Taking Sides - Konstanz (2018)

t i s t a n i e k g d s p r o g r am m e Dear Conference Participants, We warmly welcome you to Konstanz and our international conference on “Taking Sides – Theories, Practices, Cultures of Participation in Dissent”. [ w e l c o m e [ During the event, we will explore different perspectives on dissent, while understanding practices, cultures and theories of resistance, dispute and opposition as inherently participative. The concept of side-taking will hence be investigated in different facets. Firstly, as assuming a position/opinion in opposition to another or even the affiliation with a cause or unpopular standpoint. Secondly, in a play on words, thinking about side-taking also includes the taking of sites as a manner of protest, occupation, appropriation or acquisition. Thirdly, taking a side implies an active decision, rather than a circumstantial factor, that involves subjects’ positions as well as their subjectification as such. We are looking forward to the next days with inspiring talks from our keynote speakers and productive workshops on the topics of Queer Thinking, Decolonizing Knowledge, Media Activism and Theories of Critique. We are convinced our joined discussions will further our understanding of contemporary issues, recent protests and movements, artistic subversion and dissent, online activism as well as historic developments and elemental theories of dissent. We wish you all a pleasant and successful conference Elke Bippus, Sebastian Dieterich, Anne Ganzert and Isabell Otto with the research group “Media and Participation” 1 p o 28.06.2018 Keynotes Athena Athanasiou [Athens] 18:00 – 19:00 Dinner at the venue 19:30 r g 29.06.2018 Keynotes Emma Perez [Tucson] 09:00 – 10:00 Lunch 12:45 – 14:30 Gabriella Coleman [Montreal] 10:15 – 11:15 Judith Revel [Paris] 11:45 – 12:45 14:30 Parallel Workshops 2 Queer Thinking with A. Athanasiou & Julia Bee Decolonizing Knowledge with E. Perez & Sebastian Dieterich led by Isabell Otto led by Elke Bippus ECRs Kamran Behrouz Nadine Hartmann Lisa Andergassen ECRs Sophie Vögele Nina Bandi r m a m e 14:30 Media Activism with G. Coleman & Christoph Brunner Theories of Critique with J.Revel & Roberto Nigro led by Anne Ganzert led by Erich Hörl ECRs Louise Haitz Julia Ihls ECRs Michel Schreiber Mathias Denecke Lena Götz Jonas Kellermeyer Dinner 17:00 30.06.2018 Performance Lecture by ‚Geheimagentur‘ 10:00 – 11:00 Final Discussion with all participants 11:30 – 12:30 End of the Conference 3 venue: Hed i cke ’s Terracot ta Lui s en st raße 9 7 8 4 6 4 Konstanz 4 e u r q e k i t n n g h i 5 A t he n a A th a n a s i o u Taki n g sides, or what c r i ti cal theory can (still) do k n e e e e o s a r y t p k Taking sides raises the questions of how bodies come to inhabit and materialize space, who is fighting whom and why, whose side are we on, what other si des are put aside or left out, from which place and in which epistemic and political framework we take sides. In other words, taking sides involves becoming situa ted in space and time through the collective work of always figuring out what’s at stake. In this paper, I will take the opportunity of theorizing the question of taking sides to think again about critique and critical theory. My wager is to propel a reflection on the question of what critical theory can do in these times of ongoing crises. Criticality involves the ex-centric and dispossessed structure of the subject vis-à-vis the conditions of its emergence, which has thorough going implications for situated epistemologies and resistances-to-come. And so I ask: how can we rethink the political implications of crisis/critique/criticality in instating a possibility for decolonial, counter-nati onalist, feminist/queer, anti- fascist social and politi cal life in our times. Athena Athanasiou is Professor of Social Anthropolo gy and Gender Theory at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Greece. She has been a fellow at the Center for the Study of Social Difference, at Columbia University. She is a member of the editorial advisory board of the journals Critical Times and Feminist Formations. Recent books: Agonistic Mourning: Political Dissidence and the Women in Black (Edin burgh UP, 2017); Life at the Limit: Essays on Gender, Body and Biopolitics (Athens, 2007); Crisis as a ‘State of Exception’ (Athens, 2012). 6 Julia B e e Wr i t i ng thro ugh the Milieu : Social Mobi l i t y a n d Fem i ni st Cri ti qu e as Ex isten tial Pract i ce s The ability and the right to take a side_site is distri buted very differently among the social world. In our professional careers taking a side_site is a practice of writing: We art iculate a place we inhabit, often a position in our work without naming it, of ten without perceiving this act consciously. Taking a side_site is speaking_writing (from) a site_side. It is an act of gendered and gendering speech as it is a social one (among many others). It seems to me to be a pressing issue in recent femi nist theory as well as in STS to take partial perspec tives and make the place visible where one speaks from. This critique articulates at the same time the necessity of integrating the place and the position one speaks from. One does not speak from nowhere but articulates always a social position, a positon in a social milieu. In Academia these discursive power relations are also gate keepers for the production of knowledge. Taking a side is also what is expected from our professional practice as scholars. In this we create sites, habitats of thinking and discussing. How can we take a side_site without occupying it as colonizers? How can we think of social positions wi thout taking them as eternal, unchangeable or worse: reproducing the very power relations we want to analyze? I propose to think about the immanence of critiq ue in relation to processes of taking a side_site as a political practice in our own writing. In combi ning queer, feminist and social theory I ask myself how can we articulate a social and gendered place without fixing it by reproducing the existing power relations? How can we share partial perspectives wi- c o mm e n t 7 thout denying the social world to speak up when we speak, in our speaking? In my thesis, I turned to micropolitics, performing my own writing as a feminist practice of desire and writing myself into what is traditionally called analysis. In recent years, I became more and more interested in methods as a creative mode of existence in media theory. Writing can become an existential territory. “A critical thinking finds hold in itself ” (153) Didier Eribon writes in Principes d’une pensée critique (2016) about writing as a technique of emanci pation. How can a critical thinking today become a hold, an infrastructure of existence without denying the fundamental social ontology, i.e. relationality that Judith Butler as well as Butler and Athena Athanasiou brought forth in their recent publications? How can we construct methods of social immanence in our practice as researchers and teachers giving hold and consistency to one’s upspeaking and protest without once again foregrounding the autonomy of the subject? That also involves taking a position in which I see the danger of splitting up into individual strong sub jects that already have a position. In Butlers and Athanasious Dis possession: The Performative in the political (2013) it is precisely this struggle of building up a movement neither being rooted in a strong subject nor in the unity of same subjects but in heterogeneity and in the insight of being constructed by others, made by various forces, and speaking as an interpellated subject in an always already existing discourse. Donna Haraway (in: “Situated Know ledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”, 1988) and Didier Eribon, two thinkers spe aking from very different genealogies, places and traditions, both underline the importance of situated knowledge and a voice that is situated and Julia Bee Taking sides not speaking from a universalist point of view (often the white, male, heterosexual, bourgeois point of view). In their very different yet connectable ways, Eribon 8 and Haraway speak to the point of the relation of the production of knowledge and place-making. In Eribon I understand situatedness as being a method (technique) of what could be termed “writing of social immanence” and through which he writes (about) his milieu and biography without taking it simply as an example of oppression but as a complex scene in which he is involved and which con stituted him. Here, theory and experience are sides of a complex and ongoing dialogue. The site becomes a side of writing par le milieu. Thinking through the milieu is how Isabelle Stengers describes scientific practices by which she does not only mean the social but the non/human milieu. Based on thinking though the milieu writing through the milieu is a technique combining queer and class movement in Eribon. For him the place of childhood, Reims, did not facilitate a milieu he could exist in and he had to leave this place to survive. 1 As a gay man his social milieu forced him into denial and flight. This writing about the past is also directed towards the future since it enables him to take a position and a side_site of articulation: a technique of existence as a mode of immanent critique. 2 In his semi-biographical and semi-theoretical books he starts his analysis with a situation and a place and this leads him to his life today. All his writing is a movement back and forth in between place and time, Paris, Amiens and Reims, a constant struggle for a position and a side of articulation. He is writing himself in and out of his childhood milieu. He is writing himself from a precarious side_site, a position of being hurt and of exis tential vulnerability. Writing in and with vulnerability is an existential technique. Eribon starts with his family foremost his mother and his grandmothers living and working conditions. By doing this he repeatedly writes about (subjective) lived experience as a starting point for (objecti ve) power analysis. Rooted in the social world and the everyday life as a side_site of constant struggle he reports 9 scenes of power from school, the factory, and the retirement home in which his mother lived in her last years. During his career as a scholar and author it was his class background that caused his painful shame not his homosexuality he stated in various inter views. This is also what can be termed “writing shame”: In his latest book Principes d’une pensée critique ” (2016) the affect of shame caused by his class background stimulates and modulates positions of critique. Critique does not start from a detached and distanced analysis, but with one’s affective existence in the social world: A feeling that makes the site of existence felt. Writing one’s place (site) is a feminist practice in the first place and Eribon situates himself in this tradition. Obviously, this is a strategy of undoing the boundary in between the private and the political: Today, the politization of one’s own biography could even be a site of experimentation to resist neo liberal forces of individualization. Eribons self-analytics are never just obje ctive and neutral self-ra tionalizations enabling a masculinist selfcreation. They are creative and emancipatory practices, as he underlines: Writing a self-analysis is a practice, which radically thinks th rough one’s social make up without reproducing its underlying dynamics of self-determinism. Additionally, the self-analysis is also a precarious form of resistance against the neoliberal regime of self-improvement and identity management. 3 It could be related to what Judith Butler famously wrote in Gender Trouble in the begin ning of the 90s about the subject of feminism never constituted on sameness and identity as its bases, but on difference and heterogeneity. 4 What does it mean to speak and write one’s place into one’s rese arch making it perceivable as site of precariousness and as site of contingency? How to create a side_site for the new to happen, a site_side to evolve? How does writing a site into one’s work can function as an emancipatory practice ? How does writing a 10 side_site change our practice as scholars without ending up in self-confessions and privatizing the political instead of the other way around? How can we mobilize the process of taking a side as process of struggle, that does not only rationalize and reflect, but mobilizes political affects and that is dee ply related to places and situations (=sites) we speak from? How can we invent existential modes of placespeaking, time- writing that create collective sites_sides of social change? 1 2 3 4 In Bo u rdi eu , t h e con ce p t o f hab it us is d eve lo p e d in rel a ti on to s p a ce a n d ti m e: I n the colon i al si t u at i o n B o urd ie u f irst int ro d uce d his n oti on of a h a b i tu s th a t cannot act u ali ze i t s e l f in re l at io n to s p ace and p l a ce a n y m ore s i n ce Fren c h co lo ni ali sm d est roye d t he s ub je c t s m il ie u f und am en ta l ly. P i er re B ou rd i eu : Alge rische Skizzen . Au s d e m Franzö s is c he n vo n And re a s P feu f fer, A c h i m Ru ss er, Be r n d Sch wi b s u . a. Frankf ur t am Main 2 0 1 0 . Fo r t h e di scu ssi on of im m ane nt c r it iq ue s e e B r ian M a ss u m i : “ O n C r i ti q u e.” I n f le x io ns 4 , “Tran sversa l Fie l d s o f E xp e r ie nce ” ( De ce m b er 2010) . 337- 340. T he German t i t le of B ut le rs /At hanas io us Dis p o ss e ss i on ex p ress es th i s m ore c le ar ly t h a n t h e En g li sh o ne : Die Mac ht d e r U nte rd r ü ck ten . A u s d em E n g l i s c h en von T ho m as At zert . Z ü ric h, B e r l in 2 0 1 4 . And as Eri bon wri tes ve r y s im il ar to B ut le r to d ay : I t i s th e a ss em b ly i ts el f , th a t i s co ntested i n toda y’s p o l it ic s o n t he st re e t s . E r ib o n ob v i ou s ly wr i tes f rom a d i f fe re nt con cep t u a l b ac kg ro und t han B ut le r b ut in L a q u esti on g a y a s wel l a s i n Re to ur à Rei ms a n d L a s o c iè te co m m e ve rd ic t ( 2 0 1 3) th ere i s a n i n s i sten ce on th e pe r fo rmat i ve a ct of a ss e m b ly in co nt rast to a p o l it i cs of rep res en ta ti on of a l rea d y ex istin g su bj ect s li ke B ut le r d o e s in No te s tow ard a p er for m a ti ve th eor y of a s s e mb ly (2 0 1 5 ). Th i s m ig ht s e e m a d ang e ro us p o int o f com p a r i s on s i n ce E r i b on b a s e s h i s wri t i n g on a c r it iq ue o f p s yc ho analy s is , w h i ch i s key for B u tlers wr i ti n g and u n d erstan d i n g o f p re car io us ne ss . 11 Julia Bee is assistant professor for image theory at Bauhaus University Weimar. She works on perception and desire, gender media theory, visual anthropology and image based research practices. Recent publications: „Erfahrungsbilder und Fabulationen. Im Ar chiv der Visuellen Anthropology“, in: Lena Stölzl/Vrääth Öhner (Hg.): Sichtbar-machen. Politiken des Dokumentarischen. Berlin: Vorwerk 8 2017, (transl.: „Experience-Images and Fabulation. In the Archive of Visual Anthropology“, in: Lena Stölzl/Vrääth Öh ner: Making Visible. Politics of the Documentary, Berlin Vorwerk 8,); „‚Die Welt spielt‘. Spiel, Animation und Wahrnehmung“, in: Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky/Reinhold Görli ng (Hg.): Denkweisen des S piels, Berlin/Wien: Turia und Kant 2017 („The World Plays. Play, Animation and Perception“, in: Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky/ Reinhold Görling: Modes of Thinking Play); „Dramatisierungen des Anfangens. Die Intros von Homeland, True Blood und True Detec tive.“ („Dramatization of Beginning. The Intros of Homeland, True Blood and True Detective”, in: Gerko Egert/Adam Czirak (Hg.): Dramaturgien des Anfangens, Berlin: Neofelis 2015; „Gewalt, Be gehren Differenz. Zu einer Politik der Wahrnehmung“ („Violence, Desire, Difference. Toward a Politics of Perception“), in: Jochem Kotthaus (Hg.): Sexuelle Gewalt im Film, Weinheim/Basel: Bertz& Fischer 2015. 12 We apparently live in the time of digital disrupture. A notion born out of the merging of mathematical “ob jectiv ity”, the equalization of computers and brains and utopian dreams of equality and user-agency, as well as dystopian visions of control loss, AI “on the lose” and the disappearing of a haptical perceivable world. This division gave way for a particular discourse about the material and the immaterial, which is pitting the dumpy, stubborn materiality of the analog, against the airy, flexible immateriality of the digital. A division, which counterparts were later attributed with oppositional notions like the old and the new, the irrational and the rational, body and mind, hardware and softw are, as well as the real and the “mediated”. These contiguities had a particularly strong impact on photography theory, since the notion of a direct (cau sal) relationship of the depicting medium with the de picted object (and therefore mediating the “real”) falls within photography’s remit. So much so that the cha racteristic closely tied to the photographic truth claim has become a distinguishing term of its own : The index – as a trace left behind by the photographed object on a material surface – serves as the dis tinguishing feature, which not only divides the history of photography in pre and post-digital, but helped cementing the analog-digital-divide itself. In my current research I am describing the announce ment of the “post-photographic era” in the early 1990s as a discoursive event, which has functioned (and still does) as a marker of the asserted gap between the analog and the digital. By looking at the reflections on the changed status of photography’s truth claim I am describing the “post-photographic” as an example for a specific discourse which has its origins in early cybernetic definitions of the “analog” and the “digital” q u eer l a d g s i a e a e s n r s n th i n k i n g 13 and naturalizes ontological implementations which are shaping the understanding of our current digital culture. My interest in the workshop is therefore twofold. Firstly, I am very interested in discussing understandings of knowledge making by taking a position/counterposition, bringing about meaning through demarcation. And secondly, I am hoping to tackle the question of how dissent can be possible within a medial dispositive (aka the internet and internet of things), which participative aspects have not delivered freedom but control and paranoia. My research follows in a tradition which questions the possibility of taking an external position, and I do share the idea that critique is only possible „from within“ by reflecting „its situation, ‘ecolo gies of practices’ and partiality.“ (et. Judith Revel) Lisa Andergassen is an academic researcher and writer based in Berlin. Her research focuses on the relationship between photography and the digital and and Porn Studies. S h e w a s a m e m b e r o f t h e t h e D FG R e s e a rc h Tra i n i n g C e n tre Visibility and Visualisation – Hybrid Forms of Pictorial Knowledge at University of Potsdam and has co-edited “Neue Perspektiven auf Pornografie und Gesellschaft” (published in 2014 with Berz & Fischer) and „Raumdeutung. Zur Wiederkehr des 3D-Films“ (published in 2012 with transcript). She teaches classes on porn studies and photography theory at Potsdam University and University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. 14 Truth-Telling in Feminist Practices Feminism has reached a new visibility in public dis courses which are decidedly shaped by media-specific forms of avowal and confession – culminating in the ultimate density and terseness of #metoo, a formula which is at once universal and singular. This activism can b e placed within a feminist tradition, which originates in practices of the 1960s and 1970s, in consci ousness-raising groups, as well as in radical artistic practices. I am interested in asking whether the staging of fema le solidarity and feminist mobilization in this dramati cally pointed yet ultimately reduced gesture of avowal serves as evidence of empirical foundation, as attesta tion of authentic knowledge or absolute credibility, or even as a code for an identity politics. While Michel Foucault famously places the confession within the discourse of truth and sexuality and accuses p sychoanalysis of perpetuating this discourse in a “mandatory production of confessions,” Jacques Lacan claims that what happens in the “talking cure” brings about a kind of jouissance which can never be “forced” into taking place and makes us “feel the weight of our speech.” While for Foucault confession, even as an act of “telling one’s own story” is an “obligatory act of speech,” an “imperious compulsion,” Lacan insists that there is an unbridgeable gap between knowledge and truth in language. The act of speaking produces knowledge but language at the same time poses an impossible ambition of knowledge for truth. I am interested in examining the implicit promise of feminist practices of “speaking up” with these two positions in mind. I would highly appreciate to discuss my reading of feminist practices of dissent in the con text of this conference. Athena Athanasiou’s work (especially her edited volume on the philosophy of q u eer n i h t n a n a m n d e r a th i n k i n g 15 Luce Irigaray) has been very helpful for my research. I believe that my project would qualify as a thinking of “the body as political instance,” specifically the gendered body, and would therefore like to participate in the “Queer Thinking” workshop, or,as a second choice, in Judith Revel’s “Critique” workshop. Nadine Hartmann is currently finishing her Phd thesis in a e s t h e t i c s o n t h e t o p i c ‘ T h i n k i n g L i k e a G i r l’ – T h i n k i n g t h e G i r l : F i g u r a t i o n , P h i l o s o p h y, S e x u a l D i f f e r e n c e a t t h e B a u h a u s U n i v e r s i t ä t W e i m a r. S h e i s a m e m b e r o f t h e D F G N e t z werk Anderes Wissen and has taught art and design theory a t U n i v e r s i t ä t P o t s d a m , B a u h a u s - U n i v e r s i t ä t W e i m a r, a n d t h e Berlin University of the Arts. She has published several articles on the theoretical works of Georges Bataille as well as on Freud and Lacan. Her current research focuses on femin i s t p h i l o s o p h y, p s y c h o a n a l y s i s , a n d a e s t h e t i c s . 16 Rejected Bodies The following essay is a hazardous attempt to break out of the bubble of identity politics 1 and investigate the fragments of micropolitics 2 , in order to connect the dots and trace the mismatches between the desire and the commodification of sexuality and pleasure within the Modern queer culture, a process which has been forged and enabled by capitalist structures. This essay includes a series of illustratio ns based on real images of either friends or people who I met or spoke to on dating apps, as a reflection on the mecha nism of desire in our contemporary digital culture. 3 In fact it’s impossible to deny that the emergence of capitalism was beneficial for queer movements espe cially with how it helped to decode the notion of sexuality and heterosociality. As we know, capitalism is a regime of decoding. Jonathan Roffe argues; „For example, the coding of sexual relations through marriage, the church, morals and popular culture – which in different societies locate the practice of sex in certain contexts, whether that is marriage, prostitution or youth culture – has been decoded in capitalist societies. This is first of all, for Deleuze and Guattari, a good thing, making possible new kinds of relations that were excluded by the coding regimes in question. In capitalism, however, a correlative axiomatization has taken place making possible the sale of sex as a product (what Karl Marx called a ‘commodity’)“ .4 In capitalism, desires, frustrations and identities are commodified within the market which has clearly made our body as part of the chain of profit. Our bodies literally help to generate profits for shareholders. The following essay forms part of an artistic research project and is an analytical endeavor to decode our queer-digital culture. The corner stone of queer q u eer k r b r z a a e o m n h u th i n k i n g 17 politics was a protest against former codifications and binaries, a protest against the hegemony. In addition how come the queer culture has been re-coded again within the capitalist market? 1 2 3 4 As a qu eer-g en d er/ no n- b inar y, m ul t i- d is c ip l inar y, N om a d i c a r ti st, b or n i n Teh ra n A thou san d s pla tea us , cap ital is m and s c hizo p hre n i a , Gi les D eleu z e, Fél i x G uattari , t ra n sl. b y B r ian Mass um i, B lo o m s b ur r y a ca d em i c , 2014, p p .208 https:// www. 3 6 5 efc p . c h/b oy s - d o nt - c r y / D e leu ze d i ct i on ary, E d . b y Ad r ianne Par r, E d inb urg h Un i vers i ty P ress , 2010, pp.40 K a m r a n B e h r o u z i s a V i s u a l A r t i s t , b o r n a n d r a i s e d i n Te h r an, currently working and living in Zurich. He works with multiple medias, and combines the act of painting with animation, installations, costumes, and performance. His works deal with ‘politics of location’ in association with Cosmopolitics. Kamran saturates the Queer Identity throughout his art, in order to draw a cartography of belonging and displacement. Politics of image center his visual practices, transfigured in his theoretical works, as cultural translations and textual trafficking. His latest publication is a t r a n s l a t i o n o f S a r a A h m e d ’s l a t e s t e s s a y i n P e r s i a n l a n g u a g e , a l a n g u a g e t h a t d o e s n o t r e g i s t e r g e n d e r. 18 o d l e c k d z o i e e o n n l w g d e 19 E m m a Pe re z T he will to feel: decolon ial a f fe c t i ve kn ow le dg e s In my current work, I am interrogating the coloniality of feelings, which I define as feelings that emerge from the darker side of the U.S. political terrain during this historical “Trump” moment. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism— I identify as coloniality of feelings, which must be decolonized to create a hopeful future. k n e e e 20 e o s a r y t p k Dr. Emma Pérez earned a PhD in history from the University of California, Los Angeles. She recently joined the University of Arizona as a Research Social Scientist at the Southwest Center and a Professor in the Department of Gender/Women’s Studies. Pérez has published fiction, essays and the history mono graph, The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History (1999). Pérez’s first novel, Gulf Dreams, was published in 1996 and is considered one of the first Chicana lesbian novels in print. Her second novel, Forgetting the Alamo, Or, Blood Memory (2009) earned the Isherwood Writing Grant (2009), 2nd place in Historical Fiction from International Latino Books (2010) as well as the NACCS Regional Book Award for fiction (2011). She continues to research and write about LGBT Chicanx/ Mex icanx through a decolonial queer of color lens. The topic of resistance as simultaneously taking sides / taking part has been crisscrossing my research on different levels. I am in the third year of my PhD in philosophy and my research interests are located at the intersection of philosophy, aesthetic practices, and political questions. I am working on a notion of non-representation conceived as a political and as an aesthetic-material figuration. While I started to develop the notion of non-representation from the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition, Bergson, Bacon) I went on to look at different constellations (social and political movements, artistic practices, queer feminist and materialist concerns) in which I aim at tracing these instances of non-representation. Mainly stemming from this research, I will shortly point out three ways in which the topic of the workshop relates to my research. Resistance as an ecology of gestures: The question underlying my intention to invoke the concept of the gesture is how to resist in times of all subsuming capitalism and fascist tendencies while tryi ng to join thought and practice, to connect different kinds of practices (political, aesthetic, …) and think beyond the inside/outside institutional divide. For this I propose the concept of a political ecology of gestures. On the hand I refer here to Giorgio Agamben’s definition of a gesture as “… the exhibition of a mediality: […] the process of making a means visible as such.” (Agamben 2000) However what is lacking there is a perspective in time that goes beyond a mere concatenation of in stances. Therefore, on the other hand, I refer to Isabelle Stengers who uses the notion of an ecology of practice which holds open the possibility of a relation of practices as ‘cosmic event’, “a mutation which does d ecolon i z i n g n i n a b a n d i k n owled g e 21 not depend on humans only, but on humans as belonging,...“, belonging to this world (Stengers 2005). Taking sides / nonperformance: While the term ecologies of practices involves a perspective of different times and their beco mings, there remains another issue with time and history when it comes to resistance and dissent. In a talk Fred Moten (25.09.2015, MoMA) proposes the notion of nonperformance as a way to resist that is not caught up in the narrative of the either/or, either accept or resist, agency or subjugation. The example he uses is the freed woman slave who chooses in court to remain with their “ow ners” and thus rejects the subjectivity proposed to her within the given framework that is still caught up in the colonial pattern. The grounding of the question of resisting in the history of coloniality asks in Moten’s terms for a different regi ster on the level of language, aesthetics and politics. This is for me an ongoing question and process of questioning that involves the interrogating of its own positioning and taking sides. Epistemology of ignorance: I have been involved in several artistic research projects in collaboration with the artist duo knowbotiq (Yvonne Wilhelm, Christian Hübler). Most recently the research has turned around the issue of post/colonial amnesia in Switzer land and the question of how to intervene, how to counter or oppo se it. By post/colonial amnesia I mean “an epistemology of igno rance“ (Gloria Wekker) that runs through bodies, technologies and subjectivities and materializes in our sensations, thoughts and desires. Given this sturdy and flexible texture, it seems that common ways of engaging are futile. I therefore propose a feminist material reading of possible interventions and suggest that inter vening involves acting on the onto-epistemological level following Donna Haraway’s and Karen Barad’s concept of diffraction which opens up to possibilities of entanglement and response-ability. 22 Nina Bandi is a philosopher and doctoral researcher at Lucerne School of Art and Design and teaches at Zurich University of the Arts. Since 2015 she has been part of the research project ‘What Can Art Do?’ funded by the Swiss National Research Fund on the relevance of politically engaged art. Her research interests include the interplay of aesthetics and politics, the relation between gendered bodies, technol o g y a n d m a t e r i a l i t y, a s w e l l a s q u e e r f e m i n i s t a n d p o s t / c o lonial thought. She regularly collaborates with the artist duo knowbotiq. 23 Critique through dissident participation: an endeavour bearing multiple challenges de co lo nizi n g s h v e o i ö l p e g e know le dge 24 I would like to address specific challenges that seem to be inherent to the project of critiquing power rela tions, privilege, and discriminatory processes. The di scussion presented here is inspired from experiences in higher education institutions, whereby my positioning is twofold: on one hand, from a researcher’s and theorist’s perspective, and on the other, from an activist’s and practitioner’s stance (Saner/Vögele/Vessely 2016). By way of understanding the location of critique, Sa bine Hark states that an inclusion into the structures subject to critique is a necessary condition to be able to produce other than hegemonic findings and under standings (2005, 68): “To change a field means to first of all change the rules of the game. The transformation of the rules, however, does not only demand a certain degree of virtuosity in understanding and navigating them, but it asks for – and this is precisely where the challenge and precarity of an ascertained critical project is located – the acceptance of the rules – and be it out of pragmatic necessity.” (Hark 2005, 70, my translation). Thus, although the entry into the structures seem to be a fundamental necessity for the development of a ground-breaking critique of them and for achieving change, by this move we necessarily acknowledge the very structures subject to our critique. Hark subsumes this as a “dissident participation”: “Dissidence and participation are, in other words, intricately enmeshed: Participation, and yes, acceptance of the reigning rules of the game is the paradoxical premise for achieving change. […] We (would like to) actually object the powers from which our being is de- pendent” (Hark 2005, 73, my translation). It is not the primary goal of dissident participation to abolish the structures. Rather, if we are to understand and develop effective possibilities of critical practices of knowledge, we are forced to work within the structures. This paradoxical positioning, however, entails major challenges that are intricately interwoven with the functioning of a) institutions and b) the intersectional working of societal discrimination. a) Institutional structures produce a specific norm, entity, and continuity. Thereby, the structures do not confirm a value but rather contribute widely to the values’ creation (Boltanski 2009, 122). Thus, beyond their reproduction, they first and foremost have the function of self-justification (Bogusz 2010, 139f) which effects a naturalizing of the structures and a concealing of their ongoing and active reproduction. It is, then, a task of dissident participation to uncover their workings and systematic obscuring and to, instead, search for ways that offer other dealings with them (Hark 2005, 392). This is most effectively achieved through a critiq ue that not only is familiar with institutional structures and norms, but also speaks from a position of power: the more cri tique is articulated from powerful positions within that can also trans late into numbers, the more it becomes potent and able to address such endeavours. However, the attainment of power within the structures requires a specific anchorage into them. This means that blind spots, which never are totally avoidable, from a more powerful stance, are not lapses, but actually inevitably part of a strategy allowing a more enabled participation within the dominant discourse (Thompson 2004, S. 39). This means that on one hand, the intervention into the structure is more effective, and on the other that the ability to question power relations and privilege diminishes. Luc Boltanski explains that this very back and forth actually is necessary for the existence of institutions: he states that an established order and its critique actually condition each other (2009, esp. 152). Critique, if accepted by the structures, al 25 ways remains tied to the institution it criticizes – eventually op timizing it – and reigned by its hegemonic structures (Boltanski 2009, 156). This observation renders the proximity of affirmation and dissidence, participation and transformation, subversion and normalizing, critique and regulation palpable and reveals how dissident participation is challenged to constantly be aware of an own immanence privilege, cooption, and blind spots (Hark 2005, 250) – but still has to navigate all these contradictory dimensions believing in an own critical agency. To be able to take on this defi ance, Hark suggests locating oneself on the margins between the inside and the outside of the institution; and thus, to also oscillate between scientific and activist positions. Indeed, in my own experience there is a great necessity of a continuous self-criticism that can be facilitated by the position in-between. Furthermore, an ongoing development of a sensibility for discriminating and oppressive processes as well as an understanding of their historicity is fundamental for being a dissident participant and for avoiding at most to get caught up in a reproduction of the structures that initially are the subject of critique. b) The discussion so far suggests that critique is positioned. It is within a specific positioning that dissident participation cautiously and with a ready awareness of an institutions’ functioning can attempt to navigate it. I would like to suggest here to further a discussion on this specific positionality of critique that allows for dissident participation: who can be a dissident participant within which structures? And for what kind of critique? Especially on the backdrop of societal and historically embedded power relations, as well as intersectional workings of differing forms of discrimi nation, it seems to be necessary to look into identity markers that enable dissident participation and others that are rejected by institutional structures such as of Swiss Higher Art Education. Re jected identity markers are relegated to subversiveness. In some cases it is their mere survival and existence that is challenged 26 and thus will never be able to take on a position of critique from within. For Swiss art schools, the difficulty of people from lower classes or with migration experiences to be accepted as students or hired as faculty provides an illustrative example. The questions I would like to address here are: what exactly is the premise of dissident participation? and: in what ways do historically grown power-relations grounded in colonialism with effects on current racism, classism, sexism, and ableism enable or hinder the cri tique of (western) institutional structures? References Bo gus z, T. (2 0 1 0 ): Z u r A kt ual ität vo n L uc B o l tans ki. W i es b a d en : V S- Ver l a g . Bo l tansk i , L . (2 0 0 9 ): De L a C r it iq ue . P ré c is d e S o c io log i e d e L’ ém a n ci p a ti on . Pa r i s : G al l i mard. H ar k, S. (2 0 0 5 ): Di ssi de nte Par t izip at io n. E ine Dis ku rs g es c h i ch te d es Fem i n i s m u s . Frank fu rt a. M. : Suhr kam p . T ho mpson , C. (2 0 0 4 ): Fo ucaul t s Zu- s c hnit t vo n K r it ik u n d A u f k l ä r u n g . I n : Pon g ra tz , L. A. /Wi mmer, M. /N ie ke , W. /Mass c he le in, J. ( Hg . ): N a c h Fou ca u l t. D i s k u rs - u n d mac h ta n a lyt i sch e Pe rs p e kt ive n d e r Päd ag o g ik. 3 0 - 49. W i es b a d en : V S- Ver l a g . S ane r, P. /Vög ele, S. /Vess e ly P. ( 2 0 1 6 ) : S c hl uss b e r ic h t A r t.Sc h ool .D i f feren ces . Res e archi n g In equ ali t i es and No r m at iv it ie s in t he Fie ld of H i g h er A r t E d u ca ti on . Zür i ch . [on li n e] h t tp s ://b lo g . zhd k. c h/ar t s c ho o l d if feren ces / f i les / 2016/ 10/ A SD _ S chlu ssberi ch t _ fi n al _ we b _ ve r l inkt . p d f [ 1 5 . 0 6 . 2 0 18] . 27 Sophie Vögele is research associate at the Institute for Art Education (IAE) at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) where she also holds teaching assignments. She namely co-directed the research project Art.School.Differences. Researching Inequalities and Normativities in Higher Art Education with Philippe Saner from 2014–16 and currently pursues related research in the field of Higher Art Educat i o n . C u r r e n t l y, s h e f u r t h e r m o r e i s p u r s u i n g a P h D i n S o c i o l o g y f r o m Yo r k U n i v e r s i t y To r o n t o o n s o c i a l i n e q u a l i t y, processes of Othering, and critical theories grounded in the f i e l d o f H i g h e r E d u c a t i o n . E a r l i e r, s h e c o n d u c t e d r e s e a r c h in Rajasthan and within the Swiss Asylum seeking process. She has varied teaching experience and delivered talks and w o r k h o p s w i d e l y. O n e o f h e r r e c e n t p u b l i c a t i o n s „ D i s s i d e n t e Te i l h a b e , V e r r a t u n d d i e V e r o r t u n g v o n K r i t i k . S e l b s t r e f l e x i v e Bemerkungen zu einem Forschungsprojekt“ is forthcoming in: Migrationsgesellschaftliche Diskriminierungsverhältnisse als Gegenstand und strukturierende Größe von Bildungssettings edited by Paul Mecheril et al. 28 m d e a i a c s t i m v i 29 G ab r i e ll a C o le m a n H a ck in g Ideolog ical Pu rity k n e e e 30 e o s a r y t p k In this talk I turn to hacker-based politics, activism, and hacktivism to probe the theme of the conference: taking sides. Hackers, I’ve argued elsewhere, distinguish themselves by their avid embrace of political intersectionality: hackers exhibit a high degree of to lerance for working across ideological differences. In many projects, pragmatic judgments or other consi derations often trump ideological ones—leading to si tuations where, say, an anticapitalist anarchist might work in partnership with a liberal social democrat without much friction or sectarian infighting. There are, to be sure, many counter-examples, past and present: some hacker-based projects stake a clearly demarcated political position thus limiting the sort of pa rticipants who can contribute but many projects whether concerning Free Software development or straight up hacktivism as is the case with Anonymous exhibit significant ideological elasticity. In this talk I map some of the distinctive characteristics defining hacker political action before turning to some of the possible causes behind and limits to hacker political intersectionality. Gabriella (Biella) Coleman holds the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill Uni versity. Trained as an anthropologist, her scholarship explores the intersection of the cultures of hacking and politics, with a focus on the sociopolitical impli cations of the free software movement and the digital protest ensemble Anonymous.She has authored two books, Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hack ing (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous (Verso, 2014). Ch risto ph B r u n n e r A c t i v i st S ense: In frastru ctu res of Res i sta n ce a nd Di fferenti a tion During the G20 2017 in Hamburg an alliance of local and translocal activist networks planned, built and ran the alternative international media center FC /MC. In close proximity to the locus of the summit, the Hamburg fair, the center was situated at the ballroom of the St. Pauli football stadium. Over the course of 96 hours the cen ter sustained an online live stream, hosted six press conferences, provided 400 work stations for journalists, activists, hackers, bloggers and media producers, and engaged itself in the production, commenting and informing on the protest throughout the city and beyond. Apart from its aim to support “critical journalism in times of affective populism” the center also built material and sensuous infrastructures of resistance and provided a space of affectively engaged practice and care. While the positioning of the center was more open than former Indymedia projects during such summits, its trajectory targeting not only counterinformation and alternative media production but a specific and affective re-distribution of the sensible across times, bodies and spaces, I will ask if “taking sides” might be less a figure of opposition but rather a continuo us practice of differentiation. Christoph Brunner is Assistant Professor in Cultural Theory at Leuphana University Luneburg. In his work he investigates affective and media dimensions of social movements. He initiated the ArchipelagoLab for Trans versal Practices, and is part of the Sense Lab in Montre al, the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Po licies (eipcp) and the editorial collective of transversal texts. His writings have been published in fibreculture, Third Text, Open!, transversal and Inflexions amongst others. c o mm e n t 31 Hearing Both Sides and the Maintenance of Silence me d i a l i h t o u s e a i z activ i sm 32 Cases of sexual violence, if (publicly) talked about, usually result in a “he said – she said”. This highly gendered scenario comes with the legal proposition in dubio pro reo (If in doubt for the accused). In discourse on sexual violence these two structuring paradigms are connected so close-ly that doubting the (mostly female gendered) accuser(s) co mes to be the obligatory approach. The gendered contradiction of testimonies, the legal proposition and the obligatory hypothesis of possibly lying accusers are not only to be found in court but also in media reporting on- and of-fline, and in everyday debating of sexual violence, pre-structu ring and determining the debate. Sexual violence as a mediated discourse, as something we know and (don’t) understand, some-thing we debate and/or ignore is therefore closely connected to the problems of in-/ credibility. I.e. the question of who ‘we’, ourselves subjects of a media culture and society, find credible, whose words we believe, and whose we dismiss, for reasons that are, as I want to argue, con-nected to the intersections of institutionalized discrimination and to mediating, highly productive paradigms or narratives, such as those mentioned above, producing subjecti vities and determin-ing approaches. Analyzing their functioning and productiveness in TV talkshows and several news articles concerning debates following the #Metoo movement, I have made two observations: 1.Paradigms of obligatory doubt function as the main tenance of silence. The paradigm of hearing two sides and not taking one, but staying in doubt, reproduces the no-tions of objectivity and constitutionality, ergo, a good and serious citizen is objective and nonpar-tisan, stays in doubt and leaves the judging to the court. Structured by this kind of rationalized disbelief, hearing both sides, results in hypothesizing the existence of concrete violence. The strik-ingly abstract hypothesizing rather than straightforward accusation of lying works like a logical rou tine of legitimate ignorance. It results in the sociocultural maintenance of silence even if the victims/survivors talk about what happened/happens to them. 2.“We are” at the site of not taking sides Hearing two contradicting sides and not or only ever hypothetically taking one, produces the site for the innocent and irresponsible centrist society. A ‘We’ constitutes as the disconnected middle of the two sides. If ‘we’ want to stay in the center of the constitutio nal society, we need to sepa-rate: from the (‘extreme’) sides, from each other. We therefore are not a community, dealing in solidarity, but disconnected. The rationality of doubting credibility results in irelationality – it dis-connects. To dissent, to oppose these structures that, in my analysis, work as silencing mechanisms we need to leave the site of not taking sides, pre-structured by judicial paradigms. We need to lose the structuring paradigms that build the ‘innocent’ undecidedness and mistakes hearing (questioning) with listening. Can and does fe minist media activism like the #Metoo movement create different sites of listening and talking that do not need to repeat the judicial logics of the hearing, doubting, judging? Are the social media platforms different sites of resistance against the sociopolitical and judiciary systems of silencing? Recent Publ icatio ns H aitz, L ou i se: h art a b e r fair – Dis kursst rate g ie n zum M i ss b ra u c h – W i e d a s S chwei g en verwalte n? , in: G e nd e r - B lo g d e r Ze its ch r i f t f ü r M ed i en wi ss en s ch a f t zfm, 3 0 . 0 3 . 2 0 1 8 , UR L : ht t p ://w w w. zf m e d ie nw iss e n s ch a f t.d e/ h a r ta b er fa i r. H aitz, L ou i se/ Kray, Ly d ia: P ro d ukt io n vo n U n- /G l aubwü rd i g kei t, i n : For u m W i ss en s chaft 3 4 , 3 / 2 0 1 7 , S . 2 2 - 2 5 . 33 Loui se Ha it z is u n i ve rsi t y assi stan t at t h e U n i ve rs i ty of Vi e n n a at the inst it ute of t h e at re -, fi l m - an d me d i a stu d i e s . S h e work s on her disserta t io n co n ce r n i n g t h e m e d i a p rod u c ti on of i n - / c redi bi lit y in ca ses o f sexu al v i o le n ce . S h e d i d h e r B a c h e lor (2 0 1 3 ) and Ma ster (2017 ) i n l i te rat u re -, ar t - an d m e d i a stu d i e s a t th e Uni ve rsit y o f K on stan z. S h e wo r ke d as re s e a rc h a ss i sta n t i n the s u bproject 2 o f t h e “ M e d i a an d Par ti c i p a ti on ” DFG re s e a rc h group : Recht a uf M i t sp rach e : D as C o ch le a - I m p la n ta t u n d d i e Zumu t ungen des Hö re n s ( Th e Ri g h t to a voi ce : T h e C oc h le a I m plant a nd t he im p o si t i o n s o f h e ar i n g ) . 34 t e h r e o f s i o c q i r i t e u 35 Ju d i th R eve l Resistan ce an d su bjectivat i o n : f ro m „ I “ to „We “ k n e e e 36 e o s a r y t p k Judith Revel is full professor of contemporary philo sophy at the Université Paris Nanterre, and member of the Sophiapol research team (EA 3932). She is a specialist of French and Italian thought after 1945. She is also member of the scientific boards of the IMEC (Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine) and of the Collège International de Philosophie, and member of the Centre Michel Foucault. Last book published: Foucault avec Merleau-Ponty. Ontologie poli tique, présentisme et histoire, Paris, Vrin, 2015. Robe rto Ni g ro In the History of Sexuality volume one Foucault wri tes: “Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a pos ition of exteriority in relation to power. Should it be said that one is always „inside“ power, there is no „escaping“ it, there is no absolute outside where it is concerned, because one is subject to the law in any case? […] This would be to misunderstand the strictly relational character of power relationships. Their existence depends on a multiplicity of points of resistance: these play the role of adversary, target, support, or handle in power relations. These points o f resistance are present every where in the power network”. A few years after Foucault’s death, Deleuze tried alrea dy to make clear what was at stake in Foucault’s last production. By citing some beautiful texts of Foucault, he clarifies the switch from an analytic of power to a topic centered on the question of subjectivation: “the most intense point of lives, –Foucault writes– the one where their energy is concentrated, is precisely where they clash with power, struggle with it, endeavor to uti lize its forces or to escape its traps”. Deleuze can tentatively conclude that power does not take life as its objective without revealing or giving rise to a life that resists power. Deleuze’s remark is highly important, since it stresses a crucial passage in Foucault’s thought, pertaining to the role the question of subjectivity came to play in his last reflection. In an interview published in 1984, Foucault introduced a differentiation between power and domination that was only implicit in his earlier work. He asserted that we must distinguish the relationships of power as stra- c o mm e n t 37 tegic games between liberties – strategic games that result in the fact that some people try to determine the conduct of others – and the states of domination, which are what we ordinarily call power. Furthermore, we have to acknowledge that between the games of power and the states of domination, there are also governmental technologies. 1 In doing so, Foucault identifies three types of power relations: strategic games between liberties; government; and domination. Power as strategic games is an omnipresent feature of human in teraction, insofar as it signifies trying to determine the conduct of others. This ca n take many forms, from ideological manipu lation to rational argumentation, from moral advice to economic exploitation, but it does not necessarily mean that to determine the conduct of others is intrinsically “bad”. Government refers to more or less systematized, regulated, and reflected modes of po wer (one could say, it is a “technology”) that go beyond the spon taneo us exercise of power over others, following a specific form of reasoning (a “rationality”) which defines the télos of action or the adequate means to achieve it. Domination is a particular type of power relationship that is stable and hierarchical, fixed and difficult to reverse. Foucault reserves the term “domination” to what we ordinarily call power. Domination refers to those asymmetrical relationships of power in which the subordinated persons have little room for manoeuvre because their margin of liberty is extremely limited. But states of domination are not the primary source for holding power or exploiting asymmetries. On the contrary: they are the effects of technologies of government. Technologies of government account for the systematization, the stabilization, and regulation of power relationships and may lead to a state of domination. This differentiation between three types of power relations is all the more importa nt for it questions a simplistic use of the notion 38 of resistance. If one keeps on using the notion of resistance, one risks coming back to an interpretation of power in terms of re pression. The reactive conception of resistance undermines and masks the productive character of po we r. By setting out from these accounts we will also raise questions about the relationship between resistance and transgression; re sistance and outside, resistance and subjectivation as political production of an excess (Revel). To break through the crust of a mechanism of domination is a political process that can be referred to as a political subjectivation. This includes the dissolution of the subjectivity, that is to say a process of disidentification, a removal from the naturalness of a place, or a movement that extricates the subject from itself and from its actual condition. 1 M ich el Fou ca u lt , “The E t hic s o f t he C o nce r n fo r Sel f a s a P ra c ti ce of Freed om ,” in id. , Et h i cs. Su b j ec t iv it y and Tr ut h: E ss e nt ial Wor k s of M i ch el Fou ca u l t 19541984 (Volu me 1 ), ed . Paul R ab inow ( New Yo r k: The N ew P ress , 1997) , 281- 302. Roberto Nigro is full Professor of philoso phy, in particular conti nental philosophy at the Leuphana University in Lüneburg. He also is an ancien Directeur de programme at t he Collège International de Philosophie in Paris. Before coming to the Leuphana University he taught at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) (2009-2016). His areas of research and teaching interest include aesthetics, political philosophy, and cultural theory with a special focus on French and Italian contemporary philosophy and the legacy of German philosophy (in particular Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger) in contemporary thought. 39 Disse nt is a term of counterrevolution the o r ies m h s r b i e c e e c l h i r o f cr iti q u e 40 Discussing dissent in a bipolar distinction creates an understanding of the term as a simple being against somebody or something else with no chance of crea ting a notable otherness. This discussion is at least as old as deconstruction itself. Derrida highlighted this idea in “Politik und Freundschaft” (Jaques Derrida, 2000), Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau (Chantal Mouffe; Ernesto Laclau, 2006) discussed it in length throughout their respective bodies of work and Deleuze gave us the most striking narration in his discus sions of Kontrollgesellschaft (Gilles Deleuze, 1993). Poststructualist theories provide us with a variety of possible proof that there is no possibility to think inclusion without exclusion, dissent without consent, power without oppression or power without resistance and vise versa. I would suggest that these analysis of modern day societies are not only correct but show us that dissent understood as a simple “being against” is a term of counterrevolution, counterinsurgency. It ge nerates possibilities to create and recreate positions of power and thus enforce oppression. So I not only suggest that any being against is worthless, I state outright: Being against is counterrevolutionary. There is no winning in fighting against within any given order and there is no winning in fighting for within and there is no winning in fighting for a new, an other or diffe rent outside of recent power relations (tiqqun, 2013). Politics of identity e.g. are part of an ever growing counterinsurgency. Politics of individuality wear the most ugly masks of counterinsurgency. They both are losing battles in the war for a possibility to once again shout “I am!” (tiqqun, 2000). But I is no more, the idea of self is an imaginary episode of a history lost to the nameless winners of Empire. So Tiqqun found the - se struggles to be the most recent and di sturbing emanations of Bloom: “French, excluded, wife, artist, homosexual, Breton, citi zen, fireman, Muslim, Buddhist or unemployed, all is acceptable that permits the mooing on one mode or on another, eyes blinking in the face of the infinite, the miraculous “I AM...” (tiqqun, 2000). If dissent can not be understood as a pos ition one takes or a role one plays, as one is now and always lost to Empire, we need to discuss ways to think dissent as a possibility to find and define different modes of existence (Souriau, 2015). Not in trying to esca pe an absolute lack of distinction or meaning by fighting to find a name, face, mask or role in struggles for identity or worse individuality, but in trying to destroy and recreate all current modes of existence lies the great opportunity of dissent. So the struggle is not to take a side, which is ridiculously easy as sides appear and disappear every second within the de fining logic of difference that structures all so called democratic societies of our time. The strug gles of dissent are those of finding any opportunity to create and recreate areas, moments, situations in which new, other or different modes of existence become possible. To create moments in which we are not trying to flee what we call Bloom in defining new identities but to face it and eventually destroy it and all its forms of identity and all its lies of individuality. Or as Jeans-Luc Nancy put it: The question we should ask can not be “Who am I” but how can we enable ourselves to face the gap, the againsteach-other that defines our communal beings in being commu nal?! (Nancy, 2007) References G il le s Deleu ze: Un terhand l ung e n – 1 9 7 2 - 1 9 9 0 . Frank f u r t a m M a i n : 1993. Jaque s Derri da : Poli t i k und Fre und s c haf t . Frankf ur t a m M a i n : 2000. Chantal Mou ffe, Ern esto L ac l au: He g e m o nie und rad i k a le D em ok ra ti e. Z u r D ekon s tr uktion des Ma rxi smus . W ie n: 2 0 0 6 . Je an-Lu c Na n cy: Th e c re at io n o f t he wo r l d o r G lo b a l i z a ti on . N ew Yor k : 2007. É tie nne Sou ri au : Di e ve rs c hie d e ne n Mo d i d e r E xisten z . Lü n eb u rg : 2015. tiqqun: Alles i st gesch e ite r t , e s le b e d e r K o m m unis m u s . H a m b u rg : 2013. tiqqun: Th eori e vom B lo o m . Par is : 2 0 0 0 . 41 Recent Publ icatio ns : E ndl ich Kri eg . Ti qqu n , Nanc y, De r r id a – Fe ind s c haf t a l s on tolog i s ch es Kon z ep t d es S e i n s. In : O ch sn er, B e ate ; Ot to , Is ab e l l ; S p ö hre r, M a r k u s ( H rs g .) : A u g en b l i c k . K o n sta n zer Hefte zur Me d ie nw iss e ns c haf t . # 5 8 O b j ek te M ed i a ler Tei l h a b e. M arbu rg. Sch ren : 2 0 1 3 . S . 1 2 4 – 1 3 3 . AN T i-h u man – Th e et h ical b l ind s p o t . In: Oc hs ne r, B e a te; Sp öh rer, M a r k u s ( H rs g .) : Applyi n g Actor-Net wo r k The o r y in Me d ia S t ud ie s . H ers h ey, PA . I GI Glob a l : 2016. Michel Schreiber is a free associate at the DFG research group Mediale Teilhabe. Partizipation zwischen Anspruch und Inanspruchnahme . After finishing his B.A. and M.A. in litera ture-arts-media at the university of Konstanz, he is currently working on his PhD Thesis ‚Der Bloom – Anders als Dasein geschieht. Versuch einer ethischen Medienwissenschaft‘. 42 On (Not) Taking Sides Asking from which position critique is possible, the ‹perspective of dissent› I want to take into account points towards contemporary’s cybernetic regime of control in digital cultures. Addressing the intertwining of scientific, technological, economic and political conditions, cybernetics has become a contemporary mode of governmentality. Starting from this point, I want to take a closer look at the relationship of cri tique and the logics of cyberneticization (Galloway 2014; Hörl 2013). Specifically, I want to focus on cultural and media schol arly endeavours which discuss the (im)possibilities of practices of resistance and dissent. Exemplarily, besides concrete formulations on a «Digital Re sistance» (Caygill 2013) and strategies of resisting the panoptical gaze by ‹blinding› it (Ippolito 2014), there is the «intervention» into the contemporary realm of fab ricating (non-)knowledge (Kaldrack 2017) or the utili sation of the «border as a method» (Mezzadra /Neilson 2013). Since these approaches discuss different modes to ‹resist›, to ‹intervene›, and to ‹demarcate›, they all have in common the question of the possibility of ma king a difference ‹from within›. Also, they relate to the problem of the ‹representability of power structures› which is connected to the question of the possibility of critique. Correspondingly, Galloway calls for the need of a «critical or poetic language» through which power structures could be represented in digital cultures. (Galloway 2011, 99) In regards to the partially metaphorically fueled conceptualisations of critique, I eventually want to discuss the potential of these ‹alternative narrations› of digital cultures in detail. Linking to my doctoral thesis, one chapter investiga tes such «counter-aesthetic[s]» (ibid., 100) in terms of th eor i es m t a e c a h s n k i d e e of c r i ti q u e 43 alternatives to merely positively connotated ‹flows› and ‹streams of information›. Instead of «the image of regulated, omnipresent, uninterrupted, and continuous flow» (Sprenger 2015, 88) which pertains to the cybernetic logic sketched above, I want to ask for different connotations of flows. Thus, I propose to read information flows before the backdrop of another imaginary «reference system» (Blumenberg 1971, 173). Concretely, flows and streams are made readable in regards to ‹sewerage› by including literary scenes on ‹waste water› (Mersch 2013, 33). Altogether, addressing the question of critique in a contemporary cybernetic regime of control I want to discuss both the possibility of critique from within the cybernetic regime of control as well as contemporary ‹counter-narratives›. Mathias Denecke is a doctoral student at Leuphana university of Lüneburg. After finishing his B.A. and M.A. in literature-arts-media studies at university of Konstanz he received a doctoral scholarship at university of Lüneburg and was subsequently junior research fellow at the Centre for Digital Cultures (CDC) Lüneburg. In his doctoral project «Stream metaphors in digital cultures – scenes on the knowledge of mediation» he works on a history of knowledge. Focusing on theoretical positions in cultural and media studies describing technically mediated communication, the project maps discursive shifts concerning the relationship of user and environment. Here, stream metaphors serve as an access to the narrative fabrication of knowledge formations on digital cultures. 44 Participatory artistic practices of dissent in (post-) digital media Media art’s constitutive use of digital and often mobi le media establishes complex spaces of negotiation. Current artistic practices are reflecting and enacting ways of overcoming established industrialized and commercialized (social) media infrastructures. Artists such as Aram Bartholl, Trevor Paglen, Miranda July, UBERMORGEN, Christoph Wachter & Mathias Jud use mobile technologies, develop apps, use collaborative open-source software, or offer the use of peer-to-peer networks and sharing platforms to encourage participation in their artistic production processes. They dis sent highly regulated spaces in search of alternative, “open” networked ones – as sites for claimed participation and critique in a “postdigital” 1 context. Their practices raise relevant questions: To what extent do the dissenting structures enable room for actual shifts in perception and action? Or are they rather claims and strategies with means to other ends? How do com munication and collaboration processes change and in what ways do they challenge institutional and digital infrastructures? In what ways do boundaries of binary distinctions such as digital and analog, online and offline, public and private become increasingly interwoven and how can these entanglements be accounted for? Under what structural conditions is participation possible or denied within digital network contexts and increasingly within a platform culture? th eor i es l n g t e a ö z of c r i ti q u e Understood as “disruptions in participation proces ses, which can be located in the media configurations themselves” 2 , studies on dissent and participation need to critically analyze the complex interrelations of the involved practices. The described complexities and 45 raised questions make it necessary to closely take account of the configurations of participatory artistic practices conceptualized and realized within the context of mobile digital media. Conse quently, the spatially distributed practices of current participatory media art and its reciprocal production need to be situated within socio-technical power relations of digital cultures and technolo gies and in regards to (media art) institutional framings. Concei ving artistic practices of dissent in (post-)digital media contexts as tactics questioning media industrial entanglements requires to position discourses, practices and cult ures of partaking with a decisively critical understanding of the notion of participation. 1 2 Fo r t h e n ot i on of t he „ p o st d ig ital “ co m p are fo r ex a m p le: C ra m er, F lor i a n ( 2014) : “W h at I s ‘Post -Di g ital’? A Pe e r - R ev iewe d Jo ur na l A b ou t, Post- D i g i ta l R es ea rch 3, n o. 1 : h t t p :// www. ap r ja. ne t /w hat - is - p o st - d ig ita l / ? p d f =1318 ( 19.04.2018) . Bippu s, Elke / O ch s ne r, B e ate / Ot to , Is ab e l l : “ B etween D em a n d a n d E n ti tle me nt . Persp ect i ves o n R e s e arc hing Me d ia and Pa r ti c i p a ti on ” , i n : D en ecke, M at h i a s / Ga n zert , A nne / Ot to , Is ab e l l / S to c k, R ob er t ( ed s .) : ReC l a i m i n g Pa r ticipat i on . Tech n olo g y – Me d iat io n – C o l le c t iv it y, tra n s cr i p t Ver l a g , B i elefel d 201 6 , p. 2 6 2 . Magdalena Götz, M.A. Since October 2017: PhD researcher at the postgraduate program me Locating Media, University of Siegen | 2017 / 2014: project leader editing / project manager for Ars Electronica Festival, Linz | 2015 – 2017: academic trainee, Art Museum Celle | 2011 – 2014: Master programme Museum and Exhibition, Art History and Media Studies, University of Oldenburg | 2007 – 2011: Bachelor program me Literature-Art-Media and British and American Studies, University of Konstanz http://www.locatingmedia.uni-siegen.de/magdalena-goetz/ 46 Critique is a main driver of progress. It is necessary to ref lect upon a taken step and subsequently evalua te it, in order to keep on developing. This reflexion and the ability of recognizing the very own wrongdoings and/or mistakes can be viewed as a basis for consciousness. In order for me to apply the topic of reflexion and especially the notion of self-critique to the broader area of machine learning, I am asking the question: Is there something as corrective critique carried out and subsequently processed by machines? Can there be a discourse amongst automated systems and if so, can machines be thought of as capable of making their own mistakes in the first place? Of cour se there is always the notion of malfunction within an automated process, but machines are never observed as structural flawed entities — as long as they are “working” properly. In contrast, human beings seem to be rather unstable in the sense that they take part in “life-long learning”. To err is human is the beginning of a famous saying that goes on as follows: to forgive divine. The divine appears to be an irrational joker to cope with an existence dominated by the om nipresence of the possibility of something going horribly wrong. It is the equivalent to a reset button you can p ress, if something has gone so terribly wrong that it is not possible to repair/restore it, but rather a good idea to start from the scratch. Still, it is the individual itself that is taking this reset step, no one else is pushing it 1 , unlike with the machine, an external entity is needed to control the way things work out. 2 The condition for autonomy can thus be seen in the fundamental possibility of being (objectively) wrong about the issue in question and thus being able th eor i es j n k l m o a e e e e s l r y r of c r i ti q u e 47 to argue with others and most importantly with oneself. Questio ning the very own position (in the world/the milieu) and drawing concl usions (thus learning) from mistakes is the first step. The possibility of hesitation (Zaudern) completes the context by adding the idea of an active non-action to the catalogue of possibilities. Trying to understand critique as a functional component may seem paradox at the first glance. It is then that we have to ask ourselves what constitutes our ability of questioning the presumptively “obvious” state of the world and our respective roles in its course. Critique, I want to sum it up, is thus an end in itself. A sustainab le and robust A.I. must, just like human beings, keep up with the highly contingent constitution of the world, translated by an inter facial structure that focusses on handling exceptions rather than “normal” situations. Introducing the issue of critique to the realm of machine learning is not a radically new idea, still it means putting aside the functional thinking of most engineers and start cherishing problems rather than answers. 1 2 E ven i f t h ere was a G o d , it wo ul d st il l b e up to t h e i n d i v i d u a l to d en y th e of fered fo rgi ven ess. In most ca ses, a hum an b e ing wo ul d im m e d iate ly p l a y th i s p a r t. Yet, i t ca n b e tho ug h t of a prog ra m o r al g o r it hm t hat kic ks in a ccord i n g to th e p a ra m eters s et by t h e (h u man ) i n st r uc to r. Jonas Kellermeyer is a student researcher at the project „Technoecologies of Participation: New Perspectives from Media Philosophy and Anthropology“. He is currently writing his master thesis at the Institute of Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM) at Leuphana University in Lüneburg. His thesis is dealing with the vanishing of material interfaces and the rise of gestural ways to take control. 48 [ n o [ t e s 49 zur Website