(Just another) September house mix

That´s it. Enjoy…

Tracklist:

01 Aziz · Yo body
02 Tiger Stripes · Me & I
03 Jake Childs · The underground (Inland Knights mix)
04 Anton Pietee & Paul Ritch · The opera
05 Halo & Jay-J · Like jazz
06 Leo Cuenca & Rachel Claudio · If it´s right (DJ Meme club mix)

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[33:49, 46,5 Mb]

Photo: Heat, 2009 © Loudsoul

Taboo, dignity and purpose

A judge from Augsburg, in Germany, has forbidden Gunther von Hagens from showing a couple of corpses having sex in the exhibition opening this month in the city. Von Hagens, medical doctor and Professor, invented the plastination technique, which allows to preserve corpses and display them in different postures, something he has been doing for pedagogic purposes in a number of exhibitions around the world, which bear the title of Koerperwelten. The judge claims the composition with the bodies shows contempt for human dignity.

As it happens, the exhibition has been open during the whole Summer in Berlin, where it raised no controversy, and one has to wonder why this part “shows contempt for human dignity” and other bodies displayed in the same exhibition playing the saxophone or catching a rugby ball do not. Perhaps the judge was influenced by two widespread taboos which play a role here, those of sex and death. However, in this region of the world freedom of expression is a paramount social value, and prohibiting an exhibition is a serious legal decision, which here would only be justified if it actually showed “contempt for human dignity”. It seems this is not the case.

The judge appears not to have taken into account the pedagogical purpose of the Koerperwelten exhibitions, which apparently has not offended the thousands of visitors that attend them each year in different countries and continents, which surely will have different perspectives regarding the representation of death. I attended one of these exhibitions years ago in Berlin and found it fascinating and very interesting. To judge by their attitude, the hundreds of other visitors that day had similar feelings.

In matters of freedom of expression, the rule should be “everything is allowed except…”, and the list of exceptions should be a minimum one, aimed at preserving human dignity, yes, but considering the matter on a case by case basis, and always assessing from an ethical point of view the purposes of the author and the coherence of means and ends. For instance, should we allow the display of explicit images of forced sex betwen adults and children, or of a human execution, devoid of any context? I would say we should not. Should one be free to show those images in, say, a movie, a book, an exhibition, etc., maybe not explicitly, in a meaningful context and with a purpose most would deem ethically acceptable? I would say one should.

I am well aware of the many caveats raised my choice of terms -”ethically acceptable”, “assesing purposes”, “coherence”-, and that this clearly is a moral minefield. However, a liberal system of values -the one we should cherish in our liberal societies- should hold freedom as its highest moral tenet, devising criteria -as morally sound as possible- aimed at making the list of exceptions to this rule a minimum one. Otherwise, it is all paternalism and censorship.

On a final note, I must admit that even the extreme examples I gave a couple of paragraphs before are not very useful to establish the moral boundaries of what we can legitimately display in the public realm. A few years ago, I attended an art exhibition in the P.S.1 museum in New York, which showed an excerpt of an old black and white movie in one of the rooms. In the film we could see a group of white hunters aboard an helicopter, flying above a tropical forest and shooting people with their rifles - apparently, members of an indigenous tribe, who run scared in all directions. Each time they hit one of them, the hunters would celebrate it blatantly. Brutal fictional images, I thought. However, these images became breathtakingly disgusting when minutes after I read the movie was not fictional: it was part of a recovered footage of real human hunting in the Amazon forest in the 70s, hunting for pleasure, as in a normal sport. Perhaps the judge of Augsburg would have censored this exhibition if it had taken place in his city, and for the very same reasons that lead him to censor part of von Hagens´ exhibition, but in doing so, he would have served very poorly the cause of human dignity, for the message the artist wanted to convey when showing this real movie -the radical, unthinkable and utmost inhumanity we could express towards our fellow individuals- reached this visitor deeply, and more so when this message was devoid of any obvious context (just the screen and some brief lines stating it was a real movie). The film itself rendered any description redundant from a moral point of view. Was this bare displaying obscene? Yes, it was. But it made us reflect on something -respect for human life- we carelessly take for granted, and this reflection started in our guts. Nothing short of sheer revulsion could have had such a moral effect.

Photo: Two corpses at the Koerperwelten exhibit in Berlin, 2009 © Koerperwelten.de

Biased prestige

Venezuela´s President, Hugo Chavez, received last week the American scholar and linguist Noam Chomsky, who declared upon arrival that “Chavez is building a different and viable world in Venezuela”. Hours before, Chomsky criticised Washington´s “imperial mentality” and accused his country of “aggravating tensions in Latin America”. According to the Spanish newspaper El País, “the prestigious intellectual has allowed himself to be seduced by the Venezuelan President”. The paper goes on to stress that Chomsky is “among the best known and respected American intellectuals abroad”.

So, according to this newspaper, our man is undoubtedly prestigious. What is this claim based on? Which is the source of his prestige?

Noam Chomsky is an emeritus professor of linguistics at the MIT in Massachusetts, well known for his contributions to the philosophy of language and mind with concepts and theories such as the generative grammar. He is also known to be a leading critic of US foreign policy.

Whereas the scientific community values his work in the field of linguistics as a paramount contribution to the advance of the discipline, his political views are often controversial. Hence, we must conclude that, for the Spanish newspaper -in fact, for everyone regarding him as an acclaimed thinker-, Chomsky is prestigious and, therefore, his political views are to be taken as authoritative ones, either because he is a renowned linguist, or because he is a foremost leftist critic of American foreign policy. Though there is no logical causality in the former claim -being an expert on language does not imply the same expertise in the field of international affairs-, a combination of the former and the latter seems to be a plausible source of prestige in this case. Many people, and a vast sector of the serious media -employing the usual term, prestigious media, would produce an unnecessary circularity- deem someone prestigious if that particular individual is (a) critical with the US domestic or foreign policies, and (b) possesses a certain stature as an academic or theorist, but not necessarily in the mentioned fields. That is, being extremely but scholarly critical of the US is a good way to attain professional and intellectual prestige.

Given the fact that Chomsky´s assertions about the new world being built in Venezuela may be contradicted by the grim reality most Venezuelans and Latin Americans have to face in their daily lives -a direct consecuence of Chavez decisions or other colectivist policies-, in which way might we claim those views are prestigious at all?

And, worse still, would the public, and these media, see him as equally prestigious if he was a fierce supporter of US interventions abroad to restore democracy or to achieve any other declared goals of liberal foreign policy?

Photo: Noam Chomsky, 2006 © Randombassist