Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 14:21:55 -0500 (CDT)
From: Saskia Sassen <[log in to unmask]>
To: The Cyber-Society-Live mailing list is a moderated discussion
        list for those interested <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [CSL] Reply to Zizek



I agree with John Neill's observations... we need to expand the
framews
from which we think this event. I tried to do that in my oped in The
Guardian--sept 12-- and have encountered a very intersting pattern of
response: "Americans" are angry at what i said, people who have
written in
from the res of the world, the opposite, appreciative for bringing a
bit
of light into this morass of intensifying "americanism/our way of
life/act
of war." Neill's parallels with WTo, tc. yes! saskia sassen




Saskia Sassen
Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology
The University of Chicago
Social Science Research Building,
Rm 323 1126 east 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637
Telephone: (773) 702 7279 Fax: (773) 702 4849
e-mail: [log in to unmask]

On Sat, 15 Sep 2001, John Armitage wrote:

> [Hi everyone, please find below a message to me and a very
interesting replyto Zizek's article circulated yesterday on CSL from
John O'Neill. John, if
> you would like to join the CSL list please see the URL details at
the end of
> this and all other CSL messages. Best wishes. John.]
>
>
======================================================================
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John O'Neill
> To: john.armitage
> Sent: 15/09/01 16:16
> Subject: reply to Zizek
>
> Dear John,
>
> My student Mark Featherstone from Staffs forwarded me the Zizek on
New
> York. I would like to be in this circle but I am not sure how one
does
> it. Do you think you could send around the following text? Of
course,
> Zizek is always interesting but since I have just spent 4 hours and
> endless days on this, I thought it might be useful to engage the
> discussion for "over here"! By the way, I do appreciate your TCS
issue
> on Virilio. I have moved into Media Cult area this year. I will be
> teaching at Staffs next Feb March and I have family in Sunderland
and
> Newcastle is beating Man United right now on our TV.
>
> best John
>
> DESERTING THE REAL / GOING TO THE MOVIES
>
> John O'Neill
>
> Should we run into the movie house with S/Z every time we see
something
> on TV? Don't we miss TV's attempt to make a movie that we are just
about
> to see but for which its commentators lack narrative power?
>
> (1) We know what hit WTC  and possibly who --but we don't know what
WTC
> is nor who we are;
>
>         (2) If we pair WTC and WTO we get a better sense of them and
> ourselves, recalling their contested status in protests played out
> world-wide (Seattle, Quebec City, Genoa) beyond the newly improvised
> walls of capital democracy;
>
>         (3) If we twin the WTC towers with WTO, we achieve
intellectual
> perspective by connecting iconology to the material practices of
global
> capitalism. The WTC was a glass house of capital brains and bodies,
> young, powerful, plugged into money, style, and the nomadic life of
the
> twenty/eighty split that rules symbolic capitalism's division of
social
> labour into highly and lowly valued services;
>
>         (4) The terrible destruction of WTC demands in the first
> instance that its bodies be Americanized, familized and averaged
into
> "anyone of us". At the same time, there is staged the recovery of
these
> bodies by civic bodies (firemen / women, police men and women,
security
> men and women and other citizens willing to sacrifice themselves on
> behalf of capital bodies who at other times seek to be unburdened by
> such duties, charity, and the taxes that underwrite these municipal
> services.
>
>         (5) The critical challenge is to connect the intellectual
> perspective we might gain with the moral perspective offered to us
in
> the scenes of extraordinary civic responses to the disaster which
fell
> upon New York and Washington. TV is witness to these moral events
but
> lacks any liturgical knowledge to fill in its otherwise empty icons
> whose endless repetition begins to numb our minds and hearts.
Perhaps
> this is because we know our resolve to learn from them is weak and
soon
> overwhelmed with cries for revenge that do not close the wound but
keep
> it open for ever;
>
>         (6) Any pop commentary, eked out by comparing movies to
movies,
> is weak in its response to civic events that require us to think
through
> the daily toll upon workers, families and communities. It is they
who
> bear the human capital sacrifice that calls for witness at the site
of
> WTC. Here the hidden injuries of modernity mark us all.
>
>         (7) It is a conceit of commentary that the world's integrity
can
> be filtered through its analysts and anchor persons whereas it is
the
> inalienable gift of everyone who lent a hand to anyone else in need.
The
> catastrophic events that opened this week also tore out of us an
> unfinished prayer to anyone's god anywhere......It is in the silence
of
> those gods that we must learn to think and to hold together.
>
> John O'Neill
> Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology
> 227 Founders College,
> York University, Toronto, M3J 1P3, Canada
> (Home) 416-653-8838
> (Office) 416-736-5148
>  (Fax)    416-653-7323

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