RE: <nettime> Images and Official Language: The Gap or How not to Know

[pam@infonomics.co.za (Pam Sykes)]

Interesting support from Gary Young, writing in the Guardian this morning:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1228169,00.html

Politics has, to an extent, always been about the triumph of symbols over
substance and assertion over actuality. But in the case of Iraq this trend
seems to have reached its apogee, as though statements by themselves can
fashion reality by the force of their own will and judgment. Declaration
and proclamation have become everything. The question of whether they bear
any relation to the world we actually live in seems like an unpleasant and
occasionally embarrassing intrusion. The motto of the day both in Downing
Street and the White House seems to be: "To say it is so is to make it
so." These people are rewriting history before the ink on the first draft
is even dry.


ed phillips wrote: 

> As for the public that does not want to know, the legitimacy 
> gap widens between what they are being told and what they 
> begin to suspect is happening in their name. A kind of 
> corrosive cynicism grows in which people watch the charade of 
> official action play itself out. The language and the record 
> play themselves out in officialese, but no one believes. No 
> one believes that those privates are alone responsible.  That 
> they came up with it all these techniques of torture by 
> themselves, under the encouragement of subcontractors. 
> Nevertheless, they are being courtmartialed. The process will 
> play itself out. Those further up the chain of command may be 
> dismissed, while those even further up will express remorse 
> that these photos and videos got out, will reassert the 
> putative standards, the official language.
> 
> No one believes, but the charade continues, as if the world 
> of officialese were perfectly detached and autonomous. 
> Impregnable to even the assault of the images.





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