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Publication Announcements

• UnderCurrent #6

Please note that UnderCurrent has moved to a new website at: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~ucurrent/home.html

The full text of this issue and the following introductory abstract of UNDERCURRENT #6 is also available in hypertext on the web at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~ucurrent/uc6/6-content.html

Introduction and Overview

The notorious Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas shows us the lamentable consequences of neoliberalism in Mexico. Writing with his characteristic verve, sovereign humor, and engaged concern, the author surveys the contemporary Mexican political economy. In “Seven Questions to Whom It May Concern” we are treated to what is beyond doubt the most intriguing voice of resistance to neoliberal charades.

As a short companion piece, Professor Davila-Villers outlines a move “From Two Mexicos to Three Mexicos.” The author very quickly introduces the social layers of these three Mexicos—where daily life is lived at three separate and unequal paces: these classes of the International, the National, and the Communitarian. Davila-Villers argues that as the nation integrates to globalism, it simultaneously disintegrates internally.

In “Recent Riots in Indonesia Born of Longstanding Resistance,” Alison Thorne reminds us that the deposed Suharto regime had faced fierce rebellion for years, and that the latest riots resembled those of two years ago in the “Jakarta Spring” of ‘96. While the mainstream media has told us a fairytale explanation about the devaluation of Indonesian currency, the crisis of high finance, and the IMF’s generous rescue, they have neglected to report the more salient force of the people’s revolt over the past few years. Thorne shows that the shocking oppression of workers led to their increasingly potent resistance, which ultimately rejected Suharto’s CIA-installed family empire. Feminists, unions, peasants, gay and lesbian organizations, and East Timorese freedom fighters have formed broad coalitions to oppose the corrupt regime. The author suggests that Indonesia’s new President Habibie will face continued rebellion.

In a dialectical look at the obscure facets of conspiracy theories, Professor Judith Grant argues that people are learning to “Trust No One” for reasons that are both bizarre and valid. Grant situates the rise of conspiracy theory within the climate of Cold War paranoia—and with the increasing revelations of real political conspiracies. As belief in one conspiracy opens one up to belief in other conspiracies, however, we are fast becoming a populace that is hampered by vast dark webs of our own imaginings. The popularity of shows such as The X-Files is very revealing in this connection. Real power is displaced by our paranoid paralysis; a crisis of confidence and of legitimacy ensues. This is made clearer in the author’s detailed survey of a UFO conspiracy theory. The author also treats this material with a psychoanalysis of paranoia, drawing on Freud’s work with the paranoid Judge Schreber. Striking parallels show up here. Nevertheless, the dialectical twist is that we now know that some very real conspiracies have succeeded; meanwhile the proliferation of theories and beliefs continues to extend into realms that are increasingly “out there.” Like the disastrous conspiracy theories of an earlier era (the Jews, etc.) and the tragically real conspiracies of totalitarian regimes, today we continue to play out the consequences of a systematic inability to separate the real from the unreal. And like those earlier tragedies, “the link between technology, capitalism and state power wreaked havoc on the truth in ways that fed into the propensity for the spread of conspiracy theory.”

Tim Jackson thinks through “Towards A New Media Aesthetic.” He argues that “the time to construct such an aesthetics and poetics for new media is now since the ontological shifts of new media are still in progress and no dominant aesthetic model has emerged as of yet.... Indeed, this is a critical moment in the technological paradigm shift as we move from analog to digital, from our...