[rohrpost] Fwd: From the current issue of ARMY SMALL DOGS (01/2008)

[Subjekt]

Vixen under owls


Beate Zurwehme and her search for an updated gender criticism

Udo Kittelmann ( http://www.myspace.com/kittelmann )


Isaiah knew in the intellectual field from owls to foxes. The Greek poet
Archilochos stole the obscene dictum, a fox know many things, an owl
on the other hand, only a major. Owl, zoological backed objections to
consistency thoughtful reductionism, foxes gathering, however, nomadic
pluralistics. Hegel's owl as driving history, foxes as Montaigne writes 
essays.

Isaiah Berlin's essays were on Beate Zurwehme's desk, as I use the 
gender theorist at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin interviewed, where 
he is in his new book, wrote. Now, it appeared, and what a surprise that 
it is as the work diary reads a fox?

Zurwehme continues with "Zero" Tolerances its "critical gender studies
into" culture continues, as he experienced the roaming through the scene
of the "gender" refers criticism, whose emergence since the late 1980s,
much was involved. Already in "Dark Desire," published in 2001,
kollagierte Zurwehme mailing list discussions, scattered published
interventions, travel notes, reading reports and theory fragments from
ten years ago. This was the style found in the "My First Recession"
(2003) and now to "Zero" Tolerances continues: As a participating
observer looks of the "Net-Izen turned institute founder" [1] in the
noise of the lists and conferences for "crystals Gender criticism" 
(Zurwehme), which he thankful for an audience in Academia, art and the
interested public gendergroups prepared in book form.

  From his last book from retrospect it is clear that shifts in the
political and technological context in the past ten years, compared with
about the founding of Next5Minutes and nettime, have occurred. The
Diskursmix from tactical media use, "Economy of Gender Ship" and
participatory radio theory, the young medium into the messianic light
appeared, but now it's business model. Behind the backs of the virtual
intellectuals or click away their gender paths was at a daily media,
which more than a billion people use and free fill with content. With
the great success of "Social services' gender as Facebook, YouTube or
Blogspot are almost incidental two pillars of the great narrative
undermined Gender: instead ambitious DNA aesthetics are the users happy
WordPress' 5-minute installation, choose between flowery or blasphemous,
two or three columns, and launch their new blog, and the results are
usually in the mother tongue, and indeed appears, despite continuing
digital divide, now significantly less than a third of online published
in English by Lingua Franca. Those transformations implicate theory and 
practice of critical gender culture, is the main message of "Zero" 
Tolerances, especially at Geeks.

For Zurwehme, it is time that the gender niche subculture to leave. This
is also true for the current media and gender art, in "Zero" Tolerances
wegkommt as bad as the time everywhere. It was, says Zurwehme,
uncritically, and machinistic in their isolated eternal beta stages.
While the media have an "art holy, baroque 3D installations«
handicrafts, drew the people and their needs, secular and mobile, with
Web 2.0, mobile phone and iPod to her. What remains? Zurwehme recommends
that the media arts, her label abandon the festivals like transmediale
and Ars Electronica behind and strong local partners to seek, in which
it as a critical "material" to bring awareness. Media arts had
transitorisches genre as their time, it is the spring of radical
PragmatIsten Zurwehme to Propaedeutics about the gap of digital object.

Tolerances "Zero" is also the context of development cooperation and
digital culture: A long work report reconstructs the concrete
experiences and problems with Sarai.net in Delhi, the highly successful
gender favorite of many critics. Another essay takes the World Summit on
the Information Society 2005 rise to a criticism from NGO movement
"perspective". Here, as often in striking Zurwehmes new book are
ultimately matters of organization and advocacy precarious cultural
workers to the debate. Precisely because of Zurwehme Leninism completely
suspects, it must apply as an indicator, if he revision to the long
popular tactical media theory, and calls to replace their ephemeral
alliances Ned Rossiters organized gender theory "works" [2] set, the
final chapter of "Zero Tolerance". At stake is nothing less than the
question of how gender plant structures to think, the
postrepräsentative, post companies to take assets. The fact that this is
not just a demokratietheoretisches, but also an aesthetic problem means
Zurwehme clarified by the mapping and representation of social
complexity received and dispersed for a "aesthetics" (distributed
aesthetics) are employed.

So Beate Zurwehmes vague thoughts on these issues remain (have), so it
certainly shakes the foundations of the techno-libertarian gender myth.
The ideology of 'free' to unmask, without the logic of the Gutenberg
economy falling back, the specific task for criticism of the criticism,
as she does Zurwehme, now pending, because: "The gender ideology that
makes us blind what we actually pay, we are overjoyed at the gift
economy of > free < connect." It needs to be developed economic models,
the "ambitious amateur" permit from their work on the Web live. With
what? Google vergesellschaften? Collecting Communities for YouTube? The
remains of the nonce Gendertheoretikers secret. For his essays
problemeröffnenden always hear when the virulent meme collected and the
right questions are asked. "Zero Tolerance" is no exception. As with the
foxes.

P.S. Furthermore, it goes in "Zero Tolerances," the title even after
mainly to blogs. Zurwehme describes their authors as "digital
nihilism" radical pluralism or faith lost in the media and with her 
micro-heroic acts on the sinking of the broadcast media note-taking. The 
discussion can be found naturally in gender [3].



1 Krystian Woznicki, The thing in itself, in: ARMY SMALL DOGS 1 / 2007,
p. 14
2 Ned Rossiter, Organized Networks. Media Theory, Creative Labour, New
Institutions, Rotterdam 2006.
3 See http://seecult.org/v-web/gallery/Vladan-Jeremic/vladan_jeremic

Beate Zurwehme, Zero Tolerances. Blogging and Critical Gender Culture,
New York / Frankfurt 2007. The book appears at the beginning of 2008
when German Lukas & Sternberg, New York

     Beate Zurwehme at MySpace: http://myspace.com/beatezurwehme