"...No education is politically neutral...We must combine theory and affirm and demonstrate pedagogical practices engaged in creating a new language, rupturing disciplinary boundaries, decentering authority, and rewriting the institutional and discursive borderlands in which politics becomes a condition for reasserting the relationship between agency, power, and struggle...By recognizing subjectivity and the limits of identity, we disrupt that objectification that is so necessary in a culture of domination... We must insist that students participate in education and not be passive consumers... I tell students not to confuse informality with a lack of seriousness, to respect the process...In principle, the classroom ought to be a place where things are said seriously - not without pleasure, not without joy - but seriously, and for serious consideration..." -
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress -Education as the Practice of Freedom
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
A Reply to "Liberals Undermine Traditional Family Values"
I usually ignore the opinions in our university newspaper, but today there was a columan that was difficult to ignore:
Liberals Undermine Traditional Family Values
My reply to the column (keeping in mind that there is a 250 word limit:
An independent reply to Stephen Burnett and his Democrat opponents as expressed in “Liberals Undermine Traditional Family Values”:
The problem as we see it is not whether Bush stole the election or Kerry was morally unsuitable to lead our nation. Instead, we recognize the failure of the democratic system that is the foundation of our great nation. In a democracy is it unreasonable to expect “every” vote to be counted? Is it sour-grapes to insist that those votes continue to be counted so that we can get a final tally?
Of course Burnett in his column moves quickly away from the real issue of democratic process to distraction issues like the poorly-defined “family-values” and social-morals. We understand that you would like to legislate our personal lifestyles based upon your religious beliefs, but insist that you first re-read the constitution and Bill of Rights to search for where this is considered to be a legal role for the government. Are we not still fighting a war in Afghanistan against a political system that legislated religious morality.
Lastly, I would encourage everyone to honestly think about the significance of scientific research and its benefits to our society. An example of the neo-conservatives’ outright contempt for science is exhibited in Burnett’s comparison of the groundbreaking scientific research of Alfred Kinsey to the pornographic peddlers Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt. No wonder so many Nobel Prize winning scientists lined up in opposition against President Bush in the last election. Burnett’s position is symptomatic of the larger neo-conservative "kill-or-be-killed desire to undermine public debate based on fact." (Suskind, Ron. “Reality-Based Reporting.” Salon. October 20, 2004. )
----------------------------------------------------
Of course my response was limited by time and space--but feel free to add your opinions at opinions@kykernel.com
Liberals Undermine Traditional Family Values
My reply to the column (keeping in mind that there is a 250 word limit:
An independent reply to Stephen Burnett and his Democrat opponents as expressed in “Liberals Undermine Traditional Family Values”:
The problem as we see it is not whether Bush stole the election or Kerry was morally unsuitable to lead our nation. Instead, we recognize the failure of the democratic system that is the foundation of our great nation. In a democracy is it unreasonable to expect “every” vote to be counted? Is it sour-grapes to insist that those votes continue to be counted so that we can get a final tally?
Of course Burnett in his column moves quickly away from the real issue of democratic process to distraction issues like the poorly-defined “family-values” and social-morals. We understand that you would like to legislate our personal lifestyles based upon your religious beliefs, but insist that you first re-read the constitution and Bill of Rights to search for where this is considered to be a legal role for the government. Are we not still fighting a war in Afghanistan against a political system that legislated religious morality.
Lastly, I would encourage everyone to honestly think about the significance of scientific research and its benefits to our society. An example of the neo-conservatives’ outright contempt for science is exhibited in Burnett’s comparison of the groundbreaking scientific research of Alfred Kinsey to the pornographic peddlers Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt. No wonder so many Nobel Prize winning scientists lined up in opposition against President Bush in the last election. Burnett’s position is symptomatic of the larger neo-conservative "kill-or-be-killed desire to undermine public debate based on fact." (Suskind, Ron. “Reality-Based Reporting.” Salon. October 20, 2004. )
----------------------------------------------------
Of course my response was limited by time and space--but feel free to add your opinions at opinions@kykernel.com
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Joke of the Day
(courtesy of Juno Levy)
An old Jewish man lived alone in the country. He wanted to dig his potato garden but it was very laborious work as the ground was rock hard. His only son, Saul, who used to help him, was in prison for Insider Trading and Stock Fraud. The old man wrote his son a letter and described his predicament:
A few days later the old man received a letter from his son:
At 4 am the next morning, a team of FBI agents and local police arrived at the old man's house and dug up the entire garden area without finding any money or stocks. They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son:
An old Jewish man lived alone in the country. He wanted to dig his potato garden but it was very laborious work as the ground was rock hard. His only son, Saul, who used to help him, was in prison for Insider Trading and Stock Fraud. The old man wrote his son a letter and described his predicament:
Dear Solly, I am feeling pretty bad because it looks like I won't be able to plant my potato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. If you were here, all my troubles would be over. I know you would dig the plot for me.
Love, Papa.
A few days later the old man received a letter from his son:
Dear Papa,
For heaven's sake Dad, don't dig up that garden, That's where I buried the money and stocks.
Love,
Solly.
At 4 am the next morning, a team of FBI agents and local police arrived at the old man's house and dug up the entire garden area without finding any money or stocks. They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son:
Dear Papa,
Go ahead and plant the potatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love,
Your son, Solly.
Defining Community; Conceptual Awareness; Textual Positions; H.L. Goodall
(reflective-teaching notes)
We had some great questions about the term "community" when discussing Lippard's essay (and in your responses) and I thought I would just throw in an 'official' definition from Webster's online dictionary(which should be considered as just one of many definitions) of "community" ... we will be contesting and exploring this term throughout the semester (especially in the 3rd unit) ... thanks to those who attempted to tackle/discuss Lippard's challenging and problematic text.
Remember a word like community, democracy, home, love, place, freedom, identity, etc... does not have just 'one' meaning and there are continuous struggles over what they do mean... this is why, in your writing, you want to define and contextualize complex (problematic/contested) words/concepts/ideas.
------------------------------------------------------
Main Entry: com·mu·ni·ty
Pronunciation: k&-'myü-n&-tE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ties
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English comunete, from Middle French comuneté, from Latin communitat-, communitas, from communis
Date: 14th century
1 : a unified body of individuals: as a : STATE, COMMONWEALTH b : the people with common interests living in a particular area; broadly : the area itself (the problems of a large community) c : an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location d : a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society (a community of retired persons) e : a group linked by a common policy f : a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political interests (the international community) g : a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society (the academic community)
2 : society at large
3 a : joint ownership or participation (community of goods) b : common character : LIKENESS (community of interests) c : social activity : FELLOWSHIP d : a social state or condition
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Words/concepts are defined through the context of their usage and their relation to/interaction with other words/concepts.
According to H.L. Goodall our "textual positions”—“language choices you make to represent what you see” (134)--the selection and arrangement of verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs—also decisions of use or not using, humor, sarcasm, irony, and inventive analogies/metaphors. Provides clues to the way in which you “see” the world and how you act in it. How you use adjectives, adverbs and the level of emotional intensity are all signs of what you have lived through (experiences) and helps others to relate to you and your positions (or not).
Goodall, H.L. Writing the New Ethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.
Furthermore, these words/concepts go through a process of social accretion in which the more they are used the more meanings attach themselves to our usage of these words/concepts.
Allan Irving and Ken Moffatt in their essay Intoxicated Midnight and Carnival Classrooms: The Professor as Poet state that:
"Dialogue in Bakhtin's view is more than just two people talking; the more a word is used in our speech the more contexts and nuances it gathers and the word's meanings proliferate with each encounter. Our utterances (another of Bakhtin's words) do not forget but rather carry fragments from all our previous speech acts as well as the significance from the current context and this includes even forms of intonation. All utterances are double-voiced, bringing meanings with them, perhaps trailing them, but spoken into the here and now into the ongoing dialogues of our lives. 'Every word,' Bakhtin wrote, 'gives off the scent of a profession, a genre, a current, a party, a particular work, a particular person, a generation, an era, a day, and an hour. Every word smells of the context and contexts in which it has lived its intense social life'"
Goodall, H.L. “Voice, Reflexivity, and Character: The Construction of Identities in Texts.” Writing the New Ethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2000: 131-141.
The main questions of this text are laid out in the first paragraph of the excerpt:
The rest of the excerpt is then a response to these beginning questions. What are some of the conclusions that Goodall comes to in this essay?
Read the second chapter out loud—powerful, loaded, confusing... needs to be explained and unpacked ... bring definitions of major terms in the first sentence in that second paragraph.
Definitions:
Persona: (1909, Latin) 1: a character assumed by an author in a written work 2a: an individual’s social facade or front that [esp. psychoanalytic theory] reflects the role in life that the individual is playing. 2b: the personality that a person (as an actor or politician) projects in public.
Ethnography: (1834, French) the study and systematic recording of human cultures; also: a descriptive work produced from such research.
Self: (13th century) noun: 1a: the entire person of an individual. 1b: the realization or embodiment of an abstraction. 2: an individual’s typical character or behavior. 3: the union of elements (as body, emotions, thoughts and sensations) that constitute the individuality and identity of a person. 4: personal interest or advantage. 5: material that is part of an individual organism.
Voice: (14th century) 4a: wish, choice, or opinion openly or formally expressed. 4b: right of expression; also, influential power (she has a voice in the matter)
Narrative: (1566) noun: 3: the representation in art of an event or story; also: an example of such a representation. [see story] Story: (Latin, 13c, historia) 1. archaic: history. 2a: an account of incidents or events. 2b: a statement regarding the facts pertinent to a situation in question. 4: a widely circulated rumor. 5: LIE; FALSEHOOD.
Character: (14 century) [1: the word character originally refers to the process of engraving, writing, symbol-making. 2: then the meaning of the word shifts to that of representing or portraying, especially in an imagistic sense 3: a feature used to separate distinguishable things into categories 4: the complex of mental and ethical traits marking and often individualizing a person, group, or nation 5 REPUTATION]
Rhetoric: (14th century): 1: the art of speaking or writing effectively [2: the principles and rules of composition] also see, discourse. Discourse: (14th century): 1: archaic the capacity of orderly thought or procedure 2: verbal interchange of ideas, CONVERSATION 3a: a formal and orderly and usually extended expression of thought on a subject 3b: connected speech or writing 4: social familiarity [relates to the rules of ~ ]
Ethos: (1851, Greek) the distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution.
(dictionary source: Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition)
Now go through the rest of the second paragraph.
Writerly and Readerly Construct?
Writerly Construct—pages 132-134
... character emerges from the prose intersection of three “positionings” or ways of discovering—and revealing—the influences that shape who you are and what you think about, value, and are prone to believe and do (Goodall, 132).
1) Fixed positions
2) Subjective positions
3) Textual Positions
Page 132—“fixed positions”—personal facts that might influence how you see things, e.g. age, gender, class, race, nationality—factors that don’t change during your writing—often taken for granted.
Page 133—“subjective positions”—“life history and personal experiences” that also have an effect on our research. Usually derived from deeply felt lived experiences because they recall self-defining moments, decisions or turning points in the development of identity/persona. Example, Birth, death, divorce, natural disasters, war, violence, love or illness.
Page 134—“textual positions”—“language choices you make to represent what you see” … selection and arrangement of verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs—also decisions of use or not using, humor, sarcasm, irony, and inventive analogies/metaphors. Provides clues to the way in which you “see” the world and how you act in it. How you use adjectives, adverbs and the level of emotional intensity are all signs of what you have lived through (experiences) and helps others to relate to you and your positions (or not).
Page 134—“reflexivity”—begins with asking yourself the same questions that guide your own analysis.
Page 134—reader/writer dialogue—The writer tells the story, the reader interprets it, they communicate back and forth and the story is co-constructed by the reader and the writer. The reader basically compares themselves with the story and the characters/writers experiences/views.
Readerly Construct:
On page 134: “texts don’t belong to writers, they belong to readers”
Need of writers to be aware of possible interpretations of their words—careful construction of sentences, paragraphs—contextualization of information, mappings of broader connections and references—development of dialogic and dialectic relationships with the reader—awareness of intended audience’s experience/worldview.
“And that doesn’t even get close to the influence that you, the reader, have on what is happening between us, on this page, now (Goodall, 141).”
Stuart Hall’s Three Ways of Reading an Encoded Textual Message:
• dominant (or 'hegemonic') reading: the reader fully shares the text's code and accepts and reproduces the preferred reading (a reading which may not have been the result of any conscious intention on the part of the author(s)) - in such a stance the code seems 'natural' and 'transparent';
• negotiated reading: the reader partly shares the text's code and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but sometimes resists and modifies it in a way which reflects their own position, experiences and interests (local and personal conditions may be seen as exceptions to the general rule) - this position involves contradictions;
• oppositional ('counter-hegemonic') reading: the reader, whose social situation places them in a directly oppositional relation to the dominant code, understands the preferred reading but does not share the text's code and rejects this reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of reference (radical, feminist etc.) (e.g. when watching a television broadcast produced on behalf of a political party they normally vote against).
Take a look at Mikhail Bakhtin’s quote on page 140 ... what does this say about our notion of the individual construction of meaning and gathering of knowledge—especially in the sense of creating a writerly persona. What do you think of Goodall’s statement that “Voice, like consciousness, is derivative”?
The soul of good writing:
... the “soul” of good writing is the deployment of a writer’s “coming to know” perspective on selves, contexts, and others. It is the substance—both argumentative and poetic—out of which we create, constitute, and live meaningfully within the stories of our lives. (Goodall, 137)
REFLEXIVITY:
... the process of personally and academically reflecting on lived experiences in ways that reveal the deep connections between the writer and her or his subject. To be “reflexive” means to turn back on our self the lens through which we are interpreting the world. It “implies a shift in our understanding of data and its collection—something that is accomplished through detachment, internal dialogue, and constant (and intensive) scrutiny of ‘what I know’ and ‘how I know it’” (Goodall, 137)
“Reflexivity begins with asking yourself the same questions that guide your analysis and interpretation of others. These questions should be though of as navigation instruments, because asking them puts you on a particular language highway wherein the route itself is defined by words that otherwise might not have ever been spoken. (Goodall, 141-142)
ORIGINALITY:
A very important statement by Goodall is when he says that “there are no truly original voices” (141). What is disturbing about that statement? What is encouraging? So then, what does it mean when someone says that a writer has an original voice?
“When says ‘hers is an original voice,” what they usually mean is ‘here is someone who is writing in—filling in—a vital gap between all that I have read and lived through, and the result is something that speaks to me in a way that no other voice ever has.’ In many ways, this sentiment is very much like meeting someone you are suddenly and strongly attracted to, in whose shared conversation you find new meaning, in whose voice, in whose questions, you find a path to answers you are searching for. The voice of the other in this relationship is “original” because it speaks to your heart, because you haven’t heard it before, and because you closely identify with it. (141)
“Originality in writing, as in all relationships, is never a solo act (Goodall, 141)”
You might have your students approach their course readings by analyzing how authors' construct their authorial character/rhetorical ethos (writerly construct, using Goodall's hints). Also encourage them to be reflective about how they are responding to the readings—what in their experience/background shapes the way they respond to the essays (readerly construct).
We had some great questions about the term "community" when discussing Lippard's essay (and in your responses) and I thought I would just throw in an 'official' definition from Webster's online dictionary(which should be considered as just one of many definitions) of "community" ... we will be contesting and exploring this term throughout the semester (especially in the 3rd unit) ... thanks to those who attempted to tackle/discuss Lippard's challenging and problematic text.
Remember a word like community, democracy, home, love, place, freedom, identity, etc... does not have just 'one' meaning and there are continuous struggles over what they do mean... this is why, in your writing, you want to define and contextualize complex (problematic/contested) words/concepts/ideas.
------------------------------------------------------
Main Entry: com·mu·ni·ty
Pronunciation: k&-'myü-n&-tE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ties
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English comunete, from Middle French comuneté, from Latin communitat-, communitas, from communis
Date: 14th century
1 : a unified body of individuals: as a : STATE, COMMONWEALTH b : the people with common interests living in a particular area; broadly : the area itself (the problems of a large community) c : an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location d : a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society (a community of retired persons) e : a group linked by a common policy f : a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political interests (the international community) g : a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society (the academic community)
2 : society at large
3 a : joint ownership or participation (community of goods) b : common character : LIKENESS (community of interests) c : social activity : FELLOWSHIP d : a social state or condition
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Words/concepts are defined through the context of their usage and their relation to/interaction with other words/concepts.
According to H.L. Goodall our "textual positions”—“language choices you make to represent what you see” (134)--the selection and arrangement of verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs—also decisions of use or not using, humor, sarcasm, irony, and inventive analogies/metaphors. Provides clues to the way in which you “see” the world and how you act in it. How you use adjectives, adverbs and the level of emotional intensity are all signs of what you have lived through (experiences) and helps others to relate to you and your positions (or not).
Goodall, H.L. Writing the New Ethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.
Furthermore, these words/concepts go through a process of social accretion in which the more they are used the more meanings attach themselves to our usage of these words/concepts.
Allan Irving and Ken Moffatt in their essay Intoxicated Midnight and Carnival Classrooms: The Professor as Poet state that:
"Dialogue in Bakhtin's view is more than just two people talking; the more a word is used in our speech the more contexts and nuances it gathers and the word's meanings proliferate with each encounter. Our utterances (another of Bakhtin's words) do not forget but rather carry fragments from all our previous speech acts as well as the significance from the current context and this includes even forms of intonation. All utterances are double-voiced, bringing meanings with them, perhaps trailing them, but spoken into the here and now into the ongoing dialogues of our lives. 'Every word,' Bakhtin wrote, 'gives off the scent of a profession, a genre, a current, a party, a particular work, a particular person, a generation, an era, a day, and an hour. Every word smells of the context and contexts in which it has lived its intense social life'"
Goodall, H.L. “Voice, Reflexivity, and Character: The Construction of Identities in Texts.” Writing the New Ethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2000: 131-141.
The main questions of this text are laid out in the first paragraph of the excerpt:
Who are you?
Who are you when you write?
Who are you in your writing? What are the differences, if any? If there are differences, are they ones that matter? To the work? To your audience? To those whom you’ve studied? To you? (Goodall, 131)
The rest of the excerpt is then a response to these beginning questions. What are some of the conclusions that Goodall comes to in this essay?
Read the second chapter out loud—powerful, loaded, confusing... needs to be explained and unpacked ... bring definitions of major terms in the first sentence in that second paragraph.
Definitions:
Persona: (1909, Latin) 1: a character assumed by an author in a written work 2a: an individual’s social facade or front that [esp. psychoanalytic theory] reflects the role in life that the individual is playing. 2b: the personality that a person (as an actor or politician) projects in public.
Ethnography: (1834, French) the study and systematic recording of human cultures; also: a descriptive work produced from such research.
Self: (13th century) noun: 1a: the entire person of an individual. 1b: the realization or embodiment of an abstraction. 2: an individual’s typical character or behavior. 3: the union of elements (as body, emotions, thoughts and sensations) that constitute the individuality and identity of a person. 4: personal interest or advantage. 5: material that is part of an individual organism.
Voice: (14th century) 4a: wish, choice, or opinion openly or formally expressed. 4b: right of expression; also, influential power (she has a voice in the matter)
Narrative: (1566) noun: 3: the representation in art of an event or story; also: an example of such a representation. [see story] Story: (Latin, 13c, historia) 1. archaic: history. 2a: an account of incidents or events. 2b: a statement regarding the facts pertinent to a situation in question. 4: a widely circulated rumor. 5: LIE; FALSEHOOD.
Character: (14 century) [1: the word character originally refers to the process of engraving, writing, symbol-making. 2: then the meaning of the word shifts to that of representing or portraying, especially in an imagistic sense 3: a feature used to separate distinguishable things into categories 4: the complex of mental and ethical traits marking and often individualizing a person, group, or nation 5 REPUTATION]
Rhetoric: (14th century): 1: the art of speaking or writing effectively [2: the principles and rules of composition] also see, discourse. Discourse: (14th century): 1: archaic the capacity of orderly thought or procedure 2: verbal interchange of ideas, CONVERSATION 3a: a formal and orderly and usually extended expression of thought on a subject 3b: connected speech or writing 4: social familiarity [relates to the rules of ~ ]
Ethos: (1851, Greek) the distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution.
(dictionary source: Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition)
Now go through the rest of the second paragraph.
Writerly and Readerly Construct?
Writerly Construct—pages 132-134
... character emerges from the prose intersection of three “positionings” or ways of discovering—and revealing—the influences that shape who you are and what you think about, value, and are prone to believe and do (Goodall, 132).
1) Fixed positions
2) Subjective positions
3) Textual Positions
Page 132—“fixed positions”—personal facts that might influence how you see things, e.g. age, gender, class, race, nationality—factors that don’t change during your writing—often taken for granted.
Page 133—“subjective positions”—“life history and personal experiences” that also have an effect on our research. Usually derived from deeply felt lived experiences because they recall self-defining moments, decisions or turning points in the development of identity/persona. Example, Birth, death, divorce, natural disasters, war, violence, love or illness.
Page 134—“textual positions”—“language choices you make to represent what you see” … selection and arrangement of verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs—also decisions of use or not using, humor, sarcasm, irony, and inventive analogies/metaphors. Provides clues to the way in which you “see” the world and how you act in it. How you use adjectives, adverbs and the level of emotional intensity are all signs of what you have lived through (experiences) and helps others to relate to you and your positions (or not).
Page 134—“reflexivity”—begins with asking yourself the same questions that guide your own analysis.
Page 134—reader/writer dialogue—The writer tells the story, the reader interprets it, they communicate back and forth and the story is co-constructed by the reader and the writer. The reader basically compares themselves with the story and the characters/writers experiences/views.
Readerly Construct:
On page 134: “texts don’t belong to writers, they belong to readers”
Need of writers to be aware of possible interpretations of their words—careful construction of sentences, paragraphs—contextualization of information, mappings of broader connections and references—development of dialogic and dialectic relationships with the reader—awareness of intended audience’s experience/worldview.
“And that doesn’t even get close to the influence that you, the reader, have on what is happening between us, on this page, now (Goodall, 141).”
Stuart Hall’s Three Ways of Reading an Encoded Textual Message:
• dominant (or 'hegemonic') reading: the reader fully shares the text's code and accepts and reproduces the preferred reading (a reading which may not have been the result of any conscious intention on the part of the author(s)) - in such a stance the code seems 'natural' and 'transparent';
• negotiated reading: the reader partly shares the text's code and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but sometimes resists and modifies it in a way which reflects their own position, experiences and interests (local and personal conditions may be seen as exceptions to the general rule) - this position involves contradictions;
• oppositional ('counter-hegemonic') reading: the reader, whose social situation places them in a directly oppositional relation to the dominant code, understands the preferred reading but does not share the text's code and rejects this reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of reference (radical, feminist etc.) (e.g. when watching a television broadcast produced on behalf of a political party they normally vote against).
Take a look at Mikhail Bakhtin’s quote on page 140 ... what does this say about our notion of the individual construction of meaning and gathering of knowledge—especially in the sense of creating a writerly persona. What do you think of Goodall’s statement that “Voice, like consciousness, is derivative”?
The soul of good writing:
... the “soul” of good writing is the deployment of a writer’s “coming to know” perspective on selves, contexts, and others. It is the substance—both argumentative and poetic—out of which we create, constitute, and live meaningfully within the stories of our lives. (Goodall, 137)
REFLEXIVITY:
... the process of personally and academically reflecting on lived experiences in ways that reveal the deep connections between the writer and her or his subject. To be “reflexive” means to turn back on our self the lens through which we are interpreting the world. It “implies a shift in our understanding of data and its collection—something that is accomplished through detachment, internal dialogue, and constant (and intensive) scrutiny of ‘what I know’ and ‘how I know it’” (Goodall, 137)
“Reflexivity begins with asking yourself the same questions that guide your analysis and interpretation of others. These questions should be though of as navigation instruments, because asking them puts you on a particular language highway wherein the route itself is defined by words that otherwise might not have ever been spoken. (Goodall, 141-142)
ORIGINALITY:
A very important statement by Goodall is when he says that “there are no truly original voices” (141). What is disturbing about that statement? What is encouraging? So then, what does it mean when someone says that a writer has an original voice?
“When says ‘hers is an original voice,” what they usually mean is ‘here is someone who is writing in—filling in—a vital gap between all that I have read and lived through, and the result is something that speaks to me in a way that no other voice ever has.’ In many ways, this sentiment is very much like meeting someone you are suddenly and strongly attracted to, in whose shared conversation you find new meaning, in whose voice, in whose questions, you find a path to answers you are searching for. The voice of the other in this relationship is “original” because it speaks to your heart, because you haven’t heard it before, and because you closely identify with it. (141)
“Originality in writing, as in all relationships, is never a solo act (Goodall, 141)”
You might have your students approach their course readings by analyzing how authors' construct their authorial character/rhetorical ethos (writerly construct, using Goodall's hints). Also encourage them to be reflective about how they are responding to the readings—what in their experience/background shapes the way they respond to the essays (readerly construct).
Monday, November 15, 2004
How Thivai Abhor Got Its Name?
(dedicated to Svejk, the good soldier and the zombie hunter Inspector Lohmann)
"Thivai" is a female pirate and "Abhor" is her cyborg lover. I combine the name in order to give expression to the recognition of the fluidity of identities/realities and the wondrous chaotic creativity their integrative realization can bring. Thivai Abhor is the revolution of the senses--freedom of expression, the mind virus that will eat the system from the inside out. Thivai Abhor is a catalyzing enteran that seeks to alter the corrupt system through pirated words and frenzied emotional responses. Thivai Abhor is neither, yet combines both, becoming many, a new way of being, becoming, understanding and knowing. Thivai Abhor is the monstrous result of a system that eats its young.
Of course, these avatars are most famously realized (and introduced to me) as the main characters in Kathy Acker's novel "The Empire of the Senseless."
Kathy Acker Website
Books by Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker: Where Does She Get Off?
Kathy Acker: Black Tarantula
Literary Pirate: Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker: Welcome Back to Oblivion
Dalkey Archive Interveiw
Acker: Speed and Memory
Kathleen Wheeler Reads Kathy Acker
"Thivai" is a female pirate and "Abhor" is her cyborg lover. I combine the name in order to give expression to the recognition of the fluidity of identities/realities and the wondrous chaotic creativity their integrative realization can bring. Thivai Abhor is the revolution of the senses--freedom of expression, the mind virus that will eat the system from the inside out. Thivai Abhor is a catalyzing enteran that seeks to alter the corrupt system through pirated words and frenzied emotional responses. Thivai Abhor is neither, yet combines both, becoming many, a new way of being, becoming, understanding and knowing. Thivai Abhor is the monstrous result of a system that eats its young.
Of course, these avatars are most famously realized (and introduced to me) as the main characters in Kathy Acker's novel "The Empire of the Senseless."
Kathy Acker Website
Books by Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker: Where Does She Get Off?
Kathy Acker: Black Tarantula
Literary Pirate: Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker: Welcome Back to Oblivion
Dalkey Archive Interveiw
Acker: Speed and Memory
Kathleen Wheeler Reads Kathy Acker
Houston Death Penalty Controversy
Growing introspection in death-penalty capital: Shoddy science by the Houston Police crime lab has prompted more reviews of execution cases.
By Kris Axtman
The Christian Science Monitor
HOUSTON – Before each execution in Texas, lawyers plead with the courts to keep their clients alive. Some claim innocence, others a flawed case. But ever since 280 boxes of uncatalogued evidence were found disintegrating in a Houston Police Department warehouse in August, those arguments have taken on greater meaning in Harris County, long known as the death-penalty capital of the world.
The dusty boxes - mislabeled and improperly stored - contain biological, ballistic, and other evidence from 8,000 county cases, mostly murders, of the past quarter century. So far, officials have not heeded calls to halt executions until the evidence is sorted through. Meanwhile, a second Houston man has been released from prison for a rape he did not commit.
These are the latest developments in the saga of the disgraced Houston Police Department (HPD) crime lab, which was shut down two years ago following reports of shoddy scientific practices.
And while executions occur here routinely, the crime-lab scandal, and the cries of bungled evidence that precede each scheduled execution, have sown new hesitation and doubt among Texans who had come to see DNA evidence as foolproof.
Read the Rest of the Essay
By Kris Axtman
The Christian Science Monitor
HOUSTON – Before each execution in Texas, lawyers plead with the courts to keep their clients alive. Some claim innocence, others a flawed case. But ever since 280 boxes of uncatalogued evidence were found disintegrating in a Houston Police Department warehouse in August, those arguments have taken on greater meaning in Harris County, long known as the death-penalty capital of the world.
The dusty boxes - mislabeled and improperly stored - contain biological, ballistic, and other evidence from 8,000 county cases, mostly murders, of the past quarter century. So far, officials have not heeded calls to halt executions until the evidence is sorted through. Meanwhile, a second Houston man has been released from prison for a rape he did not commit.
These are the latest developments in the saga of the disgraced Houston Police Department (HPD) crime lab, which was shut down two years ago following reports of shoddy scientific practices.
And while executions occur here routinely, the crime-lab scandal, and the cries of bungled evidence that precede each scheduled execution, have sown new hesitation and doubt among Texans who had come to see DNA evidence as foolproof.
Read the Rest of the Essay
Is This Fascism, Pt. 2
(courtesy: nothing escapes the notice of Inspector Lohmann)
School Talent Show Draws Secret Service: Boulder, Colorado Band Singing Dylan Song Seen as Threatening President Bush
School Talent Show Draws Secret Service: Boulder, Colorado Band Singing Dylan Song Seen as Threatening President Bush
Arise!: Call For Submissions
Arise! Journal Call for Submissions
Arise! is a journal dedicated to bringing theory and practice into dialogue. The editorial collective is particularly interested in discussions of post/anti-colonialism, feminism and queer thought, Marxism, anarchism, environmentalism, and contemporary activist struggles in the United States and elsewhere.
Arise! is published quarterly, and each issue is thematically arranged, carrying a number of articles (ranging in length between 1000-3000 words) related to the central theme. Each issue also publishes a number of reviews of recently published book (generally between 300-500 words). Future themes include: Literature (Winter 2005), Music (Spring 2005), Spirituality & Religion (Summer 2005), and Sexuality, Sex and Gender (Fall 2005).
For the issue on Literature, we are especially interested in articles that discuss the work of individual authors (Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell, Toni Morrison, Kathy Acker, Margaret Atwood, etc.), groups of authors (the Beats, the Situationists, the Surrealists, etc.), individual novels or series, whole genres (romance, science fiction, fantasy, magic realism, etc.), as well as discussions of literature and its relationship to Marxist/feminist/anarchist/GLBT/anticolonial thought and action, personal reflections on the importance of literature, and literature and its relationship with race and ethnicity, sex, gender and sexuality, class, nationalism and patriotism, etc. We are not interested in works of fiction. Submissions must be received by January 15th.
For the issue on Music, we are especially interested in articles that discuss individual artists and musical groups (Bob Dylan, International Noise Conspiracy, Le Tigre, Frank Zappa, etc.), genres (punk, hardcore, folk, rap, hip hop, rock, etc.), individual albums, as well as discussions of music and its relationship to Marxist/feminist/anarchist/GLBT/anticolonial thought and action, personal reflections on the importance of music, and music and its relationship with race and ethnicity, sex, gender and sexuality, class, nationalism and patriotism, etc. Submissions must be received by April 17th.
If you are interested in contributing, or have questions about future themes, please contact us at: arisenewspaper@hotmail.com
Arise! is a free publication that is distributed throughout the Minneapolis-St. Paul area (as well as a subscription base outside of this area), and is supported through advertisements for both local businesses and national worker-friendly publishers, distributors and music labels.
Arise! is a journal dedicated to bringing theory and practice into dialogue. The editorial collective is particularly interested in discussions of post/anti-colonialism, feminism and queer thought, Marxism, anarchism, environmentalism, and contemporary activist struggles in the United States and elsewhere.
Arise! is published quarterly, and each issue is thematically arranged, carrying a number of articles (ranging in length between 1000-3000 words) related to the central theme. Each issue also publishes a number of reviews of recently published book (generally between 300-500 words). Future themes include: Literature (Winter 2005), Music (Spring 2005), Spirituality & Religion (Summer 2005), and Sexuality, Sex and Gender (Fall 2005).
For the issue on Literature, we are especially interested in articles that discuss the work of individual authors (Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell, Toni Morrison, Kathy Acker, Margaret Atwood, etc.), groups of authors (the Beats, the Situationists, the Surrealists, etc.), individual novels or series, whole genres (romance, science fiction, fantasy, magic realism, etc.), as well as discussions of literature and its relationship to Marxist/feminist/anarchist/GLBT/anticolonial thought and action, personal reflections on the importance of literature, and literature and its relationship with race and ethnicity, sex, gender and sexuality, class, nationalism and patriotism, etc. We are not interested in works of fiction. Submissions must be received by January 15th.
For the issue on Music, we are especially interested in articles that discuss individual artists and musical groups (Bob Dylan, International Noise Conspiracy, Le Tigre, Frank Zappa, etc.), genres (punk, hardcore, folk, rap, hip hop, rock, etc.), individual albums, as well as discussions of music and its relationship to Marxist/feminist/anarchist/GLBT/anticolonial thought and action, personal reflections on the importance of music, and music and its relationship with race and ethnicity, sex, gender and sexuality, class, nationalism and patriotism, etc. Submissions must be received by April 17th.
If you are interested in contributing, or have questions about future themes, please contact us at: arisenewspaper@hotmail.com
Arise! is a free publication that is distributed throughout the Minneapolis-St. Paul area (as well as a subscription base outside of this area), and is supported through advertisements for both local businesses and national worker-friendly publishers, distributors and music labels.
Is this Fascism?
(courtesy of Leiter Reports)
CIA PLans to Purge its Agency
The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.
"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."
CIA PLans to Purge its Agency
Richard John Neuhaus: Kierkegaard For Grownups
Kierkegaard for Grownups
Richard John Neuhaus
First Things
That extraordinary writer of stories about the "Christ-haunted" American South, Flannery O’Connor, was frequently asked why her people and plots were so often outlandish, even grotesque. She answered, "To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you have to draw large and startling figures." I expect Søren Kierkegaard, had he lived a century later, would have taken to Flannery O’Connor and would have relished her affirmation of the necessarily outlandish. But then he would immediately be on guard lest anyone think that he does not really mean what he says, that he is anything less than utterly, indeed deadly, serious. He exaggerates for effect and witheringly attacks his opponents who suggest that his exaggeration is anything less than the truth of the matter. He writes, as he repeatedly says, for that one reader—the singular individual who has the courage to understand him—while at the same time describing in detail, and often with hilarious parody, the many readers who refuse to take him at his word. Kierkegaard was keenly (some would say obsessively) attentive to the ways in which he was misunderstood, even as he persistently and defiantly courted misunderstanding. This, as readers beyond numbering have discovered, can be quite maddening. It is also at least part of the reason why Kierkegaard is so widely read.
...
Once the established order has "deified" itself by claiming to have subsumed the absolute to itself, there is nothing that it cannot presume to do. A person asks, "Do you mean the established order can assure my eternal salvation?" In one of the most scathing passages in Training, Kierkegaard lets the established order answer that question. "Why certainly. And if with regard to this matter you encounter in the end some obstacle, can you not be contented like all the others, when your last hour has come, to go well baled and crated in one of the large shipments which the established order sends straight through to heaven under its own seal and plainly addressed to ‘The Eternal Blessedness,’ with the assurance that you will be exactly as well received and just as blessed as ‘all the others’? In short, can you not be content with such reassuring security and guaranty as this, that the established order vouches for your blessedness in the hereafter? Very well then. Only keep this to yourself. The established order has no objection. If you keep as still as a mouse about it, you will nevertheless be just as well off as the others." But, of course, Kierkegaard would not keep it to himself. And that is why, as he understood it, he was defamed, derided, and dismissed as an eccentric and malcontent.
...
Even more telling, I believe, is the similarity of Kierkegaard’s argument with the chilling Legend of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. I have sometimes suggested, half tongue in cheek, that if anything might be added to the canon of the New Testament it should be the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor. Although Ivan Karamazov tells the story against the Catholic Church, it is the story of all Christians and the subtle ways in which Christianity can be displaced by Christendom, in which people can be seduced into surrendering their souls to the established order. When Jesus appears in the public square of medieval Spain, the Grand Inquisitor has him put in jail and explains to him, with sophisticated reasons, why he has no right to come back, why people do not need him and cannot bear him as their contemporary. The established order has now taken over the business of salvation, the Inquisitor tells Jesus, and it is simply intolerable that he should return to interfere. After the long night’s monologue, in which Jesus says not a word, the Inquisitor opens the prison door and says, "Go, and come never again." Kierkegaard, I am convinced, would relish the tale.
To Read the Entire Essay
Richard John Neuhaus
First Things
That extraordinary writer of stories about the "Christ-haunted" American South, Flannery O’Connor, was frequently asked why her people and plots were so often outlandish, even grotesque. She answered, "To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you have to draw large and startling figures." I expect Søren Kierkegaard, had he lived a century later, would have taken to Flannery O’Connor and would have relished her affirmation of the necessarily outlandish. But then he would immediately be on guard lest anyone think that he does not really mean what he says, that he is anything less than utterly, indeed deadly, serious. He exaggerates for effect and witheringly attacks his opponents who suggest that his exaggeration is anything less than the truth of the matter. He writes, as he repeatedly says, for that one reader—the singular individual who has the courage to understand him—while at the same time describing in detail, and often with hilarious parody, the many readers who refuse to take him at his word. Kierkegaard was keenly (some would say obsessively) attentive to the ways in which he was misunderstood, even as he persistently and defiantly courted misunderstanding. This, as readers beyond numbering have discovered, can be quite maddening. It is also at least part of the reason why Kierkegaard is so widely read.
...
Once the established order has "deified" itself by claiming to have subsumed the absolute to itself, there is nothing that it cannot presume to do. A person asks, "Do you mean the established order can assure my eternal salvation?" In one of the most scathing passages in Training, Kierkegaard lets the established order answer that question. "Why certainly. And if with regard to this matter you encounter in the end some obstacle, can you not be contented like all the others, when your last hour has come, to go well baled and crated in one of the large shipments which the established order sends straight through to heaven under its own seal and plainly addressed to ‘The Eternal Blessedness,’ with the assurance that you will be exactly as well received and just as blessed as ‘all the others’? In short, can you not be content with such reassuring security and guaranty as this, that the established order vouches for your blessedness in the hereafter? Very well then. Only keep this to yourself. The established order has no objection. If you keep as still as a mouse about it, you will nevertheless be just as well off as the others." But, of course, Kierkegaard would not keep it to himself. And that is why, as he understood it, he was defamed, derided, and dismissed as an eccentric and malcontent.
...
Even more telling, I believe, is the similarity of Kierkegaard’s argument with the chilling Legend of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. I have sometimes suggested, half tongue in cheek, that if anything might be added to the canon of the New Testament it should be the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor. Although Ivan Karamazov tells the story against the Catholic Church, it is the story of all Christians and the subtle ways in which Christianity can be displaced by Christendom, in which people can be seduced into surrendering their souls to the established order. When Jesus appears in the public square of medieval Spain, the Grand Inquisitor has him put in jail and explains to him, with sophisticated reasons, why he has no right to come back, why people do not need him and cannot bear him as their contemporary. The established order has now taken over the business of salvation, the Inquisitor tells Jesus, and it is simply intolerable that he should return to interfere. After the long night’s monologue, in which Jesus says not a word, the Inquisitor opens the prison door and says, "Go, and come never again." Kierkegaard, I am convinced, would relish the tale.
To Read the Entire Essay
Jenny Toomey: Rocking the FCC
An audio interview with Artist/Activist Jenny Toomey who seeks local radio access for independent musicians--includes links to listen to three tracks from Toomey's new album:
Jenny Toomey Interview and Music
Jenny Toomey Interview and Music
Daniel Engber: Surveying the Student Body
I've only seen Penitalia and it seems very tame...
------------------------------------------------------
Surveying the Student Body
By DANIEL ENGBER
Chronicle of Higher Education
Naked coeds and naughty angels, sexually explicit stories, and a full-page advertisement for Playboy all appear in the inaugural issue of H Bomb (spring 2004), Harvard University's glossy sex magazine. But in the words of its student editors, "It isn't porn, that's for sure."
An essay in the magazine struggles to explain: "When trying to distinguish between images that are artistic and images that are pornographic we find ourselves slipping into a discursive vortex of exceptions."
Fortunately, escaping the discursive vortex turns out to be as easy as a bus trip across town.
Alecia Oleyourryk, a senior studying journalism at Boston University, wants to start her own college sex-themed magazine, minus the tortured introspection: "We want it to turn people on, and we're not afraid to call it pornography." The first issue of Boink will appear in January, provided that Ms. Oleyourryk and her partner, Christopher Anderson, a photographer for H Bomb, can raise the $20,000 they'll need to publish it. "We're going to be honest and straightforward," she promises, "and it's going to be real sex."
Katharina P. Cieplak-von Baldegg, editor in chief of H Bomb and a junior concentrating in visual and environmental studies, calls Boink "a purely commercial venture to sell a magazine of nude photos of students." Campus pornography, she says, is a waste of time: "Students can get better porn online anyway."
Ms. Oleyourryk chides the H Bomb editors for trying to make the magazine "artsy and proper and Harvard-esque" (as opposed to Boink, which presumably will be dirty and sleazy and BU-esque).
"If our interest in intelligent art and writing about sex makes us 'artsy, proper, and Harvard-esque,' I guess that's a compliment," replies Ms. Cieplak-von Baldegg.
Far from Boston's dueling college-sex magazines, a creative-writing major at the University of Washington has recently started a journal of collegiate erotica. Though Penitalia is, so far, distributed only at Seattle-area bookstores, its founder, Michael Ryan, would like it to enter the national market. "We should get some sort of East Coast-West Coast rivalry going," he says, "like a hip-hop thing."
Mr. Ryan says he started the journal as a middle finger to the university for giving him "a crappy education for a lot of money," and as a response to the stories about "your Aunt Sally's suicide or your summer at camp" that students were expected to write for class. "My goal was to do something more commercial and mainstream," he says. "If 90 percent of the world wants to read this, then it's good writing."
Penitalia's editor in chief, Turi Fesler, says the goal of the magazine is to turn people on while proving that erotica is a legitimate art form. The first issue included a short story written by a creative-writing teacher at the university, and the second featured a work of creative nonfiction by a student who claims that she works as a prostitute.
Mr. Ryan and Ms. Fesler have had no difficulties with the university administration. While H Bomb struggled to get official approval at Harvard and Boink wouldn't even try at BU, Penitalia has been an official student organization from the very start. "At UW," says Mr. Ryan, "they said, What, porn? OK, cool."
At Bowdoin College, a project to take photographs of naked female students earned the full support of the administration. Some 50 women of all shapes and sizes volunteered to be part of the Naked Body Image Project and have their portraits displayed at an art show about women's issues. "The only naked bodies we see are those in magazines," explains the project's organizer, Bree A. Dallinga, a junior majoring in women's studies and government. "Why don't we battle this image on campus by showing people what real beautiful women look like?"
"Am I an advocate of pornography?" says Ms. Dallinga. "No. But talking about sexuality is something that's definitely needed."
Article Link
More on the Naked Body Project
------------------------------------------------------
Surveying the Student Body
By DANIEL ENGBER
Chronicle of Higher Education
Naked coeds and naughty angels, sexually explicit stories, and a full-page advertisement for Playboy all appear in the inaugural issue of H Bomb (spring 2004), Harvard University's glossy sex magazine. But in the words of its student editors, "It isn't porn, that's for sure."
An essay in the magazine struggles to explain: "When trying to distinguish between images that are artistic and images that are pornographic we find ourselves slipping into a discursive vortex of exceptions."
Fortunately, escaping the discursive vortex turns out to be as easy as a bus trip across town.
Alecia Oleyourryk, a senior studying journalism at Boston University, wants to start her own college sex-themed magazine, minus the tortured introspection: "We want it to turn people on, and we're not afraid to call it pornography." The first issue of Boink will appear in January, provided that Ms. Oleyourryk and her partner, Christopher Anderson, a photographer for H Bomb, can raise the $20,000 they'll need to publish it. "We're going to be honest and straightforward," she promises, "and it's going to be real sex."
Katharina P. Cieplak-von Baldegg, editor in chief of H Bomb and a junior concentrating in visual and environmental studies, calls Boink "a purely commercial venture to sell a magazine of nude photos of students." Campus pornography, she says, is a waste of time: "Students can get better porn online anyway."
Ms. Oleyourryk chides the H Bomb editors for trying to make the magazine "artsy and proper and Harvard-esque" (as opposed to Boink, which presumably will be dirty and sleazy and BU-esque).
"If our interest in intelligent art and writing about sex makes us 'artsy, proper, and Harvard-esque,' I guess that's a compliment," replies Ms. Cieplak-von Baldegg.
Far from Boston's dueling college-sex magazines, a creative-writing major at the University of Washington has recently started a journal of collegiate erotica. Though Penitalia is, so far, distributed only at Seattle-area bookstores, its founder, Michael Ryan, would like it to enter the national market. "We should get some sort of East Coast-West Coast rivalry going," he says, "like a hip-hop thing."
Mr. Ryan says he started the journal as a middle finger to the university for giving him "a crappy education for a lot of money," and as a response to the stories about "your Aunt Sally's suicide or your summer at camp" that students were expected to write for class. "My goal was to do something more commercial and mainstream," he says. "If 90 percent of the world wants to read this, then it's good writing."
Penitalia's editor in chief, Turi Fesler, says the goal of the magazine is to turn people on while proving that erotica is a legitimate art form. The first issue included a short story written by a creative-writing teacher at the university, and the second featured a work of creative nonfiction by a student who claims that she works as a prostitute.
Mr. Ryan and Ms. Fesler have had no difficulties with the university administration. While H Bomb struggled to get official approval at Harvard and Boink wouldn't even try at BU, Penitalia has been an official student organization from the very start. "At UW," says Mr. Ryan, "they said, What, porn? OK, cool."
At Bowdoin College, a project to take photographs of naked female students earned the full support of the administration. Some 50 women of all shapes and sizes volunteered to be part of the Naked Body Image Project and have their portraits displayed at an art show about women's issues. "The only naked bodies we see are those in magazines," explains the project's organizer, Bree A. Dallinga, a junior majoring in women's studies and government. "Why don't we battle this image on campus by showing people what real beautiful women look like?"
"Am I an advocate of pornography?" says Ms. Dallinga. "No. But talking about sexuality is something that's definitely needed."
Article Link
More on the Naked Body Project
Slavoj Zizek: Somewhere Over the Rainbow
His review of Thomas Frank's What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Metropolitan Books 2004)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Slavoj Zizek
Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy
An excerpt:
The enigmatic spectacle of a large-scale collective suicide is always fascinating – recall hundreds of Jim Jones’s cult followers who obediently took poison in their Guyana camp. At the level of economic life, the same thing is going on today in Kansas - and this is the topic of Thomas Frank’s new outstanding book.
His simple style should not blind us for his razor-sharp political analysis. Focusing on Kansas, the bedrock of populist conservative uprising, Frank aptly describes the basic paradox of its ideological edifice: the gap, the lack of any cognitive link, between economic interests and “moral” questions. If there ever was a book that needs to be read by anyone interested in the strange twists of today’s conservative politics, it is What’s the Matter with Kansas?.
What happens when the economic class opposition (poor farmers, blue-collar workers versus lawyers, bankers, large companies) is transposed/coded into the opposition of honest hard-working Christian true Americans versus the decadent liberals who drink latte and drive foreign cars, advocate abortion and homosexuality, mock patriotic sacrifice and “provincial” simple way of life? The enemy is perceived as the “liberal” who, through federal state interventions (from school-busing to ordering the Darwinian evolution and perverse sexual practices to be taught), wants to undermine the authentic American way of life. The main economic interest is therefore to get rid of the strong state which taxes the hard-working population in order to finance its regulatory interventions – the minimal economic program is thus “less taxes, less regulations”… From the standard perspective of enlightened rational pursuit of self-interests, the inconsistency of this ideological stance is obvious: the populist conservatives are literally voting themselves into economic ruin. Less taxation and deregulation means more freedom for the big companies that are driving the impoverished farmers out of business; less state intervention means less federal help to small farmers; etc. In the eyes of the US evangelical populists, the state stands for an alien power and, together with UN, is an agent of the Antichrist: it takes away the liberty of the Christian believer, relieving him of the moral responsibility of stewardship, and thus undermines the individualistic morality that makes each of us the architect of our own salvation – how to combine this with the unheard-of explosion the state apparatuses under Bush? No wonder large corporations are delighted to accept such evangelical attacks on the state, when the state tries to regulate media mergers, to put strictures on energy companies, to strengthen air pollution regulations, to protect wildlife and limit logging in the national parks, etc. It is the ultimate irony of history that radical individualism serves as the ideological justification of the unconstrained power of what the large majority of individuals experience as a vast anonymous power which, without any democratic public control, regulates their lives.
As to the ideological aspect of their struggle, Frank states the obvious which, nonetheless, needs to be stated: the populists are fighting a war that cannot be won. If Republicans were effectively to ban abortion, if they were to prohibit the teaching of evolution, if they were to impose federal regulation on Hollywood and mass culture, this would mean not only their immediate ideological defeat, but also a large-scale economic depression in the US. The outcome is thus a debilitating symbiosis: although the ruling class disagrees with the populist moral agenda, it tolerates their “moral war” as a means to keep the lower classes in check, i.e., to enable them to articulate their fury without disturbing their economic interests. What this means is that CULTURE WAR IS CLASS WAR in a displaced mode – so much for those who claim that we live in a post-class society…
Read the Rest of the Essay
More about Thomas Frank:
Architecture of a New Consensus
More about Slavoj Zizek:
The Spectre of Ideology
Passion: Regular or Decaf?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Slavoj Zizek
Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy
An excerpt:
The enigmatic spectacle of a large-scale collective suicide is always fascinating – recall hundreds of Jim Jones’s cult followers who obediently took poison in their Guyana camp. At the level of economic life, the same thing is going on today in Kansas - and this is the topic of Thomas Frank’s new outstanding book.
His simple style should not blind us for his razor-sharp political analysis. Focusing on Kansas, the bedrock of populist conservative uprising, Frank aptly describes the basic paradox of its ideological edifice: the gap, the lack of any cognitive link, between economic interests and “moral” questions. If there ever was a book that needs to be read by anyone interested in the strange twists of today’s conservative politics, it is What’s the Matter with Kansas?.
What happens when the economic class opposition (poor farmers, blue-collar workers versus lawyers, bankers, large companies) is transposed/coded into the opposition of honest hard-working Christian true Americans versus the decadent liberals who drink latte and drive foreign cars, advocate abortion and homosexuality, mock patriotic sacrifice and “provincial” simple way of life? The enemy is perceived as the “liberal” who, through federal state interventions (from school-busing to ordering the Darwinian evolution and perverse sexual practices to be taught), wants to undermine the authentic American way of life. The main economic interest is therefore to get rid of the strong state which taxes the hard-working population in order to finance its regulatory interventions – the minimal economic program is thus “less taxes, less regulations”… From the standard perspective of enlightened rational pursuit of self-interests, the inconsistency of this ideological stance is obvious: the populist conservatives are literally voting themselves into economic ruin. Less taxation and deregulation means more freedom for the big companies that are driving the impoverished farmers out of business; less state intervention means less federal help to small farmers; etc. In the eyes of the US evangelical populists, the state stands for an alien power and, together with UN, is an agent of the Antichrist: it takes away the liberty of the Christian believer, relieving him of the moral responsibility of stewardship, and thus undermines the individualistic morality that makes each of us the architect of our own salvation – how to combine this with the unheard-of explosion the state apparatuses under Bush? No wonder large corporations are delighted to accept such evangelical attacks on the state, when the state tries to regulate media mergers, to put strictures on energy companies, to strengthen air pollution regulations, to protect wildlife and limit logging in the national parks, etc. It is the ultimate irony of history that radical individualism serves as the ideological justification of the unconstrained power of what the large majority of individuals experience as a vast anonymous power which, without any democratic public control, regulates their lives.
As to the ideological aspect of their struggle, Frank states the obvious which, nonetheless, needs to be stated: the populists are fighting a war that cannot be won. If Republicans were effectively to ban abortion, if they were to prohibit the teaching of evolution, if they were to impose federal regulation on Hollywood and mass culture, this would mean not only their immediate ideological defeat, but also a large-scale economic depression in the US. The outcome is thus a debilitating symbiosis: although the ruling class disagrees with the populist moral agenda, it tolerates their “moral war” as a means to keep the lower classes in check, i.e., to enable them to articulate their fury without disturbing their economic interests. What this means is that CULTURE WAR IS CLASS WAR in a displaced mode – so much for those who claim that we live in a post-class society…
Read the Rest of the Essay
More about Thomas Frank:
Architecture of a New Consensus
More about Slavoj Zizek:
The Spectre of Ideology
Passion: Regular or Decaf?
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Guy Debord: Society of the Spectacle; Raoul Vanigem: The Revolution of Everyday Life;
Society of the Spectacle--white print, black background
Society of the Spectacle--black print, white background, more Debord readings, French and English versions
The Revolution of Everyday Life
More situationist sites:
Guy Debord Biography
Nothingness
Histroy of Unitary Urbanism
Simon Sadler's The Situationist City
Not Bored!
Situationist Films
Bureau of Public Secrets
Society of the Spectacle--black print, white background, more Debord readings, French and English versions
The Revolution of Everyday Life
More situationist sites:
Guy Debord Biography
Nothingness
Histroy of Unitary Urbanism
Simon Sadler's The Situationist City
Not Bored!
Situationist Films
Bureau of Public Secrets
Why Think About Propaganda?
"Why Think About Propaganda?"
Propaganda Critic
It may seem strange to suggest that the study of propaganda has relevance to contemporary politics. After all, when most people think about propaganda, they think of the enormous campaigns that were waged by Hitler and Stalin in the 1930s. Since nothing comparable is being disseminated in our society today, many believe that propaganda is no longer an issue.
But propaganda can be as blatant as a swastika or as subtle as a joke. Its persuasive techniques are regularly applied by politicians, advertisers, journalists, radio personalities, and others who are interested in influencing human behavior. Propagandistic messages can be used to accomplish positive social ends, as in campaigns to reduce drunk driving, but they are also used to win elections and to sell malt liquor.
As Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson point out, "every day we are bombarded with one persuasive communication after another. These appeals persuade not through the give-and-take of argument and debate, but through the manipulation of symbols and of our most basic human emotions. For better or worse, ours is an age of propaganda." (Pratkanis and Aronson, 1991)
With the growth of communication tools like the Internet, the flow of persuasive messages has been dramatically accelerated. For the first time ever, citizens around the world are participating in uncensored conversations about their collective future. This is a wonderful development, but there is a cost.
The information revolution has led to information overload, and people are confronted with hundreds of messages each day. Although few studies have looked at this topic, it seems fair to suggest that many people respond to this pressure by processing messages more quickly and, when possible, by taking mental short-cuts.
Propagandists love short-cuts -- particularly those which short-circuit rational thought. They encourage this by agitating emotions, by exploiting insecurities, by capitalizing on the ambiguity of language, and by bending the rules of logic. As history shows, they can be quite successful.
Propaganda analysis exposes the tricks that propagandists use and suggests ways of resisting the short-cuts that they promote. This web-site discusses various propaganda techniques, provides contemporary examples of their use, and proposes strategies of mental self-defense.
Propaganda analysis is an antidote to the excesses of the Information Age.
Link
Propaganda Critic
It may seem strange to suggest that the study of propaganda has relevance to contemporary politics. After all, when most people think about propaganda, they think of the enormous campaigns that were waged by Hitler and Stalin in the 1930s. Since nothing comparable is being disseminated in our society today, many believe that propaganda is no longer an issue.
But propaganda can be as blatant as a swastika or as subtle as a joke. Its persuasive techniques are regularly applied by politicians, advertisers, journalists, radio personalities, and others who are interested in influencing human behavior. Propagandistic messages can be used to accomplish positive social ends, as in campaigns to reduce drunk driving, but they are also used to win elections and to sell malt liquor.
As Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson point out, "every day we are bombarded with one persuasive communication after another. These appeals persuade not through the give-and-take of argument and debate, but through the manipulation of symbols and of our most basic human emotions. For better or worse, ours is an age of propaganda." (Pratkanis and Aronson, 1991)
With the growth of communication tools like the Internet, the flow of persuasive messages has been dramatically accelerated. For the first time ever, citizens around the world are participating in uncensored conversations about their collective future. This is a wonderful development, but there is a cost.
The information revolution has led to information overload, and people are confronted with hundreds of messages each day. Although few studies have looked at this topic, it seems fair to suggest that many people respond to this pressure by processing messages more quickly and, when possible, by taking mental short-cuts.
Propagandists love short-cuts -- particularly those which short-circuit rational thought. They encourage this by agitating emotions, by exploiting insecurities, by capitalizing on the ambiguity of language, and by bending the rules of logic. As history shows, they can be quite successful.
Propaganda analysis exposes the tricks that propagandists use and suggests ways of resisting the short-cuts that they promote. This web-site discusses various propaganda techniques, provides contemporary examples of their use, and proposes strategies of mental self-defense.
Propaganda analysis is an antidote to the excesses of the Information Age.
Link
More Divorce in Red States
(courtesy Melissa Purdue)
More divorce in red states: Kentucky and Bible Belt among highest of all
By Pam Belluck
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
BOSTON - If blue states care less about moral values, why are divorce rates so low in the bluest of the blue states? It's a question that intrigues conservatives, as much as it emboldens liberals.
As researchers have noted, the areas of the country where divorce rates are highest are also often the areas where many conservative Christians live.
Kentucky, Mississippi and Arkansas, for example, voted overwhelmingly for constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage. But they had three of the highest divorce rates in 2003, according to figures from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics.
The lowest divorce rates are largely in the blue states: the Northeast and the upper Midwest. And the state with the lowest divorce rate was Massachusetts, home to John Kerry, the Kennedys and same-sex marriage.
In 2003, the rate in Massachusetts was 5.7 divorces per 1,000 married people, compared with 10.8 in Kentucky, 11.1 in Mississippi and 12.7 in Arkansas.
"Some people are saying, 'The Bible Belt is so pro-marriage, but gee, they have the highest divorce rates in the country,'" said Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. "And there's a lot of worry in the red states about the high rate of divorce."
The Barna Group, a California organization that studies evangelical Christian trends, has produced two studies about divorce that found that born-again Christians were just as likely to divorce as those who are not born-again Christians.
One of the reports, a survey of 7,043 people in 2001, said that: "Residents of the Northeast and West are commonly noted for their more liberal leanings in politics and lifestyle. However, the region of the nation in which divorce was least likely was the Northeast."
The other study, published two months ago, said that even though the Northeast probably had a higher rate of couples living together rather than marrying, the divorce rate would be essentially similar even if the cohabiting couples got hitched. And it said that "relatively few divorced Christians experienced their divorce before accepting Christ as their savior."
George Barna, the head of the organization, said that "a lot of really nice Christian people try to shoot down the research by saying 'Oh, they got divorced and then they became born again.' That's just not true."
What accounts for the nation's divorce dichotomy is the subject of much speculation.
Some people, like Bridget Maher, an analyst on marriage and family issues at the conservative Family Research Council, attribute it almost entirely to the religions in the different regions. "The Northeast and Midwest have high populations of Catholics and Lutherans and they have lower divorce rates than other Christians," she said.
Others, like Patrick F. Fagan, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, say it has nothing to do with differences between faiths.
"People who worship frequently, no matter what their faith, tend to divorce much, much, much less," said Fagan, making an argument that might suggest that Northeasterners are more devout than other people. "All this talk about this faith, that faith, born again, not born again, to me is irrelevant."
Many experts find the explanation to be more multidimensional, tying high divorce rates to factors like younger age of marriage, less education and lower socioeconomic status.
"The higher the educational level, higher the occupational level, higher the income, the less likely you are to divorce," said William V. D'Antonio, a sociologist at the Catholic University of America, noting that Massachusetts has the highest rate of high school and college completion. "Kids who drop out of high school and get married very quickly suffer from the strains of not being emotionally mature and not having the income to help weather the difficulties of marriage."
Whitehead, who lives in Amherst, Mass., said that New England is a region that has "more stability" than other regions. "People stay here, their families stay here, and there's more social and family support for people, a more communal versus individualistic culture in New England compared to the cowboy states."
She said religion may underscore those regional differences.
"In states with lots of evangelicals, the more individualistic Protestant religious faiths may actually also encourage more go-it-alone attitudes than communal ones," Whitehead said. And these are also states where the culture encourages sexual abstinence before marriage, she said.
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More divorce in red states: Kentucky and Bible Belt among highest of all
By Pam Belluck
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
BOSTON - If blue states care less about moral values, why are divorce rates so low in the bluest of the blue states? It's a question that intrigues conservatives, as much as it emboldens liberals.
As researchers have noted, the areas of the country where divorce rates are highest are also often the areas where many conservative Christians live.
Kentucky, Mississippi and Arkansas, for example, voted overwhelmingly for constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage. But they had three of the highest divorce rates in 2003, according to figures from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics.
The lowest divorce rates are largely in the blue states: the Northeast and the upper Midwest. And the state with the lowest divorce rate was Massachusetts, home to John Kerry, the Kennedys and same-sex marriage.
In 2003, the rate in Massachusetts was 5.7 divorces per 1,000 married people, compared with 10.8 in Kentucky, 11.1 in Mississippi and 12.7 in Arkansas.
"Some people are saying, 'The Bible Belt is so pro-marriage, but gee, they have the highest divorce rates in the country,'" said Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. "And there's a lot of worry in the red states about the high rate of divorce."
The Barna Group, a California organization that studies evangelical Christian trends, has produced two studies about divorce that found that born-again Christians were just as likely to divorce as those who are not born-again Christians.
One of the reports, a survey of 7,043 people in 2001, said that: "Residents of the Northeast and West are commonly noted for their more liberal leanings in politics and lifestyle. However, the region of the nation in which divorce was least likely was the Northeast."
The other study, published two months ago, said that even though the Northeast probably had a higher rate of couples living together rather than marrying, the divorce rate would be essentially similar even if the cohabiting couples got hitched. And it said that "relatively few divorced Christians experienced their divorce before accepting Christ as their savior."
George Barna, the head of the organization, said that "a lot of really nice Christian people try to shoot down the research by saying 'Oh, they got divorced and then they became born again.' That's just not true."
What accounts for the nation's divorce dichotomy is the subject of much speculation.
Some people, like Bridget Maher, an analyst on marriage and family issues at the conservative Family Research Council, attribute it almost entirely to the religions in the different regions. "The Northeast and Midwest have high populations of Catholics and Lutherans and they have lower divorce rates than other Christians," she said.
Others, like Patrick F. Fagan, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, say it has nothing to do with differences between faiths.
"People who worship frequently, no matter what their faith, tend to divorce much, much, much less," said Fagan, making an argument that might suggest that Northeasterners are more devout than other people. "All this talk about this faith, that faith, born again, not born again, to me is irrelevant."
Many experts find the explanation to be more multidimensional, tying high divorce rates to factors like younger age of marriage, less education and lower socioeconomic status.
"The higher the educational level, higher the occupational level, higher the income, the less likely you are to divorce," said William V. D'Antonio, a sociologist at the Catholic University of America, noting that Massachusetts has the highest rate of high school and college completion. "Kids who drop out of high school and get married very quickly suffer from the strains of not being emotionally mature and not having the income to help weather the difficulties of marriage."
Whitehead, who lives in Amherst, Mass., said that New England is a region that has "more stability" than other regions. "People stay here, their families stay here, and there's more social and family support for people, a more communal versus individualistic culture in New England compared to the cowboy states."
She said religion may underscore those regional differences.
"In states with lots of evangelicals, the more individualistic Protestant religious faiths may actually also encourage more go-it-alone attitudes than communal ones," Whitehead said. And these are also states where the culture encourages sexual abstinence before marriage, she said.
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