Review: Can Jokes Bring Down Governments? Memes, Design, Politics by Metahaven

Metahaven

Review: Metahaven, Can Jokes Bring Down Governments? Memes, Design, Politics, Strelka Press, Moscow 2013. Unpaginated. EPUB file[1].

In Monty Python’s 1969 comedy sketch, “The Funniest Joke in the World”, one Ernest Scribbler writes a joke so lethal that no one who reads it can survive the fit of laughter that ensues. The joke travels from Scribbler’s apartment to the battlefields of the Second World War where it is deployed against the Nazis and is the most effective allied weapon in the war. Although apparently nonsensical, Monty Python’s sketch stands as testimony to the power of humor as a political affect. In the sketch the joke is not merely a cultural artifact but, in its transmission across different populations, the joke becomes technological—as much as the guns and bombs which defined that war.

In the tradition of Monty Python (whom they cite), the Amsterdam–based design and research collective Metahaven recuperate the joke as political technology in their playful pamphlet Can Jokes Bring Down Governments? Memes, Design, Politics. Early on in the text Metahaven asks: ‘is it possible that jokes have an untapped political power, which was historically always present but never so useful and necessary as now?’ Framed in the context of the global financial crisis of 2008 and the policies of austerity adopted by many European governments, the political potential of the joke becomes important, Metahaven argues, precisely when people are advised that it is time to “get serious”.

Can Jokes Bring Down Governments? derives much of its inspiration from British cultural theorist Mark Fisher’s 2009 book Capitalist Realism (Zer0 Books). For Fisher “capitalist realism” designates a situation where the ideological justification for capitalism is so widespread that no alternative seems possible to imagine or enact. As a totalizing economic and political formation capitalism normalizes itself to such a degree that it successfully folds all resistance within its grid of intelligibility. Discourse, in this sense, Metahaven suggests, is part of the process of capitalist capture. The joke as identified by them is one of the only escape routes from the spell of capitalist realism since by its very nature the joke often passes for “nonsense”. As something which ‘removes itself from the political–discursive frame’ the joke breaks through the enigmatic hold of capitalist realism by introducing an unpredictable, playful and contingent factor to political life.

Among all the agents who can successfully deploy the joke as political technology the designer is one of the most important. Metahaven notes that designers occupy a strange space in the world today. On the one hand they are seen as agents of capital—handmaidens of gentrification projects and the ultimate symbols of a commoditized world. On the other hand in a post–financial crash world designers have increasingly lost their traditional place as technocratic ‘gatekeepers’ of social order. Reflexively theorizing their own tribe, Metahaven claim that in the epoch of European social democracy designers were like the postal system—they were the delivery men and women who processed information and passed it along. Designers ‘operated at the behest of an institution’ and they formed the infrastructural backbone of social order. However in the months and years following the economic crisis, designers were among the hardest hit—many of the programs they were part of were shut down and funding was cut from these supposedly frilly, unnecessary and excessive practices. Choosing to focus on design as a nodal point in the re–politicization of society Metahaven suggest, therefore, that by withdrawing support from designers in the name of austerity European governments revealed that they were unaware of their own infrastructural foundation.

After an introductory chapter where some of these issues are highlighted Metahaven moves on to analyze “Disruption”, “Memes”, “Jokes” and “Design”—thereby addressing each of the problems raised in the opening chapter in much greater detail. The first thing we notice about the book is its deep implication in information technology and network culture. By referring to memes as a form of subversive political humor Metahaven immediately democratize the notion of design and seem to suggest that designers are not simply those who are identified as designers. Although they do not cite him, Metahaven’s emphasis on design is reminiscent of German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk’s work. Sloterdijk has, in an interview, argued that in the modern world every person is a ‘curator’ who takes care of and arranges her environment (Sloterdijk 2005). If we take Metahaven’s suggestion of the internet as one of the primary grounds for contemporary political action seriously then we must append to it a Sloterdijk–inspired footnote where the act of subversive, humorous design is seen to be a capacity that potentially all users of the internet possess. Indeed, nothing in Can Jokes Bring Down Governments? seems to suggest that such an implication cannot be drawn from the book.

Having identified humorous design as a political technology Metahaven argues that such a technology works precisely because capitalist realism is a weaker formation than it appears to be. Like all systems which dream of efficiency, capitalism finds an enemy in ‘disruption’. Technocratic networks are sustained through constant maintenance and upkeep. Disruption, breakdown or the possibility of inefficiency more generally makes such systems nervous. The joke is the disruptive technology par excellence since, as they point out, ‘on the internet, jokes may “scale” quickly and reach hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people in the course of a few minutes, if they are contagious enough to catch on’. The question of scale is important because it reintroduces the centrality of infrastructure and technology to Metahaven’s thinking. Unlike many theorists of cyberspace Metahaven does not buy into the ideology of immateriality or the myth of liberation as ontologically tied to the digital form. Instead they continuously remind us of the technological basis of the joke—that it is language transposed on to image (in the case of memes), circulated through networks governed by protocols that dictate, control and monitor information. We see this clearly in their claim that one of the promising transformations in online communication is the erasure of the sender–receiver loop which dominated much of information theory and graphic design practice prior to online communication. In offline communication the sender and receiver are often transparent to each other, or can be rendered so quite easily. But in a context where senders and receivers multiply through viral circulation, the “originators” of messages become harder to track down. More importantly, tracking the original source has limited impact once the information in question has already been seen by millions.

In the chapter on memes Metahaven defines three characteristics of a successful meme: longevity (relating to how long a meme can survive online), fecundity (relating to whether a meme spreads successfully), and copying–fidelity (relating to whether a meme can withstand mutation as it circulates). These three characteristics are also crucial to jokes. Of the many elements of “memetic” culture that they describe, one of the most interesting has to do with language. A meme usually consists of an image component to which text is appended at the top and bottom. The image and one part of the text (usually the top) remain stable across different contexts while the bottom is transformed to generate new meanings. Drawing on theorists of language Metahaven argues that memes are simultaneously based on self–referentiality and internal knowledge communities. With reference to the latter point we can say that only those who know the particular image and text are “in” on the joke. The joke is self–referential because it references an “original” event (say, a film or a song or image) but at the same time parasitically betrays the meaning of the original text.

Metahaven cite Susan Stewart’s work to argue that memes (and jokes) are a form of “nonsense” that counters the drive to speak only in commonsensical terms. If policy and politics demands an internally consistent language that is rational and measured, memes introduce ‘an element of “play”’. According to Stewart, play manipulates the everyday coordinates of language, thereby introducing an element that is not apparent to those who are not “in” on the conversation or joke. The example cited in the text—playing at fighting is not fighting but it is “not fighting” at one remove from other kinds of “not fighting” (such as kissing or singing)—is reminiscent of anthropologist Gregory Bateson’s discussion of metacommunication, which in turn is based at least partly on the notion of play. In simple terms metacommunication designates a context where the same action or speech means multiple things: something that looks like a fight to an observer might connote something entirely different for those engaged in the activity. Though there is no space to elaborate on these issues at present, a consideration of Bateson is crucial because his broader interest in systems theory shows clearly how the communicative and linguistic element of jokes or memes are inherently “technological”. The Monty Python sketch cited at the beginning of this review is one example of how metacommunication that actively mediates interpersonal relations in the same way that any technological apparatus might. On the internet and in the context of viral mobility this linguistic mediation of communication becomes more heightened than ever before. The parasitic component of jokes and their reliance on internal knowledge communities is therefore critical to the cross–cultural translation of memes in networks.

The other sense in which jokes are technological is this: ‘The joke is an open–source weapon of the public’ Metahaven declare in the first paragraph of the chapter “Jokes”. The invocation of “open–source” dovetails nicely with their earlier discussion of coded nonsensical communication since, implicitly, Metahaven seem to be suggesting that the internet is ontologically “nonsense”. In other words, contrary to many theorists who bemoan the amateurism of online worlds or see it as a new, bolder incarnation of the culture industry, Metahaven’s nonsensical view of the internet shows that entertainment and politics are not always at odds. To make this point sharper they draw on Ethan Zuckerman, a professor in Harvard University, who proposed a “Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism”. By supporting and bolstering network infrastructure that allows the circulation of cute cat photographs, Zuckerman argues that we establish a ‘network standard’ that can also communicate messages of political dissent. Jokes and memes as codes or metacommunication utilize the ‘military–entertainment complex’ (Der Derian 2009) to subvert the strictures of capitalist realism.

In closing we might complicate Metahaven’s impressive text by raising two issues or questions that they do not consider in great depth. While the argument for jokes as political weapons is persuasive, one could argue that sometimes jokes do become part of the architecture they seek to disrupt. This is perhaps clearest in the case of a militant and anti–establishment philosopher like Slavoj Žižek. Žižek, whose philosophy often explicates capitalist ideology through jokes, has recently published a book that consists entirely of his “material” titled—appropriately—Žižek’s Jokes: (Did you Hear one about Hegel and Negation?) (2014). What does the “reduction” of Žižek’s philosophy to just the jokes indicate about his place vis-à-vis capitalism? One could argue, following Metahaven’s logic, that Žižek’s jokes (extremely popular with the right audiences) are so ‘open–source’ that they can be accommodated within capitalist realism even as their philosophical component is expunged. This means that: first, Žižek’s jokes are not outside the discursive sphere; and second, that the open–source is not something to be valorized without skepticism[2].

The other question to pose to Metahaven relates to their optimism about networked infrastructures. While it is refreshing to read a tract that focuses on the subversive potential of the popular and seeks avenues of democratic participation which rupture the political commonsense, the darker dimension of being legible online is unremarked upon in Can Jokes Bring Down Governments? This is all the more curious since Metahaven do have a lot to say on these matters in their three–part essay published in the online journal e–flux, titled “Captives of the Cloud”. Given that their own reliance on nonsense is premised on its unpredictable promise, readers might have benefited from a slightly more textured reading of how nonsense can, in certain circumstances, become an agent of (capitalist) capture, thereby reinforcing the very spell of realism it tries to destroy or escape.

References

Der Derian, James. Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network. New York: Routledge, 2009.

Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Winchester, UK; Washington [D.C.]: Zero Books, 2009.

Ippolita. The Dark Side of Google. Vol. 13. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2013. http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publication/no-13-the-dark-side-of-google-ippolita/.

Sloterdijk, Peter. “Foreword to the Theory of Spheres.” In Cosmograms, edited by Melik Ohanian and Jean-Christophe Royoux, 223–40. New York: Lukas & Sternberg, 2005.

Žižek, Slavoj, and Audun Mortensen. Žižek’s Jokes: (did You Hear the One about Hegel and Negation?). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2014.


[1] Since the work I am reviewing is an EPUB file and does not contain page numbers, all references within the text can be found by searching the file.

[2] On this point see Ippolita’s text The Dark Side of Google where the authors argue that open–source (as opposed to free software) was always a marketing gimmick, tailor for incorporation into regimes of capital—a fact made blatantly obvious by Google’s adoption of an open–source model (Ippolita 2013).

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