Agamben on Political Tattooing

For my Technoculture students, this is what we will be discussing on Monday: Look at the New York Times report from 2004 of Agamben’s cancellation of a US visit in protest at the policy of fingerprinting arriving visitors and employees from other countries. Malcolm Bull discussed this refusal in the context of his book State of Exception in a London Review of Books article, the text of which is available here. His open letter “No to Political Tattoing”, first published in Le Monde (11 Jan 2004), explains his reasons for refusing to travel to the USA.

Agamben’s faculty page at the European Graduate School lists some very good resources, including a bio, bibliography, some lectures, and videos.

Slavoj Zizek, “Knight of the Living Dead”, New York Times op-ed critiquing the normalization of torture in US politics (March 2007), referencing Agamben.

Filed under: Technoculture

Yes Men Links

The Yes Men have a website with videos and overviews of recent interventions. Take a look at their fake World Trade Organization website as well (the real WTO is at http://www.wto.org/).

They have a number of clips on YouTube – here they are representing Dow Chemicals on the BBC.

Hynes, Sharpe and Fagan. “Laughing with the Yes Men,” Continuum 21, no 1, March 2007 (Informaworld access to the article here – use SwetsWise for access via U. of Greenwich library service).

Filed under: Technoculture , Troublemaking