CRDM 701

Week 11 - Jon

Jeremy Packer opens "Becoming Bombs: Mobilizing Mobility in the War of Terror" with an extension of the battlefield proper to the homes and streets of Americans: "In the US?s new war of terror a specific formation of the war machine has been turned upon its own citizenry. Citizens and non-citizens alike are now treated as an always present threat. In this sense all are imagined as combatants and all-terrain the site of battle" (378). Post 9/11, many individuals have willingly accepted restrictions on certain freedoms in exchange for a sense of safety and security. Supporters of giving unrestricted power to Homeland Security must rationalize the presence of an "Empire 'based on a state of permanent exception and police action'" (380). Images of what might happen without such a symbolic entity of security ? film clips and audio from overseas, simulations both realistic and virtual, and media speculation ? all seem to be contributing factors to why one would make sacrifices for a sense of safety.

Despite such fears, there is certainly a fascination with the potentiality of war in the streets. Many video games, for example, provide the imagery of monuments and skyscrapers as the ultimate battleground. For example, a student of mine is writing a paper on an advertisement for a video game, "World in Conflict." The ad, a two page spread, features planes engaged in a hyper-real air battle. The planes are surrounded with explosions, some of which mirror the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb. The setting for the missile exchange is a national monument: the Statue of Liberty. At the top of the page are the words, "America the Battleground." Thus, it seems like many Americans fear a terror attack and look to Homeland Security for protection, but are, at the same time, strangely fascinated with the idea of war in our country. Of course, regardless of who is purchasing these games and simulating a virtual war in the streets, every citizen is seen as a threat: "Citizen?s become bombs, not simply by choice or through cell propaganda and training, but by Homeland Security itself" (381).  It seems the virtual allows our fears to become interactive fantasies. 

I was also interested in how, in a control society, mobility is limited through access to space. For one, obviously, I can only go where the road will take me (unless I'm off-roading in my Civic). So, I am protected from driving off of a cliff or into the ocean in Looney Tunes-esque fashion. However, mobility controls are beyond just the network of roads to which our cars seem to be affixed. Packer describes other restrictions on mobility: "the ability to be mobile, to move from one place to another, can be governed at the level of the individual" (383). These restrictions exist, but, even in the post 9/11 era of increased security, they seem to be lax, which, I assume, is a result of prioritization. There are speed limits posted everywhere, yet few people follow them. Drivers even have an assumed rule with police that 5ish mph over is not considered speeding. And, I am not going to lie, I drove my car with an expired inspection sticker for two months. So, we are constantly trouncing upon mobility restrictions and experiencing no consequences. As technology and its use for control continues to evolve, it seems we will have less and less control over mobility and will move toward what Packer terms "the dystopic vision of a control society future; all individuals fully remotely controllable" (384). The idea of remotely controlled mobility reminds me of a toy I had as a child that was a "remote control" car attached to a wire. So, the car was always grounded to a central authority, never truly mobile beyond an arm's reach. What was termed ?remote? wasn't really remote at all. Moreso in the post 9/11 era, the wire between our means of mobility and bodies of control seems to be tightening.

In "Space, Time, and Communications," James Carey provides an interesting discussion of Innis's groundbreaking interdisciplinary research. The following quote seemed particularly useful in the context of the Packer article discussed above: "Even if society were like an organism, there would be some controlling element, some centralized brain in the body, some region and group that would collect the power necessary to direct the nerves of communication and the arteries of transportation" (152). Thus, the organism, our means of mobility, the remote control car, are always being controlled and manipulated by an outside force. The means of this direction and its purpose are determined by historical and theoretical contexts. Packer and Robertson's introduction to Thinking with James Carey: Essays on Communications, Transportation, History puts the inseparable bond between history, communications, and theory nicely: "Communications theory is never to be ahistorical and communications history is never to be atheoretical" (3). Given the difficult situation surrounding resistance outlined in the conclusion to Packer's essay, how do we resist control society? Do individuals and groups of resistance run the risk of being labeled as terrorists?

Posted at 02:23PM Nov 07, 2007 by jtburr in Week 11  |  Comments[0]