Abstract
In 2007, Barış Engin Aksoy dealt with the criticisms raised against the Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk in the Turkish press, in terms of the relationship between the cultural and the political. Aksoy showed how the cultural field lost its critical force either by being moved to a level above the political as if it were autonomous and neutral, or by being set identical to the political, being thus over-politicised. Both discourses were positioned against the West in a specific Turkish context.
There are different contexts and themes, but the use of the concepts of the ‘cultural’ and the ‘political’ in specific contexts and meanings needs clarification. In order to argue for such a contextual, materialist and conceptual understanding, here, I would like to direct attention to two recent books related to ‘participation’: By Any Media Necessary by Henry Jenkins et al. (2016) and The Discursive-Material Knot by Nico Carpentier (2017).
The first concentrates on youth activists and their media use in the United States (such as Invisible Children and the Harry Potter Alliance) while Carpentier’s book is one of theoretical argumentation on the discursive and the material, structure and agency, and conflict, participation and community media focusing on the conflict zone of Cyprus.
In both, the choice of vocabulary is a theoretical (and political) choice. Carpentier, writing from a discourse-theoretical position, and now arguing for ‘the discursive-material knot’, departs from Chantal Mouffe’s use of the concept of ‘the political’ and Carole Pateman’s definition of ‘participation’ with its emphasis on decision-making process and power relations in democratic theory. Mouffe (2005: 9) distinguishes ‘the political’ (the dimension of power, conflict and antagonism that is constitutive of human societies) from ‘politics’. Carpentier’s use of the political derives from this distinction. In fact, Carpentier considers ‘participation’ within this broad meaning of the political, as inherently tied with power and conflict in the social and avoids using ‘political’ or ‘cultural’ as an adjective that defines a type of participation. Thus, every participation is political in the sense of such an understanding of ‘the political’.
He argues Cyprus, the conflict zone, and the Cyprus Community Media Centre – CCMC – and MYCY radio as a ‘participatory community media assemblage’ should be considered from such a perspective, which also emphasises materiality and thus seems to refute discourse theory. This theoretical position does not privilege the material over the discursive and vice versa, yet posits the interaction of both. Grounded in Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) discourse theory, this is a contingent, ‘knotted’ interaction for Carpentier (2017: 4–5) and is translated into social practice via the concept of ‘assemblage’, a concept he uses for arresting the endless flows in the social.
Participation also shows its embeddedness in conflict. Again, in line with Mouffe (2005: 9), the second chapter (esp. pp. 155–188) incorporates ‘conflict transformation’ into ‘agonistic democracy’. The final chapter is devoted to CCMC and MYCY radio as a ‘participatory and agonistic assemblage’. In the book, media production and research production also seem ‘knotted’ when one looks at the plurality of methods applied (visual and textual analysis, interviews, focus groups, participant observation, etc.) and the people involved in them (a combined effort to capture the context and production-reception cycle).
Jenkins et al. (2016) do not privilege institutional politics over other spheres for participation either. However, their outlook and choice of vocabulary depart considerably from those of Carpentier. Jenkins links his previous works on fan communities and ‘participatory culture’ for new media literacy to ‘political and civic participation’ via the concept of ‘participatory politics’. Jenkins (2016: 40) defines ‘participatory culture’ as ‘a diverse set of shared activities and social engagements, ranging from fan fiction writing and crafting to gaming, through which people collectively carve out a space for expression and learning’. The very same engagements and activities that are particularly deployed towards political ends seem to add civic and political ingredients to participation.
This book is a response to the calls by Peter Dahlgren (2011), Carpentier (2011) and others to make ‘more precise distinctions between different models of participation’ (Jenkins et al., 2016: 40). In fact, his reference to Carpentier’s distinctions between minimalist and maximalist forms, and between participation in and through media, along with taking participation as an aspiration, is an ‘utopian ideal’; his deployment of Dahlgren’s parameters of civic culture and of distinction between engagement and participation as well as an emphasis on ‘contingencies’ show his respect to the previous discussions (see Allen et al., 2014; Jenkins and Carpentier, 2013).
Jenkins et al. focus on ‘new political imaginary’ for American youth – new collective symbols, gestures, tactics, which have been expressed and circulated via ‘any media necessary’ against the dysfunctional or failed mechanisms of institutional politics in the United States. Invisible Children, dedicated to end the human rights violations, displays a paradoxical case and is undemocratic in its structure. The Harry Potter Alliance, on the contrary, uses a fantasy series to encourage civic engagement. A Muslim youth group in Southern California and DREAMers seem much more related to identity politics with their struggles against the surveillance of Muslims and the denial of citizen rights to immigrants, whereas the Students for Liberty are advocates of libertarianism.
At the end, Jenkins and Shresthova (2016) discuss how young people imagine politics, share their stories and express their voices via their media and seem to consider these practices still as ‘cultural’ (p. 289) – the cultural as the gateway into the political. Carpentier (2017: 87) also reflects on the previous discussions he had with Jenkins and others before he distinguishes two main approaches to participation – the sociological approach and the political (studies) approach – which, in my view, takes its main divisive force from an emphasis on power. Despite the specific empirical, conceptual and theoretical differences, both books engage with participation and democracy for a better world even if it never comes – and such engagement continues with suggestions of ‘participatory ethics’ and ‘participatory/democratic leadership’ ‘in an age of crisis’ (Jenkins and Carpentier, 2019).