The Human...
very interesting lecture in class today...
the human and the non-human... how modern cinema explores the two realms and how they may not be so distinct as humanitarian discourse might have them be..
terminator, robocop, X men... there was a time when the american cinema saw the enemy as outside..the german, the russian, the muslim today...but its differnt now..the enemy is closer home..its at home..its even within you... the machine overtakes...
Agamben, uses the concept of musselmanner, to under stand the position of a life that if not worthy of living... the musselmanner, was a slang for the typical figure of a concentration camp that is living but is dead... shuffles around, glazed look. A captive of a camp essentially has no identity. we underestimate how things like having a name, a national identity, a gender identity gives a sense of self... imagine a man with no sense of anything...
dispensible... non-human... non-existent...on no records anywhere...
such a life, which can be killed but not sacrificed...for you sacrifice something of value. and something that the gods will accept. Such non-human entities, if you may even call them that, become sites of excessive torture, even in modern camps like guantanamo bay...
at another level... a life that can be sacrificed, but will not be killed..that can still live on...the figure of the suicide bomber..the martyr.
the machine man, is facsinating in its extreme power. power is seductive, as much as it is destructive... one way we can understand torture perhaps... the machine man is pure... untarnished by any humanity... that is why it fascinates us...
similar reductions to the non-human happen in medical experiments, the body drasticlly reduced to its parts... thoroughly objectified... and an entire vocabulary gets built around it... of abuse...
imagine this conception magnified on an entire nation...afghanistan... the red spots on your screen that have to be bombed...targets of the video game... some of the NATO guys in the places who attacked Serbia in the name of democracy, had past records of genocide...
hmm... messy business...
very interesting lecture in class today...
the human and the non-human... how modern cinema explores the two realms and how they may not be so distinct as humanitarian discourse might have them be..
terminator, robocop, X men... there was a time when the american cinema saw the enemy as outside..the german, the russian, the muslim today...but its differnt now..the enemy is closer home..its at home..its even within you... the machine overtakes...
Agamben, uses the concept of musselmanner, to under stand the position of a life that if not worthy of living... the musselmanner, was a slang for the typical figure of a concentration camp that is living but is dead... shuffles around, glazed look. A captive of a camp essentially has no identity. we underestimate how things like having a name, a national identity, a gender identity gives a sense of self... imagine a man with no sense of anything...
dispensible... non-human... non-existent...on no records anywhere...
such a life, which can be killed but not sacrificed...for you sacrifice something of value. and something that the gods will accept. Such non-human entities, if you may even call them that, become sites of excessive torture, even in modern camps like guantanamo bay...
at another level... a life that can be sacrificed, but will not be killed..that can still live on...the figure of the suicide bomber..the martyr.
the machine man, is facsinating in its extreme power. power is seductive, as much as it is destructive... one way we can understand torture perhaps... the machine man is pure... untarnished by any humanity... that is why it fascinates us...
similar reductions to the non-human happen in medical experiments, the body drasticlly reduced to its parts... thoroughly objectified... and an entire vocabulary gets built around it... of abuse...
imagine this conception magnified on an entire nation...afghanistan... the red spots on your screen that have to be bombed...targets of the video game... some of the NATO guys in the places who attacked Serbia in the name of democracy, had past records of genocide...
hmm... messy business...
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