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. Christians, Hindus, Jews, and now the West as a whole is its target, in both ideological terms violent terms.
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 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 concerns a superstition-driven totalitarian patriarchal system, whose adherents regard themselves 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 and analysis, 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 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 danger that photographers practice a form of work based on a zeitgeist that is essentially formulaic. This is especially easy in a medium that is instant rather than extended, where more in depth ideas are neither required nor welcome, and where on the whole the industry is driven and maintained by news media values 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 a complex and problematic situation 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 barred from participating. This was not presented as an issue that needs challenging, but a regrettable fact mentioned in passing. Why is this, at a conference about democracy, when injustice and inequality is being challenged?
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 improvement but still unsatisfactory.
These are not right wing ideas – another common idea that gets expressed. Rather, they oppose 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 sidestepping the values and social practices in question. I’m rather tired of such 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 need updating, and a subject articulated as an emotional logic – as Iran did with their holocaust so-called satire – that subsequently becomes intellectually skewed. 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 should 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 others. The more mono-cultural and illiberal a society is, the more it will clash with the West.
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 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 no basis for constructive resolution. 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 more symbolic. And we saw Iranian and other Muslims express a tit-for-tat response against free speech criticism (which may have a satirical form) by suggesting that mocking genocidial loss of life equates to cartoons about a dead mythologised person who, in fact, did engage in mass violence. The idea was: that hurt us, so we will hurt you, which denies the possibility of meaningful debate over the issues in question. Very convenient, for a culture whose leader was a war lord but we’re not supposed to say so – not using bombs in a turban, but with armies at his side. The equivalent to mocking the holocaust would be mocking Bosnia: something Western morality and conscience would never allow. Salman Rushdie once described his fatwa as “an extreme form of literary criticism,” an eloquent and incisive remark that reframed 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 diverse issues. Photographic culture is complex and a conference about “democracy” inevitably includes a discussion about the politics of representation – essentially what much of this conference was about – but there are moments in such a discourse where I think we have to evaluate values and social practices at the points where they are clashing. Debating ‘democracy’ concerns the inequalities of power, but that 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 values.
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.
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.
This is pretty much the problem with what Mark Sealy presented, and an elegant rebuttal:
“Europe has vanquished its most horrible monsters. Slavery was abolished, colonialism abandoned, fascism defeated, and communism brought to its knees. What other continent can claim more? In the end, the good prevailed over the abominable. Europe is the Holocaust, but it is also the destruction of Nazism; it is the Gulag, but also the fall of the Wall; imperialism, but also decolonization; slavery, but also abolition. In each case, there is a form of violence that is not only left behind but delegitimized, a twofold progress in civilization and in law. At the end of the day, freedom prevailed over oppression, which is why life is better in Europe than on many other continents and why people from the rest of the world are knocking on Europe’s door while Europe wallows in guilt.”
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_3_european-conscience.html
The only addition I’d make to that essay concerns the role and treatment of women. Devoid from the conference, ignored in Sealy’s speech when he was going on about “parity”, what we’re left with is a kind of boy’s discussion with other boys, about only the boys.
I think the advance we need should address and must acknowledge this issue. In Yemen, child brides (sexual abuse) are common. In Afghanistan, India and other countries, acid is thrown at women and girls if they express any kind of independent existence like seeking an education. In parts of Muslim Africa women and girls are constantly raped, mutilated and killed, and the police are both complicit and actively involved.
In the UK, a Muslim pimp gang was recently convicted for raping and kidnapping a vulnerable young girl. And guess what? – she was white:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-10844915
The police have a special unit to deal with this, and there are thousands of cases every year. It’s recently happened in Australia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI7IJ-R8prA
What we see here (and the video above exposes it) is the political-sexual conflict occurring when Muslims, taught that women should have no independent sexual power, regard them as animal sluts if they do. It’s the other side of the coin to the scarves and Darth Vader costumes – if women don’t comply with the Islamic role and associated dress codes they are seen as legitimate targets for violence, sexual or otherwise. Across the Middle East women are subjected to violence if they don't wear the ugly tents expected of them. We can further understand this point with reference to Christianity whereby women are regarded as the evil temptress like Eve carrying the apple: as a characteristic of religion generally. But with Christianity this is largely an issue of the past, and what we see in Islam is both contemporary and a hundred times worse. If you search "woman stoned islam adultery youtube" you find repulsive cases of Muslim barbarity. How are we to understand this? A commonly repeated retort is it's 'cultural' and not religious. This is dishonest nonsense. If we look back to the historic and ideological heart of Islam, we find Mohammed was responsible for massacring an entire Jewish tribe of about 800 people (the Banu Quarayza), for killing two poets who just mocked him, and a so called adulterous woman. In regard to the latter the report I read said he waited for her to give birth to the associated child and only then killed her, to add an even further dimension of mental suffering. If that was also 'cultural' and not Islamic, why didn't the religion oppose it? In fact the religion was directly responsible, in the person of Mohammed himself.
When Muslims speak of their “respect” for women, seen in the video above, they use the term in the same way “respect” gets mis-used by the Italian mafia and in ghetto parts of British cities: it’s associated with intimidation and subjugation. “Respect”, for the Muslim in the video above, means his notion of the female role is complied with. It’s double-talk, basically, whereby any possibility of an independent sexual life in a woman is deemed unacceptable: what gets "respected" is a subjugated role where women serve men. When the rest of us use the term "respect" we are recognising the independent self determining rights of an individual person. When Muslims use the term in regard to women it means something very different - and for some of the time, at least, they know what they are doing when they twist and corrupt such discourse.
This nonsense in the Islamic world has to be challenged. While we recognise what happens in backward countries is rather distant from our own, it's been exported here for decades. So called honour killing, perpetrated on British soil, happens quite regularly. As I write, it's in the news once again:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-11164901
And here's a BBC poll showing the extent of the problem; one in ten Asians support it:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5311244.stm
While the poll is alarming, I think it's also misrepresentative. While this crime clearly occurs across the Asian world, I think I'm correct in saying it is predominantly Muslim - and the BBC has carefully avoided this point.
And - to conclude - this topic is an associated issue wherever we see Muslim terrorists. These religious psychopaths don't go home to wives, daughters and communities where women and girls have anything remotely like an equal social role. Indeed we can ponder the topic, in psychosexual Freudian terms, how the two factors are related. Wilhelm Reich spoke about this, how murderous dictators demonstrate psychosexual pathology. The disturbing film Salo, by Pasolini, explores this graphically in regard to Nazism.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073650
Thus, in half justifying 9/11 as some kind of aggrieved political reaction against a guilty West, Mark Sealy was colluding with a heinous DISparity in regard to the treatment and role of women.
— James Lomax · Sep 8, 12:04 PM · §
And here’s the great (late) Christopher Hitchens address the same point as it arises with the unpleasant George Galloway as he tries to justify 9/11. This nonsense has to be spoken of as it is, and condemned accordingly, as you see here:
And here's the whole debate - if you can stand seeing such a foul intellectual sniping game conducted by George Galloway. What strikes me here is the elegant intellectual outlook of Christopher Hitchens - erudite, knowledgeable, moral and balanced - and the mere attack tactics of this politician who represents a (hostile) Muslim area of the UK. There's no analysis here, just a recrimination game. Also note how Hitchens calls for calm in the audience to listen to Galloway to further the debate, because he has mastery of the situation compared to ridiculous pugilist George. One side concerns the pursuit of analysis and solution, the other concerns whining:
I rather regret that I didn’t speak up more against Sealy because what he expressed is pernicious nonsense that has unfortunately gained some currency.
Hitch again:Richard Landes, associate professor of history at Boston University, has described this position as ‘moral narcissism’. It’s a component of the vacuous trendy Left, where they condemn others for condemning others as if that is the problem, in which process, when they don’t get own their hands dirty with the moral issues within certain debates – they think themselves morally superior.
Sealy said he wasn’t going to argue with me which was basically a rhetorical remark to block an embarrassing situation. But he did exactly that, and just toned it down a bit when he realised there was an objection in the audience (and a few people clapped their hands at my interjection) to his unpleasant ideas.
My impulse was to keep the proceedings friendly so I only voiced my objections so far; I regret that. He spoke condescendingly of what people remember and feel about 9/11 while suggesting, arrogantly, it’s a political position that should be reconfigured. He was wrong – what I think and feel about 9/11 did not and does not fit his schema and his remarks were disgraceful in regard to his failure to condemn the 9/11 atrocity.
Perhaps the final core idea here concerns the remark Sealy made saying he was arguing for "parity". What he meant was, 9/11 was not especially heinous when you consider other atrocities which don't prompt the same horror nor have the same exposure. He referred to an atrocity - I can't remember what it is - saying 'did you know' about this?
It's a rather odious position in several respects. Firstly, everyone - every individual, family, and nation - has some aspect of self interest. It's just the way it is. If a friend, family member or fellow national is killed it has a different effect, a different meaning, compared to the same occurrence with strangers thousands of miles away. The same applies to all people, that is to say distant people in regard to us. Secondly, this 'parity' notion makes no distinction between different cultures and ideologies. I do not accept that the social and political culture you find in Iran, Saudi, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt or Afghanistan has 'parity' with ours, that is to say the developed, free speech, egalitarian, multicultural and tolerant West. There is no 'parity' between the monoculture of Saudi where churches are banned, Egypt where Christians are killed, or Pakistan and Iran where you can be killed for Islamic "blasphemy" and/or homosexuality - and any modern Western country. It's a Left wing idea that 'everyone is equal' which I find intellectually and morally adolescent. In a political and cultural respect there is no parity between Britain and totalitarian theocratic countries and it's ludicrous - a sort of naive adolescent idealism - to form any thesis on that basis.
— James Lomax · Jan 18, 06:14 PM · §