interesting. an ‘accurate’ diagnosis (i.e., one that is politically deliberative and contentious and consistent with our critical project) of the circulation of images in the disaster–by we decriers–may in fact be subject to a process where we require them to signify exactly what it is, in their supposed evidentiary transparency, they “show”…in this way, we need them to exactly demonstrate what it is they show, an inversion of most text-oroiented semiotic critiques of visuality, which usually posit a missing authenticity elided by the technical specificty of whatever apparatus of organ generating the image and its inherent discursive and ideological bents. yet, here, while we acknowledge the map preceding the territory, instead of the text acting parasitically on the image, illustrating *it, there’s some desire to allow these images to bulge and refuse closure by the captions affixed to them. we want them, despite our vehement critical bent, to say what they say; we want these images in all their visual and affective efficacy because the render visible the inequality and abjection inherent in this whole environmetally induced conflagration that is far from simply being naural. we want them to be pictures, to be real, because what we satifies what it is we see, what we think requires ‘seeing’. we’re inverted: we want these images to cease their infernal ideological machinations and become pure and evocative signs of suffering

so, it’s actually not so much precognitive and affective (though, in ways, it is, as the spectacle of the disaster in its sublime scale indeed is strange in how it rearticulates spaces, in its ability to “strip habits of thought”) but rather an invitation to consider and contemplate the implication of the who and how of suffering in exhibition in a moment of cognition, an ability to verify and say, “fuck. that’s really there.” we want consensus on this one

again, see steve shaviro’s september 4 entry. he’s succinct on this point:

http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/

“The point is not to slam President Bush. (Others, including the New York Times’ editorial page will devote years to lambasting his administration.)

Rather, it’s to recognize the inefficiency of top-down systems such as the federal government compared with the rapid, efficient and effective organizing that individuals can accomplish on their own.

This is what the late Austrian economist F.A. Hayek called “spontaneous order,” referring to the marvel that happens every day when people work together and agree on transactions, voluntarily, without a central authority dictating what happens.

If this mechanism were created intentionally by human design, it “would have been acclaimed as one of the greatest triumphs of the human mind,” Hayek wrote in a 1943 book called “The Use of Knowledge in Society.”

The Internet is a modern-day example of spontaneous order–not centrally planned but arising impulsively, effectively built site-by-site, protocol-by-protocol by its own users.

And it was the Internet, ham radio networks and other forums that let individuals spontaneously join together in the last week to help flood victims.

By Thursday evening, bloggers had compiled an exhaustive list of charitable organizations accepting donations, and members of the “interdictor” Internet Relay Chat channel were planning to help one Internet service provider that had been posting from a New Orleans office building and running low on generator fuel.”

http://news.com.com/Net+beats+Feds+in+hurricane+response/2010-1071_3-5847405.html?part=rss&tag=5847405&subj=news

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4211404.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4214232.stm