are you an extremist?

THE SCHOOL
OF POTENTIAL ENGAGEMENT
POTENTIAL
The School of Potential Engagement Potential
(SPEP) is a transient space for collaborative
learning. It is and always will be unaccredited.
Its walls are temporary, its curriculum is ad hoc,
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It was founded upon a firm belief that higher Filipek & Johnny Ray Alt.)
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SPEP4
The Branding of Extremity

Aubrey Bauer
Carmen Denison
André Filipek
Madelyn Freeman
Kebrina Lott
Daniel Mackin
Travis Nikolai
Anastasia Tuazon

July 20th - September 19th, 2014

@ HQHQ Project Space
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CONTENTS
Preface 1
Post-Syllabus 3
The Dyspeptics 5
A Preposterous Meditation on a Preposterous Question 10
Quiz: Are you an extremist? 13
A seeing (obscene) 15
R U X-TREME Or Nah?
or Emotionz Takin’ Me Over: A Marginally Critical
Analysis of Things That Are Passably Extreme. 17
The Citation 23
Creating the Counter-Hegemonic Image 25

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 PREFACE
Over the past six weeks, The Naught Collective has inquired into the aestheticization
(or branding) of extremism. A chaotic process guided our curricular inquiry as
the content of this course was selected intuitively, and in a manner responsive
to the immediacy of our conversations. We began with RETORT’s essay “The
State, The Spectacle, and September 11,” which interprets contemporary media
representations of terror through a revived Situationist lens. Our attention then
turned to an investigation into perceived boundaries between actions which
constitute radicalism, extremism, and terrorism - as well as the ways these actions
are aestheticized. Throughout our time together we have delved into texts and other
media that address directly, or served as a departure point into, an investigation of
complexities of political ideology in a post 9/11 America.

As we considered how everyday American media representations of terrorism

necessitate and are necessitated by a culture of fear, we began to look at the ways
in which fear functions as a necessary mechanism in the branding of extremity.
Throughout this process, we have questioned who or what decides when counter-
hegemonic actions are aestheticized as political radicalism and/or extremism.

positioned actions within limited terms. How do we write towards political action
or consume and respond to polemics in a way which enacts change?

individually, how we see it taking place in other contexts, and how these experiences
motivate action. In many ways, our inquiry ended where it began. Our collective
understanding of the branding of extremity is quite possibly less clear than it was
when we formed this question because of our inclination to, upon consideration,
locate more of the center as being extreme. Although our consideration of this topic
has been expanded, this expansion has pointed us towards the problematics and
utter frivolous nature of such a generalized inquiry, causing us to be wary of the
potential Leftist cynacism has to enact nothing but political remissness.

Are you an extremist?

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POST-SYLLABUS
Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War (Intro and Chapter I)
RETORT

The Spectacle Today: A Response to RETORT

W. J. T. Mitchell

The Architect of 9/11

Daniel Brook

#ACCELERATE MANIFESTO for an Accelerationist Politics

Alex Williams & Nick Srnicek

Passions of the Real, Passions of Semblance from Welcome to the Desert of the Real!
Slavoj Žižek

What Do You Believe In? Film Scholarship and the Cultural Politics of the Dark
Knight Franchise
Martin Fradely

The Politics of Batman

Slavoj Žižek

The Politics of “The Dark Knight Rises”

Ross Douthat

The Dark Knight Rises

Cristopher Nolan

Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably
Think This Essay is about You
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Here We Accrete Durations: Toward a Practice of Intervals in the

Perceptual Mode of Power
Amit S. Rai

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A PREPOSTEROUS
MEDITATION ON A
PREPOSTEROUS
QUESTION
Are you an extremist?

Immediately I am defensive. What a pointed and seemingly narrow question. The

contemporarily pejorative identifier “extremist,” paired with the directedness of
“are you” causes an especially politicized accuser/accusee relationship. Unlike
other less politicized accusatory statements—“are you a swimmer?” “Are you a
wearer of shoes?”—“are you an extremist?” implicates at the same time a history of
horrific acts of violence, and indoctrinated mass-paranoia. Within this colloquial
read, the accuser has been predetermined. If I am however to attempt to assume
that the accuser is not a personification of the current state of Western moderni-
ty—or more specifically, spectacular neoliberal hegemony—the question becomes
much more complex. The question is evasive in nature. It accuses whoever reads
the question, in this moment myself, and later you. And the accuser simultaneously
jumps around in my imagination, from individual, to organization, to regime,
ad nauseam. It is directed towards—and delivered by—moving targets, ghosts. I
am imagining other mysterious “yous” toiling over the question, while faceless
entities wring their hands diabolically as they ask it. As the question is sourced/
perceived from/by various subjectivities its contents change dramatically. This
is not, however, just because the pronoun shifts in meaning as it is perceived by
others. The term “extremist” also shares this evasive quality.

What then is extremism?

This would be similar to defining a vessel. A most superficial reading defines the
vessel as a simple grouping of material that together have the ability to surround
objects of an applicable size. Central to its definition is not just what it is but also
what it surrounds. It has a shadow. Only in the context of another implied material
can the vessel find any utilitarian meaning. The vessel contains; it is a container.
“Extremism” is a similar container. A Saussurean analysis of this sign is useful
here. However, the word e-x-t-r-e-m-i-s-m does not point to, or contain, any
specific referent. The referent(s) in this case are composed of other undetermined
signs, and the word’s only socio-linguistic utility is to contain them in reference
to a specific context of use. The meaning of extremism requires activity, a filling
with other signs by the user, or utterer. I can identify someone as an extremist, but
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 what really am I referring to without adding a never-ending string of adjectives
that will eventually provide some trace of specificity? Extremism is an ideological
vessel. Upon its utterance ideologies compete for its content.

When I consider what extremism is, I must consider positionality. What vantage
point, or prevailing ideology, is the word directed from? I see my extremities
from the center of my body—or rather the eyes positioned in the center of the
head. When I look at my arm or leg I can thoroughly examine its form. I can
consider them in their independent objectness. In a way they are apart from my
body. My position, the vantage point of my head, gives me the ability to consider
my extremities in this way. In many ways, I am blind to my own vantage point
because I cannot look directly at it, or isolate it, without my theoretical death.
Without the aid of some technology that would allow my vantage point to be
altered, I cannot stare into my own eye or see the back of my head. Only from a
given vantage point can I locate extremisms. I locate them to the left and to the
right of a given ideological head; from the American ideological state apparatus
I can see black bloc, and I can also see the Islamic State.

The value here is the critical function of the question. A theoretical occupation of
extremity, or imaginative identification with it, can be utilized to closely exam-
ine the ideological head, so to speak; I can imagine myself within extremity and
through this vantage point I can analyze the ideological apparatus that actively
fills it with meaning. This however requires a paradoxical shift in perspective. As
if I were to hold a mirror in my hand and stare into my eyes. My vantage point
stays the same, but at the same time I am able to see from a drastically different

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perspective. What once was the head is now the hand; what once was the central
ideology, is now extreme. Here lies the evasive nature of extremism. It is identified
only by a commanding ideology, and would be nullified without it. Extremism is
contextualized, aestheticized, and mediated through a specific ideological vantage
point and can never be perceived independent from it. Through this mirror I can
examine “Islamic extremism”, and can source much of its image power to the
American ideological state apparatus from which it is constructed. This form of
extremity is defined through representation in mass media, but more importantly
the torrential onslaught of Islamophobic images proliferated via new “democratic”
social medias—RETORT’s reinvestigation of Debord’s Spectacle in relation to the
War on Terror is useful here.

In continuing to entertain the question, would the extremist ever refer to them-
selves as an extremist? It seems to me that without a rejection of the ideological
framework that first declared the subject an extremist, or of an extreme ideology,
this gesture would be nonsensical. If one were to declare himself or herself an
extremist—or rather respond to the pointedness of the original question—I could
only understand it to be a political action. Answering the question affirmatively
actively rejects the commanding ideology, but through that same ideological
vantage point. It would be to identify with what is upside down—what is back-
wards and outside—through a given ideological lens, if we recall Marx’s camera
obscura of ideology. Within the political dimension the question is a potential
site for antagonism, resistance, and/or dissensus. And if this is the case, I can
imagine many contexts in which I would answer the question in the affirmative.

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 QUIZ:
are you an
extremist?
Are you a
commonplace
so-and-so
or do you often get

1
a)
for your beliefs?
carried away?
Find out with this fun,
exonymic quiz!

b) I’m constantly chatting up friends and strangers about my ideology.

c)
*
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d) I don’t have any beliefs.

a) Sometimes, but I can admit Are you usually

when I’m wrong. right?
b) No, not usually; I’m literally always right.
c) My god/favorite text is the only one that has all the answers.
d) I never have any idea what I’m talking about.

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b)
a) That depends on the conversation.
No. I usually need to convince them that I’m right before the
conversation ends.
c) I have a community of 30-50 people that agree with me.
d) I am a very agreeable person.

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4c)
a) I like to think I’m a good patriot.
b) I hate the state of this country, which is why I work so hard
to convince everyone else to agree with me. Then things

I love my country more than anything, which is why I work so hard to

get all the bad people out and save the
souls of everyone else.
d) I have no feelings about my country.
Mostly ’s A
You might be slightly radical.
Be careful! You are at extreme
risk for becoming an extremist!

a) I don’t trust any single

source of news.
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b) It’s a capitalism machine designed
Mostly B’s
You are an extremist.

Mostly C ’s
to sedate and control the masses. You are extremely extremist!
c) It always misrepresents me and my
cohort. Mostly D ’s
d) I don’t pay attention to world events. Yeah you’re extreme.
Extremely boring.

6 you hate

a) People who are

mean.
b) People who are
wrong.
c) People who are
*
immoral.
d) My neighbor’s cat.

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THE SCHOOL
OF POTENTIAL ENGAGEMENT
POTENTIAL
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