> She appears to be some sort of Yugoslav government
>mouthpiece.
>From Adorno's perspective (here I quote Erik Krakauer, The Disposition of
the Subject, p. 92ff) the spokesperson or the mouthpiece-- whether of a
government, union, institute or a party--is a most interesting character.
Your criticism here suggests somewhat paradoxically both her evidently
singular mouthedness (ability to speak for other human beings) and her own
unmouthedness (she is nothing but an *instrument* of the government).
"In order to carry out their vocation, spokespersons must actually surrender use of their mouths and voice to others. For example, members of certain Christian sects surrender their mouths to the holy Spirit which speaks through them with tongues not their own, just as It spoke through the Apostles on the first Pentecost. Those who are legally mouhtless have what the Germans call Vomuender or Fuersprecher appointed for them, people who become their mouths, and give up their own, by speaking for them. In this case more clearly than in the others, spokespeople speak not so much for their employers, clients, or wards, *nor indeed for any human being* (assuming of course that the legally demouthed count as human), but for the best interests of the ward as prescribed by legal, medical, and philosophical texts. here, and perhaps in all such representations, spokespeople become mouthless as they become mouthpieces (and guardians) for institutional prescriptions, for written definitions, concepts, and values which have institutionalised themselves and which indicate in advance what the best interests of the legally demouthed might be. These prescriptions are then the authority which spokespeople advocate and represent.
"The freedom which the 'free world' claims for itself is that of the muendiger Buerger, of the mouthed, individual human subject. Technology, both as the power/knowledge which masters nature and as the apparatus of representative government and 'free market' capitalism is assumed traditionally to be catalyst of this Muendigkeit. Technology, as traditionally understood, is assumed to be the instrument with which Muendigkeit was progressively won by breaking the bonds of servitude to both nature and tyranny. And it also assumed to be the guarantor of Muendigkeit. yet Adorno warns that the modern technological age, which smugly announces itself as the zenith of progress towards enlightened Muendigkeit, may secretely approach a nadir of regression. We might say that it is the *technology* with which we mouth ourselves that may also demouth us; technological faciliation of speaking [what else is the internet!!!] may render our voices inaudible; ubiquotous [-]talk may be a profound silence.[ouch!!!]
"...those countries which enjoy the most progressive and highly developed technologies and consequently the greatest freedom of speech, [are] the countries where the voices of critique, protest, pain, and outrage, of the others which disrupt the ever same, in short, of truth, have been been most efficiently disarmed. For while expressions of the truth are still tolerated, they are also lost amid the cacophony of other wildly proliferating voices. They are made into so many more commodities and mass marketed in a marketplace of mass overabundance...Mouthedness is still allowed only where enlightened technology has made a certain mouthlessness virtually complete. Meanwhile where totalitarian dictators need to 'forbid us our mouths' to maintain control, this very repression indicates that the voices of pain, protest and critical truth are still a threat [in China today?], still maintain their subversive force."
And then the critique cuts even deeper:
"We have also seen that it is commonplace to voice thoughts other than one's own, to *repeat* words not one's own. Indeed, it can be shown that the Muendige, the linguistically original human subject, is not original at all. Attention to the language or, better, to the literality of any claim to such Muendigkeit reveals it to be *repetitive*. What the subject says has always already been said: it has been pre-dicted. This revelation too erases the distinction between Muendigkeit and Unmuendigkeit."
This pessismistic analysis of a liberal utopia of free speech, faciliated by technology, may provoke Justin's analysis. And the suggestion that linguistically original human subject assumes a metaphysics should raise Jim Heartfield's eyebrows (to choose another body part than the mouth as synecdoche). And there are quite a few here (Kelley, Rob, James F, Yoshie) interested in things Frankfurt.
And no matter how much I disagree with him on other things, Dennis may well be right that Adorno remains a critical person to think with against late capitalism.
yrs, rakesh