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<font face="Geneva" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Geneva;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;"><b><a href="mailto:brian.holmes@wanadoo.fr">brian.holmes@wanadoo.fr</a> writes:<br>
</b></font><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0"><font face="Geneva" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Geneva;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">My belief is that the <br>
possibility of instantaneous cross-continental communication <br>
and self-made media is still pretty strong. </font></span><font face="Geneva" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Geneva;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;"><br>
<br>
<i><b>the tension: productive dissent "vs." powerlessness</b></i><br>
<br>
the political expressions produced through self-made media are phenomenal, inspiring and circulate more widely and in increasingly divese forms all the time.i am studying what i call "digital dissent" with a large team, and one of sites we are studying is jon stewart's appearance on crossfire (the top-cited media event in the blogosphere in 2004) where he told the MSM off for "hurting America" and calls for the civic responsibility of media to publics. it is amazing how much chatter this event continues to cause amongst diverse online networks, debating the role of media in contemporary political landscape. similarly, studying blogs about the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Bushin30Seconds, what I am examining is how people talk about "lies" "truth" and what counts as "reality." all of these sites of dissent give me hope.<br>
<br>
at the same time,the weight of despair is heavy and palpable. as i speak nationally and internationally students and scholars in very different contexts express powerlessness in the face of corporatism.<br>
<br>
<i><b>we need a new theory</b> <br>
</i>that articulates the multi-directionality of subjectivity and media in an era of fast-paced convergence and production.<br>
<br>
in media education--and i think in media studies--it is truly difficult to do all of the following simultaneously:<br>
--avoid a theory of overdetermining reproduction, <br>
--attend to the realities of materiality and economics<br>
-- maintain a language that is not only about resistance but about creativity<br>
--integrate a theory of networks and publics<br>
--account for media convergence <br>
<br>
in media education the current dominant discourse tends to be "play" and "pleasure" (e.g. gaming) as [the] form of agency. i find this unsatisfactory.<br>
<br>
tonite i am gathering together canadian scholars and activists who are trying to articulate new ways of understanding subjectivity, consumer culture, and capital. it seems like a cliche to say the theories of agency we have are inadequate, but there is a clamor for new approaches that help make sense of these tensions of praxis being discussed in this listserv.<br>
<br>
last night for the end of semester i turned us to this stand-by quote from donna haraway:<br>
<br>
"So I think my problem and "our" problem is how to have <i>simultaneously</i> an account of radical historical contingency for all knowledge claims and knowing subjects, a critical practice for recognizing our own "semiotic technologies" for making meanings, <i>and</i> a no-nonsense commitment to faithful accounts of a 'real' world, one that can be partially shared and friendly to earth-wide projects of finite freedom, adequate material abundance, modest meaning in suffering, and limited happiness…" (Situated Knowledges)<br>
<br>
The most challenging aspect of haraway's call is the "no-nonsense commitment to faithful accounts of a 'real' world." <br>
<br>
Because of the seriousness of this political moment, I increasingly lose patience with solely scholarly commitments and instead feel we have an obligation to act as public intellectuals in political realms. My aim is to make convincing arguments about what counts as a "faithful accounts of a 'real' world" and incite hope by offering inspiring examples of production and modeling the political engagement i want to see in others.<br>
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