…best use of Burroughs in a contemporary political discussion goes to k-punk.

One dimension of the whole “cartoon protest” affair that seems to have been largely overlooked is the significance of the distinction between use and mention. Lenin, for example, has cheerfully adopted Chabert’s tic of decorating blog posts about racism and imperialism with jpegs of anti-semitic Nazi propaganda (suggestive juxtaposition with stills from Buffy the Vampire Slayer an optional extra), but neither is involved thereby in promoting or endorsing anti-semitism.

So while it can be plausibly argued that the original publication of the cartoons in Jyllands-Posten used those cartoons to promote an anti-Muslim agenda, it is not clear that their republication in, say, the Guardian, in the context of a discussion of their content and import, would necessarily have the same effect. The Guardian won’t publish them in any context whatsoever, of course, but the reason is likely to be nervousness about the repercussions of such an action rather than a principled refusal to promulgate racist lies.

The value of the distinction between use and mention was presumably perfectly well understood by the group of Danish Muslims who took copies of the cartoons on a tour of Muslim countries, looking for sympathetic outrage: they would not have expected to be attacked themselves for making reproductions of the material and displaying it to others. But, then again, the Jordanian tabloid editor who republished the cartoons for purposes of illustration was duly sacked, apparently because “the article was being used by a hostile Western media to show that the fuss over the cartoons was overblown and that Arab papers were themselves reprinting them” (source: The Peninsula).

It should be noted that the use/mention distinction is inherently unstable, as Derrida points out at some length in Limited Inc. It’s understood that when someone like Hitchens says, ”some would call my opponent a crook, a swindler and a craven apologist for theocratic fascism; I will not indulge such smears, but…”, he is employing a disingenuous rhetorical device: no-one can seriously doubt that the insult is intended, even as it is disavowed. So when other European newspapers give their reasons for reprinting the cartoons as the defence of free speech and solidarity with Jyllands-Posten, the excuse that they themselves do not really mean to say what the cartoons themselves say seems a little thin: what they mean to say is, apparently, that Muslims threaten free speech, and are a violent enemy against whom one should stand in solidarity with others who are similarly threatened. Images of a slavering, scimitar-wielding, barbarously bewhiskered and beturbaned Prophet do not exactly contradict this message.

Nevertheless, it is worth holding out for the possibility of reasoned discussion; and some citation of the cartoons seems a necessary prerequisite for such discussion. Otherwise, one risks getting sucked into of those interminable, irremediable relationship-breakdown spats that threatens to culminate in a brisk and potentially deadly exchange of kitchenware: “what? what did I say now?” - “you know what you said!” - “no, really, what’s the problem here? I mean, what the fuck is your problem?” - “don’t swear at me! you never show me any respect!”, et cetera ad nauseam. Nova police, arrest these men.