August 18th, 2009 / 6:52 am
Snippets
Snippets
Justin Taylor—
Yale University Press is publishing a book about the Danish Mohammed political cartoon controversy from a few years back. But, for fear of violence, this academic study of a dozen political cartoons is being published without the cartoons it is studying. Assholes. But don’t let me get all pissed about this. Here’s Hitch at Slate, pissed enough for all of us.
Hi Justin. Far from the images being redacted, this ongoing obsession with having the cartoons seen and seen is what pisses me off. Part of the ideological manipulation and outright racism of the cartoons is not so much that they mock an Islamist injunction against God being seen but rather that they facetiously insist that we in the West are custodians of a right to see which is predicated on our historical bravery to show things in disregard of prohibitions. Hitch especially irritates me because he vituperates at length in his online column about Islamo-boogeymen and cowardly liberals and then, quite bravely, says, ‘Oh, and here’s a link so you, courageous independent-minded reader of Slate, can see the things for yourself.’ Like he did anything. Well, shucks, maybe if I was that hellbent on seeing them I could have punched ‘danish cartoons mohammed’ into Google and guess what, done it myself – becoming a fearless nonconformist in the process, I suppose. This pretty much highlights my point. Anyone with computer access – including Muslims – can find those images without any real hassle at all (internet censorship in some regimes notwithstanding but that’s a bigger issue and not relevant to the Western audience – Muslim and non-Muslim – at which the cartoons were primarily targeted). The wider atmosphere of anger and injury over those cartoons was not so much that they were profane as that they were wantonly obscene. Yes, their profanity mattered but what exercised the issue was that they were not only visualizations but *obfuscations* of the logic of the creator’s divinity and denigrations of their religion’s sophistication and dimensionality. Obscenity, of course, is not about what literally can or cannot be seen but where, how and in what way a thing that is thought should not be seen comes to be seen. Like, for instance, placing fisting shots in a children’s book is an issue of obscenity, because of the criss-cross of objects and contexts in a manner considered incompatible from the perspective of the values which inform the platform of presentation itself (in this case, the children’s book). So I have no beef at all with fisting but I might raise an eyebrow were fisting to be the centrepiece of a book for ages 5 to 10. Though I’d soon lose that raised eyebrow were that kid’s book o’ fistin’ fun to be an art object designed for a gallery or a gag in a film or so on. What became the catalyst for such fury – and I mean the emotive content of the protests in Denmark which had to exist alongside the political machinations of the imams or whatever – was that a institutionalised tabloid newspaper gave its columns over to a kind of gutter screed on Muslims and savagery and the superior of our seeing them as such. And since I can see those cartoons at great ease and leisure on the net, why is it that because Yale decides not to sandwich some colour plates in the book itself – which, I should add, is not the big loss Hitch makes it out to be since the book is specifically intended to argue that the cartoons were secondary to the broader political plottings anyway – why is it that this ‘failure’ is apparently is the sign of our impending internal cultural collapse? I mean, it’s just not. And to argue that it is is to mutate these grotesque cartoons into an indispensable litmus test of our cultural ‘health’ as opposed to the cultural pathology their over-elaboration as such a sign actually represents. If the Danish newspaper had originally been on the level about its concern for the right to representation, it could have represented a *respectful* image of Mohammed and achieved the same ‘subversive’ ends, right? Except it’s hard to conceive of a benign picture of Mohammed stirring the pot so thoroughly. And that’s because it was never about that. It was about the invention of a provocation which situates the West as a historical collective of those who can *see* over those who are willfully blind and benighted. And as for the Yale reaction, why it sucks is not because it exhibits cowardice in the face of fanaticism but because it is a continuation, ironically, of the Danish newspaper’s racist bullshit in a new form. The Yale publishers’ grounds for refusing to print the images is their assumption that the *likelihood* of a violent reaction makes printing them too risky: they can’t take onto their ‘conscience’ the ‘responsbility’ for setting in train a series of events with traumatic consequences, as if there were this perennially, libidinally unrestrained Arab mass unquestionably out there which can only ever erupt into bloodlust – and nothing else – if its fanatical ‘sensibilities’ are trod on. This is the bullshit that the Danish cartoons were absolutely intent on promulgating. The reason for not reproducing the cartoons is that they are cheap, ugly, shitty things that don’t deserve the university imprimatur, simple as that. If only there were more politically correctness!
Hi Justin. Far from the images being redacted, this ongoing obsession with having the cartoons seen and seen is what pisses me off. Part of the ideological manipulation and outright racism of the cartoons is not so much that they mock an Islamist injunction against God being seen but rather that they facetiously insist that we in the West are custodians of a right to see which is predicated on our historical bravery to show things in disregard of prohibitions. Hitch especially irritates me because he vituperates at length in his online column about Islamo-boogeymen and cowardly liberals and then, quite bravely, says, ‘Oh, and here’s a link so you, courageous independent-minded reader of Slate, can see the things for yourself.’ Like he did anything. Well, shucks, maybe if I was that hellbent on seeing them I could have punched ‘danish cartoons mohammed’ into Google and guess what, done it myself – becoming a fearless nonconformist in the process, I suppose. This pretty much highlights my point. Anyone with computer access – including Muslims – can find those images without any real hassle at all (internet censorship in some regimes notwithstanding but that’s a bigger issue and not relevant to the Western audience – Muslim and non-Muslim – at which the cartoons were primarily targeted). The wider atmosphere of anger and injury over those cartoons was not so much that they were profane as that they were wantonly obscene. Yes, their profanity mattered but what exercised the issue was that they were not only visualizations but *obfuscations* of the logic of the creator’s divinity and denigrations of their religion’s sophistication and dimensionality. Obscenity, of course, is not about what literally can or cannot be seen but where, how and in what way a thing that is thought should not be seen comes to be seen. Like, for instance, placing fisting shots in a children’s book is an issue of obscenity, because of the criss-cross of objects and contexts in a manner considered incompatible from the perspective of the values which inform the platform of presentation itself (in this case, the children’s book). So I have no beef at all with fisting but I might raise an eyebrow were fisting to be the centrepiece of a book for ages 5 to 10. Though I’d soon lose that raised eyebrow were that kid’s book o’ fistin’ fun to be an art object designed for a gallery or a gag in a film or so on. What became the catalyst for such fury – and I mean the emotive content of the protests in Denmark which had to exist alongside the political machinations of the imams or whatever – was that a institutionalised tabloid newspaper gave its columns over to a kind of gutter screed on Muslims and savagery and the superior of our seeing them as such. And since I can see those cartoons at great ease and leisure on the net, why is it that because Yale decides not to sandwich some colour plates in the book itself – which, I should add, is not the big loss Hitch makes it out to be since the book is specifically intended to argue that the cartoons were secondary to the broader political plottings anyway – why is it that this ‘failure’ is apparently is the sign of our impending internal cultural collapse? I mean, it’s just not. And to argue that it is is to mutate these grotesque cartoons into an indispensable litmus test of our cultural ‘health’ as opposed to the cultural pathology their over-elaboration as such a sign actually represents. If the Danish newspaper had originally been on the level about its concern for the right to representation, it could have represented a *respectful* image of Mohammed and achieved the same ‘subversive’ ends, right? Except it’s hard to conceive of a benign picture of Mohammed stirring the pot so thoroughly. And that’s because it was never about that. It was about the invention of a provocation which situates the West as a historical collective of those who can *see* over those who are willfully blind and benighted. And as for the Yale reaction, why it sucks is not because it exhibits cowardice in the face of fanaticism but because it is a continuation, ironically, of the Danish newspaper’s racist bullshit in a new form. The Yale publishers’ grounds for refusing to print the images is their assumption that the *likelihood* of a violent reaction makes printing them too risky: they can’t take onto their ‘conscience’ the ‘responsbility’ for setting in train a series of events with traumatic consequences, as if there were this perennially, libidinally unrestrained Arab mass unquestionably out there which can only ever erupt into bloodlust – and nothing else – if its fanatical ‘sensibilities’ are trod on. This is the bullshit that the Danish cartoons were absolutely intent on promulgating. The reason for not reproducing the cartoons is that they are cheap, ugly, shitty things that don’t deserve the university imprimatur, simple as that. If only there were more politically correctness!
More political correctness? Gag me…
More political correctness? Gag me…
Switch a few words around and you’d sound exactly like a moral majority Reaganite.
Switch a few words around and you’d sound exactly like a moral majority Reaganite.
Muslim isn’t a race. If Yale (or this cartoonist or whoever) are prejudiced against Muslims, that does not count as racism. That is only the first of many levels upon which your argument fails at rationality.
Muslim isn’t a race. If Yale (or this cartoonist or whoever) are prejudiced against Muslims, that does not count as racism. That is only the first of many levels upon which your argument fails at rationality.
The cartoons themselves are racist precisely because they conflate religious association with racialized character, much in the same way as anti-Semitic pamphleteers did early last century. Move on to level two, I guess.
The cartoons themselves are racist precisely because they conflate religious association with racialized character, much in the same way as anti-Semitic pamphleteers did early last century. Move on to level two, I guess.
Religion is not a race. Muslims stretch across many ethnicities, unlike Jews.
Go back to level one jail. Do not collect 200 dollars.
Religion is not a race. Muslims stretch across many ethnicities, unlike Jews.
Go back to level one jail. Do not collect 200 dollars.
I suppose that it wont help to point out that while Judaism is a religion, the Jews are also a race (in as far as ‘race’ exists as anything other than a societal construct), whereas there are Muslims of every race, so the analogy doesn’t really hold up.
These cartoons are ugly and offensive (that is beyond argument, in my opinion) but are still a valid form of free expression. Even when someone’s speech is hateful, it should not be used as an excuse for violence (or the threat of violence) as happened when these images were published. Since those who dislike these images chose to answer with violence, then it becomes fair to call them zealots, assholes or whatever. No matter how offensive the images are, there is no excuse to censor them. The publisher, while pretending to foster meaningful debate, showed great cowardice in being unwilling to present the images that they chose to discuss.
I suppose that it wont help to point out that while Judaism is a religion, the Jews are also a race (in as far as ‘race’ exists as anything other than a societal construct), whereas there are Muslims of every race, so the analogy doesn’t really hold up.
These cartoons are ugly and offensive (that is beyond argument, in my opinion) but are still a valid form of free expression. Even when someone’s speech is hateful, it should not be used as an excuse for violence (or the threat of violence) as happened when these images were published. Since those who dislike these images chose to answer with violence, then it becomes fair to call them zealots, assholes or whatever. No matter how offensive the images are, there is no excuse to censor them. The publisher, while pretending to foster meaningful debate, showed great cowardice in being unwilling to present the images that they chose to discuss.
Zoink – You were posting while I was typing. You beat me to it.
Zoink – You were posting while I was typing. You beat me to it.
My point was that I know that religion is not race and vice versa. Not all Muslims are Arabs, not all Arabs are Muslims: um, of course. The cartoons, however, don’t know that, or, more accurately, don’t want to know that and imply that the ‘religiosity’ presented is a racial trait of Arabs. That is their religious racism. And I never did say that the violent reaction to them was justified, only that it was premeditated by the imagery itself. And that the cartoons were a clear example of obscenity, despite their gloss as commentary. In regards to free expression, I don’t argue against that above. The cartoons are accessible on the net and that’s fine, great even from some abstract ‘all expression deserves a medium’ point of view. My argument isn’t about whether should people be allowed to see and say shitty racist things (it’s a moot point; they can and will) but rather to point out that to make the free choice not to replicate said images is not the same thing as censorship, which is what Hitch and the cartoon defenders insist we have to believe. Censorship is about the organized, institutionalized obstruction of access to materials – such as China’s net policies, say, or Iran’s – so that materials cannot (without fear of consequence or reprisal) cannot be seen. Yale’s decision is based on the wrong (racialised) reasons because it plays into a fantasy of the always imminently violent religiously fervent Arab mass. This appeal as concerned citizens to the social consequences is immensely cynical because it insists that the decision isn’t about the material itself (which apparently, if there were no angry Arabs ostensibly in the wings, would suddenly be okay) but about the reaction it might trigger, as if this wasn’t about what they want to do but what they’re being forced to do. That’s garbage. I agree that the Yale decision is their decision. But I also insist that it isn’t wrong in itself not to want to reproduce those cartoons. It does not immediately mean we’re kowtowing to fundamentalists or failing to defend the right to speak freely. Part of free expression is the right to decide what expressions you wish not to promulgate. So my point was that Yale’s real grounds for not reprinting the cartoons should have been the more principled decision not to have truck with the cartoon’s racism, not because of some lame fantasy of the violence that supposedly might happen in response. But the politically correct demand that we must not appear ‘politically correct’ insists that obvious freedoms of expression like being free not to republish racist material come to seem like one has an ‘agenda’ to repress speech in an evil-anti-democratic-conspiratorial sense. Which is garbage. The real troubling aspect of this is not that Yale isn’t brave enough to stand up to fundamentalists or whatever but that it isn’t smart enough to see through the orthodoxy which insists that not printing these cartoons is abandoning free expression for censorship when all it is at best is a choice not to spend the money and time sandwiching gross racial caricatures into a book when the images are already available and the book is aimed at critiquing the circumstances surrounding the cartoons and defocusing our attention on them anyway.
My point was that I know that religion is not race and vice versa. Not all Muslims are Arabs, not all Arabs are Muslims: um, of course. The cartoons, however, don’t know that, or, more accurately, don’t want to know that and imply that the ‘religiosity’ presented is a racial trait of Arabs. That is their religious racism. And I never did say that the violent reaction to them was justified, only that it was premeditated by the imagery itself. And that the cartoons were a clear example of obscenity, despite their gloss as commentary. In regards to free expression, I don’t argue against that above. The cartoons are accessible on the net and that’s fine, great even from some abstract ‘all expression deserves a medium’ point of view. My argument isn’t about whether should people be allowed to see and say shitty racist things (it’s a moot point; they can and will) but rather to point out that to make the free choice not to replicate said images is not the same thing as censorship, which is what Hitch and the cartoon defenders insist we have to believe. Censorship is about the organized, institutionalized obstruction of access to materials – such as China’s net policies, say, or Iran’s – so that materials cannot (without fear of consequence or reprisal) cannot be seen. Yale’s decision is based on the wrong (racialised) reasons because it plays into a fantasy of the always imminently violent religiously fervent Arab mass. This appeal as concerned citizens to the social consequences is immensely cynical because it insists that the decision isn’t about the material itself (which apparently, if there were no angry Arabs ostensibly in the wings, would suddenly be okay) but about the reaction it might trigger, as if this wasn’t about what they want to do but what they’re being forced to do. That’s garbage. I agree that the Yale decision is their decision. But I also insist that it isn’t wrong in itself not to want to reproduce those cartoons. It does not immediately mean we’re kowtowing to fundamentalists or failing to defend the right to speak freely. Part of free expression is the right to decide what expressions you wish not to promulgate. So my point was that Yale’s real grounds for not reprinting the cartoons should have been the more principled decision not to have truck with the cartoon’s racism, not because of some lame fantasy of the violence that supposedly might happen in response. But the politically correct demand that we must not appear ‘politically correct’ insists that obvious freedoms of expression like being free not to republish racist material come to seem like one has an ‘agenda’ to repress speech in an evil-anti-democratic-conspiratorial sense. Which is garbage. The real troubling aspect of this is not that Yale isn’t brave enough to stand up to fundamentalists or whatever but that it isn’t smart enough to see through the orthodoxy which insists that not printing these cartoons is abandoning free expression for censorship when all it is at best is a choice not to spend the money and time sandwiching gross racial caricatures into a book when the images are already available and the book is aimed at critiquing the circumstances surrounding the cartoons and defocusing our attention on them anyway.
an interesting sidebar on the race thing is that only two or three of the cartoons feature severe arab caricatures. the features are generally drawn a bit more blandly, with the most common joke in the cartoons being a meta-commentaries on the stunt itself, of the “I just drew mohammed don’t kill me” school. (not saying the cartoons aren’t racist, just that there’s this strange built in ambivalence — plausible deniability? — in the cartoons as a group which one could wring some pages out of, if one was so inclined.)
but the meta-commentaries pretty much confirms david’s point, which if i can rearticulate it, is: the newspaper published vile shit knowing it would severely provoke muslims — and the fact that it did in fact accomplish this is a justification for vile shit in the original cartoons, and proves what a super awesome open society denmark has, instead of, say, proving that the people publishing and celebrating those cartoons are racist jags.
to say this is not to advocate for censorship or to offer justifications for violence, it’s just sort of describing the situation and how it’s been represented.
now, in *my* ideal world danish cartoonists wouldn’t have been dicks, muslims wouldn’t have been all offended, particularly european muslims, who should try to get with this whole liberal society free speech thing, europeans wouldn’t have brought a bazillion muslims in for the cheap labor if they weren’t going to have actual jobs for them when they started settling down and having kids, etc., etc., horrible, intractable problems, etc. — but that world’s a bit different from this one.
what i’m not quite following in people’s responses to david is that unless you think the cartoons themselves are an unalloyed good, why not have an actual discussion about why and how they’re bad, and how that relates to YUP’s decision?
an interesting sidebar on the race thing is that only two or three of the cartoons feature severe arab caricatures. the features are generally drawn a bit more blandly, with the most common joke in the cartoons being a meta-commentaries on the stunt itself, of the “I just drew mohammed don’t kill me” school. (not saying the cartoons aren’t racist, just that there’s this strange built in ambivalence — plausible deniability? — in the cartoons as a group which one could wring some pages out of, if one was so inclined.)
but the meta-commentaries pretty much confirms david’s point, which if i can rearticulate it, is: the newspaper published vile shit knowing it would severely provoke muslims — and the fact that it did in fact accomplish this is a justification for vile shit in the original cartoons, and proves what a super awesome open society denmark has, instead of, say, proving that the people publishing and celebrating those cartoons are racist jags.
to say this is not to advocate for censorship or to offer justifications for violence, it’s just sort of describing the situation and how it’s been represented.
now, in *my* ideal world danish cartoonists wouldn’t have been dicks, muslims wouldn’t have been all offended, particularly european muslims, who should try to get with this whole liberal society free speech thing, europeans wouldn’t have brought a bazillion muslims in for the cheap labor if they weren’t going to have actual jobs for them when they started settling down and having kids, etc., etc., horrible, intractable problems, etc. — but that world’s a bit different from this one.
what i’m not quite following in people’s responses to david is that unless you think the cartoons themselves are an unalloyed good, why not have an actual discussion about why and how they’re bad, and how that relates to YUP’s decision?