Introduction: Participation and Precarious Alliances, Now and Then

Don't Look Away

“…89 It is such psychically and materially based, messy attachments to larger social bodies-based on precarity and the risk of vio lence to such attachments-that "may ethically bind people through difference and a sense of interdependence." 90 In The Force of Nonviolence, however, Butler more explic itly underlines the prob lems with a discourse of "vulnerable groups" and a potentially uni-versalizing discourse of vulnerability. 91 Vulnerability cannot be isolated from other terms or serve as the sole foundation for a new politics: "In portraying people and communities who are subject to vio lence in systemic ways, do we do them justice, do we re spect the dignity of their strug gle, if we summarize them as 'the vulnerable'?"…”

“…The remaining winner would win a cash prize or possibly Austrian citizenship through marriage, depending on the availability of a volunteer. 90 Schlingensief critically mimicked and parodied the creation of what I term a securitarian public (in contrast to a preventive public): one generated on the basis of fears of security and alterity. This type of public purports to promote security in controlling the publicity and visibility of unwanted peoples through strategies such as surveillance, statistical imaging, and physical containment, but its tactics ultimately exacerbate rather than prevent vio lence by categorizing and classifying peoples into rigid social hierarchies.…”

“…To reiterate, by definition, publics are composed of strangers, similar to the national imagined community, but they do not presuppose kinship or any kind of territorial, linguistic, racial, or other positive identification. 90 A public is based on volition, yet it is not necessarily a voluntary association in the sense of civic society. According to Michael Warner, it is more fundamental: if the attention of the public no longer exists, neither does the public.…”

“…For her, mastery lies at the foundation of anticolonial writings and postcolonial studies, for instance, as figures such as Gandhi and Frantz Fanon had to assume "masterful" positions-linguistic, emotional, psychological, material-to credibly oppose and confront colonial vio lence in its diff er ent manifestations, rooted in the pernicious power of Eurocentrism (8)(9). 109 Singh,Unthinking Mastery,17,[90][91]139. 110 Like Freeman in Time Binds, I strive for the unfolding of "slowly, a small number of imaginative texts rather than amass a weighty archive of or around texts" (xvii) with the addendum that I wish to substitute or supplement visuals for or with textual documents as well.…”

“…42 Dezeuze,Thomas Hirschhorn,17,[33][34][35] Helleman and Wassenberg, "The Renewal of What Was," 5. 44 Giorgio,113,207n124 Akšamija,Azra,193n77 Alberro,Alex,11 Algeria,[85][86]178 alienation effect,[89][90]138,199n66 Alternative for Germany party (rightwing party), [47][48]52 Amsterdam,Netherlands,104,124. See also Bijlmermeer complex (Amsterdam, Netherlands) anachronisms, 137,146,Benedict,105,111,121 antagonism,[23][24][25][49][50]127,191n28;and Bataille Monument,96,122 "Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics" (Bishop), 96, 122 anticipatory art activism, [6][7][16][17][18]30,35,178;in Farocki's work,[68]…”