skandalon

Do the “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction” not fit perfectly the status of the MacGuffin? (Incidentally, one of the most famous Hitchcockian MacGuffins IS a potential weapon of mass destruction - the bottles with “radioactive diamonds” in Notorious!) Are they not also an elusive entity, never empirically specified - when, a couple of years ago, the UN inspectors were searching for them in Iraq, they were expected to be hidden in the most disparate and improbable places, from the (rather logical place of) desert to the (slightly irrational) cellars of the presidential palaces (so that, when the palace is bombed, they may poison Saddam and his entire entourage?), allegedly present in large quantities, yet magically moved around all the time by the hands of workers, and the more all-present and all-powerful in their threat, the more they are destroyed, as if the distraction of the greater part of them magically heightens the destructive power of the remainder? As such, they by definition cannot ever be found, and are therefore all the more dangerous… Now that none were found, we reached the last line of the story of MacGuffin: “‘Well,’ said President Bush in September 2003, ‘then that’s not a MacGuffin, is it?’

✖ Via “The Iraqi MacGuffin” by Slavoj Zizek, Nov. 4th, 2003

• May 18, 2010 link notes tagged: art politic Iraq WMD simulacrum Baudrillard Zizek philosophy representation movie cinema film plot media technology war critic

In March 2003, Rumsfeld engaged in a little bit of amateur philosophizing about the relationship between the known and the unknown: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” What he forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the “unknown knowns,” the things we don’t know that we know-which is precisely, the Freudian unconscious, the “knowledge which doesn’t know itself,” as Lacan used to say. If Rumsfeld thinks that the main dangers in the confrontation with Iraq were the “unknown unknowns,” that is, the threats from Saddam whose nature we cannot even suspect, then the Abu Ghraib scandal shows that the main dangers lie in the “unknown knowns” - the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about, even though they form the background of our public values. Thus, Bush was wrong. What we get when we see the photos of humiliated Iraqi prisoners is precisely a direct insight into “American values,” into the core of an obscene enjoyment that sustains the American way of life.

✖ Via “What Rumsfeld Doesn’t Know That He Knows About Abu Ghraib” by Slavoj Zizek, May 21st, 2004

First heard of this text via Errol Morris Twitter account. Errol Morris is still thinking about the Dunning-Kruger effect.

• May 08, 2010 link notes tagged: Agamben America Freud Iraq United-States communication homo sacer ignorance knowledge life philosophy science self torture unconscious value zombie cognitive bias Dunning-Kruger

✖ Via Boing Boing: “Iraq Campaign 1991” by Phil [video link]

“San Francisco-based video artist Phil Patiris transforms network news footage, clips from Star Trek, and sports coverage (all used without permission) into a devastating critique of the media/industrial complex.”

Artist statement: “To the extent I see the mass media culture drag standards of intelligence, creativity and ethics down to the lowest common denominator… and then turn around and generate more slick and profitable news programming bemoaning the resulting deterioration in our streets, schools and elective offices (not to mention our art and civilization), that’s the extent I will point my own electromagnetic finger.

To the extent self-serving, misleading, and deliberately manipulative psychological associations are made (and not just through advertising) is the extent I will break those associations, since they are subjective, and therefore rightly subject to counter-assault.” (read more).

The video was originally posted on Illegal Art: “The laws governing “intellectual property” have grown so expansive in recent years that artists need legal experts to sort them all out. Borrowing from another artwork—as jazz musicians did in the 1930s and Looney Tunes illustrators did in 1940s—will now land you in court. If the current copyright laws had been in effect back in the day, whole genres such as collage, hiphop, and Pop Art might have never have existed.The irony here couldn’t be more stark. Rooted in the U.S. Constitution, copyright was originally intended to facilitate the exchange of ideas but is now being used to stifle it.

The Illegal Art Exhibit will celebrate what is rapidly becoming the “degenerate art” of a corporate age: art and ideas on the legal fringes of intellectual property. Some of the pieces in the show have eluded lawyers; others have had to appear in court.” (read more). See more video here.

• Jul 30, 2009 link notes tagged: art communication technology critic video montage television America revolution Iraq war copyright