Reload Disobedience
This is a modal window.
The media could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported.
Formal Metadata
| Title |
| |
| Title of Series | ||
| Number of Parts | 234 | |
| Author | ||
| License | CC Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0 Germany: You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor and the work or content is shared also in adapted form only under the conditions of this | |
| Identifiers | 10.5446/33069 (DOI) | |
| Publisher | ||
| Release Date | ||
| Language |
Content Metadata
| Subject Area | ||
| Genre | ||
| Abstract |
|
00:00
3 (number)DigitizingTheoryMultiplication signSet (mathematics)Perspective (visual)Civil engineeringComputer animationJSONXMLUMLLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
00:58
Parameter (computer programming)Query languagePhysical systemMultiplication signCivil engineeringGroup actionContext awarenessMeeting/Interview
02:17
Exception handlingCivil engineeringType theoryRevision control
02:41
Game theoryCivil engineeringRight angleType theoryConstructor (object-oriented programming)Rule of inferenceSoftware frameworkLine (geometry)Game theoryField (computer science)Cheat <Computerspiel>Open sourceMoment (mathematics)Lecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
04:02
Group actionInstance (computer science)Game theoryRule of inferenceMoment (mathematics)
04:53
Civil engineeringMereologyOffice suiteDecision theoryGroup actionDifferenz <Mathematik>Right angleCASE <Informatik>Multiplication signComputer animation
05:34
Mathematical singularityRevision controlDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Group actionMultiplication signCivil engineeringBitMereologyPhysical lawRevision controlTerm (mathematics)TheoryLecture/ConferenceMeeting/InterviewComputer animation
07:09
Civil engineeringRule of inferenceLecture/Conference
07:32
Mathematical singularityTelecommunicationRule of inferenceMereologyGroup actionCivil engineeringComputer animation
08:00
Civil engineeringMereologyInstance (computer science)Rule of inference1 (number)Point (geometry)Meeting/Interview
08:29
User interfacePhysical systemMereologyRule of inferenceWechselseitige InformationMoment (mathematics)Surface of revolutionComputer animation
09:16
Right angleMereologyLecture/Conference
09:46
MereologyCivil engineeringGroup actionPoint (geometry)Arithmetic meanData structureLine (geometry)Term (mathematics)Lecture/ConferenceComputer animation
10:56
MereologyContext awarenessLecture/ConferenceComputer animation
11:24
MereologyCivil engineeringStrategy gameGroup actionLecture/Conference
12:00
Digital signalGroup actionInternetworkingDigital electronicsMoment (mathematics)Bit
12:35
Direction (geometry)Moment (mathematics)Group actionCivil engineeringMereologyDirection (geometry)Frame problemStatement (computer science)State of matterInsertion lossSource code
13:33
Direction (geometry)Digital electronicsGroup actionDimensional analysisState of matterSource codeComputer animation
13:58
Digital signalWordType theoryDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Civil engineeringDigitizingSymbol tableInternetworkingState of matterWordComputer animation
14:31
Computer programmingTerm (mathematics)RobotTwitterMeeting/Interview
14:56
Mathematical analysisTwitterElectronic program guideBitMultiplication signJSONComputer animation
15:17
NumberExpert systemGroup actionData structureTwitterCivil engineeringTelecommunicationPhysical lawMeeting/Interview
16:13
Group actionDataflowMultiplication signInternetworkingPhysical systemBildschirmtextInformation privacyOffice suiteHacker (term)Meeting/InterviewComputer animation
17:28
Directed setGroup actionDigital signalInformationAdaptive behaviorType theoryGroup actionDigitizingDirection (geometry)Civil engineeringComputer animation
17:52
InformationGroup actionInternetworkingModemGradientTelecommunicationMeeting/InterviewJSONComputer animation
18:45
InformationInstance (computer science)Civil engineeringInternetworkingDirection (geometry)Type theoryVector potentialRight angleTelecommunicationMeeting/Interview
19:20
MereologySummierbarkeitReal numberCivil engineeringSource code
19:59
Group actionDirection (geometry)DigitizingCivil engineering1 (number)Vector potentialType theoryInternetworkingDataflowTelecommunicationMereologyCASE <Informatik>Mobile appPhysical systemLecture/Conference
21:15
MereologyMereologyCondition numberOptical disc driveChaos (cosmogony)ExistenceSource codeLecture/Conference
21:38
MereologyMultiplication signInternetworkingWeb 2.0Right angleExtreme programmingLecture/Conference
22:21
Vector potentialSpeech synthesisOrder (biology)Office suiteMeeting/Interview
23:03
Term (mathematics)Right angleCivil engineeringSymbol tableMeeting/Interview
23:50
Term (mathematics)Inclusion mapSource codeMeeting/Interview
24:19
Term (mathematics)Civil engineeringPower (physics)Meeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
24:48
Goodness of fitCivil engineeringGroup actionMereologyConnected spaceForceArithmetic meanDenial-of-service attackVirtual machineOperator (mathematics)Chaos (cosmogony)Context awarenessCASE <Informatik>Instance (computer science)Meeting/Interview
26:44
Group actionComputer virusRight angleLecture/Conference
27:09
Term (mathematics)MereologyType theoryCivil engineeringData structurePhysicalismMeeting/Interview
28:28
HypermediaComputer animation
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:16
I'm here to see that a few people want to start their third day of Republica with thinking
00:20
about civil disobedience at that time. I probably wouldn't be here if I wouldn't have to, so I'm very happy you are. So, as he said, I wrote a PhD about this for the last four years, and what I did in my PhD was bring together two perspectives that hadn't been so much in dialogue, I
00:40
believe, and that is on one side the practices of digital disobedience that we see since the 80s, and on the other side the discourse of the political theory that has concepts of civil disobedience, and so I tried to create a dialogue between those both sides, the practices going on and the theory, and tried to engage them in equal
01:07
arguments, so also see the practices as a kind of thinking about what civil disobedience might be in the digital age. And I called my PhD reload disobedience because that talks to two claims that I'm making.
01:20
The first claim is that we have a mainstream understanding of civil disobedience, and I think there's a lot of things wrong with that. I think it's very much too restricted, and we should really reload that understanding of civil disobedience with better conceptions that are also around for a long time, but they're not that common. And on the other side, I think that digital actions actually reloaded and reinvented civil
01:47
disobedience in a way, and I'm going to talk about in which ways they reinvented disobedience, and I want to point out first that this is not uncommon for civil disobedience because civil disobedience is never defined by one tactic.
02:02
It's always something that is transforming regarding to each system and each context that it is enacted in. So what are we talking about when we're talking about civil disobedience? First, civil disobedience is an exceptional type of politic, so it's not a demonstration.
02:26
And in our liberal societies, there is already a lot of conflict built into our daily discussions. We have disagreements on things, and civil disobedience is exceptional even to that.
02:42
And on the other side, civil disobedience is a constructive type of politics, and what I mean by that is that it does not only defend those rights that already exist, but civil disobedience claims new rights. So to give you a good metaphor what civil disobedience is, I would like to use this quote
03:06
of James Talley, a philosopher. Politics is the type of game in which the framework, the rules of the game, can come up for deliberation and amendment in the course of the game. And when we take this metaphor for a moment, what is civil disobedience then?
03:22
So civil disobedience is not the cheater in this game. So it's not the person who simply evades the rules and bends the rules for his own personal interest to have an advantage, and do this maybe secretly so that nobody notices that you're actually bending the rules or somehow cheating.
03:42
And it is also not a killjoy. It is not a person who says, you know, I don't care about your rules, do your rules, I'm doing my thing over here. No, civil disobedience is this. It is the person who takes a look at the games and takes a look at the rules. And if you imagine a soccer field, the civilly disobedient person would be the
04:00
person standing on the line of the field saying, you know, while this game is going on, let's please change the rules and let's renegotiate by which rules we're playing because these rules are kind of unfair, and they're somehow unjust for a certain group, for instance. So what a civilly disobedient person does is a very delicate act because on one side,
04:23
this person is certainly stepping out of the game and breaking the rules in a way. And on the other side, this person is highly involved in the game because he's asking everybody in the game to pay attention for a moment and to rethink the rules by which we're playing.
04:42
Okay, so in history, it turns out that we are pretty crappy to find out what civil disobedience is while it's going on. We seem to have a better understanding of what civil disobedience is in retrospect. So we all now agree that Martin Luther King is one of the heroes of civil disobedience.
05:00
But when he was part of the civil rights movement in the US, that wasn't entirely clear. The opposite was the case. He was seen as one of the most dangerous enemies. He was highly surveilled and highly attacked by all kinds of groups and by the government. So we only seem to come to know who the civilly disobedient people are in
05:24
retrospect. And I really like this quote saying, all empires like their dissidents' foreigns, and I would say definitely also all empires only like their dissidents in retrospect. But how do we figure out in a time where's the difference between civil
05:41
disobedience and plain criminal action? And I would argue that the difference can be found in principles and in political qualities of that action. So let's talk a little bit about the definitions of civil disobedience out there. And there is a liberal, so-called liberal understanding that goes back to
06:03
John Rawls and a theory of justice. That is still the mainstream understanding of civil disobedience. And I would like to challenge that because it's really too restricted to understand what practices of civil disobedience really do. The part that everybody agrees on in philosophy is that civil disobedience is
06:23
an intentional act and it's in conflict with the law. So that doesn't necessarily mean that a court has to decide if this is civil disobedience. It never would because civil disobedience is not a jurisdictional term. It is a political term. So in a court, this will not be decided necessarily.
06:42
But at least for civil disobedience, there's always this risk of being charged with a crime. It is very important that civil disobedience is always a principled act. And what that means is that it's not only a conscientious act.
07:01
That was like part of the definition for Rawls. But the thing is that with our consciences, they're not really political. They are regarded towards ourselves. They care about our self, our self's own well-being. And they're very subjective to our personal moral beliefs.
07:22
But civil disobedience, if it is a truly political act, is directed towards a commonly shared world. So it's an intersubjective act. It doesn't only care about my personal interest, but about what rules we want to play with each other. And it is very much a communicative act.
07:42
And sometimes the communication part happens within the acting itself. Sometimes it's communicated additionally to that action. And I'm going to give you examples for that later. But that does not necessarily mean that this act is necessarily public in every step of the way. For some occasions, it might make a lot of sense that parts of civil disobedience
08:03
are not public. Think about whistleblowing, for instance. That would make no sense if it's entirely public. But what I want to point out here is that it can't happen completely in secrecy. Civil disobedience is directed towards other people more than anything else.
08:21
So these people need to be the ones addressed if you want to change the rules. And Ahrendt, Hannah Ahrendt, a philosopher, which was very influential on what I'm talking about, she always said that there is some kind of revolutionary spirit to civil disobedience. And what she meant by that is not that civil disobedience
08:43
is overthrowing a whole system in a revolution, but rather that civil disobedience goes back to a certain, maybe fictional, but a very important moment of a society. And that is the moment of mutual promises. And these promises can be understood as a kind of consent.
09:03
But as a society, we're not consenting to all of the rules that we have in our society. Because we're all kind of thrown into one place, and we're part of that, even if we want to or not. But the consent that we're giving is that we are part of this, that we belong to this for some reason.
09:21
And everything else, we can negotiate. So she called this the right to have rights, and I think it's a very important idea. She said that as a human being, we necessarily have the freedom, inevitably have the freedom to have rights.
09:42
So nobody can strip us away from claiming our personal rights. And this is really the essential part of what she thinks civil disobedience is. So there is a big debate about when civil disobedience is justified.
10:03
And there's two important parts that are usually brought up. The one is, civil disobedience is supposed to be completely nonviolent. The other one is, civil disobedient people are supposed to accept any kind of punishment that is brought on to them. And I would contest both points. The violence part, because violence is really a concept that we haven't
10:24
figured out yet entirely, not in legal terms and not in any other terms. If you think of psychological violence and structural violence, where do we draw the line? So I'm not saying that civil disobedience should be a violent action.
10:41
Please don't understand me that way. But I would say it's not a good criteria. I would rather say that civil disobedient actions needs to use means directed towards a future cooperation among citizens. And simply by that, a lot of violent action is excluded.
11:01
And also, civil disobedience is always a limited freedom by the freedom of others. And I think also by that, we come to a better understanding what means might be appropriate. But it's always, I would say, depending on the context where civil disobedience is happening very much.
11:22
And about the punishment part. I would say that not necessarily civil disobedient people have to accept the punishment that is brought up to them. It might be a part of their strategy to shame a state. But it is kind of ridiculous, especially if we look at the digital actions going on, what kind of horrifying punishments are brought on to people.
11:45
And it would be kind of asking them to completely self-sacrifice for something that they believe is helping a commonly shared world. So, when we talk about what civil disobedience is in the digital world,
12:05
I want to make sure that I'm not saying that everything is new about civil disobedience when it comes to digital action. The opposite, I think all of these criteria that we now talked about still hold true, even using digital technology. I would say acting political on the internet
12:23
is no less political than acting political on the streets. But there is things that are really reinvented, and they are new. And I took a look at those, and will try to explain a little bit about those in the next moments. So, there is new actors that we see acting politically.
12:43
And it's certainly groups that were thought to be completely unpolitical. And that is a very interesting part. Also, there is new directions of civil disobedience. So, more and more civil disobedience is directed against companies, against private actors, and not only against states.
13:01
It's not only directed against laws, but it is more and more connected to issues that people care about across borders. There is a new aesthetic of civil disobedience, and certainly anonymity is one part of that new aesthetic. And that has to do with the idea that not necessarily a person
13:21
is the thing appearing for a political action, but it is rather a statement that enters the room of the political arena. And also, there is a new framing for civil disobedience. And what I mean by that is that usually we think of civil disobedience as an action between a citizen and a state.
13:41
And now, this dimension doesn't really work their way anymore because a lot of issues really affect a lot of people in the world, and especially with digital technologies. A lot of people are affected. It has nothing to do with what states they live in. So, in my work, I've found it really helpful
14:03
to think of three different types of civil disobedience on the internet. And first, I found a lot of symbolic types of digital disobedience, and I would say that's doing things with words. So, it's engaging in the symbolic fight in politics
14:25
that has been going on since politics exists, I would say. And one good example for that is an initiative that the PEN collective started a couple of years ago.
14:40
And what they did is they took Twitter bots and certainly broke the terms of use of Twitter to identify sexist on Twitter and sent them a six-step self-help program to become less sexist. I'm going to show you just a little bit of that. But it is still online, and if you feel that is interesting,
15:04
you can still look it up or send it to someone who you think might need it. Are you struggling to engage with anyone who doesn't identify as a heterosexual man?
15:24
Well, you may be suffering from what experts call sexism. Now, online, this can manifest itself in a number of ways. For example... OK, that's enough. So, what is interesting about this example is that, as I already said,
15:45
this example is not directed against a law. It's not even necessarily only directed against an institution. It is more connected and directing against structural violence in society.
16:00
So it's kind of a self-communication with society that civil disobedience is used for here. But it certainly also addresses Twitter and asks the question, like, why are you not doing anything about this? The second example is out of the group that I called disruptive and invasive digital disobedience.
16:20
So that is addressing the manipulation of data flow and infrastructure on the internet. One example for this happened here in Germany a long time ago. I think 1984, where the early people of the CCC did the BTX hack. They transferred money from the bank to an account of the CCC,
16:48
and did this actually very publicly. They did this from the data protection office of the data protection official in Hamburg, and they make a huge press release about it.
17:01
So they made very clear that this was not done in secrecy nor done out of personal interest. They never really got the money. But it was really directing to think about that these systems are insecure, and that we as a society should better technology and more secure technology.
17:28
And the last example that I want to talk about is what I call digital disobedient direct action. And I would say that these other two types of political intervention
17:41
that I showed you are more an adaptation of tactics that we already know out of traditional practices of civil disobedience, but this is really something genuinely digital, I would argue. So it's about co-constructing the world by creating infrastructure
18:01
or sharing disobedient information. And one group that has very prominently given us good examples about what that is were the telecomics. And with a campaign they called Re-Rebuild, they started to create a low-fi infrastructure of the internet
18:26
with modems when, for example, in Egypt there was an internet shutdown. And so they didn't appeal to the public to change something, but they rather just did it. And they called this doocracy, the politics of sheer doing.
18:45
And I think it's a very interesting concept, and it also means that there is a potential of directness of politics with this new type of civil disobedience, because it is really constructive in two ways. Constructing new ways to communicate politically,
19:04
for instance to get information out where there is an internet lockdown, but also it is claiming rights in this sense that I explained before that civil disobedience always is constructive.
19:21
Okay, so what I want to finish with is to sum up what I was not saying, because I only looked at these positive examples where civil disobedience happened,
19:41
so this might sound very optimistic. But what I don't want to say is that civil disobedience is easy. I would say that most of us are very illiterate in this new essential realm of politics in our world, and that is a huge problem. Secondly, I don't want to say that civil disobedience
20:03
and digital action is very likely. I would say right now the opposite is the case, because the ones who actually have the ability to act politically in this very direct way with civil disobedience are also the ones who are very privileged in this new political system,
20:21
and they are usually part of the elite that benefits, so they have lesser reasons to actually take action and complain. And also our communication has turned more and more into a really just monetised flow of data, and I think that makes it less and less likely
20:42
that we really have a political public on the internet. And I also don't want to say that there is no problems with these new types of civil disobedience, but I do want to claim that there is a huge potential for new politics and digital action,
21:00
and it is very much worth exploring and very much worth defending. And I would like to end with a quote by Hannah Arendt, or that is not a quote, but it's a kind of summary for you, because political freedom and civil disobedience are not a given. They prevail against all odds, and that has to do with what Hannah Arendt calls
21:22
the ability to create new beginnings, and she said that part of the human condition is this indestructible ability of humans to create new beginnings, and I think that is exactly what civil disobedience is in the middle of the chaos that we exist in. Thank you.
21:46
Thank you very much. You're very much on time, so we have time for questions. Please come to me. Hi, thanks for the talk.
22:01
I am Christina. I come from the Amadeo Antonio Foundation, and I would say we deal with right-wing extremism, and you write, all write, all what is in the Internet, and thanks for this talk, but I look through this, through my experience that I look what they do on the web, and they actually use this concept of disobedience
22:23
to do exactly the opposite. I know. So how do you, I mean, at the end you said, of course, there's potentials, but I feel the only potential is that we give them this concept in order to undermine our democracy or our democratic values.
22:42
They would say, yeah, freedom of speech, great stuff, and I can give my race and hate, and they will use it all kinds of ways to restructure discourse, and they will also use this concept, so how do you see that under the spirit of Hannah Arendt
23:01
that you so nicely quoted? I find that really worrying, and I would really want to reclaim this concept because what they are doing is completely excluded from the conception of civil disobedience as I proposed it here, so I would say it has nothing to do with civil disobedience
23:21
because it really, as I refer to this concept of the right to have rights, stripping that away from a person, and that is what they're essentially doing there, makes it completely contradictory to civil disobedience, so I would say we need to reclaim the term because what they're doing
23:41
has nothing to do with civil disobedience, and I know that this is a thing that in this symbolic fight of politics, claiming a term is what happens, and that is why I think we cannot let go of this term and just say, okay, have it. No, I think we need to reclaim the term and say no. Civil disobedience is something
24:01
that depends on this inclusion of anybody human, and so that is my reaction, but I think it is very worrying that we see more and more that these terms are really claimed and misused. Yeah, I just want to say that Lutz Bachmann,
24:21
the movement of Pegida, he absolutely claimed this, and that's why they also got so much attention because people did that. And I think that just shows us what kind of powerful term civil disobedience is because we do pay attention, and it's kind of, it moves something in us, and that's why I think we need to really reclaim the term
24:40
and make it very clear what it is and what it is not, so yeah. Any other questions? Hi. Thanks for your speech, and I would like to ask if you would say that what Anonymous does
25:03
is a good example for civil disobedience. That's a delicate question because, first of all, I would say that one actor is always doing civil disobedience. It really has to be only defined by each example in each context, so as a researcher, I have to say this.
25:23
So I think that there are some examples that I also discussed in my PhD where I would say, yes, they kind of managed with a lot of chaos and without even really aiming for it from the beginning to come very close to civil disobedience.
25:42
So I would say that, for instance, the Operation Payback was one example for that where they managed to include a really huge machine of publicity, and with that quality, they did something else than just a DDoS.
26:01
But I would argue that a DDoS, in very few cases, is a very successful technique of civil disobedience, and especially if it's used over and over again, it kind of loses its meaning because civil disobedience, I talked about this communicative part, and this is getting weakened. If you just do the same thing over and over again,
26:22
I know that there is a certain attraction towards this because it has this connection to sit-ins, but I think that I want to stress the other part. I want to say, no, the digital realm is exactly a realm for new creativity,
26:41
so let's think about more than DDoS actions. Hello. I found your talk interesting but also kind of contradictory. You mentioned that civil disobedience did not exclude violence, and not long after, you said that you had to have actions
27:00
that were in respect of other people's rights, and for me, violence is disrespecting other people's rights, so how do you actually make those things go together? I'm very happy that you asked that if that wasn't entirely clear because I tried to actually point out that I'm not saying that civil disobedience should include violence. What I was saying is that the term violence or non-violence
27:21
is a very delicate criteria because there is not only physical types of violence, there's also psychological types of violence, structural type of violence, and if you just actually, under the German law, a sit-in is still considered a type of violence. So to have that clear, like in jurisdictional terms,
27:43
violence is a very contested concept, so I'm just saying that I think it's not a good criteria for the definition. That does not mean that I want to include hurtful tactics into what civil disobedience is. Quite the opposite.
28:00
I would say it is just not a good criteria, but we have to rather think about what means really encourage a better future cooperation amongst people. And it's a very philosophical discussion maybe, so we can talk about that later if that didn't entirely clear up the question,
28:20
but just to make that clear, I did not say that violence should be a part of civil disobedience. Thank you very much. A warm welcome for Teresa Zuger for her very enlightening talk. Thank you very much. Thank you.