there's injustice in the
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> world, so
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> don't let it happen in this realm.) Indeed, it could actually
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> the problem, by suggesting distinct realms after all, which the whole
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> problematic of complicity in art is supposed to question. Thus, my
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> question would be this: if the political analogy is silence, then
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> does
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> that open possibilities for art, in which making visible is part of
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> game? Now, I realize that acknowledging something, as argued well,
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> doesn't make it go away. But it's still different from silence.
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> John
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> --
> Timothy Murray
> Director, Society for the Humanities
> <http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/>
> http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/
> Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New
> Media Art, Cornell Library
> <http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu>
> http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu
> Professor of Comparative Literature and
> English
> A. D. White House
> Cornell University
> Ithaca, New York 14853
> _______________________________________________
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