[-empyre-] "Save As: Social Memory"

[Jon Ippolito]

Hi Jussi,

Thanks for the kind words about Re-collection; I hope it doesn't disappoint. I can promise a chapter that addresses this quandary raised in your panel:

On Dec 2, 2013, Jussi Parikka wrote:

> a situation which is defined by blatant censorship and a distrust of any centralised governmental organisation who could not be trusted to preserve the counter-memory of the activists. Indeed, this is where paradoxically the probably meticulous work of “archiving” the activists was more of a police-operation of following up the “dubious” elements, tagging them, secret arrests, databases of suspects, etc.

Rick and I cite Diana Taylor's distinction between the written archive and the supposedly ephemeral "repertoire." Although Spanish and Portuguese colonists outlawed oral performance during the Conquest, sacred dancing, mask carving, and other indigenous methods of preservation survived the attempts by conquistadors and the church to stamp them out. We think books are archival, but they can be burned, while many core aspects of Native American culture somehow survived 500 years of invasion from a continent bent on genocide and armed with muskets and smallpox.

Can today's vibrant networked culture persevere by being re-performed in an analogous fashion, without leaving the NSA a trail of digital breadcrumbs to round up the netroots?

jon
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