Monday lecture

The Authorship of Revolution & Mass Communications.

Paris, 1968 by Victoria H.F. Scott

October 31^st, 2011. 6pm.

The lecture on Monday was “The Authorship of Revolution & Mass Communications” by Emory University professor Victoria H.F. Scott. One of the main topics was Cultural Revolution, political revolution, and the difference between the two. “The confusion between culture and politics are what culture revolutions are all about”. She stated that before it became associated with China, Cultural Revolution was mostly in Russia. She mentioned many names of people that contributed to the events of 1968 in Paris, like Alexander Bogdanov, who opposed the government from a Marxist point of view. Even though the protest of 1968 was a political failure, it had an enormous social effect that gave way to anarchy and liberal thoughts. “Revolution is the highest form of creation, the re-creation of the animate matter of the social organism” was a quote she stated. She also talked about the manipulative way of the media and the popular belief that there is such thing as “unmanipulated truth” because there is no unmanipulated writing, filming or broadcasting. However, the important thing is not what is manipulated but who manipulates it, which brings forth the issue of authorship and how all of us as authors are actually manipulators. “The author has now become the producer”, something that was impossible in 1968 mainly because of the technology we now have, and now we face the political effect that this will have in art.

She also talked about how in 1967 the government still controlled what was played on TV and the radio with messages such as “sorry the revolution will not be televised” because “to let people imagine the idea of revolution is to let revolution happen”, and a battle to control what TV played began in 1968.

However, as Jean Baudrillard said, the media was the message because “Not only is their destiny far from revolutionary; the media are not even, somewhere else or potentially, neutral or non-ideological”, therefore, the media does not work as a revolutionary protest.

She also showed a lot of graffiti and posters (“the most revolutionary form of communication during May” because they were unmediated) that were a way for students and protesters to express their opinions about the government. Overall, the lecture was very confusing because she gave unnecessary complicated explanations, used complex words and French names every 5 seconds, and I don’t think anyone understood a lot of the things she said.