Our age is the age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds of exemption from the examination of this tribunal. But, if they are exempted, they become the subjects of just suspicion, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination
Kant: The Critique of Pure Reason, Preface, 1781
Interesting conference sub-titled ‘Photography And Globalisation’ Manchester 20/21 April 2007, hosted by photographic group Redeye.
Various photographers gave presentations on their work, sometimes directly, sometimes tangentially related to the notions of photography, democracy, and how the two factors inter-relate. Most interesting for me was the commentary by photographer Pedro Meyer of Zone Zero, and some issues arising from the presentation of Mark Sealy of Autograph. Self-confessed “happy geek” Bill Thompson participated via a video-link, offering observations about technology and democracy further relevant considering the medium he was using. In a concise live internet presentation he was the first to articulate the notion that access does not mean democratisation, a crucial point with which I agree emphatically, especially in relation to a tendency to evangelise the internet. Other speakers affirmed this later, in relation to a point I myself formulated: democracy is an issue of power, how that works, who has it and who doesn’t, and how internet facilitated photography/communication does not, in itself, impact on real world political structures.
Here’s the first presentation from Pedro Meyer:
I have little to add to this, being essentially an interesting commentary and evocation of some of the relevant ideas and issues concerning this subject.
The following talk by Mark Sealy was more specifically political, offering the specific viewpoint of the black community and the legacy and impact of colonial attitudes and the slavery exploitation of Africa. I interjected in what I thought was a dangerously polarising discourse, firstly for confirming black identity as otherness with comments about “negating differences” – which for me is a subject not for negation but a position we will eventually have to realise whereby we are just friends rather than politically inspired different people – and secondly for a questionable usage of the horror of 9/11. Here’s the presentation:
Sealy suggested that 9/11 was effectively an attack on imperialism, and came dangerously close to suggesting we deserved it: that we should have predicted it, on the basis of largely former but still existing colonial-capitalist attitudes. I find that wholly unacceptable not because we should avoid the issues he correctly identified, but because 9/11 was the work of a vicious theological ideology that is intensely right wing, and cannot be incorporated in rhetoric such as his, the way he did it. Islam has always been fighting against the non Islamic world, from the very beginning, in the example of the war lord Mohammed. Christians, Hindus, Jews, and now the West as a whole is its target, in both ideological terms and for a substantial minority, with actual violence.
Here’s my interjection:
Here’s what I wrote on the Sunday morning in a quiet moment, with regard to my interjection about polarising discourse and 9/11:
This is a disingenuous way of establishing a political position comparable to Iran’s tit-for-tat response to perceived “insult” by satirising the holocaust – a morally obscene and intellectually perverse equation, falsely suggesting that genocidal loss of life is a sensitive subject equivalent to a fictitious religious narrative. Sealy said he would not engage with any “hierarchy of oppression” while suggesting that American politics are equally a problem – and it is precisely this subject that needs debating and thereby exposing to collective analysis, and precisely the impossibility of doing this in regard to the Islamic world – neither understanding nor allowing external nor internal critical process – that is the fundamental ‘clash of civilisations’ problem.
Further, the oppositional polemic proposing confrontation between right wing America and a disenfranchised world itself needs an unfolding scrutiny. Firstly because it’s a common topic, and secondly because it’s not as it initially appears: Islamism is a singular ideology attacking a multifarious, internally diverse, critically free world where in a few years time America will not be governed by a right wing administration. In short, Bush is incidental, whatever relationship Blair has with him is transitory, and Islamic aggression objects to the entire circle, not its internally debating parts. The very fact that people express this argument is significant and needs a meta-perspective commentary rather than a partisan identification: there is nothing remotely comparable in the Islamic world as Rushdie, Danish editors, Hirsi Ali and also Theo Vin Gogh would express, if he were still alive.
It’s really quite annoying constructing a structural argument such as Sealy’s suggesting the West is no better than the Islamic world, while simultaneously refusing to consider the attitudes, values, and social practices in the two different cultures: treatment of women and attitudes towards free critical speech being especially pertinent. US-bashing ‘is the new black’, like a sartorial uniform ostensibly offering a fashionably incisive viewpoint which is actually the opposite: a viewpoint that refuses to engage with the vital, fundamental questions, taking advantage of the fact that they are exceedingly difficult to address. But that difficulty is a challenge, not a convenient no-go area: an ideology that regards suicide attacks as a shortcut to heaven, and heinous oppression of women as a requirement of a superstitious-based deity, does indeed have a lesser “hierarchical” relationship to the more evolved (yes, evolved) culture of America or Britain which, while far from perfect, is superior to the society we see in Afghanistan, Iran or Iraq. The first point (religious martyrdom) can be subjected to metaphysical or philosophical criticism, and the second (oppression of women) to decades of hard won feminist values.
I constantly see suggestions that liberal ideals are “fundamentalist”, and democratic values are a form of aggression rather than liberation. These perverse semantic twists collapse when the social attitudes and practices are acknowledged and duly considered: advocating social and sexual equality for women for example does not become “fundamentalist” merely because many people – myself included – regard it in strong terms as not only a necessary social principle but also an index of how evolved a society is. If you oppress half your own population and the particular contribution it can make, it’s hardly surprising if your society is unsuccessful. Much of the Middle East is quite wealthy but has a third world infrastructure not because of Coca Cola exploitation, but because of repressive theocratic practices dating from hundreds of years ago. The twists and inversions of this political subject are eloquently deconstructed here in relation to other topics, including the courageous work of Hirsi Ali These are not central or even pertinent issues to photography per se, but they certainly exist within current rhetoric and can further be expressed in photographic practice. Sealy’s essential premise was that there’s an otherness beyond the US-Europe hegemony that’s been brutalised and exploited notably but not only with behaviour towards Africa, and 9/11, he suggested, raises uncomfortable questions we need to consider in this way.
Rubbish: 9/11 specifically concerns a superstition-driven, intense totalitarian patriarchy which regards itself as divinely superior with as much racial vehemence as 1940s Aryanism. Consistent with the analysis in my previous link, note the way in his speech he sets up a moral equivalence between Abu Ghraib and 9/11: a purely emotional equation lacking context, balance, implication and analysis, ie thought, its basis being ‘that upsets you, well this is also upsetting so they are the same’. Rubbish! One question, perhaps, suffices to summarise this overall point: so if you are a woman, or a man with wife and daughters, where would you choose to live – Iran or California? Saudi or Houston, or even Tonbridge Wells? There are indeed moral concerns pertaining to individual human life and due respect for it, but the problematic fact is that clashing ideology in one form or another is typically related to violent conflict and current world events are no exception.
In the current British Journal Of Photography 18-4-07, there’s a feature on Magnum in which they refer to a “photography that is concerned with humanistic values, with big issues, and with the narrative that only committed photography can produce” (27). Two points about this. First, it expresses what is, I think, a somewhat mythologised notion of being ‘an engaged photographer.’ What does that mean? What is it supposed to mean? I think there’s a real danger that photographers essentially practice a form of work that taps into zeitgeist and in that respect formulaic concerns. This is especially easy in a medium that is instant rather than extended, where the latter is neither required nor welcome, and where on the whole the industry is driven and maintained by news media values and what exactly they are, regardless of whatever part of the political spectrum they come from.
Second, I have never seen or heard of an extended collection of work or extensive documentation of the plight of Muslim women in Middle East society. It seems to be off the political radar, even within the feminist camp, because it’s an embedded part of an immensely complex and problematic situation which is currently blurred by the lens of political correctness and cultural relativity. The problematic fact is Middle East Islamic culture is now part of an overall geo-political ecology, from which comes the term ‘clash of civilisations’. Several times in the conference, Islamic oppression of women was referred to – for example, Suvendra Chaterjee of Drik runs photographic training programmes where women are substantially barred from participating. This was not presented as an issue that needs challenging, but a regrettable fact mentioned in passing. Why is this? – especially within a conference on democracy, when injustice and inequality is high on the agenda. Indeed, when injustice and inequality is the flip side of the coin. The answer is above: because it’s immensely complex and problematic – and because of the enormous scale of the problem.
Photographer Geert van Kesteren of Magnum
later made the interesting remark that the possibilities for journalism are an index of the democracy of any country, and I think that’s an incisive observation. Here’s his presentation:
He concluded that independent journalism in Iraq is impossible, showing that the democracy project has failed. I’ve no doubt that’s correct, in both aspects. How, why, and what it means in practical terms is a complex subject that doesn’t interest me so much as an analysis of what is opposed and antithetical towards democracy in the Islamic world: where the Middle East is almost completely a theocratic, non-democratic society and, further, how religious tribal hostility is an indigenous fact that has to be recognised as a critical factor in current instability and violence. It is ridiculous to blame George Bush once again for a situation few could have or would have wanted to predict: that if you remove a barbarous dictator, it allows pre-existing hostilities to emerge once again. I don’t like Bush; but I also don’t like such formulaic debate, confined to narrow intellectual pathways. Kesteren stated that people in Iraq want democracy, but can’t cope with its possibility. That’s a complex point that would need further expansion but one relevant factor is who, exactly, he is referring to? I doubt if it’s the Islamic-tribal hierachies of men who wield power and want to maintain it, who only understand theocracy. And in any case, does this supposed support for democracy encompass anything like a democratic equality for women? Of course not; actually what it means is patriarchal democracy which is a strange oxymoronic situation, an undoubted improvement but still unsatisfactory.
These are not right wing ideas – another common polemic suggestion in the contemporary world, when such criticism is proposed. Rather, they are a position opposed to a theological Right, currently benefiting from a conventional positioning within multicultural ethics. Opposition to right wing attitudes does not itself becoming right wing; this semantic twist parallels the strange inversion whereby an advocate for liberal values is supposedly ‘fundamental’: another oxymoronic cheat, using a logic of tit-for-tat while actually sidestepping, again, the actual values and social practices in question. I’m really rather tired of this polemic; I’ve seen quite a lot of it, as have others with a similar response to mine against obscurantist and propagandist nonsense. It appears to me as a subject defined by decades-old parameters that vitally need updating, and a subject articulated as an emotional logic – as Iran did with their holocaust so-called satire – that subsequently becomes intellectually skewed and therefore unacceptable. Sociologist Karl Popper said there are two kinds of societies, Open and Closed, seen as follows:
Democracies: Open
Allow different ideas to compete with each other; tolerance for different ideas; sharing thoughts; transmission of ideas
Totalitarian: Closed
Fascist, communist and religious states with a controlled media, to break the human spirit and bind your capacity to think
Advocating the former can and must involve a repudiation of the latter, and suggesting relatively minor problems in the former is equivalent to what you find in the latter is a ridiculous but widespread practice: no, our democracy is not perfect, but it’s a hundred times better than Middle East theocracy. Bush is incidental, whatever you think of him, so is Blair and the relationship he’s developed, because both are impermanent political moments. The point is there’s massive internal disagreement and argument within the West, which is how it should be within free speech democracy, which contrasts substantially against what we see in the Islamic world: a closed society, built on thought control, indoctrination, and mono-cultural attitudes resistant to criticism – the fatwas on Salman Rushdie, Hirsi Ali, Danish cartoonists and many others. The more mono-cultural and illiberal a society is, the more it will clash with the West. As the Americans say, go figure.
The conference was linked to an essay which at one point states it seems that it’s possible to make images as unconsciously as one consumes them, bypassing the critical sense entirely. Indeed. Although unconsciousness is not confined to either image making or consumption; it applies more fundamentally at the level of rhetoric and ideology. I think what we’re currently seeing is a manouevring for political position taking advantage of an established rhetorical debate with what is, essentially, an emotional grievance which is itself no basis for constructive resolution because the issues require thought. Thus, we saw the protestor confronting the Queen and government about shameful slavery when actually it happened a long time ago and now everyone condemns it – and, in significant contrast, there now exists a new form of slavery no less evil, the trafficking of women from Eastern Europe, and while it’s on a significantly smaller scale than African exploitation it differs because it is currently real – whereas the slavery protestor expressed something which was signficantly more symbolic. Thus again, we saw Iran and other Moslems use a tit-for-tat response against free speech criticism which sometimes has a satirical form, by suggesting that mocking genocidial loss of life equates to some cartoons about a dead mythologised person who, in historic actuality, did engage in mass violence. The idea was, that hurt us, so we will hurt you, which denies and occludes all possibility of meaningful debate over the actual issues in question. Very convenient, for a culture whose leader was a war lord but we’re not supposed to say so – not with bombs in a turban, but with armies at his side; this is a disturbing fact, for someone with the status of religious leader. The equivalent to mocking the holocaust would actually be mocking Bosnia: something Western morality, conscience, and humanitarian intelligence would never allow. Salman Rushdie once described his fatwa as “an extreme form of literary criticism” which was a wonderfully eloquent and incisive remark, reframing his position in enlightened terms repudiating what he’s referred to as obscurantism – obscuring logical, moral, and philosophical issues with emotive, primitive, and dishonest rhetoric.
Photography is a ubiquitous medium interfacing with the wide diversity of human life. It’s no surprise then if its associated culture is complex and debateable and a conference about “democracy” inevitably, must, incorporate a discussion about the politics of representation – which essentially is what much of the conference was about – but there are critical moments in such a discourse where I think we have to penetrate beyond mere representational matters, and start to evaluate values and social practices at the points where they are clashing. Debating democracy essentially concerns the inequalities of power, but that in itself is not enough: we have to acknowledge and evaluate the competing viewpoints, not only in terms of who has the power and who doesn’t but in terms of enlightened, free speech, philosophical and humanitarian discourse.
As philosopher Slavoj Zizek said: What, however, about submitting Islam — together with all other religions — to a respectful, but for that reason no less ruthless, critical analysis?
Indeed, and it almost never happens.
Finally to conclude, I repeat the excellent words of Kant taken from his Critique of Pure Reason:
Our age is the age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds of exemption from the examination of this tribunal. But, if they are exempted, they become the subjects of just suspicion, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination.