The Dig: Reviving Resistance to Empire with Aziz Rana

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Socialism, History, News, Left, Jacobin, Alternative, Socialist, Politics

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2018

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s our 100th episode and the launch of our spring fundraising drive! Aziz Rana returns to The Dig fifteen years after the invasion of Iraq to reflect on the paucity of substantive anti-imperialist politics across much of the American left. Socialism isn’t just an internationalist politics on principle: domestic and foreign struggles are inherently linked, just as the forces we struggle against are globally intertwined — and the latter benefit from perpetuating an ideology that artificially divides the two. But for decades, a bipartisan consensus has governed foreign policy, to disastrous ends. Why, Rana asks, is there no foreign policy equivalent to the new left-wing domestic policy litmus test on single-payer health care? Check out Aziz’s n+1 article here: nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/the-lefts-missing-foreign-policy. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art and Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo versobooks.com/blogs/3635-where-freedom-starts-sex-power-violence-metoo. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our supporters on Patreon and by Verso Books,
0:05.6	which has loads of great left-wing titles, perfect for dig listeners like you.
0:11.2	One that you might like is Duty Free Art, Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War, by
0:17.7	Hito Styrel. What is the function of art in the era of digital globalization, how can one think of art
0:25.4	institutions in an age defined by planetary civil war, growing inequality,
0:31.2	and proprietary digital technology.
0:34.0	The boundaries of such institutions have grown fuzzy.
0:37.0	They extend from a region where the audience is pumped for tweets
0:41.0	to a future of neurocureting in which paintings
0:45.2	surveil their audience via facial recognition and eye tracking to assess their
0:50.9	popularity and to scan for suspicious activity.
0:54.8	In duty-free art, filmmaker and writer, Hido Styrel,
0:58.8	wonders how we can appreciate or even make art in the present age. What can we do when arms manufacturers sponsor
1:07.2	museums and some of the world's most valuable artworks are used as currency in a
1:11.9	global futures market detached from productive work.
1:15.0	Can we distinguish between information, fake news, and the digital white noise that
1:20.9	bombard our everyday lives.
1:24.0	Exploring subjects as diverse as video games,
1:26.5	WikiLeaks files, the proliferation of free ports,
1:29.5	and political actions, she exposes the paradoxes within globalization, political economies, visual
1:36.6	culture, and the status of art production.
1:40.6	Duty-free art, art in the age of Planetary Civil War by Hido Styrel
	...

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