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Forum 2017-18

Forum 2017-18 The Agony of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs

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  1. A few links regarding the controversy over the factual integrity of Daisey's monologue, below:

    A 2012 CBS story, “The Dark Side of Shiny Apple Products,” on Mike Daisey’s performance piece (with excerpts), positioning it within the frame of investigative journalism:

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3445_162-57367950/

    The original adapted-for-radio broadcast of Mike Daisey’s piece on This American Life:

    http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory

    The subsequent retraction of the broadcast, itself taking up an entire episode of This American Life:

    http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction?act=0#play

    A Washington Post ‘opinion blog’ detailing the ‘truth vs. facts’ of Daisey’s performance:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/mike-daisey-truth-vs-facts/2012/03/16/gIQA0T3uGS_blog.html

    A New York Times article, “In China, Human Costs are Built into an iPad,” by reporter Charles Duhigg:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all

    A handwringing piece by James Fallows of The Atlantic on the fallout from the Daisey affair:

    http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-sad-and-infuriating-mike-daisey-case/254661/

    And one of the few critical examinations of the story, drawing attention to some of the contexts for the firestorm over Daisey’s show, including corporate support for National Public Radio shows like Marketplace:

    http://theatreideas.blogspot.co.uk/2012_04_15_archive.html


    In light of the NPR episode, and in keeping with our focus on the environmental aspect of media communications, a few points for consideration:

    - Daisey’s play belongs to a genre of performance monologues that includes the work of writers and actors such as Wallace Shawn and Spaulding Gray, as well as that of activist filmmakers such as Michael Moore. Comparing Daisey with these artists, we might ask what the ‘rules’ of the genre entail.

    - Consider the various institutions implicated in the Daisey affair – corporations, journalism outlets, governments, trade associations, NGOs, etc. Exercise: draw a ‘map of the field,’ Bourdieu-style, involving the various players in the story.

    - The retraction episode aired on This American Life lays great emphasis on Daisey’s departure from the facts of what he witnessed first-hand during his visit to Foxconn in Shenzen. In both journalist and theatre circles Daisey’s inventions are often referred to as a ‘betrayal.’ What is the nature of this betrayal?

    - The Daisey affair has parallels with a famous episode involving the testimonial narrative I, Rigoberta Menchú, the story of a peasant woman recounting her witness of US-supported government killings in 1980s Guatemala. With the Menchú story in mind, it may be useful to discuss the implications of truth-telling as a function of personal life-narrative vs. the accountability of collective testimony.

     
  2. This was the article I mentioned in class, about the garment company that tried to pay more ethical wages: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/factory-apparel-industry-ethical/546419/

    - It presents an alternative to the problem that Lucy raised, about ethical consumption being a luxury: consumers only have to pay 90 cents more.

    - On the other hand, this could allow consumers (admittedly a very generalised category in my usage) to feel ethical while still underpaying labour. It allows them to feel good while overlooking the still-existing gulf, between wages and the socially necessary labour time which goes into producing a commodity. 'Living-wage' is better than before, tripling wages in this case - but is this good enough? 

    - It blames exploitative conditions on structural processes rather than villanising certain players: "I think what we learned from Alta Gracia is that managers often are tasked with the industry's dirty work. They are given an untenable amount of money to produce goods, and then they have to push workers to work off the clock, and long garments."

    - In facing such systemic forces, any sense of agency thus disappears and there is a resulting sense of determinism and fatalism. On the one hand, this absolves us from playing the 'blame game' which isn't always productive. On the other, it lulls us into a false sense of inertia since no single agent is responsible and can be seen as a starting point to improve the system.

     

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