As scholars begin to tease out many of the factors in the Egyptian revolution and beyond, it needs emphasized that once again the affective dimensions of such struggles should not remain excluded from our analyses. Anna Sussman has an interesting article in The Atlantic demonstrating some of the ways that irony, satire, and other seriocomic forms were used to create solidarity and propel citizen mobilizations in Egypt.

Protestors held signs in Tahrir square imploring “Leave, my arm hurts” and “Leave, I want to shower/see my wife/shave/get married.” Of particular note is the way in which administration appeals were used as material for comic fodder. I think that the existence of such discourses in these matters continues to demonstrate two points about the role of humor in politics: a) it still remains highly undertheorized in a way that is no longer adequate for present conditions, and more so, b) that in everyday practice, it blends with a variety of other ways of communicating to create interactional effects larger than the sum of their parts.

A fun comment on our wired world from the folks at UCB:

I’m working on an article right now relating to problems of incommensurability in communication and deliberative democracy. I just found this neat passage from the prolific anthropologist Clifford Geertz:

“To see others as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is from the far more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity is self-congratulation and tolerance a sham, comes.” (Geertz, Local Knowledge, 1983, p. 16).

Indirectly, I think Geertz is dealing with a fundamental crux of much work on public deliberation–asking us to maintain a “largeness of mind” that incorporates the vast diversities of our planet while still being able to produce unities, decisions, and other outcomes. Geertz’s quote leads me to ask: Are there fundamentally incommensurable forms of communication in our world? In other words, are there interpretive frameworks, linguistic understandings, or other forms of human symbol use that could never be brought together or reconciled, no matter how much communication was involved?

Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda during the Third Reich, infamously said that “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” and “the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”

The unceasing repetition of certain terms in the media has become fair fodder for critiques by comedians such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Watch Colbert’s quick deconstruction of the “wave” metaphor in the midterm elections:

Colbert Midterm Election Coverage

One of my students forwarded me a recent Rachel Maddow segment similarly fact-checking an assertion that’s been propagated through many platforms about Obama’s expenses during foreign visits:

Maddow on the Media

It’s a sad day when some media commentators like Maddow have to turn from their jobs reporting and analyzing on all the happenings of governments, businesses, etc.—to spend their time fact-checking and trying to prevent corruption in other media. Stewart and Colbert have been our primary media critics of the past decade, and that these roles are being taken over by Maddow and others tells us just how bad the repetition problem has become in an oligarchic news industry.

To his credit, Malcolm Gladwell has opened a critical space of discussion in the media and blogosphere in his latest New Yorker article, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not be Tweeted.”.

I won’t detail all his arguments leading to the conclusion that, compared to the merits of face to face communication, activism on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter is very poor activism indeed. There are already many terrific critiques of the article, such as Ken Kambara’s.

I would simply add to this discussion that in constructing his views, Gladwell has forgotten about the findings of his first book, The Tipping Point, which taught us much about the nature of viral epidemics and influence in society. In a section of the book, for instance, Gladwell demonstrates how one type of person critical to such epidemics, “Connectors,” have an amazing ability to make social connections and act as a source of social power/glue by having so many mere acquaintances and “weak ties” in their networks. Before even questioning Gladwell’s notion of weak ties (I again refer you to Kambara, who discusses “multiplex” ties, etc.), surely social media have at least a) amplified the ability of Connectors to continue doing what they do best, and b) created forums for these kinds of Tipping Point ties–the likes of which the world has never seen before. There’s lots of other relevant points from Gladwell’s book, like his discussions of academic diffusion models, which could have been applied and updated to the context of social media.

All in all, though it’s only been nine years, we shouldn’t forget “How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.”

As the classic Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been getting some recent media attention (NY Times), I thought it proper (in that British sense) to post a little Fry and Laurie tribute to the topic, which at once demonstrates the old chestnut, while taking us through the many flights of fancy to which our rhetorical contortions may lead. If anything, have fun watching Hugh Laurie in his pre-House career:

Colbert UFW Testimony
Colbert is hilarious as always. Yet, while I’d usually be one of the first to commend his efforts, I’m going to go out on a limb (this phrase never made sense to me, shouldn’t it be a plank?) and say that Colbert’s parodic persona didn’t serve this forum nor the issue at hand that well. The main problem with Colbert’s testimony is that he forgot to use satire in a forum where it was sorely needed. In other words, he forgot to speak truth/s to power. Consequently, Jon Stewart’s more straight-laced, “righteous indignation” would have been a far better choice for the UFW’s campaign. Funny, yes. Satirical, no. It’s the difference between a Jay Leno monologue and the kind of brilliance we saw from Colbert a few years ago at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner speech. Who are the targets in this testimony? In the WHCD speech Colbert focused with an observant precision upon a yay-saying cohort of political and media personalities desperately needing critiqued. In this congressional testimony the targets are all over the place. Take a look at the reactions by the Members of Congress themselves—do they appear all that threatened? Colbert fawns before one Member of Congress at one point and finishes by emphasizing how much of an “honor” it is to be there etc. Don’t get me wrong, a simple, light-hearted laugh at some of these issues can definitely serve an important function, and I certainly don’t think satire needs to be used all the time–but I can’t help but think that outside the orienting walls of his studio, Colbert missed an opportunity for the kind of disorienting, stinging critique for which he’s capable.

Yes and no…
(Source: www.internetworldstats.com/stats25.htm)

Check out Norm Magnusson’s “historical markers” along I-75, which intend to provoke unthought thoughts in public spaces:

As Magnusson puts it: “The types of people who stop to read them are collectively defined more by their curiosity about the world around them than they are by any shared ideological leanings, which makes them a perfect audience for a carefully crafted message. And unlike most artworks on social or political themes, these markers don’t merely  speak to the small group of viewers that seek out such work in galleries and museums; instead, they gently insert themselves into the public realm. ‘Are they real?’ is a question viewers frequently ask, meaning ‘are they state-sponsored?’  I love this confusion and hope to slip a message in while people are mulling it over. These markers are just the kind of public art I really enjoy: gently assertive and non-confrontational, firmly thought-provoking and pretty to look at and just a little bit subversive.” (www.funism.com/art/I75project.html)

That the project is as much about the use of wide-open public spaces as it is about the carefully crafted messages speaks volumes about how innovation may best work in our age. With so little room to communicate messages of social conscience in our message-dense environment, these signs are apt demonstrations of how to pick and choose a context for sociological critique.

Check out Norm Magnusson’s “historical markers” along I-75, which intend to provoke unthought thoughts in public spaces:

As Magnusson puts it: “The types of people who stop to read them are collectively defined more by their curiosity about the world around them than they are by any shared ideological leanings, which makes them a perfect audience for a carefully crafted message. And unlike most artworks on social or political themes, these markers don’t merely speak to the small group of viewers that seek out such work in galleries and museums; instead, they gently insert themselves into the public realm. ‘Are they real?’ is a question viewers frequently ask, meaning ‘are they state-sponsored?’ I love this confusion and hope to slip a message in while people are mulling it over. These markers are just the kind of public art I really enjoy: gently assertive and non-confrontational, firmly thought-provoking and pretty to look at and just a little bit subversive.” (www.funism.com/art/I75project.html)

That the project is as much about the use of wide-open public spaces as it is about the carefully crafted messages speaks volumes about how innovation may best work in our age. With so little room to communicate messages of social conscience in our message-dense environment, these signs are apt demonstrations of how to pick and choose a context for sociological critique.