Position and Voice – Vlad Molico

Activity ONE

What is the author’s topic? & 2. What is the author’s opinion on this topic?

In Declaration of Rebellion, the authors, compelled by the threat of inevitable planetary-scale ecological disasters combined with a lack of governmental preventive action, declare themselves in rebellion against their government and other ‘corrupted, inept institutions’ that are threatening their future. Dissociating themselves from the current social order, they demand a new type of ecologically informed and driven governance, and ask for like-minded citizens to join their cause.

In Foreword, Vandana Shiva reiterates the gravity of the ecological state of emergency and draws parallels between the self-proclaimed superior colonialist mindset that led to the genocide of inferiorly portrayed indigenous populations of North America and the current ecocide led by the profit-driven behaviour of the 1%¹. Shiva calls for a similar method of protest as previous authors, through a radical refusal of co-operation with the complicit existing social governing structures.

How do they persuade you to take their view? & 4. What is the author’s writing style?

Authors start with the following categorical sentence: We hold the following to be true, which establishes them as firm believers in their position, a position persuasively reinforced by a diverse range of facts and arguments throughout the text.

Does it appeal to you? & 6. How would you write it differently?

Although I am sympathetic with the authors’ cause/intention due to my own pre-existing knowledge and political convictions, I find the text lacking focus and containing a scattered and wide-ranging series of anecdotally presented alarming arguments without following a certain logical thread of connection and causality. The text is asking an uninformed reader to make a large number of assumptions and it is primarily aimed at readers already equipped with a sympathetically formed point of view and coming with a broad pre-existing baggage of jargon on the subject — see footnote 1 on Q1 & Q2 — all of which might reduce the effectiveness of the overall argument for a reader new or unsympathetic to the subject.

In my view, the text also lacks clarity of proposed action models — although some of the main responsible actors are named clearly, the arguments are presented with conviction and the future scenarios confidently suggest a very accurate unfolding, the proposed solutions are yet vague, incomplete and non-participatory, without asking for specific outcomes or even suggesting specific complete systemic processes. There is a disconnection between the planetary scale of the problem and the local aspect of the main proposed course of action. For example, the replacement of a democratically elected representative governing body in one country with a ‘national assembly’ (which according to the authors support for the democratic process, would still be a democratically elected governmental institution, voted by the same electoral distribution of people, within the same socio economical & cultural frameset) does not, logically, guarantee or implies any ‘positive’ or even different outcome in terms of preventing the upcoming global crisis.

Another aspect that I find ineffective in constructing a compelling case is the listing of very disparate temporal, geographical and contextual arguments without attempting to logical connections between them.

I assume that a much more focused and detailed line of thought following a much more simplified yet holistic logic describing a complete cycle of systemic events, stating clearly the role of each actor, plus describing more clearly the causes, effects and actions would help the authors reach a wider audience outside their primary target and ultimately generate audience engagement.

A preferred example of a manifesto that effectively influenced human life at a global scale during the 20th century, would be the Manifesto of the Communist Party (Marx & Engels, 1848) which has a very simple and logically constructed structure explaining causally the evolution of human socio-economic relations and how various societal organisational models are affected or affect those relations. The paragraphs and chapters are focused on specific topics in order to maintain clarity of purpose and the arguments are constructed and arranged in a logical temporal-causal way hence making the lecture more accessible to a wider audience without the need of any prior knowledge on the subject. I would also like to note the effectiveness with which Marx & Engels frequently use footnotes throughout their entire text to either explain certain terms to the ‘uninitiated’, to add a greater sense of authenticity to the work or to add layers of depth to their argument and to also not distract the reader from the main topic discussed.

Footnotes

1. I am assuming that the economic force the author is referring to is the profit-driven ‘free-market’ economic concept which implies the logic of deregulating economic actors’ actions (which in turn is mostly beneficial to the top most economically powerful 1% of the total human global population) in their pursuit of profit, often accompanied by a disregard to the socio-environmental impact of such actions.

Bibliography

Marx, K. & Engels, F. (1848) Manifesto of the Communist Party [online]. < https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf > [Accessed 11.2019].

Activity TWO

Choose another text from the list below.

Pair this text with an image/object of your choice. This could be the image/object you selected for the ‘Writing Objects’ task.

Write a paragraph about this pairing which answers the following questions:

In your opinion, how does the image/object relate to the text?
Why have you brought them together?
How can you persuade me of their relationship?
Can you find any other writing to back up your opinion?

These questions develop your understanding of ‘position’’ and ‘voice’. Please bring your paragraphs to the workshop.

In On Decoloniality, the author links the idea of modernity to coloniality and to the idea of hierarchical societal thinking which favours certain elements over others less ‘modern’. At the same time, my object of study in ‘Writing Objects’ is the questioning of the concept of ‘digital white’ as the default colour of primarily text-based software interfaces in use today. Adding the arguments made by Richard Dyer in his book White, where he questions the colonial aspect of the sometimes unquestioned ‘defaultness’, preference or perceived superiority of the colour white in various aspects of society, I ask the question if the choice for the default text processing interfaces doesn’t actually hide any colonial cultural biases over practical aspects.

Texts

Texts can be accessed using your RCA login details.

Autobiography

Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts, 2015

Decoloniality

Catherine E. Walsh and Walter Mignolo ‘Introduction’ in On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis, 2018

Essay

Teju Cole, ‘Death in the Browser Tab’ in Known + Strange Things, 2016

Fragments

Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat, 2014

Manifesto

SPIT! ‘We The Enemy’ in The SPIT! Manifesto Reader