a

journal

d i

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socialist

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feminist

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philosophy
maRCh/aPRil 2011

h y

166
Editorial collective Claudia Aradau, Matthew Charles, David Cunningham, Howard Feather, Peter Hallward, Esther Leslie, Stewart Martin, Mark Neocleous, Peter Osborne, Stella Sandford, Chris Wilbert Contributors Nichols Mendoza teaches in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, and is founder of the KJF Initiative, www.keepjournalismfree.org. Finn Brunton (http://finnb.net) works on digital media adaptation, modification and misuse and issues of publicity, privacy and anonymity. He will take up a post in the School of Information at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the autumn. Antonia Birnbaum teaches in the Philosophy Detartment at the University of Paris 8, Saint-Denis. Her latest book is Bonjour Justice Walter Benjamin: Le dtour grec (Payot, 2009). Mathieu Potte-Bonneville is currently prsident de lAssemble collgiale at the Collge international de philosophie, Paris. His books include Daprs Foucault (with Philippe Artires, Les Prairies ordinaires, 2007) and Foucault (Ellipses, 2009).

CONTENTS
COmmENTaRy

A Tale of Two Worlds: Apocalypse, 4Chan, WikiLeaks and the Silent Protocol Wars
Nicols mendoza ............................................................................................ 2

Keyspace: WikiLeaks and the Assange Papers

Finn Brunton ................................................................................................... 8

aRTiClES
Between Sharing and Antagonism: The Invention of Communism in the Early Marx
antonia Birnbaum ........................................................................................ 21

Risked Democracy: Foucault, Castoriadis and the Greeks

mathieu Potte-Bonneville ............................................................................ 29

REviEwS
Hans Radder, ed., The Commodification of Academic Research: Science and the Modern University Eeva Berglund .............................................................................................. 39 Martha C. Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities matthew Charles .......................................................................................... 41 Susan Hekman, The Material of Knowledge: Feminist Disclosures alessandra Tanesini ...................................................................................... 44 Dawne McCance, Derrida on Religion: Thinker of Difference Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe Steven Shakespeare, Derrida and Theology Sas mays ....................................................................................................... 46 Nick Couldry, Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics after Neoliberalism mark Fisher ................................................................................................... 49 Randall Williams, The Divided World: Human Rights and Its Violence anne mcNevin .............................................................................................. 51

Copyedited and typeset by illuminati www.illuminatibooks.co.uk Layout by Peter Osborne Printed by Russell Press, Russell House, Bulwell Lane, Basford, Nottingham NG6 0BT Bookshop distribution UK: Central Books, 115 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN Tel: 020 8986 4854 USA: Ubiquity Distributors Inc., 607 Degraw Street, Brooklyn, New York 11217 Tel: 718 875 5491 Cover image: Marx Lounge, Liverpool, 2010

Andrew Hoskins and Ben OLoughlin, War and Media: The Emergence of Diffused War Joyce Goggin ................................................................................................ 53 Stanley Cavell, Little Did I Know: Excerpts from Memory ine Kelly ...................................................................................................... 54

CamPaiGNS: aGaiNST EdUCaTiON CUTS

Pow!
Nina Power.................................................................................................... 56

Occupations and Their Limits

Escalate ......................................................................................................... 58

Smells Like Teen Spirit

Published by Radical Philosophy Ltd. www.radicalphilosophy.com

Emily Clifton ................................................................................................ 60

OBiTUaRy
Captain Beefheart, Vorticist Artist (19412010)
Ben watson .................................................................................................. 62

Radical Philosophy Ltd

COmmENTaRy

A tale of two worlds

Apocalypse, 4Chan, WikiLeaks and the silent protocol wars
Nicols mendoza

here is something eerie about the WikiLeaks logo. It works as a sort of graphic manifesto, an image of dense political content stating a notion of ample consequences. A cosmic sandglass encloses a duplicated globe seen from an angle that puts Iraqi territory at the centre. Inside this device the upper and darker planet is exchanged, drip by drip, for a new one. The power of the image lies in the sense of inexorability it conveys, alluding to earthly absolutes like the flow of time and the force of gravity. The WikiLeaks symbol can be read as a bullish threat that grants the upper world no room for hope. The logo narrates a gradual apocalypse, and by articulating this process of transformation through the image of the leak, WikiLeaks defines itself as the critical agent in the becoming of a new world. What has become manifest since late November 2010, with the release of what is now known as The US Embassy Cables, is that the narrative implicit in the WikiLeaks logo, that of a world disjunct, not only fits the WikiLeaks saga but describes a greater struggle of global power, held diffusely by transnational corporations and enforced by governments around the world. This power is under attack by a relatively new actor that can be called, for now, the autonomous network. The conditions that allow the network to challenge the power of governments and corporations can be traced to the origin of the Internet and the Cold War zeitgeist that made the network we know possible. It was only because Cold War strategists had to narrate to themselves the unfolding of what was known as the worst-case scenario (the moment after a thermonuclear apocalypse was under way) that a computer network with the characteristics of the Internet was implemented. The idea of the apocalypse was so extraordinary that it allowed for the radical thinking that resulted in the TCP/IP computer protocol suite, a resilient network protocol that makes the end user of the network its primary agent. The design philosophy of the Internet protocols represents a clean break from the epistemes and continuums that had historically informed the evolution of Western power, as traced by Foucault and Deleuze from sovereign societies to disciplinary societies to societies of control. The main goal of the early Internet was to provide a survivor with a versatile tool that could make him an empowered agent in an utterly hostile post-apocalyptic world. The TCP/IP protocol suite structures the network around three exceptional characteristics: (1) it essentially bypasses the need for central structures, establishing a network based on the principle of end-to-end (or peer-to-peer) communication; (2) it provides maximum resilience of communication in a hostile environment through the model of distribution; and (3) it is neutral to the information being distributed. These characteristics at the protocol level defined the network as, literally, out of control.

R a d i c a l P h i l o s o p h y 1 6 6 ( M a r c h / A p r i l 2 011 )