The ‘Kiss of Love’: Politics of Communication and Perceptions.

                                                                                                              John Samuel

‘The Kiss of Love’ is politics in search of new possibilities and poetry. The ‘Kiss of Love’ signifies not only new modes of protest but also the emerging crisis in conventional politics.   Recently in the state of Kerala in India, there has been a mobilisation on face-book against the emerging fascism that begins to threaten young people from hugging or public display of affection. While on the face-book, tens of thousands supported the mode of protest against the fascist  moral musclemen on the street, in reality there were only few dozen young people turned up for the protest in Kochi and thousands of  ‘moral muscle-men’ along with ‘moral’ police landed up there to deal with the ‘threat’ of ‘kiss of love’.

So in real world  the ‘Kiss of love’ protest fizzled out. But in the virtual world the protest was phenomenally successful. The national and international media covered the event at a time when media often ignore big rallies and mass mobilisation of conventional political parties. A small event in the real world became global news, largely due to its big presence  in the virtual world, on the social network and  due to the new possibilities of such a protest. The idea of ‘Kiss of Love’ went viral and young people in many other cities of India demonstrated this new form of protest by public display of affection.

 What has ‘Kiss of love’ to do with  politics? It is neither about kiss nor about love.  However, the new forms of mobilisation on the ‘virtual spaces’ and it expressions signify  an exasperation of the conventional modes of politics,( largely driven by conventional political party institutions) and action. In many ways, such modes of mobilisation and protests in different parts of the world, including  the 'occupy the wall streets', indicate a generational shift in political discourse at all levels.  This shift is evident at all level of power-relationships and responses to power.

The political process and institutional forms that emerged in the post-second war era is getting saturated in multiple ways.  In the last fifteen years, many scholars and researchers tried to theorize the multiple shifts in the context of economic, technological and social modes of globalisation.  Thomas Friedman discovered that the ‘the world is flat’ on the swanky ‘world-class’ campus of an Indian IT company – Infosys- in Bangalore.  He might not have had an opportunity to see ‘flat’ world in the slums few kilometers away from the ‘world’ class IT Companies in India. However, Thomas Friedman was indicating a shift in the dominant modes of perceptions.

When the mode of technology changes, the modes of communication changes; when modes of communication changes, modes of perception changes; when modes of perception changes, modes of thinking changes; when the modes of thinking changes, modes of action changes; and when the modes of thinking and action changes, modes of organising and institutions changes. And all these change the modes of power relationships in the society and countries and between countries. This changes politics at the national and international level. However, such shifts often create its own ‘reaction’ on the ground and the real demonstration of such shifts often take few decades.

While the invention of Printing Press and the process of Bible Translation and the new literacy movement from the 17 to 20 the century changed the politics and poetry of the world and influenced the world in the last four hundred years in multiple ways, the paradigm shift in the technology and modes of communication that emerged towards the end of twentieth century will affect the politics, economy and society of the 21^st century in multiple ways. The printed word gave rise to interpretative possibilities and rise of new poetry, philosophy, politics and organisational forms. The enlightenment in the 17-18nth century and the revolutions that followed and the formation of the nation-states in the last 150 years all would have been accompanied by shifts in technology, communications, modes of mobilisation and modes of organising politics and economy.

However, in the last fifteen years, the fleeting words have taken over the printed word; the fleeting images have taken over the ‘still photography’. The fleeting words, flying images and the options of fast-forward communication changes the modes of love, modes of living, modes of institutions and mode of politics.  Such shifts in mode of communication, modes of love and living create new forms of individuations and negotiations of relationships.  In terms of family, the primary mode of social organisation, there is a shift from join-family to nuclear family to the post-nuclear family. In a post-nuclear family setting, the idea of people living under the ‘same roof’ or under a defined political economy has changed.  Now, in many parts of the world, the members of the family are ‘dispersed’ in space and sometime even in time- but connected on the social network. Hence, birthdays and marriage anniversaries are celebrated on the face book. People express love and kiss on ‘whats up’. People fall in love on the net and break love also on the net.  ‘Love’ or ‘sex’ can also be bought  on the information highways- and people can get hooked on the face-book.   People conduct meetings and conference and prayers on Skype. Gods too are roaming around the world on social networks!!  The Pope is palpable on the face-book. People get blessed and biased on the social network.  Wikipedia’ displaced the old world charm of ‘Encyclopedia Britannica’ that emerged during the colonial modes of organising knowledge and power.  Information and knowledge are on the finger tips and on ‘touch’ screen.  Libraries are increasingly becoming ‘achieves’.  Young people spend more time on face-book or mobile phones and they are more connected with distant people, rather than those sitting next to them.  People ‘get lost’ without their mobile phones and feel ‘insecure’ without net-connectivity.

The point is that modes of communication influences modes of loving and living  and modes of living influences modes of organisations and changes in modes of organisations shifts the modes of politics at various levels.  Hence, politics – as we know today- is undergoing deeper shifts at all levels from the national to the international.

Corroding Structures and dissolving disciplines

The conventional modes of top-down structures began to dissolve from the bottom and organisations started corroding and collapsing from within. In the new age of communication, there is no space for conventional ‘discipline’ of information management or calibrated communication.  When individuals are empowered in terms of communication and networking, traditional modes of institutional disciplines get dissolved.  Hence, the earlier practice  of 'structured' organisation through cadre parties or top-down management of people and information no longer work. This has made many of those organisation that managed politics through centrally managed structured cadre institutions are facing an institutional and political crisis. In the network age of communication and relationships and individuation, the 'disciplined and 'obedient cadres cease to exist.'  Interests and ideals get collapsed and incentives become the motives that bind modes of mobilisation within the institutional structures of one or other kind. The politics of communication is fast moving from the one-sides 'broad-casting' mode by the conventional News Papers and TV to multi-lateral dialogues, conversations and crowd sourcing. And this results in to 'flash mobs' and 'instant' responses and 'imaginative possibilities' and 'leader-less' modes of mobilizations. This also gives individual a sense of new freedom to express, to connect and to communicate on his/her own terms. Such flexible options of communications, engagement and multiple-lives( an introvert person in real life may be an extrovert on the virtual world; an 'obedient' child in real world may be wild on the net; a conventional wife in a patriarchal family may be very 'unconventional in the virtual world). This multiple choices and options that new media, social networks and virtual world offer create its own different power dynamics in  the real world. People can mobilize on the net beyond the conventional constraints of time and space.'  A lonely person sitting in a lonely location anywhere in the world can be a part of an internet community, Google group or a social network that help him to communicate and influence. Hence, there is a crisis in politics at the local, national and international level. However, such a crisis often creates multiple responses from multiple actors.

  Crisis in power-relations and the established structures of power often give rise to ‘reactive politics’ and ‘reactionary politics’ as well as ‘search for new politics’.  The multiple shifts evoke multiple responses in terms of sensibility and politics. When there are radical shifts in communications and modes of living, the most evident reactive tendency will be the assertion of ‘tradition’ and ‘conservative values’. And the new shifts get pushed back by conservative values, and ‘traditional’ political process.  In the history, whenever there were instances of multiple shifts in communications, knowledge, living and modes of mobilisation, there were oppressive tendencies and the reactionary politics.  However, such conservative backlash may not be able to survive new forms of shifts fuelled by technology, communication, economy and modes of organizing.

Often the conservative and reactionary elements in politics also use the same kind of technology to fight the new values that accompany the shifts in the very same technology. Hence, the ultra-conservative sectarianism to all forms of extremism makes use of technology to communicate the reactionary values that they represent. And new modes of mobile phones help people to exhibit any acts of violence or terror anywhere in the world within seconds across the world.  The new media eclipsed the old media. News papers- as we know now may disappear in this century.  There are much faster ways to communicate and the notions of narrow casting and broad –casting in the news paper era is vanishing.  Individuals and virtual networks can broad cast or narrow cast or community –cast, as they like.