I want to start this one off with a fairly lengthy from Dirk Baecker's article, "The Meaning of Culture (published in Thesis Eleven, 1997 51:37). Baecker writes, "[c]ulture is perhaps at its best with respect to the social dimension of meaning. Memory and control provide social situations with solutions of their double contingency. Almost automatically and without even noticing one enters a situation, remembers comparable situations, realized possible means of control, and complies. [...[. Add to this the extent to which culture is able to regulate the chances to dissent and consent, and you start to realize the extent to which it indeed controls by memory (both remembering and forgetting). Even the distinction between ego and alter fades into the characteristics of persons known to be know, thereby losing the knowledge of how we all maintain the construction of our selves which consist of both ego and alter."
K. So. Writing that sucker out made me realize how much it relies on preliminary knowledge. Sorry, but, ya know, I'm not gonna take the responsibility for that.
I'm coming to realize that the way that I think of culture is in how it functions in what Parsonian system's theory calls, 'double contingency'. Basically, 'double contingency' is the idea that when one (ego) announces, proposes, what have you, a situation to another (alter) wherein alter is expected to respond, the response continues the relationship, the roles of ego alter, from an outsider perspective, being in continual rotation between the two parties. However, with that being said, the idea of 'double contingency' is also marked by an important rule; there essentially are none. An act, or a situation, are not going to be reacted to similarly in any given situation. The problem posed will always have an alternative to be considered, and this alternative, if not chosen, is at the very least made aware of because it was not chosen. I ask you to do something for me. You do it. I begin to trust you because you did something for me that you very well might have not done. Trust is the relationship established between people who do things for one another that they very well could not have done. This is one of the basic ideas Luhmann presented in Trust and Power. Aaand I'm getting bogged down in things I didn't want to get bogged down in.
Baecker has convinced me that it's in this alternating between alter and ego that we can begin to see where it is that culture resides when undertaking a social systems approach. So, what is the data? Where is it that we can see this happening that maintains a strictly sociological standing? Stories.
After reading Baecker, I watched a documentary called Manhunt, directed by Greg Barker and based on the writing of Peter Bergen. The documentary is concerned with the "hunt" for Osama bin Laden, the then most wanted man in the world for his involvement in 9/11 and his leading of al-Qaeda. Why did I put "hunt" in quotations marks? Well, it's the idea of the "hunt" that begins this moment in time to become a narrative. Which brings me to another thing: any attempt to understand this is going to be morally charged. This organization has had a hand, be it either through inspiration, piggy-backing (ie, taking credit for), or funding and training, in the deaths of 10,000s, if not 100,000s of people. There's no escaping the moral when we talk about terrorism. But we must. If we want to understand what terrorism does, for whatever reason, we have to take all the precautionary steps necessary to assure that morals be removed from how we understand.
In Manhunt, the event becomes a story and in this story, there are many things happening around the "hunt". The idea of a "hunt" is incredibly powerful. It has a set narrative. There's the targeting, the pursuit and the capture. Using this narrative backbone, Manhunt has already achieved something procedural. Every point in time is already in play through the idea of the "hunt" being evoked. Another important factor is that the film clearly assumes that we all know how this ends (the film begins with Obama announcing the successful operation leading to bin Laden's death). This also important because it allows the film to go into areas surrounding the "hunt" without having to necessarily build up this narrative. We know there's a hunt, and we know that the hunt results in a successful ending.
With all of this out of the way (we effectively know the ending of this film as well as the general way in which it gets there), the film is able to delve into other aspects surrounding the hunt. The narrative becomes the backdrop for a nation trying to figure itself out when it comes to the moral it takes for granted. The film poses questions, the form of these questions all being coded. The coding (right/wrong, good/evil, sanctity of life/martyrdom) are all clear in the film, but the right answer isn't. The paradox isn't lost on these people when it comes killing someone in order to save an other. Ethical gymnastics come into play to reason, live better with their actions. But the answer isn't necessarily important. It's how the question is formed. This is best seen in the film's lengthy discussion regarding torture.
Torture is presented as a question. To torture is to burst the bubble of naivety surrounding interrogations. The layman doesn't understand what it's like on the ground. It is also a space for justice, the torture being seen as far less than the pain inflicted due to al-Qaeda's operations. To not torture is to take a stance against the body becoming a site for persuasion and manipulation. To not torture is to be efficient and humane. But I'm not interested in these answers. The only thing I see being answered by the question of whether or not to torture is what allows the question to be posed in the first place: a nation.
Without a nation, neither answers regarding torture would have lost a lot of its persuasiveness. The reason why both answers are seen as valid (ie, there are many who agree with one side and many who agree with the other) is because they evoke the idea of the nation. Torture is a national duty because it can help save the lives of national citizens. To not torture is a national duty because it affirms the morals of a nation that upholds the individual as worthy of dignity. Whatever the answer, the nation becomes operational, closed, and ready for further questions. The debate surrounding torture allows for the nation to persist because it is the nation that organizes such a question to be posed and continually posed.
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