Contents of B:
Bass:
Our four-stringed instrument, Sadie, has suffered a sad history: rescued
from a hack music shop for a ransom of $150, she was then appropriated by the
divisive hands of an interloper not worthy of humanityâs better half.
Liberated from a squat in Philadelphia, our poor red instrument spent few hours
being played, until three years later the founding of Countdown to Putsch set
into motion the eventual redemption of our trusted friend. She now most
frequently collaborates directly with Chris, although she remains open-minded
about future cooperation with all members of the Putsch.
alt. meanings: 1) Mental acceptance of something as real or true;
or 2) An understanding or thought upon which one acts. - Most people would
accept the first meaning, which is the operative dictionary definition. I am
lobbying for a change to the second meaning because I am convinced that the word
ãbeliefä has become essentially meaningless. People rattle off a myriad of
beliefs, with no obligation to display conviction merited by those beliefs. For
those of us with ãrealä beliefs, it is kind of insulting to hear some nimrod
exclaim ãwell I believe thisä and ãI believe thatä. What irks me is not
that I disagree with the beliefs of others, although often I do, but
that others are so willing to espouse beliefs without actually acting on these
beliefs.
Letâs imagine for an impossible second that my new definition of belief
was accepted - how would our use of the word belief change? Well, for one, it
would not change under many circumstances - I can still say that I believe in
gravity, as long as I take precautions to not fall out of windows (demonstrating
that deliberate refusal to do something is an action). I can say that I
believe in my friendâs ability to play drums, as long as I support his
drumming by playing in a band with him or going to watch his band play. But
idiots can no longer say ãI believe in animal rightsä and walk around with a
hamburger in their hand which was just washed with a Proctor and Gamble soap.
Christians will be accused of distorting the language if they say ãI believe
in the Jesus Christ depicted in the Bibleä, unless of course they help to feed
and clothe the downtrodden as instructed to by the New Testament. Belief will
become a rejuvenated word, rescued from the pit of meaninglessness in which it
now resides.
1) You are completely free to
travel in almost any direction, unimpaired, while they wallow in the false
security of their death boxes; 2) Part of everyday life becomes extremely
beneficial to both mental and physical health; 3) Own a big lock and still get
your bike stolen in New York City.
There is a secret ballot in our wonderfully democratic society. Well, it
actually isnât too big of a secret. But perhaps you think that you need to
wait for the next local election to place your vote. Well, Iâve got some good
news and some bad news. The good news is that we can place official, tallied
votes every day, holding political sway at will- and the bad news is that most
people already do place these votes, mostly unknowingly. You see, in the United
States there really is next to nothing that hasnât a market. That is to say,
that fundamental human needs such as clothing, shelter, and healthcare are not
only sold privileges but large-scale businesses. Things like walls equipped with
a ceiling, or the care of a doctor, are not at all the rights of the citizenry,
but the citizenry does have the right, at least in principle, to earn a
Îsecond rightâ to have them. This second right earned is called money, and
the system of rights which sells basic and universal human needs for it, for
better or worse, is what we call capitalism.
Upon these playing grounds, the winners are known to celebrate their
acquisition of a great, new healthcare package as if such a thing should
actually be considered an achievement awarded only to those whoâve earned it.
These winners are, to say it plainly, just the most Îsuccessfulâ consumers.
But Îsuccessâ, in the context of the winners, is defined only as ãable to
buy,ä and this is a definition that we can reject. You see, even the most
impoverished amongst us are active consumers. The less fortunate beggar most
commonly asks not for the object of his or her desire, but for the money to buy
it. This essay, however, is not addressed to those who cannot afford a cup for
water, but to those who can afford to buy this CD. If you are the American Iâm
thinking of, then you, by definition, must love your fresh lot of choices· it
is a rule here. If we arenât choosing a health club, then we are at least
choosing the place to buy our bread and toothpaste. But the scene we have been
inserted into is a place where everything must be sold in order to persist as an
option in the future. Hence, the consumer can make an effective statement by
deciding what to buy and what not to buy. I say Îeffectiveâ meaning only
that it has an effect which is immediate, intentional, and potent- not that it
is an effective revolution in itself. Yet, if we appropriate this scene to the
best of our ability the Îsuccessful consumerâ need not be the one who is
ãable to buy,ä but the one who ãrefuses to buy.ä That is, we can feel a
successful consumption in our refusal to buy from the GAP, Nine West, Nike,
Mobil, Chevron, Proctor & Gamble, and McDonalds; and we will not go
clothes-less, foodless, and unshaven because of it, since we will obtain these
belongings from the independent businesses that are often squashed out by the
colonization of monopolistic, corporate Îdevelopmentâ.
The potential boycott, however, is often dictated by oneâs economic
context. To boycott oxygen we would need to have something else to breath, and
to boycott one luxury there needs to be an alternative to it. Rosa Parks, in the
Montgomery Bus Boycott, saw walking to be a suitable alternative to riding the
bus. Now, with the purchase of an automobile, one who earns $13,000 per year has
an economic inability to buy an S.U.V.; an inability that cannot register as
their choice not to do so, since it was never an option to begin with. The
makers of S.U.V.s are not surprised or detrimentally affected by the
non-patronage of the poor, since the blueprint for these vehicles has planned
into it the exclusion of this consumer group. Whereas with Rosa Parks, the
Montgomery busses sought the support of the people of color who could have
indeed afforded the bus fare throughout the year that they chose to walk. So in
the first place, we cannot buy the things that cannot even be sold to us. All
things that are for sale are also always for sale to the wealthy, while a great
deal of these are not for sale to the poor. Housing and education are often
amongst the most brutal examples.
A further complication, stemming also from economic roots, is that the
vendors address their consumer groups through the mediums of exploitation,
deception and mass psychology (see Culture Industry, Precursor to
Fascism). Itâs not that they sell what we want to buy, but that we
want to buy the things that they sell; that which is not for sale cannot be
bought, and sadly there have been no stones left unpriced. That is, the
inner-city kids who get ridiculed for spending under $200 on sneakers, and the
members of an affluent neighborhood wherein to not own an S.U.V. is to not yet
have Îmade itâ, have both been victimized by the oppressive capitalization
of an economic class. The vendors will indeed stop at nothing. In fact, there
are many individuals who actually pay to advertise for the companies without a
wage. For example, to buy the Nike swoosh (the companyâs logo) as a necklace
medallion is often seen in New York City as an expression of style rather than
an ad for Nike that provides no physical function to the wearer. The strata of
deception that makes such a thing both popular and possible is not an invention
of the consumerâs but of the vendor who pretends to be an ally. Yet, while it
is not the consumerâs invention, they are the ones who enable its success. In
this case, it is the consumer group who buys the swoosh medallions that has the
most effective consumer power. Hence, it is not that the targeted group cannot
boycott the products aimed at them, but that the consumer group that actually
buys them is the very one thatâs been deceived thus far. To overcome this
deception is the preliminary struggle.
The boycott is felt by the companies since it refuses them their lifeâs
blood. In India, when McDonalds had no food for the vegetarians (who comprised
the majority), they were compelled to introduce a veggie-burger. McDonalds
absolutely must be supported by the consumers, for it is through their patronage
that the company is paid. This is a fact. If we learn that McDonalds feeds
enough grain to a single cow to have sufficiently fed a small country in the
so-called third-world, they can Îveg-outâ until the cows come home (pun
intended), but they will never get my dollar. This is the same as it is with a
political candidate like David Duke whoâs history with the KKK is too much for
many voters to Îget overâ. McDonalds has a bloody, murderous history of
libel and animal abuse- and they have become a null and void candidate in my
personal voting booth. And the same goes for Mobil. Mobil, having provided
logistical support to the military in Indonesia (by way of supplying them fuel
and construction machinery which was used to dig
mass graves), has forever lost my vote. I spend hundreds upon hundreds of
dollars in gas each year, and Iâll be damned if I give any of them to Mobil.
ãYâknow, all of this political crap is making me think we should go
get some beers tonight.ä Well, if youâre going to buy some beers, go
ahead· enjoy your drunk self. But if you are going to critique sexism as you
take the dayâs edge off, you better refuse to buy your alcohol from Anheiser
Busch, Miller, Coors, or Heineken. Go find yourself an independent brewery, or
take some time to brew your own alcohol. Otherwise, consider yourself on the
sides of the oppressors in our corporate dominion. For every time you buy a beer
from one of these bastards youâre helping to buy dinner for the same assholes
who designed the latest campaign that promises great sex with a Sports
Illustrated model the moment of your first sip. Supply and demand is the
underpinning of the corporate network. It is the crux of the mass psychology of
mass consumption to supply the items first, and then make them precisely the
things that are demanded by the people.
The boycott is, in the end, not ideally democratic- but neither is the
American political system. President Hayes was not chosen by the peopleâs vote
but by the vote of the electoral college- And, while it is historically rare and
unlikely, the same system that gave the people of the United States President
Hayes is the same one that gave us President Clinton, and it will give us the
next president against our will if our vote conflicts with that of the electoral
college. In principle, then, the Îweâ that effectively selects our so-called
leaders, is not a Îwe the peopleâ. Democracy, in this sense, is merely a
tasty mirage. Each of us buys something, and where there is an option there is a
potential vote. We need to know our suppliers so we can make our demands, and
then consume accordingly. The boycott is indeed a substantial part of my daily
fight against the evils of corporate America. While I am not over-confident that
my boycott will single-handedly Îsmash the stateâ, the accumulation of
capital is the basis of culture, and the things that we buy are truly our votes.
Gabi tells the following story: ãA kid, wearing headphones, walks onto
the subway platform. Alone, he pauses in front of a poster. Itâs a picture of
Busta Rhymes, an advertisement for the local hip-hop station. The kid looks at
the picture and says Îhey Busta! whatz up? you chilling?â. The kid continues
down the platform, oblivious to the real humans around himä. Celebrities have
become, for many, our main focus of adoration and attention. In accepting
celebrities as our familiars, we ignore the great wealth of talent, personality
and value which surrounds us. Why not make celebrities of our friends?
Butler,
Judith- Speech Activism:
To what extent, if at all, can we consider speech to be action? Speech
certainly can describe actions, perhaps instigate another to action- but can we
take action by mouthing certain sounds? Maybe some, but not all, of our speech
is an action. This is a recent contemporary philosophical issue, first opened up
in this century by J.L. Austin. He observed that only some of our speech is
either true or false, or a description of things. That is, he noticed that while
some speech is propositional (can be judged true or false), and other speech is
descriptive- there is yet another kind of speech which is neither of these.
Take, for example, the wedding ceremony. In this ceremony, the bride-to-be is
asked if she will take the one beside her to be eternally bound as her partner
in matrimony. When she utters ãI doä, what kind of an utterance is it? This
utterance cannot be judged true or false, since it is not propositional (propositional
statements have the form Îx is yâ). Also, neither is her utterance
descriptive. That is, it does not describe marriage, her spouse, the ceremony,
etc. If you claim that it describes her love, feelings, or devotion, then you
have inferred something from the utterance. You may turn out to be right, but
nowhere in the words ãI doä themselves can we find a verbal description of
anything. The utterance has no adjectives, ãIä refers to the one speaking,
and ãdoä refers to doing something. Meanwhile, nothing about the ãIä or
the ãdoingä is described with this utterance. But a ceremony is
conventional, and by saying ãI doä in this context, she actually enters into
her marriage. The reality is that if she just stands there and never responds,
the marriage shall never Îtake placeâ. So, according to these conventions,
her simple utterance actually enacts the marriage. She does something very
significant by speaking ãI do.ä Austin gives another example of action by
speech. Letâs say I have just finished building my new boat and wish to give
it a name. If I stand before my new boat, wearing a D.R.I. shirt, holding a
bottle of non-alcoholic beverage in hand, smash it against the stem of the boat,
and proclaim ãI hereby name this ship the ÎFloating Putschâ,ä the ship
is named at once. If I smash the bottle into the stem of the boat without making
the utterance, not only will I look rather foolish- but the boat will not have
been named by my action. My words, when uttered in the way above, are actually
an event taking place in the world.
This all seems very obvious, but there are suppositions of power and
authority that weâve overlooked. Imagine, for example, that right before I
smash the bottle into the stem of the boat a homeless drunkard runs up from the
gutter, grabs the bottle from my hand, smashes it into the stem of the boat, and
utters: ãI hereby name this ship ÎFuck the Mayorâ.ä We might be a little
startled, and would all agree that the ship has not yet been named. But the
drunkard enacted the process of naming the ship precisely in the way that it
worked for me. Why, then, did it not work? The answer is also pretty obvious.
The drunkard hadnât any authority to name it, and thus we donât take her
interruption seriously in this way. With these examples we see some basic ways
that speech can be action.
At this point, I introduce an author that I suggest all of you take a
very close look at. In Judith Butlerâs new book, Excitable Speech: A
Politics of the Performative, she examines the politics of speech-action.
Now, in building on what Iâve mentioned above, let us consider things like
sexual harassment, or yelling a racial slur. Not too distant in our history,
these things were not considered actions-in-themselves. There is still more than
a residue of this perception. The question was and still is: ãYes, he said
Îhey baby, nice assâ, but at least he didnât do anything to
you, right?ä There are no clear lines in determining which speech should be
charged as conduct. You see, once we take certain utterances to be injurious,
hateful acts- we are inviting the state to come in with its courts and prosecute
people for speaking certain things. Butler takes a very unique look at this
problem, and offers some very convincing arguments. But, first, what the hell is
speech anyway? Well, it is definitely a system of meaningful symbols which, when
uttered, represent and communicate specific ideas. At bottom, it is a
representational symbol-system that says something to someone in a way that
highly specified ideas are transferred. Speech is communicative. This all seems
more and more obvious, but what if somebody sexually harasses an
English-speaking person on his or her way to the train with Chinese words? Has
any harassment actually taken place? Maybe after someone tells the addressee, in
English, what was said. Or maybe he or she was able to infer what was said by
the harasserâs accompanying gesticulations. But, if the addressee doesnât
get the meaning of the speech, and cannot infer anything for sure, then he or
she may very well feel no injury whatsoever. And what about art, or other
non-verbal symbols. If a painting or a sculpture clearly communicates that all
Jews should be exterminated, can it be considered as a kind of speech that acts?
No, you say? Well then, what about a burning cross placed by white supremacists
on the front lawn of the only African American residents in the neighborhood?
This is not a symbol which is true or false, for it just stands there burning.
But, does it not say something? Butler refers to the court case R.A.V. v. St.
Paul, where just such a thing took place. The court did find the burning of
the cross to be reprehensible, but they saw it as being protected under the laws
of free-speech by the first amendment to the US constitution. So it was taken as
speech. Recently, the high courts of the United States decided that homosexuals
would be allowed in the military, but that they could not Îsayâ that they
were homosexual. Such an utterance, judged the courts, could be construed as a
Îsexual actâ and the perpetrator would be dismissed at once from the
military. It would seem that saying ãI am a homosexualä is a lot more
speech-like than burning a cross- but the former is not protected by free-speech
laws, while the second is. For the homosexual, self-identification is
Îoff-limitsâ in the military, while the cross-burner is protected as such by
the state.
Speech-action, for Butler, is a very real phenomenon. But, for her, the
stateâs interpretation of speech as action is violently dangerous. For this
reason, she is not in favor of conflating speech with action. She recognizes the
deep injury and activity of speech, but she wants to insist on an important
distinction between them. The one who screams out the racial slur hoping to
cause injury, is not really the responsible actor. Each time a racial
slur is intelligibly uttered a history and tradition of racist speech, which
long precedes the birth of the one who speaks it, is called back as the present
context. Without the history of the utterance, there is no reason why it should
be offensive. Butler notices that the courts attempt to reprimand a single
individual who uses injurious speech; speech which actually refers not to the
speaker, but to a tradition of prejudice and hate. In this sense, the courtsâ
treatment of Îhate-speechâ is only a smoke screen which ignores the history
and context that is the real problem· A problem left un-indicted by the state.
The real reason that a homosexual in the military cannot say that he or she is a
homosexual, has to do with the broader social context that regards homosexuality
as deviant. This homophobic context is not on trial, but rather imported and
preserved in the military. It is the homosexual that will be put on trial if he
or she utters the unspeakable. Butler argues that, in most cases, something is
only officially unspeakable if the courts decide that it is. In this way, it is
the state that actually produces what we call Îhate speechâ. The state
creates the unspeakable, and can enforce it at will. Butler writes:
Considered
as discriminatory action, hate speech is a matter for the courts to decide, and
so Îhate speechâ is not deemed hateful or discriminatory until the courts
decide that it is... Indeed, the petition to call something hate speech, and to
argue that it is also conduct, efficacious in its effects, consequentially
privative of rights and liberties, is not yet to have made the case. The case is
made only when it is Îdecidedâ. In this sense, it is the decision of the
state, the sanctioned utterance of the state, which produces the act of hate
speech-produces, but does not cause. ...not only does the state curb homosexual
speech, but produces as well- through its decisions- a public notion of the
self-censoring homosexual; ... and it produces the burning cross as an emblem of
intelligible and protected speech (p. 96-98).
This
is also evidenced by the stateâs treatment of the reappropriation of racial
slurs in rap music. Rap music produced by African American artists has the power
to reappropriate certain words which have historically been used to injure them.
It has the power to strip away some of the injurious force of these words by
lifting them from their hateful context and inserting them into a new one. This
does not eradicate the other contexts within which the words are still
injurious, but it is Butlerâs way of using speech action to resist the efforts
of the courts to selectively restrict our speech.
For those of you who are interested in the activism and politics of speech, Judith Butler is right up your alley. Also, donât forget to check out J.L. Austinâs How To Do Things With Words. Remember to look in the philosophy sections of you local independent bookseller, get a copy from the nearest library, or write to us for photocopies before even thinking about Barnes & Noble or Borders