This is to commemorate the HACIENDA LUISTA MASSACRE.
Activities will be held as we remember this tragic event.

hanging by a thread

This photo was taken in an evacuation area of the victims of typhoon Ondoy. The very composition tells the story of how are they coping with things. The classroom definitley serve as their temporary homes (hopefully). The lack of place to go and the home you are forced to leave are reminscent of the day-to-day struggle of a Filipino. A family displaced by a calamity is not unrelated to a mother with three children in the streets. It is just that we have learned to take them as they are. Poor people begging in the highway as you stop for that red light are what we been accustomed to. It is the case that storms do whip off your roof and take away lives but it also a reality when society acts upon our lives, acts upon the children that wipes your shoe as the jeepney stops in the intersection at Quezon ave. Some would tell that others are not working enough that's why they are poor. Try telling that to a kid who has never set foot in school, who rummages the garbage for five or ten varied coins, who comes home to his sick mother or if not abusive guardian, who eats your unfinished meal, who you constantly try to be kind and charitable to, who you forget when you shop for your well-off nieces and nephews, goddaughters and godsons.
The way you think about and help the miserable typhoon victims is way of "...making yourself feel good" as Jessica Zafra would put it. Yet, the devastation has been under our noses all these times. It is just pathetic that it has to take a month-worth of rain to flood the central Luzon for us to care. Nature has its wrath and we are also at fault as proven by the environmetalist mov't, however society's demise is truly our sole fault. You cannot tell an abused OFW that it's just how it goes! It's not nature that stabbed her twice in the gut and padlocked her in the closet for days. We can never speak of things as somthing normal and adaptive when people are killed, exploited and forced to disappear. We will not accept the gov't's excuses and further lack of response. We will not sit and eat all the US crap food we are to forced to devour together with the lies of that woman extravagantly living in the Palace. While her people barely eat once a day. AH! the disparity! That's for my next post.
The other picture is of a protest being held to abhor the (in)action the GMA regime has been doing to the affected citizens of the typhoon. They hang their used clothes and condemned the gov't's decadence and neglect in the midst of the catastrophe.

The typhoon is not what makes the country devasted, it's how this society is being run and I mean the control of the few.


sources:
REUTERS/ROMEO RANOCO
http://lite.alertnet.org/thenews/pictures/RVR05.htm

The Counter Hegemony and Resistance in the Internet a.k.a Panu Magamok ng Away sa Internet

I encountered this pdf file that reviewed the potentiality of the internet as a venue for resistances and counter reactions to hegemonic understanding. It speaks of an organization, Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and the media attention it received internationally. Its website featured a virtual space for voicing out their political views and it helped them gain financial support worldwide. We have to look at the conditions of possibilities that allowed this group surface in the virtual world.

beggar child in kabul

RAWA was born in 1977 to start the mobilization of women and push women’s rights and their sociopolitical stand in Afghanistan, basically its was their lives that they were fighting for. It remained underground to protect the members and supporters though continuously participating public demonstrations. It expressed its resistance against an extremist group known as Mujahideen or holy war warriors which was the same group that received US funding. Members of RAWA were jailed and some were tortured and killed. In 1986 there leader Meena was assassinated. They were a marginalized group in country with little political space to even operate. It was the launching of the website www.rawa.org that catapulted them and gave them a louder voice. The year was 1996 and within months of the same year, responses came via emails. Later, international observers turned supporters began raising funds for RAWA programs. Help flooded mostly form South Asia and Middle East, areas with great accessibility to the Internet.

Many of the over 70,000 war widows in Kabul make a living by begging in the streets accrdg. to rawa.org

It was Internet and the technology of electronic mail that served as stepping stones for the international growth of the organization. Members and supporters were able to connect to their international supporters both in virtual and safe public spaces. They were able to uphold their political views and solicit for financial support. The effects were substantial with the media coverage across the globe brought shifts in the sympathy and monetary support.

On a similar account are torrents sites that somewhat counter the hegemony of media conglomerates over movies, music, etc. Torrents are files shared by individual computers on the network rather than stored on one central server. You can download videos or even full length movies in minutes no matter what that is as long as it is shared. In these very grounds of freedom that torrent file sharing sites are being questioned and even sued by (who else?!) media companies that own the means of production for these media materials.

torrent are files shared by individual computers on the network rather than stored on one central server

Hollywood alone demands US$15.4 million in damages from The Pirate Bay. It is the most widely used BitTorrent trackers for music, software and movies. They mentioned Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Syriana, Pink Panther and other Hollywood produced movies have been unlawfully shared. It was Pink Panther that got the most popular searches and has been downloaded 49,593. Note: who wants Pink Panther twice in their playlist? Anyway, beyond copyright infringement they are also demanding a sum subject to interest, which will continue to grow, and damages for the “harm” Pirate Bay has made (Mikael Ricknäs, IDG News Service). It is one of the instances that some sites if not oppose, at least threatens the monopoly of media products.

pirate in the internet. YEAH!

The state is the one that primarily regulates the boundaries of what are tolerable and acceptable identities and events, specifically in the physical public sphere. This is why some resort to the cyberspace as a venue for resistance and expression.
Thus, cyberspace provides open flows of communication
and representation for subversive or counter-political groups. However, public
(physical) space remains an important aspect of political representation, resistance and action – for example, political groups cannot only operate solely through a virtual medium (D’Arcus, 2006)
The very existence of websites like utorrent, The Pirate Bay, Torrentzen, Bitsoup and many more develop pockets in the world wide web were cyber individuals can challenge the private ownership of media materials or even art.
These instances remind us that the arena of the internet can cater to a marginalized group or freedom even with the limiting factors present.

"On to what extent can you use the master’s tools to destroy the master’s house?"
–sarah raymundo
(on the use of liberal ideas to counter the present system)


Sources:
“Our Website Was Revolutionary”
Virtual Spaces of Representation
and Resistance
Jennifer L. Fluri1
Geography Department, Women’s and Gender Studies Program,
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA

Hollywood Wants $15 Million From Pirate Bay
Mikael Ricknäs, IDG News Service
https://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/news

(De)controlled [a final paper on visual culture and globalization/socio197/ under prof.sarah raymundo]

He breathes hard as he makes his way in a dense forest of bamboo. He heard something. He ran. He finds the edge and sees his friend, Jonas. “Jonas! Jonas!” he exclaimed and he remembered that he is still being chased. Before he can bellow, an echoing sound was first to speak. His friend was spread-eagled in the clearing, lifeless. He ran towards him while breathing loudly the words, “Don’tshoot! Don’tshoot! Don’tshoot! Don’tsh…” and the flapping of wings and that loud echoing sound.

This is my best interpretation of the public announcement entitled ‘Takbo’ from the series Rights v.1(see video ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDCkrJSTrKI). Beside from my mediocre fiction writing skills it aims to deliver a narrative. It is for the readers and for them to be encapsulated in the narrative. It is to suture them. In the system of suture that Rebelle Musique Americas were able to deliver subversive images and voices. A persistent use of musical scores and themes juxtaposed to the documentary editing was a formula in presenting the rebel musicians. A similar wielding of suture was used by Rights. The dark and ominous scenes are definitely purposeful to put the audience in a trance that could summon fear, remorse and sympathy. The use of suture and its potentiality has been utilized to make a resistance or at least to depict the ubiquitous oppression of the state.

Usually films would show spectacle which antagonizes the very possibility of the unity of poverty. Take for instance the character of Will Smith in Pursuit of Happyness, a father who sells medical thing-of-a-jig and encounters a series of unfortunate events that are ultimately rooted in the fantasy of capital as an egalitarian system. He then pursues to be a stock-broker which is basically the job involving financial speculations. It basically tells the audience that even if your wife leaves you and your son, the landlord kicks you out and only 90 cents in your pocket, it’s still your lone struggle and history to handle. You can’t blame the government, you can’t blame the system and you should definitely not rebel together with the thousands of jobless Americans.

In contrast, Rights and Rebelle Musique Americas deploys a sense of cooperation rather competition among those who are marginalized. The very organization of Free Jonas Burgos Movement together with the Southern Tagalog Exposure materializes the collaboration of those excluded journalists and human rights activists. The depiction of the street protest in Argentina puts emphasis on the capacity and possibility for the oppressed and dominated to organize. Collectivism as oppose to individualism. Group agenda instead of personal interest. Unity (as opposed to fragmentation) of poverty.

The deployment of warm bodies as consumers is how biopolitics operate. “Biopower is based on strategies of control that transcend those institutional frameworks…”¹ As biopolitical mechanisms exist together with its national agenda, eventually some will not agree and resist this agenda. This is where necropolitcs comes in, the labeling, targeting, and silencing of those who disagree. It was Michel Foucault that introduced these state mechanisms and manifests in the Philippine context as seen in Rights. The reenactments of interrogations and killings divert attention to the state’s aim to contain these human rights violations. A very characteristic of necropower to destroy bodies or as Achille Mbembe put it, the creation of deathscapes.

The very embodiment of an employment agent turned punk singer is what the narrative wants its audience to follow or sutured into. A sense of freedom to be rockstars as shown in the film is very logic of consumer freedom. You have these roles that you can pick from and wear whenever one chooses to. Biopolitics is concerned in preserving that ideology among its produced bodies. Biopower is based on control. The control being inflicted to Ian by the field where he navigates is the aim of social disciplines. Take for instance the persistence of the band to be recognized actually limits their space rather than widens it. As the movie progressed, Ian was unable to control his feelings to Debbie and Annik, and more the popularity of Joy Division looms over him and every performance threatens his health. The subject here is held to believe that control over things is what free choice guarantees though in conclusion the biopower relations is the one that controls the subject. Ian didn’t lose control, he was guided, he was controlled by the same mechanisms responsible for the hundreds of cases of political killings in the Philippines.

The movie together with the song She’s Lost Control by Joy Division spoke of the formal freedom (as characterized by Zizek) enforced by a social discipline. The song verbalizes:

And she gave away the secrets of her past and said "I’ve lost control again"
And a voice told her when and where to act she said "I’ve lost control again"
…and walked upon the edge of no escape and said I’ve lost control again²

The subjectivism takes on in the act of controlling or restraining oneself in accordance to the system’s coordinates. A mode of subjective position reconciles it as if there is an agreement that all shall subscribe to the conditions set by neoliberalism. The voice in the song, “told her when and where to act”. The voice is definitely not your hallucination but the insidious ideology that has been there since and before we were born.

On the same submission of consent, capital continues its accumulation. It is not that the capitalist is evil, it is the precisely the pursuit for historical agglomeration of exploited labor that has been responsible for the transformation of unalienated creative practice to alienated labor. These biopolitical and necorpolitical mechanisms introduced by Foucault have a job to do as seen by a functionalist. It is to enforce social discipline and make the conditions for capitalist accumulation possible. So, it is just right that there be a continuous divide between those who hold the means of production and those who have none. Well, it is functional, to those in the ruling class that has again a legitimate excuse to continue their comfortable and favorable lives at the expense of the exploiting the poor.

Be creative, be innovative and be productive are modern day mottos of capitalism. Though, those virtues should always be in the realm of formal not actual freedom (Zizek). An image according to Guy Debord, is what mediates us, our social relations. In order to for capital to expand an abstraction has to take place. A worldview that has to be naturalized that this is the only space where one can be creative, innovative, productive and be free. And, that is how Debord describes spectacle, “… appears simultaneously as society itself, as a part of society, and as a means of unification.”³ We are convinced that we are leaving a society of free choice. Take for instance the spectacle-of-love mobile exhibit. (We obviously acknowledge the ineffective means of showcasing the visuals). However, it tries critique the very notion of love as a transcending supernatural power beyond all odds and conquers all. But, in actuality it is love that is being conquered by the divide of social classes and uneven distribution of wealth. You marry within your own socio-economic group though it happens otherwise like what they show in movies. The more it is pervasively used to further justify a very uncommon event, a dream.

It is capitalism that took birth to every protest and resistances against it. The conditions of possibilities to pursue counter hegemonic struggle is set by the system that is why it is able to absorb it easily. A good example of this is one group’s take on the commodification of the history of say Mao, Bonifacio, Ninoy and gave an interesting title, Nationalism for Sale. What actually limits and allows these kinds of subversive analysis and observations is the semi-autonomization of the visual. Yes, it the system that gave life to the visual and the technology behind it though however it is used to profit and make expropriation of labor possible, it is still semi-autonomous. How do you think plays like Ang mga Lorena were able to operate? The play itself delivered a provocative message and in exchange, they have to use the visual technology of the present conditions plus one has to pay to hear the message.

The very concept of Jacques Ranciere of democracy as oppose to the neoliberal version of it provides both a critique and a challenge. The Democracy here forces to think beyond the gates of the system and ultimately to give way for that actual freedom that Zizek pertains to. The distribution of the sensible (Ranciere) is an experience that can be seen on how an industrial society shapes “…workers as spectators and then spectators as workers?”⁴ as traced by Jonathan Beller. It is in both concepts that the place and stakes of politics is determined. The Demos as elaborated by Ranciere are the excluded from the Oclos’s obsession of unification. It is in Beller’s analysis of mediation that this obsession of unification is reconciled. Mediation is the process of making the world an illusion and the Oclos obviously is in an illusion that the world is unified.

This illusion comes in different forms and they offer you a world were you can exercise suffrage, where the many is said to be the decisive voice, a government of the people, by the people for the people. And that phrase, “the voice of the people is the voice of God.” Democracy is the modern day fantasy everybody.

In an interview given by Alliche Mbembe, on the occasion of the publication of his book On Post-Colony, he stated firmly that democracy as a form of government and as a culture of public life does not have a future in Africa – or for that matter, elsewhere in the world – if it is not rethought precisely from the crucible of “necropower.”⁵

Lastly, it is this neoliberal concept that has to be rid off its spectacular shell and who knows what other things we can find.

“the tyranny of the 21^st century is called ‘democracy’”

-Alfonso Cauron

NOTE: for other supporting readings, look up Slavoj Zizek's SOS Violence, books by Pierre Bourdieu

Notes

1 FROM BIOPOLITICS TO NECROPOLITICS

ŠVERC ZNANJA u Beogradu 12. januara 2009.

[Marina Gržinić]

http://www.tkh-generator.net/sr/home

2 Joy Division, She’s Lost Control (extended version)

3 Guy Debord, The Society of Spectacle, I. The Culmination of Separation, p.6

4 Jonathan Beller, The Cinematic Mode of Production Attention Economy

and the Society of Spectacle, 2006, Chap. 2 Production, p. 115

5 FROM BIOPOLITICS TO NECROPOLITICS

II. To differentiate in- between biopolitics and necropolitics

ŠVERC ZNANJA u Beogradu 12. januara 2009.

[Marina Gržinić]

http://www.tkh-generator.net/sr/home

Sources:

www.letssingit.com

www. imdb.com