Submitted by Jim Brown on March 1, 2007 - 12:48pm
There's an interesting piece over at Salon by Paul M. Barrett about how denunciations of terrorism by moderate Muslims are supposedly "not heard" by Americans:
"But this disconnect may not stem entirely from a failure to listen. It may also have to do with the way American Muslims have condemned terrorism. Specifically, until recently, Muslim leaders often added caveats to their condemnations that robbed them of real force."
These caveats and asterisks come in the form of questioning whether bin Laden was actually responsible for 9-11 or in the continued use of terms like "kafir" (a pejorative term for a non-believer) or "jihad."
While these types of terms and arguments are counter productive when addressing certain U.S. audiences, it seems clear that they are used with other audiences in mind (for instance, Muslims who are against terrorism but also uncomfortable with many U.S. policies). This discussion reminds me of a great book I read over break: No God But God by Reza Aslan. Aslan first provides a brief history of Islam (useful to those attmpting to understand distinctions between Sunni and Shia) and then argues that the the current "war" is only partly about East v. West and much more about a war within Islam. So, it makes sense that those attempting to denounce terrorism must do so in a way that addresses audiences within Islam and outside of Islam.
I'm also reminded of Bush's recent response to a question about Congress' non-binding resolution and whether it emboldens the enemy:
"The only thing I can tell you is that when I speak, I'm very conscience [sic] about the audiences that are listening to my words. The first audience, obviously, is the American people. The second audience would be the troops and their families. That's why I appreciate the question about whether or not -- about the troop morale, it gave me a chance to talk to the families and how proud we are of them. Third, no question people are watching what happens here in America. The enemy listens to what's happening, the Iraqi people listen to the words, the Iranians. People are wondering; they're wondering about our commitment to this cause. And one reason they wonder is that in a violent society, the people sometimes don't take risks for peace if they're worried about having to choose between different sides, different violent factions. As to whether or not this particular resolution is going to impact enemy thought, I can't tell you that."
So audience is clearly the issue here, but how do we consider this concept of audience in a world where texts are transported instantaneously to infinite audiences? I want to be clear here: technologies have not "created" the problem of audience. But it certainly seems that certain technologies have forced us to consider this question much more rigorously. How does one become "very conscience" of an audience that they could never possibly predict?
I leave this question open to the Blogora for two reasons: 1) I try never to ask a question when I already know the answer; 2) I'm tired of typing with one hand (still recovering from wrist surgery).
The question of audience and technology is permeated by the questions of 'value' and 'freedom.' Hence the analogy I make with my terms 'open source audience,' by which I mean one that shares information, code, ownership, and methods of representation. This was starkly illustrated for me last year while teaching in Copenhagen when the Mohammed drawings/cartoons were published, and within hours there were Muslims rioting and burning the Danish and Norwegian embassies in several cities around the world.
But in Denmark, there was hardly a stir among Muslims, who number around 200,000 in a country of about 5 million people. Mostly self-transplants, these folks had become part of Danish culture in which freedom of speech and increasingly conservative immigration politics go hand in hand. Turns out that the newspaper that published the images was interested in sparking debate in Denmark....never dreaming it would spark violence in other parts of the world. In the cartoon above, the young student Mohammed is depicted as a student at Valby Skole, and our apartment was next door to it. How ironic that I not only had to worry about being an American in this world, I now had to add worrying about working in Denmark while Muslims in the Middle East were chanting "Death to Denmark." Needless to say, the day all this erupted, it made for fascinating discussions in my Serious Design class, the topic of which (for that day) just happened to be cartoons.