PEN-L message, [Pen-l] Giroux on Iran - Also Arrighi's Passing

As the uprisings in Iran illustrate, the new electronic technologies and social networks they have produced have transformed both the landscape of media production and reception, and the ability of state power to define the borders and boundaries of what constitutes the very nature of political engagement. Indeed, politics itself has been increasingly redefined by a screen cultur e and newly emergent public spaces of education and resistance embraced by students and other young people.1 For example, nearly 75 percent of Iranians now own cell phones and are quite savvy in utilizing them.2 Screen culture and its attendant electronic technologies have created a return to a politics in which many young people in Iran are not only forcefully asserting the power to act and express their criticisms and support of Mir Hussein Moussavi but also willing to risk their lives in the face of attacks by thugs and state sponsored vigilante groups. Texts and images calling for âDeath to the dictatorâ circulate in a wild zone of representation on the Internet, YouTube, and among Facebook and Twitter users, giving rise to a chorus of dissent and collective resistance that places many young people in danger and at the forefront of a massive political uprising. Increasingly reports are emerging in the press and other media outlets of a number of protesters being attacked or killed by government forces. In the face of massive arrests by the police=2 0and threats of execution from some government officials, public protest continues even, as Nazila Fathi reports in the New York Times, the government works âon many fronts to shield the outs ide worldâs view of the unrest, banning coverage of the demonstrations, arresting journalists, threatening bloggers and trying to block Web sites like Facebook and Twitter, which have become vital outlets for information about the rising confrontation here.â3

full: http://www.counterpunch.org/giroux06192009.html

Also, Giovanni Arrighi died yesterday. He was very much influenced by African anthropologists, especially during his stay in Dar es Salaam. See his March/April interview with David Harvey in New Left Review
http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2771