Re: <nettime> made for TV, made for social media

On 07-Jan-2021, at 11:55 PM, Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com> wrote:

In my view, far from being a harbinger of possibly worse threats to come, yesterday's events were the most positive thing that could have happened. I had hoped - dreamed - that we would see something exactly like this.

My sense is the mob at the Capitol is an act in a scene that is yet to play itself out fully, and it is still wide open in the way it will play itself out. As Adam Serwer argues, the invasion of the Capitol by a mob was not an attack on democracy, it was an attack on multi-racial democracy.

<https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/multiracial-democracy-55-years-old-will-it-survive/617585/>

The question is whether we view democracy as a means by which a community fulfils its destiny, or is it a means by which a community constructs and sustains itself as a continual work-in-progress?

If it is the former, then we start with pre-defined notions of community, which means we are trapped within racial and other social divides. Which means the scenes at the Capitol will continue to be replayed in other forms.

If it is the latter, we have to deal with the question Hannah Arendt raised: the need to construct an inclusive public commons that is inherently political. On this, there is still clarity to emerge, in both theory and practice; and we will continue to repeat what we just saw until we have clarity on this point.

Best,

Prem

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