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ArjunJoshiFirstEssay 3 - 30 Nov 2019 - Main.EbenMoglen
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Downloading Dissent, Uploading Identity | | | For 67 days, the people of Jammu and Kashmir have been made invisible, not visually but communally. The absolutist powers of a State refashion law to simply a vehicle to erase identities. For most part, this identity is most powerfully expressed through the internet. But the remote control lies in the hands of those who control not just Kashmir, but the idea of Kashmiriness. In the internet age, attention is a scare resource. As Kasturirangan argues, the way to control minds is by controlling attention, whether by making people focus where businesses and governments want them to (white holes) or by creating black holes of information where they would rather people did not look. There is absolutely no advantage in making that black hole permanent because attention is fickle and it keeps shifting from one spectacle to the next. Smart governments and businesses are constantly creating and destroying white holes and black holes. From managing expectations about jobs to creating new dystopic images about anti-nationals, every modern state is in the business of constant focusing and refocusing of citizens’ attentions.
Till then, for us, everything has returned to normalcy in Kashmir. Or so they say.
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I think the draft doesn't really get to its own thinking until the end. In that sense this seems like a good first draft to me: it has cleared away the brush and disclosed the subject. Your point about the contemporary state's "business of constant focusing and refocusing of citizens' attention" is a valuable pathway for more thinking. This, rather than the facts we both know and can be briefly stated, is where your own focus should be in the next draft. The illustration is a fine and politically-crucial one, but you are writing not only about what it means in Kashmir for this to be how it is in Kashmir, but what it means for the world. That's where your idea takes you, and it is right.
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