|
|
# Transmitting Ugly Things
|
|
|
*you are part of the stream*
|
|
|
|
|
|
## What ugly things, and the medium
|
|
|
Marginalized people vocalize things that are unacceptable for the society, unspeakable, politically incorrect, emotionally overwhelming, disorderly. They are too personal, too emotional, too embodied. Carson explains how the direct mode of address of women's voices has been an annoyance for the patriarchal society since Ancient Greece. A woman would expose her inside truths that were supposed to be kept private. Examples of these 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); this reveals society's fear of 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 filtered through the rational tool of humans, 'speech'. 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 remain inside their homes when their men take 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 truths. One of the principal characteristics of sound is its unique relationship to interiority. 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 perceptively ugly form of address in Ancient Greece was an utterance, a high-pitched cry, called ‘ololyga’ which was a female ritual practice (more in 'Monstrosity...'). This is still valid in Greece and the Middle East, and it is related to mourning. In their rituals women would also say offensive bad things under the context of 'aischrologia'; a process in which a woman acting as a proxy, would freely discharge unspeakable things on behalf of the city. A more recent one is 'hysteria', introduced by Freud, that connects the psychical events within a woman's body directly to the outside, her exterior behavior. Females are often associated with sins and evil within the collective memory. For example, 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 domain 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 undesirable; Plutarch tells a story about how a secret is spread fast by women creating chaos and ruins, in contrast to men that keep 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, public speech, 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 do not follow 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 making decisions that doesn't accept any form of over-emotion or overflow of expression, is nothing more than an illusion, one 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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
## Streaming media in relation to female continuity
|
|
|
In ancient medical and anatomical theory women had two mouths, the upper and the lower, connected through the neck. The lips of both these mouths guarded a “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 said indirectly. This direct continuity between the inside and the outside is repulsive for the male nature, which aspires for self-control, interrupting this continuity and dissociating the inside from the outside (Carson, 1996, pg. 131). Women 'transmit' unfiltered information. At this point I would like to draw a parallel with 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 deliver unedited live messages that sometimes disagree with the mainstream current public opinion. At Occupy Wall Street, for example, streaming media, like Livestream, Ustream and Youtube stream, was a way for protesters to be immediately heard in public and to broadcast their own news online ("Multiplication..."). Thus, experts or official media platforms could not filter their speech and alter messages before they were spread online. The companies providing online streaming didn't agree with the actions and messages 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 and 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] has similarities with the uncontrolled 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 its channels. This continuity seems to me like an 'embodied streaming' that relates the medium with the human body, based on the need for a message to be articulated and distributed to others. Live streaming provides the opportunity for a body to be present somewhere else, with a slight delay through the voice or a video representation. There is a small delay, the transmission delay [more on that].
|
|
|
|
|
|
Terms of the embodied streaming:
|
|
|
>channels, flow, unedited, live, source, distribution, protocols, delivery systems [more]
|
|
|
|
|
|
<img width="500" src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/83/64/70/8364701246dd61b05067af3c125a1faf.jpg" ><br>
|
|
|
|
|
|
<img width="500" src="http://www.dldewey.com/images/live2.jpg" >
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
[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 message but what is happening right now at present, and what practices of democracy are emerging. It is like Chantal Mouffe's 'agonistic' model of democracy, in which there is not an external power that filters the message and no time for thinking about future utopias and realities, but only what is happening now. It creates space, allowing 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...]
|
|
|
|
|
|
## Conclusion
|
|
|
Marginalized modes of address share concerns that seem uninteresting for Western, formal, civilized society, which supports a democracy rooted in the politics of Ancient Greece. Because of their disparity, they are suppressed and accused as ugly forms, then filtered and censored before they being expressed in public. They share unfiltered, unedited messages that skip 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 and a guerilla approach (from Multiplication...). Today, streaming media is used constantly by protesters or citizens to autonomously broadcast news and avoid government censorship. 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 transmit 'ugly' things, according to a rational society, and also, that marginalized people need this media to communicate, to establish their own voices, and to 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. 'Embodied streaming' suggests resistance, with our unfiltered/uncontrollable mediated present selves/bodies.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
# Bibliography
|
|
|
- Inside/ Media: Voices of the Absent, Antinomies of Transmission
|
|
|
- Rose Gibbs, Speech Matters: Violence and the Feminist Voice (2016)
|
|
|
- Federici, S. B. (2014) Caliban and the witch. 2., rev. ed. New York, NY: Autonomedia.
|
|
|
- Ernst, W. (2016) ‘Experiencing Time as Sound’, in Chronopoetics. London ; New York: Rli, pp. 99–121 (102-111).
|
|
|
- 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).
|