Either you're with us

My comments' box here at Blogger seems to be able to swallow comments rather than publish them - but one was rescued in summary and sent to me by e-mail in stead:

The commentator, R, had a striking experience with Danish reporter Camilla Stockmann's writings. A few years ago Stockmann covered an event in R's own professional surroundings, and her account struck him as arrogant and condenscending as she was portraying his colleagues as members of some peculiar, exotic tribe in a remote country (which, in fact, they are not).

Then, via links in my previous blogpost, R read Stockmann's account of Alexander Brener and Barbara Shurz' provocative appearances in Copenhagen last year. As it happens, R himself has encountered Alexander Brener live in Ljubljana, Slovenia, a couple of years ago where Brener turned up at a public meeting where Brener approached Slavoj Zizek, who served as a moderator at the event, and spat Zizek right in the face, twice. Reading Stockmann's reportage R suddenly found himself siding with her, partly grateful for getting some more information about Brener, partly having his feelings of contempt for the man confirmed.

So what R is suggesting is that Stockmann's writing style is certainly able to communicate a sense of facination, but also a - cheap, says R - sense of identification at the expense of people who are portrayed in the journalistic coverage without getting heard.

I've returned to Stockmann's text on several occasions now, so it may not come as a surprise that I tend to agree with R. Stockmann's article immediately caught my interest when I originally saw it in the paper, but as I was reading it I felt invited to develop contempt for the two provos, even to pity them. And they may have deserved it, the text does make a good case that they do deserve it, but the reassuring or affirmative drive of the narrative against the two still seemed unfair. Let me stop here, though, and just link back to October06.