Comments on: The room of knowledge

By: Ann

Ann — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Salam Navid,
Of course no situation is exactly comparable to another one. But I think we can see how these three situations have a really similar background, that is: the lack of being informed. Yes, absolutely, I have been in situations in for instance my own country Belgium where it was clear that people were not well informed. But then that’s because they often choose not to be better informed, whereas the case is different in Iran. I understand what you mean, but I think you are analyzing this text from an academic point of view, whereas this text is a column; not a lengthy analysis.

By: Navid

Navid — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Ann,

You’re definitely right that citizens of democratic societies have more opportunities to broaden their perspectives if they wish (however maybe we shouldn’t forget that the “whole room of knowledge on the Internet” is also conditioned by certain power relations which that room of knowledge presupposes and constitutes); and I emphasize again that I do feel sympathy with your main point. However, what I wished to point out was rather the problem of (mis)representation. Your text takes three similar “situations” and generalizes ‘what they have in common’ over all other situations. But such situations are totally contingent. During your travels you might have bumped to radically different “situations” as well. Or one might encounter quite similar situations in any other time-space. But when a text is constructed from the point of view of an “anthropologist-observer” the very contingency of the sample situations will go unnoticed because those people the observer has encountered will be seen as “informants” of a (fundamentally different) culture and this is exactly what allows the writer of such a text to over-generalize her/his sample situations and derive quasi-necessary conclusions from them.

By: Ann

Ann — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Salam Navid,
Thanks for your comment. I have not said that disinformation is exclusively Iranian. Of course, you could say that in the West, some people are disinformed as well, depending on what media they rely on. But if someone living in a democracry with freedom of press, wants to know more than what ‘regular’ media inform him with, he or she can do that, because there’s a whole room of knowledge on the internet. There is always the freedom to broaden one’s perspective.

By: Navid

Navid — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I do feel sympathy with your point about disinformation but I really don’t know to what extent you can generalize your examples?! and to what extent this kind of situations are exclusively “Iranian”! to be honest I feel a kind of unconscious misrepresentation of the Iranian situation in your works (which I’ve been following on TR). A misrepresentation which probably has it’s roots in the assumption of an “anthropological” observer’s point of view which leads to the construction of an Other once you are temporally and spatially far from your “field” and “informants”. i

By: Abi

Abi — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

well, It is very important that Iranian citizens could have acces to news by internet without any censsor. As every one knew, the news which broadcast by regime media completly change and many of Iranian never could access to the reality behind it.

The Iranian constitutional revolution at around 1910 also shown us the importance of using a new technology to getting the correct information which
in that case was telegraph.

fortunately, using internet many of us could get the latest news and videos during protest from streets, in order to be able to arrange the protest time and place.

I think one of the main things that Iranian needs to be able to fight against this regime is the real information which is possible true an internet without any censor.