Marginalized people are vocalizing things that are unacceptable for the society, unspeakable, political incorrect, emotionally overwhelmed, disorderly. They are too personal, too emotional, too embodied. Carson in her text explains how the direct mode of address of women's voices is annoying for the patriarchal society since Ancient Greece. A woman would expose her inside facts that are supposed to be private data. Examples of these facts would be emotions that reveal pleasure or pain either from sexual encounters or the birth of a child. "By projections and leakages of all kinds- somatic, vocal, emotional, sexual- females expose or expend what should be kept in" (Carson, 1996, pg. 129) and this reveals the fear of society for death, blood, darkness, birth, the female body. This direct continuity and linkage between the inside and outside has been a threat for the human nature and society as it is not filtrated through the rational toll of human, the 'speech'. A human nature that is though defined by the dominant norms. It has been established that our inner desires and needs have to be expressed indirectly through speech and in the case of women through their men’s speech. It is very common that women stay inside home when their men come out to the streets to protest or talk about their family concerns (Kanaveli, 2012)[example]. There is a connection of sound and voice with externalizing our inside facts. One of the principal characteristics of sound is its unique relationship to ineteriority. According to Ong (2002, pg. 69) "[t]his relationship is important because of the interiority of human consciousness and of human communication itself".<br>
One ugly form of addressing in Ancient Greece was an utterance, a high-pitched cry, called ‘ololyga’ and it was a ritual practice of women (more in 'Monstrosity...'). This is still valid in countries like Greece or Middle East and it is related to mourning. In their rituals women were also talking offensive bad things under the context of 'aischrologia'; a process in which a woman would freely discharge the unspeakable things on behalf of the city. A more recent one is 'hysteria', introduced by Freud, that expresses the psychic events within the woman's body directly to the outside of the body. Female is associated with the bad things of the collective memory. Gossiping is another form of address that reveals secrets that should have stayed hidden. It is an alternative way of communication existing in the private domains and has been created in response to the exclusion of speech in public. Gossip "provides subordinated classes with a mode of communication beyond an official public culture from which they are excluded" (The Gossip, 2017, p.61). But even in Ancient Greece this form was annoying; Plutarch tells a story about how a secret is spread fast by women creating chaos and ruins, in contrast to men that are keeping themselves from revealing it (Carson, 1996, pg. 130).<br>
Other ugly things are the private and hidden events of family violence. For feminists in the early 20th century the speech in public, in a group of other women sharing the same problem, was a way to externalize the personal violence and suppression of women, without using violence in response. Protesters, respectively, talk collectively about the unfair economical and political structure of the society either by demonstrating or occupying public spaces. All these examples are not following the rationalist approach of the context they are part of. They express passion, vulnerabilities and unfulfilled desires with their voices and presence. The idea that democracy is a civilized way of taking decisions that doesn't accept any form of over-emotion or overflow of expression, is nothing more than an illusion. An illusion that threatens the existence of democracy by creating exclusion and disregarding the importance of passions and desires in politics. As Mouffe (2013) says, "[i]f there is anything that endangers democracy nowadays, it is precisely the rationalist approach, because it is blind to the nature of the political and denies the central role that passions play in the field of politics." Thus democratic processes should take into consideration any irrational fantasies and desires that the public express. Their suppression may lead to repressed pain, fanaticism and totalitarianism.
In the ancient medical and anatomical theory women had two mouths, the upper and the lower, connected through a neck. The lips of both of them guarded the “hollow cavity” (Carson, 1996, pg. 131) and they had to remain closed. Having two mouths that speak simultaneously is confusing and embarrassing and this creates ‘kakophony’. Females were expressing something directly when it should have been told indirectly. This direct continuity between the inside and the outside is repelling for the male nature that aspires the self-control which interrupts this continuity and dissociates the inside from the outside (Crason, 1996, pg. 131). They 'transmit' unfiltered information. At this point I would like to draw parallel lines with the streaming media that has been used as a tool of direct and urgent communication for protesters like in the case of the Occupy Movement. Similarly with the continuity I described before streaming protocols and processes are delivering unedited live messages that sometimes don't agree with the mainstream current public opinion. In Occupy Wall Street for example streaming media, like Livestream, Ustream and Youtube stream, was a way for the protesters to be heard in public fast and broadcast their own news online ("Multiplication..."). Thus, experts or official media platforms could not filter their speech and alter the message before they spread it online. The companies providing online streaming wouldn't agree with the action and message of the #occupy and thus they would publicly differentiate themselves from them. "Both Livestream and Ustream officials say they simply operate platforms and are not supporting the movements. They have made some adjustments on their platforms and provided some extra resources to accommodate Occupy movement video. Mr. Haot removed advertising from the Occupy channels after some brands complained that they did not want their ads appearing next to streaming video of protesters"(Preston, 2011). Similarly radio streaming has been a way for activists, protesters, artists, citizens to share their own news and music [example of wartime radio. Women in Afghanistan]. This unaltered and direct speech of (radio/streaming) broadcasting [(Ernst, 2016, pg. 104) more from his text] have similarities with the non controlled direct expression of the female bodies in public (like 'hysteria', 'aischrologia', 'ololyga'). There is a fear of continuity related to the message that comes out unedited from the inside of the human container and their channels. My assumption comes to introduce an 'embodied streaming' that relates the medium with the human body based on the need a message to be articulated and distributed to others. Live streaming provides the opportunity for a body to be present somewhere else almost live through the voice or a video representation. There is a small delay, the transmission delay [more on that].
[Explaining the structure of streaming in relation to the structure of female continuity in the beginning of the paragraph: Streaming online depends on protocols that can stream directly or indirectly filter with TCP]
### For an agonistic streaming [streaming media in relation to voice and gender and Hot media]
This uninterrupted continuity shows us that what is important is not the last message but what is happening right now at present and what practices of democracy are emerging while being in the flow. It is like the 'agonistic' model of democracy of Chantal Mouffe in which there is not an external power that filters it and no time for thinking about future utopias and realities but what is happening now. It gives space to the conflicts to happen naturally. Streaming media reflects a sense of liveness and presence. There is no time to reflect or edit the message [Clara and pauline oliveros mediation, workshop at tender]. The audience receives the message directly from the proprietor and can see clearly who is broadcasting, what is the source, how it looks like.[text of chronopoetics] The democracy of agonism accepts all the ideas, thoughts and concerns on the table. [Through a healthy conflict...]
The marginalized modes of address share concerns that seem uninteresting or bad for the Western formal and civilized society, that supports a democracy rooting in the Ancient Greek politics. Because of their ugliness, they are suppressed and accused as ugly forms, then filtered and censored before they been expressed in public. They share unfiltered, unedited messages that overpass the rational sphere of speech. From my perspective the medium used by these modes reflects their character. They are based on instant and urgent communication, liveness, "hit and run" approach (from Multiplication...). Today streaming media is used constantly by protesters or citizens for broadcasting news by themselves that are not censored by the government. Streaming media is characterized by the distribution of unfiltered data, the sense of liveness and the continuity (direct distribution) of the message. In this essay I wanted to highlight how the use of streaming media and the concept of streaming in general can be related to these 'ugly' forms of mediation. How these kind of media transmits 'ugly' things, according to the rational society, that marginalized people need to communicate for establishing their own voice and find space for their own desires. These ugly things may subvert, also, the formal society. I think that the acceptance of continuity and direct mediation can facilitate more democratic processes. As "the prime task of democratic politics is not to eliminate passions or to relegate them to the private sphere in order to establish a rational consensus in the public sphere. Rather, it is to 'tame' those passions by mobilizing them towards democratic designs" (Mouffe, 2013). Focusing more on the media that allow/facilitate this process to happen can open possibilities and alternatives of democratic processes. The embodied streaming suggests a resistance with our unfiltered/uncontrollable mediated present selves/bodies.
- Berry, D. (2011) ‘Real-Time Streams’, in The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age. 2011 edition. Basingstoke New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 142–171.
- Tetsuo, K. (no date) ‘Minima Memoranda: a note on streaming media’. Available at: http://anarchy.translocal.jp/non-japanese/minima_memoranda.html (Accessed: 12 October 2018).
