{"id":7976,"date":"2015-01-15T09:10:32","date_gmt":"2015-01-15T14:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=7976"},"modified":"2021-06-14T07:41:43","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T12:41:43","slug":"cultural-policy-in-the-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/01\/15\/cultural-policy-in-the-21st-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural policy in the 21st century"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Charlie<\/a><\/p>\n

A few quick reflections on the\u00a0<\/em>Charlie Hebdo affair…<\/em><\/p>\n

1. In the age of social media, we are all producers of images and meanings. The difference is only a matter of degree.<\/p>\n

2. \u00a0In a globalized world, those who\u00a0traffic in media ought to have some knowledge of the cultural and ethical implications of their trafficking.<\/p>\n

3. This means we are all called to develop\u00a0our own standards for engagement in global media — our own “cultural policies.” So, for instance, when a faith group of 1.6 billion, or at least a significant\u00a0proportion of them, believes that their prophet should not be depicted in images, and particularly not\u00a0irreverently —<\/em> that’s their<\/em> cultural policy — each of us who traffics in media production needs to decide whether and how\u00a0we will abide by that.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0blog, with its two to three hundred subscribers and score of other visitors, hardly qualifies in the ranks of\u00a0Charlie Hebdo,<\/em> which traffics at a far higher scale and knows\u00a0full well the kind of effects it wants to trigger. Hebdo<\/em> is in the business of iconoclasm, perhaps even iconoclash<\/a> — that’s its cultural policy and its raison\u00a0d’\u00eatre<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But we all traffic in a world of iconoclashes, where the standards of modernism — free right to full visual and narrative expression, and so on — are not accepted by all, nor maybe even by\u00a0a\u00a0majority.<\/p>\n

Last night at my university, Salman Rushdie defended the rights of satirists everywhere<\/a>. I agree with him, at least when the satire is aimed at powerful interests. And I agree even more with the case he made for stories — a case for the multiplication and pluralization<\/em> of stories, as part of\u00a0an\u00a0“opening up” of the universe, as opposed to its closing down. Surely an open universe is an idea I can get fully behind. (As did William James and A. N. Whitehead, for instance.)<\/p>\n

Even so, it’s not so clear who the powerful are in today’s world, and any trafficking in\u00a0images necessarily has to take sides and commit itself to engagement with those we might not agree with. In particular, it ought — this, at least, is my own chosen cultural policy — to respectfully engage with those who are less<\/em>\u00a0powerful than the ones whose cultural power I, knowingly or unknowingly, benefit from. (By the latter I mean the white, western, liberal-modernist establishment.)<\/p>\n

That’s hard work. But it’s what being a media producer calls for in the twenty-first century.<\/p>\n

(Okay, you say, so why did I choose not to include Mohammed’s face in the image above? For one thing, because it isn’t necessary to make the point.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few quick reflections on the\u00a0Charlie Hebdo affair… 1. In the age of social media, we are all producers of images and meanings. The difference is only a matter of degree. 2. \u00a0In a globalized world, those who\u00a0traffic in media ought to have some knowledge of the cultural and ethical implications of their trafficking. 3. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[690660,689701],"tags":[123566,4480,123564,123563,2899,16825,8,417],"class_list":["post-7976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural_politics","category-media_ecology","tag-charlie-hebdo","tag-cultural-policy","tag-icococlasm","tag-iconoclash","tag-images","tag-islam","tag-media","tag-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-24E","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1097,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/06\/30\/earth-songs-michael-jacksons-cultural-ecologies\/","url_meta":{"origin":7976,"position":0},"title":"earth songs: Michael Jackson’s cultural ecologies","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 30, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=f8muMo0fw_M&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1 The death of Michael Jackson has prompted eco-bloggers to take another look at Jackson's 1995 \"Earth Song\", which some consider the most popular environmentally themed song ever produced. The song remains Jackson's biggest seller in the U.K, having sold over a million copies there -- more than either \"Thriller\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/f8muMo0fw_M\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11484,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2021\/01\/12\/civil-crisis-media-the-future-of-hegemony\/","url_meta":{"origin":7976,"position":1},"title":"Civil crisis, media, & the future of hegemony","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 12, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"There's a fairly straightforward narrative about media and cultural hegemony in the United States that most scholarly observers have come to largely agree on (with the usual spectrum of variations in emphasis), but that more of the public ought to be aware of. It accounts for how we got here,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cultural politics"","block_context":{"text":"Cultural politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cultural_politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/01\/120605023718-cronkite-emotion-jfk-live-video.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/01\/120605023718-cronkite-emotion-jfk-live-video.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/01\/120605023718-cronkite-emotion-jfk-live-video.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1060,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/16\/lessig-on-the-ecology-of-culture\/","url_meta":{"origin":7976,"position":2},"title":"Lessig on the ecology of culture","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 16, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Thanks to Mediacology for sharing this presentation on \"Green Culture\" by Lawrence Lessig from the recent Green Festival in Seattle. Lessig is the guru of the creative commons movement, and his talk, on what he calls \"cultural environmentalism,\" is really on media ecology, i.e. the \"ecology\" of cultural production and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14049,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2025\/04\/17\/forthcoming-books\/","url_meta":{"origin":7976,"position":3},"title":"Forthcoming books","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 17, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm happy to share the news that both The New Lives of Images and Terra Invicta are now available for pre-order. The New Lives of Images: Digital Ecologies and Anthropocene Imaginaries in More-than-Human Worlds is a theoretically and empirically rich study of images, imagination, and the digital. It's the fourth\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6485,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/02\/04\/thinking-through-media-ecologies\/","url_meta":{"origin":7976,"position":4},"title":"Thinking through media ecologies","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"On e\u00b2mc we're thinking through the various meanings of \"media ecology.\" The first, chronologically, is the medium theory of Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, and others -- sometimes called the Toronto School of communication theory. Neil Postman's \"New York school\" can be considered a more critical and pessimistic adjunct\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cultural politics"","block_context":{"text":"Cultural politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cultural_politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14080,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2025\/04\/17\/cfp-the-life-cycle-of-moving-images\/","url_meta":{"origin":7976,"position":5},"title":"CFP: The Life-Cycle of Moving Images","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 17, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"The deadline is coming soon; please write to me if you need more time. Call for Chapter Proposals: The Life-Cycle of Moving Images: Ecological Entanglements from Conception to Consumption and Beyond We invite contributions for a forthcoming edited volume entitled The Life-Cycle of Moving Images: Ecological Entanglements from Conception to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7976"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8014,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7976\/revisions\/8014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}