the naked gaze 肉眼

The Inoperative Community

As the internet becomes an increasingly potent force in China, the government has responded both by restricting access to specific web-spaces, strong-arming internet sites such as Google and Yahoo to both censor themselves and also, allegedly, hand over to the government information on potential dissidents, as well as by imprisoning numerous prominent cyber-dissidents. Examples include Huang Qi (arrested in 2001 and sentenced to five years imprisonment for posting human rights material on his web-site), Luo Yongzhong and Huang Qunwei in 2003 (arrested in 2003 and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for posting “rumors” about SARS on the web); New York Times researchers Zhao Yan and Zhao Jing; and blogger and documentary filmmaker Hao Wu (who was released this past July 11, after spending 5 months in prison). Just last week, furthermore, reporter Li Yuanlong was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for disseminating controversial essays via e-mail.

This past July 4 (Independence Day in the US), meanwhile, another Chinese dissident was imprisoned on charges of inappropriate internet-related political expression and unlawful association. What makes this Independence Day prisoner somewhat unusual, however, is that not only was he imprisoned for instigating an on-line protest attended by more than 10,000, but furthermore his own identity is entirely an on-line creation. This is because the prisoner, is actually the on-line avatar of a long-time player on the Chinese massively-multiplayer on-line role-playing game (MMORPG), 梦幻西游 (The Fantasy of the Journey West) operated by Netease. The un-named player was being punished for refusing to change his alias, 干死4小日本 ["Kill the little Japs"], and also on account of the name, 抗日同盟会 [The Alliance to Resist Japan], of the 700 person guild he had formed (one of the game’s largest). As a result of these transgressions, he was locked in the game’s “Great Tang Permanent Incarceration Prison” (大唐永禁监 ) (see screen capture above). 

As Roland Soong reports in a widely-cited post from a couple of weeks ago, it turns out that around the same time that Mr. “Kill the little Japs” was imprisoned, “someone” noticed that a government office within the on-line game was decorated with a painting of a rising sun that resembled the Japanese Imperial Navy flag adopted in 1889. Word quickly spread, and within a day or two more than 10,000 avatars had allegedly gathered to protest the painting (see screen capture below).

Never Let Me Go (Clones)

(Many thanks to Matt for a very useful follow-up  to my earlier post on Gore and Heidegger, as well as to David at GreenCine and to Chris in recent carnival for referencing the same post. Thanks, also, to Helmut for an interesting discussion of my preceding post on masochistic performances. Building on these questions of the ethical status of worldly representations, together with the implications of bodily desecration, I now turn to Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel about cloning and organ harvesting, Never Let Me Go.)

In History in Three Keys, Paul Cohen discusses the curious fact that there were an abundance of terrifying rumors circulating in China during the spring and the summer of 1900, at the height of the Boxer Rebellion—rumors which were not only unsubstantiated, but furthermore were actually worse than the admittedly dire reality which inspired them. When faced with terrifying, chaotic circumstances, it would appear to make sense for people to create hopeful rumors as a means of reassuring themselves, but why create and circulate rumors which are even worse than the actual circumstances themselves?

Cohen suggests that the answer to this dilemma may lie in the terror of the unknown—the  possibility that, when faced with a lack of knowledge concerning what is going on, there is a natural impulse for people to fill that vacuum with something, anything, even if it be something of nightmarish dimensions. For instance, Cohen cites Paul Fussell’s observation (in Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War) that

It is easy to understand why soldiers require constant good news. It is harder to understand why they require false bad news as well. The answer is that even that is better than the absence of narrative. Even a pessimistic, terrifying story is preferable to unmediated actuality.

This role of rumor as filling in a perceived vacuum, an “absence of narrative,” meanwhile, has its precise inverse in the specific content of the actual rumors circulated among the Boxers at this fin-de-siècle moment, many of which contended that Westerners were trafficking in human organs, including human eyeballs (for photography), women’s nipples, little boys’ testicles, or taking Chinese orphans and “cutting out their vital organs and severing their limbs.” That is to say, inspired by a litera vacuum of understanding, these rumors revolve around a paranoid fantasy of the emptying out of the human body—yielding, in effect, a “body without organs” which, as Deleuze and Guattari would argue, can then be “peopled” and “populated” by new “intensities.”

Chinese rumors of organ trafficking are, of course, not new, and can be dated back at least to the Song dynasty (10th to 13th century). As recently as 2001, the US House of Representative held hearings on whether the Chinese government was harvesting the organs of executed criminals. These fantasies are else evident at the level of popular culture, as in the “Hell Money” episode of the X-Files (March 29th, 1996) featuring a group of Chinese immigrants to the US who had to pay off their snake-heads by entering a lottery—a lottery which was periodically held to determine which of them would have to donate one of their own organs to sell on the black market (curiously, this is one of the few episodes of the series which does not appeal at all to the supernatural—as thought the exoticism of the Chinatown was somehow already exotic enough).

This theme of organ donation is also at the heart of Never Let Me Go, the latest novel by Kazuo Ishiguro (author of Remains of the Day). Set in 1990s England, Never Let Me Go features a community of human clones who have been created, it is gradually revealed, for the purpose of ultimately donating their organs (as many as three or four, which they donate serially while being carefully kept alive).

Never Let Me Go (Twins)

(Many thanks to Said for an interesting follow-up to my  post on memes and Fallen, as well as to Janet for referencing the same post in a recent carnival. The underlying concern of that post--namely, the invisible bonds of virtual contagion which link us together--is developed further in the following discussion of three Chinese works (from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora in the US) which each revolve around two individuals who are quite literally bound to each other).

On July 4th 1983 (Independence Day), Hsieh Tehching and fellow performance artist Linda Montano tied themselves together with an eight foot long rope, and vowed to remain tethered together in this way, 24 hours a day, for the next 12 months. While they had previously been sexually involved (see 萧元’s 2002 book, 《做壹年》Steven Shaviro, in the introduction to the DVD Tehching Hsieh: One Year Performance Art Documents 1978: 1999 inaccurately claims that Montano and Hsieh had never met before they began the performance), they nevertheless vowed not to touch either sexually during the year of the performance.

This rather remarkable performance was one of several which the Taiwanese artist Hsieh performed in New York beginning in the late 1970s. In his first (begun in 1978), he locked himself in a room and vowed not to leave for a full year and, furthermore, not to speak to anyone, watch television, or even read during that time. In his next project (begun in 1980), he vowed to punch in on a time clock every hour, on the hour (24 hours a day), for a full year. Hsieh’s next performance (begun in 1981) consisted of remaining outside for a full year (including a New York winter), never once entering a structure with any sort of roof (this is the only one of his performances which he failed to complete, on account of being arrested near the end of the performance). Following his 1983 “Rope” performance, his final year-long performance was the paradoxical commitment not to “do art” (including talking about art, reading art, viewing art, etc.) for a full year. This was then followed by the multi-year (1986-1999) “performance” consisting of a commitment not to “make art” or to “show it publicly” until the end of the millennium.

As Time Goes By (1)

In “The House Next Door,” episode 46 of the 1990s BBC sitcom “As Time Goes By” (Sydney Lotterby, dir.), Lionel (Geoffrey Palmer) and Jean (Dame Judi Dench) are startled by noises coming from an empty house next door. While the noises turn out to be just those of the former owner returning to take away some boxes, this disturbance nevertheless sets in motion a chain of events which further strengthens the bonds of the unlikely family at the center of the series.

The premise of “As Time Goes By” is that Lionel and Jean dated briefly, were separated for 38 years when he is sent to fight in the Korean War, and then accidentally become reacquainted (and fall back in love) when Lionel attempts to date Jean’s adult daughter (whom he has recently hired to be his secretary). “The House Next Door” episode, therefore can be seen as a miniature allegory for the series as a whole—the unfamiliar (i.e., strange noises next door, the mother of one’s employee and date) turns out to be familiar; and a space of absence (i.e, the empty house, the 38 year interregnum) provides the opportunity for the strengthening of existing ties.

More generally, the themes of memory and remembrance within the series (Lionel’s and Jean’s preservation of their memories of their former love over nearly four decades of separation) are now doubled back onto the series itself, which concluded its run last year and has now been released in its entirety on DVD.