I agree with a lot of the points Ann made in her post ("Fan fiction author as knowledge laborer"). I found myself also wondering, as Coppa discussed the explosion of fandom culture and its incorporation of comics, manga/anime/yaoi, celebrity and music fandom, whether the world of fandom had turned into Ang's organized chaos. With so many groups contributing to and expanding the subculture, and indeed bringing much of the culture into the mainstream (particularly, as Coppa notes, in music and celebrity fandoms), the influx of fannish "information" might make the subculture seem chaotic and incoherent, but it is, as Ang suggests, in this chaos that fandom finds its order.
Fans from across the globe can now find companionship, friendship, and community among disparate, previously disconnected individuals via the Time and Distance Disintegrator, the Internet. Instantaneous communication afforded by the Internet allows for the kind of collaboration Terranova references in Barbrook's assertion that "Unrestricted by physical distance, [users] collaborate with each other without the direct mediation of money and politics. ...Network communities are instead formed through the mutual obligations created by gifts of time and ideas" (101). Terranova goes on to discuss the emergence of "free labor" among the early Internet Pioneers; labor "willingly conceded in exchange for the pleasures of communication" (Terranova 112). Ann's point about sci-fi fanfic writers as knowledge labors seems particularly driven home by this relationship between labor and communication; science fiction fans write stories "in exchange for the pleasures of communication"--or communion--and for little else.
One very fitting example of collaborative community-making is the website PostSecret. Terranova heralds the "best website" as "a space that is not only accessed, but somewhow built by its users" (113). PostSecret is an "ongoing community art project" (Wikipedia), started in 2005 by Frank Warren and featuring weekly updates of roughly 20 new submissions. Users send in their secrets, written or decorated or in some other way conveyed on the back side of a regular postcard, which Frank sifts through to select the week's postings. "The PostSecret website is the largest advertisement-free Blog on the web", says the tag at the bottom of the PostSecret website, followed by a guest counter reading "100,363,430" (postsecret.blogspot.com, accessed 8 October 2007). It is hosted on a free blogging framework provided by Google (the same, in fact, currently hosting this blog), and contributors receive no more compensation for their labor than the knowledge that someday, maybe, their secret will be posted.
Frank periodically posts email responses to individual secrets, many of which express feelings of camaraderie or encouragement to the poster, contributing to the sense of community engendered by the site. Many of those who have contributed feel part of the community even if a secret has never been posted; this seems to me the ultimate expression of an imagined community, in which not only will the members never meet, but that's the whole point. If we knew who were reading our secrets, or who were writing them, the effect would be lost.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Capitalist Uncertainty
Ien Ang claims that capitalist postmodernity is "a chaotic system, where uncertainty is a built-in feature." This means that "the simplistic idea that existence of diversity is evidence of freedom from power and domination" could not be further from the truth. Pluralism and diversity don't challenge capitalist postmodernity--they fuel it. Indeed, Ang argues, true resistance is impossible--it can only "unsettle (but not destroy)" the boundaries of the global system.
Ang's theory reminded me of Benjamin Lee and Edward LiPuma's discussion of "cultures of circulation." One passage that was particularly striking was their passage on derivatives, financial instruments that commodify uncertainty itself. The derivatives markets are chaotic places, markets with too much information.
Lee and LiPuma later argue that "Semiotic analyses that fixate exclusively on cultural forms are inherently inadequate because the issue of capital cannot be ignored or bracketed." In this Ang seems to concur, with her criticism of communication theory.
In all this description of postmodern uncertainty, Ang seems deeply skeptical of attempts to resist the totalizing structure of postmodern capital. Quoting de Certeau, Ang says that resistance is "'escaping without leaving.'"
Here are my questions: is Ang implying that any attempt to impose a semblance of order on postmodern uncertainty would necessarily be conservative (and thus presumably undesirable)? Must all this uncertainty--e.g. the profit-making uncertainty of derivatives markets--be accepted? If any attempt to impose order on the situation (perhaps international regulations) will be futile, could more uncertainty, directed uncertainty, dramatically alter the postmodern system? Does Ang's text suggest any forms direct uncertainty might take?
Ang's theory reminded me of Benjamin Lee and Edward LiPuma's discussion of "cultures of circulation." One passage that was particularly striking was their passage on derivatives, financial instruments that commodify uncertainty itself. The derivatives markets are chaotic places, markets with too much information.
Lee and LiPuma later argue that "Semiotic analyses that fixate exclusively on cultural forms are inherently inadequate because the issue of capital cannot be ignored or bracketed." In this Ang seems to concur, with her criticism of communication theory.
In all this description of postmodern uncertainty, Ang seems deeply skeptical of attempts to resist the totalizing structure of postmodern capital. Quoting de Certeau, Ang says that resistance is "'escaping without leaving.'"
Here are my questions: is Ang implying that any attempt to impose a semblance of order on postmodern uncertainty would necessarily be conservative (and thus presumably undesirable)? Must all this uncertainty--e.g. the profit-making uncertainty of derivatives markets--be accepted? If any attempt to impose order on the situation (perhaps international regulations) will be futile, could more uncertainty, directed uncertainty, dramatically alter the postmodern system? Does Ang's text suggest any forms direct uncertainty might take?
Fan fiction author as knowledge laborer
The fandom author is a perfect example of Terranova's knowledge laborer. A fan writer does not produce stories for economic gain, but for the pleasure of writing. Yet, his or her contribution to the database of fan fiction is necessary for the continued survival of the genre. Despite the lack of monetary reward for the majority of fan writers, we witness an "investment of desire into production" (Terranova 107), as fans produce stories, video shorts and episode scripts simply because.
As Terranova notes, "labor is not equivalent to waged labor...often the unemployed are such only in name, in reality being the life-blood of the difficult economy of 'under-the-table,' badly paid work..." (110). I believe this definition is equally relevant to the creators of fan fiction as it is to the programmers of open source material. Terranova, too, points out the tendency to ignore "feminine" labor as an integral part of knowledge labor (113).
Interestingly, this particular kind of 'female' labor is in reality dominated by female writers (at least in the case of Star Trek). (Personally I don't see why writing an operating system is innately masculine, but anyway...)
Finally, the entire system of fan fiction (the networks of websites, blogs, video postings, readers, writers, etc.) are reminiscent of Ang's contemporary capitalist world-system: "So, the capitalist world-system today is not a single, undifferentiated, all-encompassing whole, but a fractured one, in which forces of order and incorporation...are always undercut...by forces of chaos and fragmentation" (177). This becomes especially apparent in Coppa's discussion of the breaks between Stark Trek and sci-fi fans and a further split of Star Wars fans from Star Trek fans. Therefore, the world of fandom, as well as the internet as a whole, is an example of positive chaos, a space that is "rich in information," not "poor in order" (175).
As Terranova notes, "labor is not equivalent to waged labor...often the unemployed are such only in name, in reality being the life-blood of the difficult economy of 'under-the-table,' badly paid work..." (110). I believe this definition is equally relevant to the creators of fan fiction as it is to the programmers of open source material. Terranova, too, points out the tendency to ignore "feminine" labor as an integral part of knowledge labor (113).
Interestingly, this particular kind of 'female' labor is in reality dominated by female writers (at least in the case of Star Trek). (Personally I don't see why writing an operating system is innately masculine, but anyway...)
Finally, the entire system of fan fiction (the networks of websites, blogs, video postings, readers, writers, etc.) are reminiscent of Ang's contemporary capitalist world-system: "So, the capitalist world-system today is not a single, undifferentiated, all-encompassing whole, but a fractured one, in which forces of order and incorporation...are always undercut...by forces of chaos and fragmentation" (177). This becomes especially apparent in Coppa's discussion of the breaks between Stark Trek and sci-fi fans and a further split of Star Wars fans from Star Trek fans. Therefore, the world of fandom, as well as the internet as a whole, is an example of positive chaos, a space that is "rich in information," not "poor in order" (175).
Fandom as a Reflection of the Mass Media’s Power(lessness)
In the piece “In the Realm of Uncertainty,” Ang relates Curran’s claim that since “audiences are conceived as active producers of meaning and produce a diversity of readings, that ‘oppressive’ role of the media [as transmitters of dominant ideology] has been considerably diminished, to the point that there might be no dominant ideology at all” (168).
Ang disagrees strongly with Curran’s stance that the audience is autonomous and that the mass media’s power is ebbing. In contrast, he believes that while “meaning is constructed rather than given,” we’re far from gaining “freedom and independence from media power” (168).
Meanwhile, Coppa’s piece on media fandom describes many “kinds of mass media storytelling [beginning] to form their own distinct culture” (50), with fans of an “obsessively researching nature” who immerse themselves in their fandoms with abandon, both absorbing all relevant minutiae and responding with the production of fan fiction, fan art, zines, and so forth.
We as fans have taken the initiative to really seize hold of the media we favor, certainly “produc[ing] a diversity of readings” and indeed becoming producers ourselves. Nevertheless, fandom demonstrates the thoroughness with which the media can permeate our lives, taking hold of not just out attention but even our creativity and imaginations. So my question is this: Given the intense “audience participation” that surrounds media fandom, is the mass media more (Ang) or less (Curran) powerful today than it once was?
Ang disagrees strongly with Curran’s stance that the audience is autonomous and that the mass media’s power is ebbing. In contrast, he believes that while “meaning is constructed rather than given,” we’re far from gaining “freedom and independence from media power” (168).
Meanwhile, Coppa’s piece on media fandom describes many “kinds of mass media storytelling [beginning] to form their own distinct culture” (50), with fans of an “obsessively researching nature” who immerse themselves in their fandoms with abandon, both absorbing all relevant minutiae and responding with the production of fan fiction, fan art, zines, and so forth.
We as fans have taken the initiative to really seize hold of the media we favor, certainly “produc[ing] a diversity of readings” and indeed becoming producers ourselves. Nevertheless, fandom demonstrates the thoroughness with which the media can permeate our lives, taking hold of not just out attention but even our creativity and imaginations. So my question is this: Given the intense “audience participation” that surrounds media fandom, is the mass media more (Ang) or less (Curran) powerful today than it once was?
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Horatio Alger and Cyberspace
This week's reading really got me thinking about social mobility within imagined networks. Like a lot of recent science fiction, Snow Crash posits the alternate, second reality of the MetaVerse as a utopian realm that liberates its participants from the social and economic constraints of the "real" world. Within the MetaVers, users are freed from their corporeal social status to a new status determined by access to information and places, the ability to hack/code, and a hierarchy of avatar aesthetics. As Snow Crash puts it, Hidden beneath avatars, adept at programming, and armed with access, even U-Stor-It residents like Hiro Protagonist can escape the ghetto of their bodies to a paradise of the mind.
In example:
"[Hiro] steps over the property line, and he's in the doorway. And in that instant, he becomes visible and solid to all the avatars milling outside. As one, they all begin screaming. Not that they have any idea who the hell he is- Hiro is just a starving CIC stringer who lives in a U-Stor-It near the airport. But in the entire world there are only a few thousand people who can step over the line at the Black Sun" (37).
Like the concerns of access, there is also hierarchy of Avatar aesthetics, to be black and white is taboo, "like Xeroxing your face over and over again" and to be a Brandy or a Clint is cheap and generic, "off the shelf". At the top of the hierarchy are those avatars that look the most "real"- human and unadorned- capable of transmitting seemingly authentic human emotions through facial reflexes.
And then there is hacking. Hiro Protagonist's literal card of character. This facet of MetaVerse social status suggests that the utopian realm of digital other is governed by a meritocracy, wherein the most capable people are those afforded the most control.
Is this intentional? Has Neal Stephenson updated Horatio Alger and the filtered rags to riches story through the age of the World Wide Web? Do we really believe that imagined networks and the imagined societies they beget allow for social mobility? If so, what are the limits of mobility? If you succeed in the MetaVerse do you succeed in the "real" world?
This is an interesting baseball card for our dear protagonist that I found on Google Image Search. Just for fun really.
In example:
"[Hiro] steps over the property line, and he's in the doorway. And in that instant, he becomes visible and solid to all the avatars milling outside. As one, they all begin screaming. Not that they have any idea who the hell he is- Hiro is just a starving CIC stringer who lives in a U-Stor-It near the airport. But in the entire world there are only a few thousand people who can step over the line at the Black Sun" (37).
Like the concerns of access, there is also hierarchy of Avatar aesthetics, to be black and white is taboo, "like Xeroxing your face over and over again" and to be a Brandy or a Clint is cheap and generic, "off the shelf". At the top of the hierarchy are those avatars that look the most "real"- human and unadorned- capable of transmitting seemingly authentic human emotions through facial reflexes.
And then there is hacking. Hiro Protagonist's literal card of character. This facet of MetaVerse social status suggests that the utopian realm of digital other is governed by a meritocracy, wherein the most capable people are those afforded the most control.
Is this intentional? Has Neal Stephenson updated Horatio Alger and the filtered rags to riches story through the age of the World Wide Web? Do we really believe that imagined networks and the imagined societies they beget allow for social mobility? If so, what are the limits of mobility? If you succeed in the MetaVerse do you succeed in the "real" world?
This is an interesting baseball card for our dear protagonist that I found on Google Image Search. Just for fun really.
Plausible Imagination
I'm always interested to see what variables of our reality science fiction authors play with, and which they choose to leave untouched. In Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek, characters alternate between flying hyperdrive spacecraft and gathering in a bar setting to drink alcohol. We can still relate, on some level, to the experience of these characters -- their world is a possible world.
What makes some counterfactuals interesting and others too absurd for consideration? In Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter explores this question by borrowing the concept of frames and nested contexts from the field of artificial intelligence.
The linguist George Steiner writes in After Babel,
What makes some counterfactuals interesting and others too absurd for consideration? In Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter explores this question by borrowing the concept of frames and nested contexts from the field of artificial intelligence.
In frame language, one could say that mental representations of situations can be represented by a hierarchal model of nested frames, each of which contains a set of default expectations, as well as knowledge of its limits of applicability, and heuristics for switching to other frames in case it has been stretched beyond its limits of tolerance (645).
It is only at particular levels of depth in the hierarchy, within certain bounds of tolerance that an imaginative move can be made --- a variable can only 'slip' so far. The imaginative moves in Star Trek, for example, operate on the level of politics, technology, and geography, but assume a certain base-level similarity to our reality in their 'humanness'. We can easily relate to the crew members' modes of interaction and their social dynamics. And, at a more fundamental level, our conception of causality and temporality is maintained in the Star Trek universe. The higher-level the frame, the less tolerance it allows for imaginative play in fiction. Fantasy fiction, in contrast to science fiction, allows a few more variables to slip but is ultimately subject to similar constraints.
The linguist George Steiner writes in After Babel,
Hypotheticals, 'imaginaries', conditionals, the syntax of counter-factuality and contingency may well be the generative centers of human speech. No less than future tenses to which they are, one feels, related, and with which they ought probably to be classed in the larger set of 'suppositionals' or 'alternates', these 'if' propositions are fundamental to the dynamics of human feeling...
Ours is the ability, the need, to gainsay or 'un-say' the world, to image and speak it otherwise... We need a word which will designate the power, the compulsion of language to posit 'otherness'.... Perhaps 'alternity' will do: to define the 'other than the case', the counter-factual propositions, images, shapes of will and evasion with which we charge our mental being and by means of which we build the changing, largely fictive milieu of our somatic and our social existence (232).
Must an imagined world remain plausible? What kind of limitations does this impose on our imagined worlds? And how can the choice of expressive medium influence these boundaries? (e.g. how is imagination different in animation, which allows the director to depart from human actors and physical sets; or in painting, which disposes of a linear sense of time?)
Violence in Snow Crash
The gratuitous violence omnipresent in Snow Crash's Reality - no less than the bloodless death of the Metaverse - speaks to the waning of affect and depthlessness of cyberpunk fiction and of postmodern society. In the novel, Hiro and Y.T. move the story forward while huge battles featuring countless gory deaths break out in the background, between Russian Orthodox forces, the Mafia, the Enforcers, drug dealers, and private armies. As Y.T. notes, what makes Kouriers worthwhile is their interchangeability - one Kourier is as good as another. In the same way, the teeming humanity of Snow Crash is completely interchangeable. There is no emotional impact to their deaths - they are mere background dressing, surface. The reflections in contemporary society are ubiquitous - violence in movies, television, video games, and the network news carries little emotional weight, it is mere background action, information, and infotainment.
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