Ai Wei Wei the ZEN Master

Ai Wei Wei Garish Painting Ancient Neolithic Pottery

Chinese Hold Ai Wei Wei’s Passport, 

Denies Access to Art Opening at the Hirshhorn in DC

October 7, 2012

With his government holding his passport, the political activist/artist will be absent from his new show at Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum, where controversy is the main attraction.

But then, in one of his classic moves, he turned the tables on his persecutors: It could be, he said, that the notable absence of an artist from his own opening would have a bigger impact than his presence there ever could. That absence could underscore the daily indignities imposed by a Chinese state that is trying to forge “a new national identity based in culture and humanity,” Ai said, but whose soft-power actions mask an unchanged hard line. “I still think it's very old, cold-war thinking … I think that the thing they are afraid of most is freedom of speech—the spirit of freedom of speech is the number one enemy for a totalitarian society.”

Soft power is a "floating sign" masking hard power

And this is what Christopher Nolan did with the character of The Joker performed by the irreplaceable Heath Ledger in his The Dark Knight Rises

as observed by Darren at:

http://www.thm0vieblog.com  

in Dublin

A blog that gets best prize year after year.

Unknown Knowns : The Subjugated Knowledge of Terrorism Studies (2012) - R. Jackson

New post on Foucault News

Unknown knowns: The subjugated knowledge of terrorism studies (2012) by Clare O'Farrell Jackson, R. Unknown knowns: The subjugated knowledge of terrorism studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Volume 5, Issue 1, April 2012, Pages 11-29 Abstract This article employs Foucault's concept of 'subjugated knowledges' to explore forms of knowledge which provide explanations of the nature, causes and solutions to terrorism and political violence, but which have been suppressed and silenced within the terrorism studies field. Subjugated knowledges include historical knowledges that are present within the functional and systemic ensemble of terrorism studies itself, but which have been masked by more dominant forms of knowledge, as well as knowledges outside of the field that have been disqualified and excluded as naïve, inferior or below the required level of scientificity. This article analyses some of the primary mechanisms and processes by which knowledge subjugation takes place in terrorism studies and the consequences of such suppressions and exclusions. It argues that the presence of subjugated knowledge means that the field exists in a highly unstable condition where certain forms of knowledge are simultaneously known and unknown and where eruptions of subjugated knowledge periodically destabilise the dominant discourse. Among others, the rise of critical terrorism studies represents such an eruption in the field. The article concludes by suggesting that one of the key future tasks of critical terrorism studies must be to liberate a range of potentially important subjugated knowledges and that Bourdieu's concept of the 'collective intellectual' provides a potentially important model for undertaking this difficult task. Author keywords Foucault; peace studies; subjugated knowledge; terrorism studies Clare O'Farrell | 2 October 2012 at 6:00 am | Categories: Journal articles | URL:http://wp.me/p13ybx-Aj