These Games are a Riot

"When does a crowd become a riot?" asks Ronald Paulson in his essay-lecture The Art of Riot in England and America, to which the answer is "When it gets out of control." What appears, on face, to be a cheeky answer to what many would assume is a rhetorical question actually brings about a complex field of interactions and expectations on behalf of those who would analyze riots and their articulations in life and art. Paulson's essay focuses on depictions of riot as found on engravings and in literature from the 18th century onward in both English and American culture. Over the course of his 121 page analysis he outlines a 'taxonomy of riot', an attempt to balance what we know about real riots against various artists' representations of those riots, that takes at its core three elements: actual riots, fictive riots, and the aesthetics of riot.

Taking a cue from E.P. Thompson, Paulson seeks to "outline the myths of the insurgents' (the 'radicals') imagination- the formal structures that shaped 'riots', in particular traditional forms of 'crowd ritual'." As an event, riots are both festive and seditious. They are defined in relation to the in-place social order, symbolized in our modern era by the presence of police. Yet the most important aspect of the riot is its affective/effective impact, a subjective measurement that depends wholly on the presence of aesthetics in relation to spectators- both those depicted in the artist's rendition and the outside viewer gazing upon the artist's rendition. The presence of the spectator is crucial for Paulson, who defines aesthetics as the philosophy of spectatorship. After all, a riot would have little impact were it not for the affective power (as opposed to its often diminished effective impact) it holds over those who are witness to its events.

Paulson's work raises interesting questions when extended beyond the engravings and novels covered by his essay. What happens to his analysis when the taxonomy of riot shifts to the medium of games?

That's a question I would like to address now, using three examples that span analog and digital mediums: Brian Train's Battle for Seattle board game, as well as Rockstar's State of Emergency and 2K Games' Spec Ops: The Line video games. What makes these artistic depictions of riot intriguing is how they take the spectator of the player and transform that player into a participant of the riot with a viewpoint that is, nonetheless, wholly defined by the aesthetically influenced spectator experience. The player literally controls an event that is the antithesis of a controlled state.

These ludic depictions also shift the interpretation of riot beyond Paulson's investigation on how festive and seditious acts depicted representation, or the relation of the individual to society as a whole. With the emergence of ludic riots, the interpretation now centers on concerns of a post-Cold War society in which new questions are raised regarding the re-articulation of liberalism and the relation of society to the individual. This seeming reversal (because ludic models are hardly reactionary in their approach) of riotous depiction in our current era still, nonetheless, draws upon the rich history and legacy of riot as encountered in the Western tradition.

On the left, a scene from the upcoming game RIOT. On the right, 'The Zenith of French Glory' by James Gillray

Paulson notes that whereas pre-18th century depictions of riot generally used scenes from the Passion narrative of the Bible, the rise of Humanism/Enlightenment ideals transformed depictions of riot into "a form of burlesque that repeated the Passion as farce." After the French Revolution, when the potential transformation of riot into revolution was fully realized, depictions of riot carried with them this psychic weight of revolutionary memory. It became harder to depict popular violence in a positive light after the events of late 18th century France (a sentiment Paulson attributes to Ian Haywood's Bloody Romanticism) because "the pleasure and festive air of riot is evacuated in revolution, which is without ambivalence."

Ludic riots continue this tradition, utilizing forms that vacillate between actual and fictive depictions placed on the border of what we might call burlesque interpretations. Their representations are often filled with 'revolutionary memory', meaning that the player frequently engages in action that goes beyond limited expressions of pleasure and festive sedition found in riots, moving, instead, towards a more forceful expression of violence that is 'without ambivalence.' All the games examined here begin in riot but either progress towards or allow the player to engage in something much more deadly.

Let's begin with Brian Train's 2000 release of Battle for Seattle. Dedicated to 'the violins in the streets', Train's ludic riot is actually a representation of a real riot that occurred in Seattle during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting held there. Two players take on either the role of the 'Authority' (representing the Seattle Police Department, Washington State Troopers, or the National Guard) or the 'Protester Factions' (representing a loose coalition of Anarchists, Environmentalists, Radicals, Liberals, Organized Labor, and Yahoos). The goal of the game is to for each side to gain enough points on the 'Exposure Index', representing favorable publicity and image leverage, to qualify for a win.

There is a limited combat system, in which the Authority player can attempt to disperse or arrest protesting groups or crowds. The protester faction can counter-attack, potentially forcing Authority units to be returned to the 'force pool'. Only the Authority player can 'escalate' the conflict, which allows the Protester player the option of building 'barricades' and the Authority player the option to call in additional police units and utilize 'special munitions', like tear gas or rubber bullets.

From an aesthetic viewpoint, Battle of Seattle gives both players a clear sense of order and the breakdown of that order through the unified blue of the Authority pieces versus the multi-hued and diverse Protester factions. The map, which utilizes a point-to-point system, emphasizes some spaces over others. For example, the Protester gains more 'exposure' by having units occupy the Convention Center rather than the adjacent Seattle University space. This designation that some spaces are more valuable than others also reinforces the notion of spectatorship; one's exposure is increased if actions take place in noted areas, as opposed to nearby, but less important, areas considered distant from the real center of action- the WTO talks being held downtown.

Conversely, the Authority player must battle to keep its exposure from decreasing by losing 'control' of the situation either through Protestor 'victories' or through excessive use of force via 'special munitions' use/calling in state troopers and national guard units. The ability of the Authority player to engage in 'escalation' hints towards an acknowledgement of 'revolutionary memory'- after all, the Authority player will only escalate the conflict in an attempt to forestall a complete breakdown of control which could allow for far more dangerous situation to develop. (One of the higher levels of victory for the Protester details a situation in which WTO delegates run scared in the streets) Regardless of which side the player is on, their ability to win is directly indexed to the opinion of 'spectatorship' represented by the 'Exposure Index'.

So far, Battle of Seattle demonstrates several degrees of continuity with the sort of riots examined in Paulson's essay. However, one clear difference is that the players of this ludic riot go beyond mere spectators- they become active participants in this fictive depiction of an actual riot. The presence of the WTO as the catalyst for the riot depicted also shifts the question of what the riot represents. Unlike the previous two centuries, this riot is not a question of an individual's place in relation to the state, rather it's about an individual's place in relation to supra-national forces, represented by the WTO, which have called into question the role of liberalism in the post-Cold War world order. All of the various Protester factions see in the WTO personification of agendas that seek to reshape their oft marginalized role in the larger liberal conception of society. This theme of the riot as a means to question and re-evaluate the terms of liberalism continually resurfaces in the other games examined here.

Yet it should also be noted that Battle of Seattle maintains the festive and seditious air particular to the composition of riot. In the designer notes, Brian Train states that, "although this game attempts to model some of what happened in Seattle, it is also partially a SATIRE on the events, perhaps best displayed by the irreverence of the Random Events Table." This irreverence can be seen clearly through use of the Goofy holding an M-16 graphic used to denote National Guard Units, or the 'Coffee Break'/'Hey Beavis…' events found on the aforementioned Random Events Table. Even though the design carries strong connotations of rising violent potential, the entire game is cloaked in burlesque swatches that continually remind the players that this is a construct primarily centered on abstracted spectatorship. Violent outbreaks are always on the horizon, yet never amount to an actual spilling of blood.

Things change decidedly once you start playing State of Emergency. Released in 2002, State of Emergency contains the relatively simple plot whereby the player represents a member of an underground organization bent on the destruction of the 'American Trade Organization' (a rather thinly veiled reference to the World Trade Organization), another supra-national group that ostensibly controls America and that sets off the action of the game by declaring a 'state of emergency' in response to escalating riots against ATO authority. Constructed as an 'arcade'-type game, the player is given a set amount of time to run around various levels and inflict the most amount of damage via destruction of property and elimination of police forces sent out by the ATO. Different weapons, ranging from baseball bats to rocket launchers, are scattered throughout the level, the acquisition of which greatly increases the player capacity to deal out destructive damage. There is no goal other than to rack up points for a high score, and the entire game is depicted in rather cartoony elements with the figures and weapons used taking on exaggerated appearances.

There is a clear attempt by the creators of State of Emergency to have their game also play off of the WTO riots in Seattle. As such, several elements found in Battle for Seattle carry over here. There is the question of an individual's relation to the ATO, and the use of cartoonish animations and over-the-top voice overs (throughout the game, an announcer spouts out phrases like 'Smash the Corporation!' or declares opportunities like 'Smash windows for bonus score!') give the game a festive and seditious burlesque air. (Consider that the first level puts the player in a shopping mall, full of 'innocent' people running around, which could be seen as a farcical take on the bizarre scenes of when shoppers race through a store during Christmas sales) Yet the deadly seriousness ATO police forces utilize in their hunting down of the player place this game almost beyond burlesque and into the territory of true revolution. Were it not for the fact that the core design elements of State of Emergency center on the arcade aesthetic, which emphasizes action over narrative, the earnestness of the situation could be seen as a tete-a-tete in which the player explores the potential ramification of the ATO's influence on the reshaping of liberal ideals.

Spectatorship takes on new meaning when one combines the riot atmosphere with arcade gameplay found in State of Emergency. Beyond the numerous 'spectators' that constantly run around the game universe, the one-upmanship and competitive aspect involved in attaining high scores means that State of Emergency could potentially have several player-spectators waiting in line for their turn to participate in the rioting. The inherent nature of the arcade style means that part of the enjoyment comes from playing against others, and in this way one can say that State of Emergency actually emphasizes the role of the spectator in its fictive display of riot. Unlike Battle for Seattle, the bulk of spectator influence is sourced in real life and not abstracted, giving State of Emergency greater access to the affective impact the real Seattle riots brought about.

But what about the issue of revolutionary memory and the stain popular violence carries in our modern milieu? Paulson, again taking a cue from Ian Haywood, states that after the French Revolution, artistic depictions of riot dealt with this stain by allegorically shifting the context of riot to that of natural catastrophes. The fear of riot was displaced by aesthetizing it into an earthquake, or flood, or fire. By evoking a deliberate cartoonish style, State of Emergency finds a way to aesthetize its depiction of riot in a way that neutralizes the violent impulses made manifest. This cartoonish aesthetic can also be tied to what Paulson identifies as a "schematic version of (Edmund) Burke's sublime" found in many articulations of the aesthetized 'nature' riot (often containing a spectator within the scene who is safe from the tremendous event),

"…which leaves the viewer outside the picture as secure as the observer within, a mere mediator of the human effects of the natural catastrophe. Burke's 'delight' and 'terror' refer not to the terrified victim, but to the safe spectator who can identify with the source of danger, sublimating terror into delight." (74)

While State of Emergency uses arcade aesthetics to facilitate this sublimation of terror into delight, Spec Ops: The Line (from 2012) utilizes different allegorical techniques to twist this delight back into terror. While the previous two games discussed above featured already developed riots containing large numbers of participants, Spec Ops: The Line is unique in that it features a developing riot of just three people. In a remarkable analysis, titled Killing is Harmless, Brendan Keogh (@BRKeogh) explores how this game situated in the shooter genre actually pushes the genre forward by bringing the central actor into greater focus- the player:

There’s no shortage of shooters that want to be about something. But very few shooters are brave enough to look in the mirror—or to force the player that enjoys shooters to look in the mirror—and question what they see. Not to pass judgment. Not to ask them to change their ways. Just to understand what is going on here. (4)

Spec Ops: The Line is a game that centers on three member of Delta Squad: Captain Martin Walker, Lieutenant Adams, and Sergeant Lugo. The player controls Walker, but the other two members accompany him through much of the story, acting as sources of additional firepower in conjunction with their role as a type of Greek chorus in questioning and reflecting on the transformations Walker undergoes as the drama progresses. Their mission- and by extension, the mission the player undertakes- is to enter the city of Dubai, wrecked by sandstorms of unimaginable intensity, and look for traces of the 33rd Battalion who entered Dubai six months ago and has not been heard from since. Yet, as Walker and his squad mates progress further into Dubai they concurrently move further away from their original mission. What begins as a search for survivors turns into a merciless quest to hunt down the commander of the 33rd- Colonel John Konrad.

What starts off as a controlled experience quickly descends into uncontrolled chaos. Delta Squad, and the player controlling them, slowly transform into a riotous presence in Dubai. Seemingly a force of counter-riot, or the restoration of order represented by their military/police function, Delta Squad begins by killing masked Arabic men in the opening chapters of the game, but then moves on in later parts to killing members of the 33rd, effectively making them not preservers of order but, rather, instigators of a riot that quickly becomes an uprising. Keogh observes this progression, and the impact it has on the narrative:

Of course, it is worth noting that while the enemies I face become less othered as the game proceeds, the Arabic people are never less othered themselves but merely replaced with more relatable Western enemies (more relatable to a Western audience, at least). On one hand, this is certainly problematic. Nothing that The Line does works to de-otherise Arabic people so dramatically othered in other shooters and media more broadly. But, on the other hand, by replacing them with US soldiers halfway through the game, The Line forces the player to realise they are—have always been— shooting humans. How many players draw that connection back to consider the ‘insurgents’ of the early levels as human, however, is questionable. (23)

As Walker becomes increasingly obsessed with finding Konrad, engaging in more atrocious acts along the way, his own body is transformed through injury, first with cuts and bruises and later with half his face becoming black and burned. The further Delta Squad travels into Dubai, the more their speech and reactions to events become strained and disjointed from their earlier, sanitized military speak. 'Fire on my target' and 'Moving to clear' become 'Got one' and, later, 'Got the fucker', the changes in audible speech and personal appearance an aesthetic effect meant to impress upon the player, the spectator, that Delta Squad is moving from the seditious and festive air inhabited by many shooters towards a more violent uprising that riotous behavior induces. Dubai might have been consumed by calamitous sandstorms, a clear parallel with the allegorical shifting of riot discussed earlier, but instead of sublimating terror into delight, the journey through Dubai reveals that this allegorical shift was only a cover for the real riot occurring through player action. The delight that Spec Ops: The Line is just another shooter transforms into terror as the game continually reminds the player that they are complicit in the plot unfolding, even if they have little choice in how that plot develops.

The setting of Dubai, and the use of American soldiers as primary actants, again demonstrates that the central issue of this particular riot relates to questioning the role of liberalism in a post-Cold War order. Being a location that symbolizes the intrusion and extension of Western capitalist ideals, having Spec Ops: The Line depict Dubai as laid low by both natural catastrophe and Western-sourced sociopathic motives calls into question the goals and expectations of liberalistic influence. To make matters worse, had the player and Walker, working in tandem, not entered Dubai and engaged in riotous behavior, some semblance of liberalistic good might have been salvaged. Yet once the player and Walker begin on their narrative path, the inevitable progression from order to riot to revolution must occur, moving the festivity of the shooter towards a situation that is without ambivalence.

Clearly, the depiction of riot has well-defined articulations in the medium of games. Many of the elements analyzed by Paulson- the aesthetics of riot and the presence of the spectator- are also utilized in ludic riots, although their ultimate goals and techniques used to achieve an aesthetic effect on the spectator differ from the engravings and even novels examined in The Art of Riot. While the games examined here are done so in a somewhat cursory fashion, there is a clear path here for others to pursue. The art of riot is alive an well in games, both analog and digital, and examination of how these riots are created and ludically depicted reveals something deeper about ourselves and our society.

Idea for a Reading Group

(Update: I've created both a website and a discussion forum for this project.  I hope to start around March 18th, so stop by and take a look! - JA)

There's one thing I've noticed recently: my research efforts increasingly turn towards questions of the self and the way we relate to reality and ourselves through the observation of others.  This was one of the points touched upon by David Lyon in his keynote speech at Theorizing the Web, but it has also come up in my recent analysis of Snapchat and my larger dissertation work on the immigration of Russian Old Believers to Oregon in the 1960's.

In the past couple of months, I read through Foucault's last two College de France lecture series- The Government of Self and Others and The Courage of Truth- both of which deal with the notion of parrhesia (frankness, a sense of truth-telling) and how it has evolved over time to suit different needs for different truth regimes.  I think there is a lot of good material here to discuss, not only for the selfish reasons listed above but also for anyone interested in larger questions of how digital technology- through all of its manifestations and infiltrations- affect notions of the self and methods of veridiction of the self sourced through observation/reflection of others.

To that end, I would like to propose forming a reading group to analyze these two lectures-series delivered by Foucault.

I'm still thinking about how it would work, so nothing is set as of yet.  I've used Google Groups before, so that would be my default platform to host a discussion board, but I'm open to any other alternatives.  I would like to take between three to six months to read both books, with my preference being to the latter if only to promote deep, rather than surface, reading.  The larger goal would be to simply discuss the ideas of the lecture and hopefully make some meaningful connections to the diverse disciplines we all study.

For those of you without ready access to these books, I have a workaround that should help anyone out.  Right now I'm gauging interest, so if this sounds like something you would be willing to do let me know either via Twitter (@jsantley) or leave a comment below.

Compromised Reality in 'Jews and the Imperial State'

I've spent a fair amount of wordspace discussing topics related to augmented reality, especially how the current digital wave of augmentation can be informed by analyzing the impact of textual augmentation in the pre-digital era.  As someone who studies Russian history, I find investigating the question of how textual practices altered perceptions of reality especially interesting.  The tsarist government, over the three hundred years of its rule, held a fascination with documentation that rivaled any Western European power.  And just like Western Europe, tsarist authorities recognized the power documenting subjects of the realm could bring to their grander designs of glory and empire.  However, unlike the powers of Western Europe, one problem that chronically plagued tsarist ambitions was lack of available manpower.  If Russian authorities wanted to build a foucauldian gaze of panoptic power, they had to make compromises in order to do so.  Eugene Avrutin's Jews and the Imperial State: Identification Politics in Tsarist Russia describes the effects of this compromise by analyzing Imperial efforts to document Jewish identity.  His work sheds light on how we might better understand the interplay between textual dualist conceptions of identity and the augmented reality those conceptions measured up against.

"While Jews could be easily identified visually as a collective group or defined in legal terms, authorities found it much more challenging to document Jews as individuals," writes Avrutin, as he later identifies three factors that contributed to this problem.  First, building " a legal-administrative order capable of accommodating the empire's remarkable juridicial distinctions and confessional diversity", second "the ordering of clear and distinct cultural boundaries between Jews and non-Jews" and third "containment of Jews in their permanent places of residence."  During the first half of the 19th century, Russian authorities found it increasingly difficult to accurately document a population under once satisfactory categories of social estate and religious belief.  By turning away from census records towards passports, city censuses, and metrical books in the second half of the 19th century, the ruling regime began to rely more heavily on ethnic conceptions of identity for categorizing and policing diverse subjects.  Passports were handy for regulating internal movement of populations.  In contrast with empire-wide census efforts, city censuses were far easier to carry out and contained very valuable information on the inhabitants of urban centers.  According to Avruitn, it was use of the metrical books that constituted a novel method in documenting the legal status of a subject.

Photo from Rude Cactus

Metrical books recorded the births, baptisms, marriages and deaths that occurred in a community and their maintenance fell to clergymen who acted as an intermediary between state and subject.  Since 1722, when Peter the Great issued his first statute on registering vital events, clergymen of the Russian Orthodox Church kept records of their confessional community, but it wasn't until 1835 that Jewish 'crown rabbis' also found themselves in charge of performing the same tasks.  Avrutin states that, "the recording of vital events allowed the state to recognize the population not only as a religious community but as individuals with distinct civil identities."  This approach, using functionaries of religious faiths as proxies for civil servants in record-keeping tasks, possessed several advantages in the eyes of Russian authorities.  Not only did the state find a way to augment its often meager presence amongst diverse populations across the empire, but it also felt that the information it received from religious authorities was more 'accurate' and complete than otherwise could be attained from trained civil servants.  Unlike census records, which collected data primarily for tax use and military conscription quotas, metrical books delineated identity by acting as a record of an individuals denomination, legal status, ethnic origin and place of residence.  Yet the regime also knew how fickle and prone to error record keeping could be, particularly with the Jewish community in the matter of transliterating Hebrew names to Russian or when rabbis recorded different names for birth and death records.

Over the course of five chapters, Avrutin makes a very compelling analysis come to life with several examples drawn from the multitude of records and archives surveyed.  The footnotes alone are worth reading, as they bring the somewhat narrow focus of the work (Jewish populations) into line with the larger backdrop of imperial record keeping practices across the empire.  As a work of Imperial Russian History, I give Jews and the Imperial State high marks.  Instead of performing a more standard review, I would like to spend the remainder of this post exploring a theme I mentioned above- the interplay between textual dualism and augmented reality.  While never using such terms, Avrutin nevertheless provides intriguing examples that demonstrate how these modes of perceiving reality clashed and modified the terms by which the Imperial Russian state understood the meaning of identity.

Bexley police in the UK hold up fake ID cards

Take this observation by Avrutin on the metrical books in the chapter 'Making Jews Legible':

As a fundamental marker of identity, the document (a metrical book entry) followed individuals as they changed place of residence, marital status, and even religious denomination.  The document's civic importance- as the most important tool by which the state obtained knowledge of its population- ensured that officials took much time in enforcing proper registration while continuing to devise new administrative methods to improve record-keeping practices.

By placing so much importance upon an interpretation of reality as espoused by the document, a textual construction of identity, the Imperial Russian government essentially cultivated a textual dualist position with regards to individual identification.  The individual and the gaze the state held on that individual became separated under this interpretation of reality.  When the two differed, as could be the case if a rabbi transliterated a Hebrew name into Russian or if an individual used a Russified version of a Hebrew name in everyday life, then the individual in question would find themselves in an asynchronous conflict between the reality of the lived identity and the identity recorded in the book.  This could prove advantageous, as when Jews resisted being conscripted into the Imperial Army on claims of confused identity, or it could prove a hindrance, as when Jews sought to prove to Imperial authorities that their sons who died in infancy could not fulfill the call for conscription.  There was also the issue of gendered imbalance found in the metrical books, as many crown rabbis did not usually attend a females naming ceremony- the designated time when registration of births occurred.  Avrutin notes that omission of birth registration of females led not only to difficulties for said females as they grew up and began to interact with the social and legal system of the empire, but also to a statistical myth that among Jewish communities a gendered imbalance skewed towards males existed.  Again, the textual dualist conception of reality found in the metrical books, the primary conduit for the state to exercise its documentary gaze, often encountered asynchronous contradictions when individuals operating in an augmented reality conception of reality (which could be said to contain both oral and textual knowledge) disputed the record at hand.

Photo by Awed Job

However, as is often the case with documentary power, a record can be amended thus ameliorating asynchronous conflict between the lived reality of the individual and document that purports to know vital characteristics of the individual.  But true to its absolutist form, the Russian government placed severe restrictions on making changes to recorded events in the Jewish metrical books.  To correct a mistake, crown rabbis were forced to submit petitions in order to receive an exemption and be allowed to amend the records.  Even if interested Jewish parties sought to correct the official record through legal efforts, Avrutin states that the courts would rule that they did not have the legal authority to mandate a change in the official record (as that would be the prerogative of the absolutist central government, embodied in the tsar).  "For the imperial government, a change in the document- however small or inconsequential it may have appeared- undermined the integrity of the entire record-keeping system'"  This insight by Avrutin describes the Russian authorities proclivity to inject absolutist content into the documents used to identify and surveil the population.  While the imperial regime desired to harness the power of individual documentation, inability to consistently maintain a disciplinary apparatus (like those produced in Western Europe and examined by Foucault in his analysis of power) forced authorities to adopt a conception of reality based on stable (to them) textual dualist notions over a more chaotic (for them) augmented reality conception.  This limited the Russian governments ability to integrate religious and cultural differences into its own sense of imperial identity.  As the individual and the gaze held on that individual through documentary power increasingly diverged, the asynchronous conflicts between textual dualist identity and augmented reality identity grew to greater and greater proportions.

While Avrutin's work looks only at a particular group within the multi-ethnic Russian empire, the Jews, it does a superb job of examining how "knowledge-based technologies" impacted the conception of identity at both the individual and panoptic-authoritative level.  I believe that further examination of Imperial Russian use of these 'knowledge-based technologies' could benefit from using a conceptual framework that puts central the conflict between textual dualism and augmented reality in establishing the veracity of the individual.

Short Thoughts on 'Gutenberg Galaxy'

I just finished reading Marshal McLuhan's Gutenberg Galaxy in preparation for an abstract I'm planning to submit to the Theorizing the Web 2012 Conference, and there was a line of argumentation brought up in the work I wanted to discuss.  It comes from a quote McLuhan selected from James Frazer's Golden Bough for its commentary on the accelerating effect literacy and visuality introduced to the oral world:

"Compared with the evidence afforded by living tradition, the testimony of ancient books on the subject of early religion is worth very little.  For literature accelerates the advance of thought at a rate which leaves the slow progress of opinion by word of mouth at an immeasurable distance behind.  Two or three generations of literature may do more to change thought than two or three thousand years of traditional life…and so it has come about that in Europe at the present day the superstitious beliefs and practices that have been handed down by word of mouth are generally of a far more archaic type than the religion depicted in the most ancient literature of the Aryan race…"

Using the example (drawn from a different work) of 'folktales' and 'traditions' found in the play of schoolchildren as a corollary to the quote above, McLuhan declares, "In communities widely separated in space and time there is a continuity and tenacity of tradition quite unknown to written forms."

One of the themes I want to address in my abstract is the need, in my opinion, for a new conceptualization of information that will allow us to more accurately map the augmented reality presence infused in our daily lives.  While the points addressed by both Frazer and McLuhan are, on face, correct they do some disservice in their perpetuation of an informational framework dependent on speed as the indexer of change.  With the advent of the digital wave of augmentation, the interaction between supposedly slow atoms of oral knowledge and the fast bits of digital knowledge increasingly level each other out in their interoperability making distinctions of speed between the separate domains of knowledge increasingly moot (under what McLuhan calls the 'pressure of simultaneity') and even illusionary once an augmented reality perspective is pursued.  The question can no longer be, "what is the speed of this accelerating effect?"  It must instead shift to, "what degree can this knowledge be modified through transmission?" as this qualifier, this focusing of informational pursuit, will allow us to move away from harmful dualist modes of thinking towards a more realistic augmented reality perspective.  

This is helpful not only for interpreting the effects of the digital wave of augmentation, but also the previous waves and the waves to come.  My attempts to define knowledge in terms of high and low mobility potentials, as seen in my examination of the debate on usage of oral citations on Wikipedia and the new website Small Demons, denotes small efforts towards this larger goal. 

Old Belief, Sex and the Modern Divergence

One of the sublime (hint- massive sarcasm here) joys of working on a graduate portfolio lies with the painstaking production, in around 250 words or less, of individual entries into the master annotated bibliography.  It would definitely border on busy work were it not for the curious fact that it sometimes takes the tedium of summation in order to see the linkages between seemingly disparate works.  Such was the case as I prepared to take Roy Robson's Old Believers in Modern Russia and Eve Levin's Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700 and condense their cogent and well argued points into a paragraph.  

As some may know, I'm currently conducting research on Old Believer communities that immigrated to Oregon in the 1960's.  Even though I spent several evenings in the Fall semester of 2007 learning about Russian Orthodox history, Old Belief is sufficiently varied and highly dependent on the experiences of the local that I knew I would need to 'remind' myself as to the origin and nature of these asynchronous Orthodox beliefs.  Roy Robson's work, specifically addressing Old Believer groups at the turn of the twentieth century, provided a well-informed foundation of knowledge from which my initial inquires could take form.  

Two observations made by Robson in his first chapter are particularly enlightening.  The first:

Because symbols and rituals are experienced (emphasis in text) by the faithful, not simply understood in an intellectual way, scholars need to break down the distinction between symbolic and concrete structures, between the 'signs' of the old ritual and the 'real' issues at stake in the Old Belief. (7)

and the second:

Consequently, we can understand the Old Belief as an ongoing relationship between the symbols of pre-Nikonian Orthodoxy and the lives of the old ritualist faithful. (9)

The key observation in both statements is that one cannot analyze Old Belief solely on the basis of ritual practice, as the faiths very makeup and execution is directly tied to the circumstances and experiences of the practicing community.  A scholar must look to the community itself for deeper understanding, recognizing that the rituals encountered do not tie their practitioners to the past but rather grounds the practice of Old Believers in the lived presence of today.  This especially strong linkage between Old Belief and and the community not only helps explain the ability of the faith to endure under various forms of persecution but also why the Nikonian reforms of the mid-17th century provoked the Russian religious schism in the first place.

How so?  Interestingly enough, the answer lies with sex.  And this is where summation becomes suddenly less tedious.

Enter the work of Eve Levin (who, in all candor, is my advisor).  Sex and Society of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700 is her exhaustive and well-informed work utilizing ecclesiastical and other documentary sources from the various the slavic populations in Eastern Europe and Russia.  Her main argument is that sexual behavioral norms and attitudes espoused by the Orthodox Church largely correlated to the norms and attitudes of the people themselves.  Looking at the issues and debates surrounding topics of marriage, illicit sex, rape, incest, as well as sex and the clergy, Levin asserts that because the Church held such close contact with Orthodox believers in the period surveyed, 900-1700, regulation of their sexual behavior was largely free from acrimony and actually enforced by the community itself.  (There are other, larger points made in the work, but the community aspect is what interests me here.)

Yet towards the end of the 17th century, the traditional medieval relationship and cooperation between the people and the church, at least in the area of sexual behavior regulation, underwent a reconfiguration.  Two points will help illustrate the nature of this reconfiguration; the Nikonian reforms and the rise of the centralized, secular state.  

As the power of the tsar began to grow into a more modernist form, shedding the aging ancient regime skin, it sought to extend its influence in areas previously reserved for the ecclesiastical.  As Levin points out, regulation of sexual behavior was one such area increasingly transferred to the purview of the state at the end of the 17th century.  Suddenly, the close relationship between community and church was replaced by a bureaucratically distant relationship between community and state.  Whereas the community members once had a greater roll in the determination and enforcement of behavioral norms, under the new arrangement their voice increasingly diminished until it was hardly considered at all.  The reform of the secular promised radical change in the way society and the state interacted.  This alone would have been disconcerting to those who cherished the community centered aspect of their lives- yet the 17th century would also see reform of the sacred, and this transformation provoked an intense reaction.

I briefly discussed the Nikonian reforms here- essentially, Patriarch Nikon sought standardization of both text and ritual used in the practice of Russian Orthodoxy.  He modeled his standardizations on Greek Orthodox forms, believing that such efforts would help to strengthen the faith by eliminating the inconsistancy that crept in over the past six centuries.  During the same period, the Church also sought to improve the standing of their parish clergymen thought minimal education requirements and cultivating a more dignified, elitist position in the society they served.  It was a quest never completed- but the undertaking produced unintended consequences.  The combined effect of both movements described above was that the Church effectively took itself out of the close contact it possessed with the community faithful, instead preferring to create a far more formalized and structured relationship that placed the tsar and the church hierarchy before that of the community.  

As Robson point out in his analysis of the differences between the liturgy and rituals of Old Belief and Russian Orthodoxy, the former made little room for the role of secular power but contained a diverse set of interactions between clergy and faithful, while the latter de-emphasized the community in favor of promoting the health and well-being of the tsar and church clergy, eliminating much of the interaction elements between clergy and faithful.  This would prove to be the main grievance stemming from the progenitors of Old Belief, namely that the Russian Orthodox reforms abandoned the established and stabilizing relationship between community and church that existed for centuries during the medieval era in favor of a more modern form that used dictation instead of cooperation in establishing and enforcing norms.  Hence, the Russian Orthodox schism.

In effect, Old Believers faced a changing relationship with their authorities in the sacred and secular realms in which both significantly modified existence of traditional ties and commitments to the community faithful.  To see the Russian Orthodox schism as a religious issue alone misses the point- changes in the configuration of the state no doubt provided an additional source of unease among those who saw value in the more traditional methods of governance.  

Robson informs us that the community and the lived experience of Orthodoxy is what characterizes Old Belief, while Levin states that, at least in the arena of sex, the 17th century saw the divergence of medieval models of synchronicity with the community in favor of modern forms influenced by the West.  Probing deeper, one can distinguish the link between the two scholar's works and provide greater depth and meaning to larger cultural trends within Russian history.  At least, that's what I attempted to roughly outline above.
  
And I owe it all to the bibliography.  Thanks.

A Look At Abstract Investigations

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure to become completely immersed in a work of non-fiction on a topic seemingly ubiquitous in our present day- Information.  Written by James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood attempts to provide a history of how the West first defined and then applied conceptions of information in realms both analog and digital.  I say 'the West' because, outside of the first chapter on West African communicative drumming, the core of the book looks at noted personalities in the U.K. and United States.  Specifically, giants like Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing and Claude Shannon form the biographical focus.  While the subjects of biography are limited, the scope of the work is not- Gleick should be commended for his tackling of a subject both omnipresent and etherial.  The Information reminded me of another work on a similar abstract topic, that being Adrian Johns in-depth and far reaching work Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars From Gutenberg To Gates.  Utilizing the same biographical-narrative approach as Gleick, Johns looks over a much wider scope of history- roughly 400 years- probing the intertwined complexities surrounding the conception, evolution and use of the terms 'copyright' and 'piracy'.  Johns states that development of what we now term 'intellectual property' often lagged behind piratical practices and that distinct revisions of history occurred with the rise of each 'new' conception of the term.

I throughly enjoyed and highly recommend both of the above works.  On one level, I became so engaged due to the superb writing of both authors on the subjects they address.  Yet on another level, one beyond that of technical appreciation, I found both works to be superb illustrations and examinations of a process I encounter frequently when analyzing the behaviors of Russian peasants- that being the reconfiguration of knowledge, often at the local level.  In the case of information theory, the star concept highlighted in Gleick's work, the key development came when Claude Shannon proved that the total informative content of an object (a message, or a picture for example) could be mathematically calculated, so long as one accepted the basic premises that predictable change (knowing that the next number in the series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is probably 6) does not constitute 'information', and that any 'meaning' of information an object contains is irrelevant, as this was beyond the scope of mathematical inquiry.  At first glance, this definition of 'information' and the stipulations on its analytical content appears counter-intuitive.  Why would one analyze a letter, or a film, and specifically avoid the question of meaning?  Information, as many now conceive of it, would cease to be if voided of meaning.  Yet Shannon realized, and this was the true genus of his idea, that only by stripping away the subjective nature of information could one objectively measure its content.  He dubbed his objective unit of information a bit, and his later work and ideas would form the foundation of our digital era today.  Several disciplines outside of engineering, biology for one, took inspiration from Shannon's work and reconfigured his ideas to help them analyze their research.  But in order for it all to happen, Shannon had to first take the ill-conceived yet established notion of information and redefine it in a way that could make it mathematically interpretable.      

Johns' work analyzes the shifting definition of a similarly abstract idea akin to 'information'; Piracy.  The crux of his argument lies in the effects reconfiguration of the definition of piracy spurred equal reconfiguration of the definition of intellectual property.  Each new technological innovation that allowed for the greater distribution, or novel distribution, of information prompted new questions as to the nature of ideas and creativity.  When debates on the meaning of piracy began in the early 17th century, many questioned if ideas alone were worthy of protection.  Today, if one looks at the United States alone, not only have the concepts of piracy and intellectual property taken up copious amounts of legal thinking and articulation but they also are undergoing continuing expansion and redefinition as to their breadth.  For example, in the United States one may patent software- in the E.U. one cannot.  In Brazil, HIV/AIDS drugs used for treatment of the disease are 'pirated' via purchase or local production of generic substitutes of currently patented medicines.  Merck sees this as infringement of its intellectual property rights- Brazilian officials see it differently.  How each nation, each locale, reconfigures the definition of 'piracy' impacts on a wide range of issues, software and medical treatments being only a few fields touched.  

Lewis Hyde's work, Common As Air, also addresses this subject- indeed, many people see the current debates over the role digital technologies play in our use, consumption and generation of creative works as the dawn of a new relationship between people and the cultural artifacts that surround them.  What form that relationship will take has yet to be seen, but as Hyde mentions and Johns confirms our current notions and understanding on cultural production stems from debates cemented during the industrial revolution.  Would it be inconceivable that the digital revolution would prompt a similar reevaluation in our present day?

Perhaps the ultimate reason I appreciate these works is that they both take their subjects of inquiry and appreciate the fact that 'Piracy' and 'Information' are results of an intertwined and complex circulating process; the interplay between profesional disciplines and among histories men and women of letters, not to mention the average person and their relations, produces striking results not anchored in the moment of their conception but instead in a variance of motion across time and space.  This is an approach I endeavor to bring to my own work.

And now for a review…Slavophile Empire by Laura Engelstein

As I mentioned in my last post, I study Imperial Russian History. It's a topic that I totally accidentally happened into studying, largely prompted by a conversation I had with one of my advisors colleagues during my 2005 study abroad/Russian immersion in St. Petersburg. We met in what Americans might call a 'campy' restaurant, themed heavily in images and avatars of bears and just off the ever-busy Nevskii Prospect. A wood-carved bear greeted me at the entrance, a stuffed bear stared me down while I ate my soup, and I could spy the outlines of bears in the forest, captured in illustration across the room, when my advisors friend explained to me the breakdown of my field. He asked what period I wished to study and what exactly I wanted to research. Having, more or less, blundered into graduate school during my final semester of undergraduate study, I had never considered these questions and could only offer a vague answer.

That was okay, he said, and then informed me that the study of Russian history separated into roughly three periods; Early/Medieval, Imperial, and Soviet/Post-Soviet. Too many scholars in the Soviet Period, he said, would make it difficult to acquire a job. Early/Medieval was interesting but required learning Church Slavonic, a prospect that seemed impossible considering I was just beginning to study the actual Russian language itself. Imperial, he said, might be the best fit. I took his advice to heart, and began to focus my attention on the middle period when I returned home.

Imperial history, for me, really is a satisfying study. There is a large availability of documents, thanks in part to a larger and more educated bureaucracy that existed for the years I study, roughly 1700-1917. The empire contained numerous ethnic minorities and diverse ecological zones that, in turn, impacted the character of life for the inhabitants within. The Russian state underwent several changes during this period, moving beyond the status of regional power to that of a respected player in world politics. Yet, despite the increasing role Russia played in Western European history it came under constant scrutiny, both internal and external, for the central themes of its identity. Here was a state whose culture straddled the border between 'East' and 'West', buttressed throughout its existence by a powerful, anti-liberal, centralized government that nonetheless spawned several movements with the goal of reconciling the cultural differences between Western ideas/values and the ever evolving idea of Russian identity. The legacy of this evolution reverberates in Russia today.

Laura Engelstein's latest work, Slavophile Empire: Imperial Russia's Illiberal Path, provides an explanatory theme of this process in a collection of seven essays, plus introduction, using a mix of approaches related to the Cultural/Intellectual fields of history. Reading it reminded me of Fin-de-Siècle Vienna by Carl Schorske in that you have no reason to read the essays in order, other than the fact the Ms. Engelstein has divided the collection into three sub-themes. As an instructor, I find collections such as these helpful when trying to provide students with a reading assignment that is, in itself, a contained unit. Chapters in a progressive narrative approach reward the reader for sustained diligence, but it has been my experience that unless the text is of an especially engrossing nature it can be difficult to maintain interest. Engelstein's work provides one the opportunity to pull out a key essay that allows the reader to engage with the topic in a format that has a clear beginning, middle and end. The other big plus in my book is the use of footnotes; endnotes in a printed text almost guarantee that the references contained within will almost certainly never be inspected and students should become accustomed to checking the footnotes on interesting points contained within the essay. Besides, footnotes are where authors can be snarky or witty even if the text itself is more formal.

Engelstein explores the paradoxical relationship Russia's proudly anti-liberal autocracy held with, then, radical liberal movements created by the societal shockwave of the Napoleonic Wars. As noted in her introduction, liberalism conceived a new model of the nation, one based on an increasing importance accorded to the individual and where the ideas of sovereignty were redefined delegating some power to the new concept of 'society'. This model, if one could call it that, held no universal form and took shape in a variety of distinct configurations across Europe. One of the central tenets of a liberal nation was the cohesion achieved among similar peoples in an "illusion of unity", a concept that held little currency for rulers of multi-ethnic empires. However, the autocracy soon learned that it ignored the "illusion" at its own peril, as the power of the nation-state threatened to pull apart empires whose populations were diverse and not at all common. Autocrats of Russia required a unifying myth of their own and thus selectively took from Western trends; they codified laws, introduced trial by jury and increased opportunities for the promotion of cultural and economic development. Yet the central government never gave up censorship and still relied upon the supreme, if arbitrary, rule of the Tsar.[i]

In this vein of developing institutions and attitudes, exemplified best in the classic Slavophile vs. Westernizer debates, Engelstein investigates, as she puts it, the tensions between the liberal paradigm and the conservative anti-liberal alternative.[ii] The organization of the collections essays falls into three groups that explore these tensions. The first three essays represent aspects in law and legality that lent themselves to the westernizing urge of moderates. The next two, in turn, explore parallel efforts in the religious sphere to resist these westernizing movements by examining two contemporary intellectuals, Aleksei Khomsakov and Ivan Kireevski, and their attempt to find reason within an Orthodox framework. The last two chapters look at how Slavophiles contributed to the formulation of the ideal Russian nation, defined for them by the core characteristic of Orthodox belief.[iii]

I particularly enjoyed reading the first and third essays, dealing with Russia's weak commitment to the rule of law in both Imperial/Soviet frameworks and the desire of moderates in the judiciary, through the promotion of religious toleration, to reform the role religion played in society, respectively. Without going into too much theory, the first essay considers how the experience of Russia, an empire that combined liberal, anti-liberal and absolutist governing models, reconciles with Foucault's conception of how the liberalist 'rule of law' changed, for Western Europe at least, the apparatus of domination from compulsion to discipline as exercised by the newly empowered bourgeoisie. Engelstein interprets the contribution of liberalism as one that replaced the, "alliance between discipline and the administrative state with a configuration that frames the operation of discipline within the confines of the law."[iv] However, in the Russian experience, the Tsarist and later Soviet rulers took this conception in a new direction. Instead of invoking a "disciplinary society limited and controlled by the authority of the law", Russian rulers created a governing framework that eschewed the validity of 'legality' and sought control of various disciplines for their own use.[v] It is a fascinating read, one that really demonstrates how the distinct historical-geographical experience of Russia shaped governing models and expectations visible today.

The third essay investigates the role modernist efforts in the judiciary played in the debate on the role of religion in society and the correlative issue of religious tolerance. Eastern Orthodoxy, spread to the present day lands of Russia in the 9th century, served not only as a unifying force in the broader society and culture but also as a central pillar of the Tsarist regime. To be sure, the Orthodox Church's relationship with the Russian rulers was complex and only distantly mirrored that experienced by Western European nations and Roman Catholicism. The reformers highlighted in this essay sought not to remove religion from society but instead to change it into a more modern conception, in line with the models then emanating out of Western Europe. Efforts to reform religion in the judiciary, according to Engelstein, constituted an attempt by Russian intellectuals to create a space for 'civil society' to flourish, albeit one that did nothing to discount the absolutist nature of the larger government apparatus. Three key discussions are used for evidence in this tracing of opinions; the first showcases the discussions of the 1895 editorial commission charged with revising the criminal code, the second looks at the liberal jurisprudence work of Professor Mikhail Reisner, and the third considers the impact of the pre-1905 October Manifesto imperial decree of 17 April 1905 on religious tolerance. Taken together, the three vignettes demonstrate the alternating currents of thoughts, up to the near end of imperial rule, regarding one of the central tenants of Russian identity; religious belief.[vi]

I really enjoyed reading Slavophile Empire, as well as one of Engelstein's previous works, Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom, that looks at the religious sect of the Skoptsy and their relation with the Russian government. Both provide readers with a means to understand some of the historical differences Russian people encountered in their imperial past and the connections those differences created in contemporary society today. If nothing else, Slavophile Empire demonstrates that the liberal values so often taken for granted in the making of our Western society not only penetrated Russian society but also forced appreciable change in their wake. This point alone should inform our opinion of the mobility of ideals, and the ultimate mutation those ideas undergo through the process of circulation.

Ultimately, I enjoy the work because it demonstrates the incredible depth available in the study of Imperial Russian history.

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[i] Laura Engelstein, Slavophile Empire: Imperial Russia’s Illiberal Path (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 2-3.

[ii] Ibid, 3.

[iii]Ibid, 7-10.

[iv] Ibid, 20.

[v] Ibid, 20.

[vi] Ibid, 78-98.