# What is urgent publishing? - request for comments

Florian Cramer, Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam

## publishing as propaganda

To begin with an example: In 2020, the psychology professor and political influencer Jordan Peterson had 3.2 million YouTube subscribers and up to 6.9 million views for his individual videos.^[According to the view numbers on (Peterson, 2020). He also sold more than 3 million copies of his self-help book _12 Rules for Life_, according to (Peterson, 2019).] Peterson's political message could be broadly characterized as traditionalist conservatism that uses mythology and Jungian archetypes to support its position against feminism and intersectional politics, or - in his own words - "political correctness" and "postmodernism". This continues a discourse that had been established in the late 1980s with Allan Bloom's book _The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students_, with the same targets and partly identical arguments. Peterson, however, reaches a much wider audience. He even has been referred to as"the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now" in _The New York Times_.^[See (Brooks).] Peterson is also popular among art school students who reject feminist, decolonial and intersectional curricula. This is epitomized by this meme, created by a teacher of Rotterdam's Willem de Kooning Academy in May 2020:

![From the Instagram account _wdka.teachermemes_](pics/wdka_memes.jpg)

Both Peterson's YouTube videos and the meme reactions to them could be characterized as forms, and ways, of publishing that meet an existing popular demand. On top of that, they are built on formats and networks outside traditional publishing. Even if one doubts Peterson's intellectual depth (since, for example, his take on Jacques Derrida's deconstruction appears to be at best superficial, at worst not even based on first-hand reading), he is - for better or worse - the first global YouTube 'intellectual'; someone who rose to fame via his self-produced YouTube videos, not print publications. On top of that, Peterson's YouTubing does not exist in isolation, but is part of a larger "Alt-Right" discourse and network that includes, among others, the former _VICE_ journalist and founder of the militant right-wing street fight organization Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes. (Among others, Peterson appeared in 2016 in McInnes' YouTube talk show under the headline "Prof. Jordan Peterson: 'Bloody neo-Marxists have invaded the campuses'".^[Source: (McInnes)]) Peterson's videos take up central "Alt-Right" talking points such as the "manosphere" view of traditional gender roles, the conspiracy narrative of "cultural marxism" and the meme "Pepe the Frog", normalize them into mainstream conservative discourse, and give his social media audience the feeling that what they otherwise know only through trolling and meme subculture is scholarly sanctioned.

![Jordan Peterson (in the middle)](pics/peterson_pepe.png)

Peterson's success factors can be summed up as follows:

1. speed, thanks to the immediacy of YouTube as a publishing medium as opposed to traditional publishing;
2. reach, thanks to the ubiquity of YouTube/the Internet;
3. tapping into existing subcultures and popular desires, discourses and concerns (as opposed to scholars, mainstream news media and traditional publishers who are not in touch with them);
4. partisanship; dividing the audience into either followers or adversaries;
5. meme-ability; where the quality of a statement lies less in its well-foundedness or consistency, but its potential of "going viral".

![Natalie Wynn, ContraPoints, discussing Jordan Peterson](pics/contrapoints.png)

These success factors also apply to publishers in the opposite political camp to Peterson, such as the transgender YouTuber Natalie Wynn who posts her lavishly and elaborately produced videos on issues such as "Cancel Culture", gender, and Peterson himself, on her channel _ContraPoints_ where they have up to 3.8 Million views.^[According to the view numbers on (Wynn).]

Do the above five points - speed, reach, tapping into existing subcultures, partisanship, meme-ability - amount to criteria, or even a definition, of urgent publishing? 

A historical side note: In all these five points, Peterson follows the footsteps of an other Canadian scholar and political conservative, Marshall McLuhan (only that McLuhan's electronic medium was television, not the Internet).

Another historical note: All five points are typical characteristics of propaganda; not only the political propaganda of totalitarian regimes, but also, for example, anti-catholic propaganda in the European reformation age and counter-reformation propaganda of the catholic church. (Cross-reference to the previous note: not only was McLuhan a devout catholic, his "global village" was a literal riff, via James Joyce, on the pope's annual prayer "urbi et orbi" ["for the city and the globe"].) Even visual meme propaganda pre-existed in reformation and counter-reformation propaganda emblems and flyposter caricatures.

!["I am the Pope" - anti-catholic meme, 16th century](pics/ego_sum_papa.jpg)

That the production of propaganda (or counter-propaganda) memes can be a critical publishing practice, is exemplified among others by Berlin Dadaism and John Heartfield photomontages of the 1920s:

![John Heartfield, "Adolf, the Übermensch - swallows gold and talks garbage", 1932](pics/heartfield-adolf_uebermensch.jpg)

But ultimately, this discussion goes back to the political-philosophical and ethical debate on the validity of rhetoric (as a school of persuasion, seduction and propaganda) versus logic/dialectics (as a school of finding the truth through sound reasoning) that, in Western culture, had first articulated been by Plato. In the _Phaedrus_, he came to the conclusion that rhetoric as such can only be justified when it is firmly based on dialectics, thus helping to make a sound argument more persuasive. Since Plato articulated this position in the historical period of the decline of Athenian democracy,^[Leaving side the issue of Athenian democracy not being a democracy, but an oligarchy, by today's political standards.] it has gained new relevance in the present times of globally surging fascist populisms. The dispute between dialectics and rhetoric is now being re-enacted as a dispute between analytical philosophy (which continues the position of logic being the only valid form of argumentation) versus continental philosophy and critical theory (which, in its deconstructionist and social-constructivist schools, has rhetoric and subjective epistemology as its foundations). This extends into an opposition of scientific research paper publishing versus popular - and populist - visual culture and social media publishing.

These oppositions are most clearly visible in the current societal debate on the Covid-19 pandemic. The (often "Alt Right"-affiliated) Covid-19 "skeptics" alternatively claim that the virus is not real, that its harmfulness is being exaggerated, that it can be better fought with alternative remedies, and that both quarantine measures and vaccinations are the product of a global conspiracy. Since rational scientific method and logical argumentation seem to be the only way of countering these positions, with rhetoric being - along the lines of Plato - used to support them, the Covid-19 crisis forced continental philosophy and critical theory to either align themselves with analytical and scientific discourse, or to side - like (Agamben) - with the "skeptic" camp and thereby cast doubt on its soundness. 

The corresponding question for artists, designers, cultural workers, respectively producers of popular visual culture would be: Am I just supposed to create "good" propaganda for knowledge and discourses in whose development I wasn't involved (but that were created among others by virologists and policymakers) in order to amplify, in line with Plato, a given, sound logical argument with the persuasiveness of visual rhetoric? Does urgency, and urgent publishing, exhaust itself in that, and thus boil down to illustration? Will the art schools that educate these visual culture workers and publishers just play their due role in the Dutch higher vocational education ("HBO") system where they are supposed to (merely) receive research knowledge from traditional universities and put it into practice?


## rephrasing the issue

To get out of this impasse, and out of being stuck in repeating Plato's argument, it might help to flip the question of what urgent publishing is: What is non-urgent publishing? Can we define urgent publishing ex negativo, based on the characteristics of non-urgent publishing?

The difficulty in answering these questions is that urgency will never be set in stone. If one chooses, for example, telephone books as a seemingly evident form of non-urgent publishing, one would overlook the fact that a telephone book may be a literal life-saver for a person in a particular situation (such as: finding an emergency hotline while having no Internet access). Conversely for the visual culture producers, receiving a design commission for telephone books may be of critical financial importance. 

The non-urgency of a publication can perhaps best be defined as a situation in which the urgency for the publisher is not the same as for the reader; where, in other words, no communal urgency defines a publication and the act of publishing. Conversely, even a zine written out of personal urgency (such as, for example, struggling with a queer coming-out) and published in an edition of five copies, with the hope of finding only one person who shares the publisher's feelings, is defined by communal urgency.

In art and research publishing, almost all forms of ritualistic publishing are non-urgent. Publications that are made out of institutional logic and legitimation, but for which there is no wider community urgency, include the majority of exhibition catalogs, research papers, conference proceedings, academic journals that primarily serve scholars' needs to meet ranking and evaluation criteria; as well as showcase, prestige and other p.r. publications, no matter whether these are books, periodicals, blogs, podcasts or YouTube videos.

In unsubsidized commercial publishing, any book or periodical that is primarily a coffee table publication, or any other publication to be shelved away after at best superficial reading, is by definition non-urgent. While non-urgent publications of any kind may still gain urgency in future contexts and circumstances, they were typically not developed from and with a larger community and its self-defined urgent issues and articulations.

Therefore, successful propaganda is always urgent publishing; but not all forms of urgent publishing are propaganda. When revisiting the previous five criteria of speed, reach, tapping into existing subcultures, partisanship and meme-ability with a focus on communal urgency, the picture - and definitions - become more nuanced:

1. while urgency always somehow implies speed, the corresponding criterion for communal urgency cannot be quantitative but needs to be qualitatively measured (and could, in some cases and situations, even entail intentional slowdown and delay): in other words, the criterion is *responsiveness* rather than merely speed;

2. likewise, reach needs to be a qualitative rather than quantitative, criterion when applied to communal urgency, in the sense of a publication (or an act of publishing) that actually reaches the community for which it is meaningful;

3. instead of merely tapping into existing subcultures and their desires, the publication and the act of publishing emerges from communities and their needs;

4. while partisanship is not necessarily the criterion or intended effect of a publication in its intended community - or, put differently: reaching a community does not needs to mean to alienate others -, but *identification* remains crucial;

5. meme-ability, while being helpful as urgency metrics, depends on the particular community and discourse for which the act of publishing and the publication is meant; while a meme that goes viral is urgent publishing by definition, not all forms and acts of urgent publishing are viral memes; but at least they spread 'peer-to-peer' within their communities.^[A good example being _El Paquete_ in Cuba, a 1TB hard drive of popular movies, tv shows and music that is updated every week and gets copied and distributed across Cuba, because of the absence of broadband Internet.]

To avoid misunderstandings: These five modified criteria do _not_ amount to criteria of ethically "good" communal urgent publishing versus "bad" propaganda publishing. For example, both Jordan Peterson's and Natalie Wynn's/ContraPoints' YouTube videos do not only fulfill the five criteria of propagandistic urgent publishing, but also those of communal urgent publishing through their combination of propaganda-style meme tactics and psychological self-help. Even a crass Neonazi propaganda website like _The Daily Stormer_ ticks all the above boxes, which may explain why it has been more successful than more traditional Neonazi websites; the same of course is true for imageboards like _4chan_ and _8chan_/_8kun_ and the "QAnon" conspiracy myth that emerged on them.^[Covered in more detail in (Cramer, Wu Ming 1).] All these examples fulfill all five criteria of propaganda urgent publishing as well at least two of the five criteria of communal urgent publishing; or - more precisely - they work as propaganda catalysts for communities which further elaborate those stories, visuals and memes in communal acts of urgent publishing.


## the larger picture

In all above examples, the notion and definition of "publishing" was kept deliberately broad. This is, in my opinion, necessary for opening up space for radical imaginations and reimaginations of publishing, in times of radical changes in media, communication and visual culture; reimaginations in which artists and designers need to play a role. The urgent publishing of the Berlin Dadaists broke with fine art and materially engaged with the urgent publishing media of their time - newspapers which in the 1920s often appeared with three issues per day -, reimagining these both in form and content. ContraPoints is doing (structurally) the same with today's YouTube propaganda. 

Publishing then includes any act of making something public - including street interventions and performances and low-resolution meme images for example -,^[For an early reflection on the digital "poor image" as visual culture production, see (Steyerl).] but one that in most cases travels over a distance and can be archived. Aside from these technical characteristics, publishing has informational and educational aspects. This includes the use of Internet meme images and YouTube videos as educational resources for self-study,^[Years ago, a theory curriculum coordinator of a Dutch art school told me that she prefers learning cultural theory from YouTube videos to reading books.] which explains Jordan Peterson's and Natalie Wynn's respective success. Major intellectuals and philosophers of the 20th century, including Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt, mainly published in journalistic periodicals after their academic careers had been cut off, which was unfortunate for them personally but not for their readership and for the public role of the humanities. Other philosophers (from Adorno and Heidegger to Slavoj Žižek and Judith Butler) followed suit by lecturing on radio and television and publishing in newspapers, but to date have remained stuck in these classical editorial mass media.

An early example of memetic urgent propaganda publishing were the controversial "Zeitgeist" videos published on YouTube from 2007 to 2011 by the designer and activist Peter Joseph. Originally produced in close neighborhood to _Infowars_ of the later Alt-Right personality Alex Jones, they spun a conspiracy narrative and "post-scarcity" economic vision that instigated a homonymous "Zeitgeist movement". In 2011 and 2012, _Zeitgeist_ activists played central roles in the _Occupy_ movement both in New York and in Europe. _Zeitgeist_ may therefore be called an early (or perhaps even the first) example of Internet-based theory construction in which memetics and viral success acted as editorial filters and thus replaced peer review. 

This form of urgent publishing has created a problem for academics, artists, designers and journalists who have not been educated or trained in this system and logic, but in peer reviews, group critiques, editorial boards and institutional curatorship. The political takeaway of the 2016 Trump elections, that "the left can't meme", at that time could be remixed into "artists, designers and academics can't meme". Both are no longer true if one looks at contemporary political activism - with _ContraPoints_ just being one example - or, in the Netherlands, at the anonymous meme accounts run by students and teachers of particular art schools such as "wdkamemes" and "wdka.teachermemes" for WdKA Rotterdam (the first picture in this article was taken from the latter) and "kabkmemes" for the KABK Den Haag.

The examples and definitions of urgency I used to this point included social and political urgency, personal urgency and (in the case of _Zeitgeist_ and _Occupy_) economic urgency; but they should also include - among others - aesthetic urgency (for which tattoo culture is a good example of an urgent publishing practice) and technological urgency (with, among others, Free/Open Source software as a form of urgent publishing). 

![Still from René van Zundert's documentary _Thuisprikkers_ ("Home Tattooers") showing a self-taught, unlicensed discount tattoo artist running his home studio in Rotterdam's Tarwewijk](pics/thuisprikkers.jpg)

In both arts and design and in academic research, there is a lack of courage for _not_ doing something because it either lacks urgency or addresses it in the wrong way. A good example for such courage is, in my opinion, the 2012 social design project "WIJkonomie" (a pun on "we-conomy" and "neighborhood economy") in Rotterdam's poor neighborhood Tarwewijk. The architects Theo Deutinger, Stefanos Filippas, Elisa Mante and Ana Rita Marques had been hired to improve local conditions, but gave up after having researched the area:

> "Four architects spending two months of thinking about Tarwewijk and spending three weeks physically in Tarwewijk does not make any difference. The people of Tarwewijk have a lot of people like us seen come and go. Well educated groups with high flying plans, spreading hope for a prosperous future. When they are gone, live in Tarwewijk is more miserable than before. All expectations and trust by the people of Tarwewijk did disappear with the people foreign to the place.
> 
> Tarwewijk does not need us to know what to do; Tarwewijk knows exactly what to do. Do it yourself Tarwewijk! We propose a project stop, a concept stop and a subsidy stop for initiatives from outside of Tarwewijk. The people of Tarwewijk know how to do things; they know how to start a business, they know how to work around regulations. We trust in the power of the people in Tarwewijk".^[Quoted from (Deutinger).]

This example shows how urgency, and one's true capability of living up to it, is an important self-evaluation criterion. For less experienced people, however, it could also be suffocating. Art and design educators are faced with the dilemma that they want and need to foster urgent work (as opposed to art and design that is, for example, just complacent and decorative), but at the same time need to give room, especially in undergraduate education, for "pre-urgency": the opportunity for students the opportunity to develop their voice and experiment without urgency as a binary requirement. Correspondingly, there can be "post-urgency" in works of artists and designers. Examples could include Andy Warhol, who - after enabling a queer and underground community in his Factory period and surviving Valerie Solanas' gun assault - became a high-society artist who factually printed his celebrity portraits as money; or Nam June Paik, who resorted, after having radically deconstructed and reimagined electronic mass media in the 1960s and 1970s, to building decorative video sculptures which allowed him a better lifestyle than the unheated lofts that had ruined his health. 

The crisis of traditional publishing and media industries may be explained with the high amount of non-urgent publishing it involves while urgent publishing conversely moved on to other channels (including memes, YouTube, zines). And, to clarify again, "urgent publishing" by itself does not say anything about the quality let alone the ethics of a publication or act of publishing, but it only describes its performativity.^[Or, to borrow from Peirce via (Diederichsen)'s theory of "post-popular arts", its indexicality.] The subject matters and visual-cultural language of YouTube "truthers", Covid-19 deniers and trolls of any kind are urgent, otherwise they would not find their audiences - and would the subscriber numbers of even semi-obscure YouTubers not exceed those of large newspapers by the factor of ten and more. 

When I moved to the Netherlands in 2006, before the financial crisis and the slashing of Dutch public art funding, I subjectively experienced most contemporary Dutch art - particularly what could be seen at art schools graduation shows - as lacking urgency and tending to be visually decorative.^[On the popular contemporary Dutch art blog (trendbeheer), many examples of such art can still be found.] The unfortunate and perhaps perverse logic of social, economic and political crisis and divides is that they re-instill urgency into arts and publishing practices, as the aforementioned examples from the Weimar Republic to Trumpist America demonstrate. In these times, the criteria I proposed for a working definition of urgent publishing - responsiveness, reaching intended communities, emerging from communities and their needs, fostering identification, and (to some extent) spreading virally - will hopefully become subject to discussions, critique, improvement and alternatives.





# References

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