A refugee boy puts a flower on the fence as he waits with others on the Greek side of the border to enter Macedonia, near Gevgelija, Macedonia. Tomislav Georgiev/PA Images. All rights reserved.On Saturday 4th November, the Berliner Gazette‘s Friendly Fire conference asks: How is citizenship changing in times of war? Two speakers will be looking for answers: the geographer Deborah Cowen, whose books War, Citizenship, Territory and The Deadly Life of Logistics explore the politics of violence in the global age; and the historian Felicity Scott, whose Silicon Valley research sheds light on the emergence of the military-entertainment complex. Closing the three-day conference, this public talk will reflect the crises of citizenship in the context of states of exception. Here, Felicity Scott reflects on strategic reversals of power that may occur in moments of crisis.
Krystian Woznicki (KW): Today, computer culture is celebrated as counterculture and vice versa – a legacy from the Hippie days. What grounded their philosophy back then was a cunning understanding of the relationship between the government and police, on one hand, and outlaws on the other, as in Stewart Brand's supplement to the 1970s' Whole Earth Catalogue entitled "The Outlaw Area". Could you say more about their thinking with regard to that relationship and reflect what kind of ground this has laid for notions of citizenship?
Felicity Scott (FS): There are so many important facets to your question. I particularly appreciate your recognition of the complex and at times quite problematic interplay between emergent claims to non-normative citizenship and the nexus of computerization, forms of governance, and the police that was at work within the late 1960s and early 1970s American counter-culture. We need to think all of these facets together to recognize what was at stake and at play in the libertarianism fostered by a media-savvy figure like Stewart Brand at that moment—to understand how he could possibly have had such an impact upon the cultural imaginary of the period but also to understand the persistence of his “whole earth” and “outlaw” ideology today, especially within computer culture, with its apparently “alternative,” free-wheeling valence.
