Rappers and Basketball Players

Why is it that the best response to Katrina has been from celebrities... At the war rally in DC this past weekend, Etan Thomas, a mediocre NBA player, suddenly transformed into MLK or Jesse Jackson. This is an interesting phenomenon, and it was quite a powerful speech. Here's the transcript:

Giving all honor, thanks and praises to God for courage and wisdom, this is a very important rally. I'd like to thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts, feelings and concerns regarding a tremendous problem that we are currently facing. This problem is universal, transcending race, economic background, religion and culture, and this problem is none other than the current administration which has set up shop in the White House.

In fact, I'd like to take some of these cats on a field trip. I want to get big yellow buses with no air conditioner and no seatbelts and round up Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Trent Lott, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Bush Jr. and Bush Sr., John Ashcroft, Giuliani, Ed Gillespie, Katherine Harris, that little bow-tied Tucker Carlson and any other right-wing conservative Republicans I can think of, and take them all on a trip to the hood.

Not to do no 30-minute documentary. I mean, I want to drop them off and leave them there, let them become one with the other side of the tracks, get them four mouths to feed and no welfare, have scare tactics run through them like a laxative, criticizing them for needing assistance.

I'd show them working families that make too much to receive welfare but not enough to make ends meet. I'd employ them with jobs with little security, let them know how it feels to be an employee at will, able to be fired at the drop of a hat. I'd take away their opportunities, then try their children as adults, sending their 13-year-old babies to life in prison. I'd sell them dreams of hopelessness while spoon-feeding their young with a daily dose of inferior education. I'd tell them no child shall be left behind, then take more money out of their schools, tell them to show and prove themselves on standardized exams testing their knowledge on things that they haven't been taught, and then I'd call them inferior.

I'd soak into their interior notions of endless possibilities. I'd paint pictures of assisted productivity if they only agreed to be all they can be, dress them up with fatigues and boots with promises of pots of gold at the end of rainbows, free education to waste terrain on those who finish their bid. Then I'd close the lid on that barrel of fools gold by starting a war, sending their children into the midst of a hostile situation, and while they're worried about their babies being murdered and slain in foreign lands, I'd grace them with the pain of being sick and unable to get medicine.

Give them health benefits that barely cover the common cold. John Q. would become their reality as HMOs introduce them to the world of inferior care, filling their lungs with inadequate air, penny pinching at the expense of patients, doctors practicing medicine in an intricate web of rationing and regulations. Patients wander the maze of managed bureaucracy, costs rise and quality quickly deteriorates, but they say that managed care is cheaper. They'll say that free choice in medicine will defeat the overall productivity, and as co-payments are steadily rising, I'll make their grandparents have to choose between buying their medicine and paying their rent.

Then I'd feed them hypocritical lines of being pro-life as the only Christian way to be. Then very contradictingly, I'd fight for the spread of the death penalty, as if thou shall not kill applies to babies but not to criminals.

Then I'd introduce them to those sworn to protect and serve, creating a curb in their trust in the law. I'd show them the nightsticks and plungers, the pepper spray and stun guns, the mace and magnums that they'd soon become acquainted with, the shakedowns and illegal search and seizures, the planted evidence, being stopped for no reason.

Harassment ain't even the half of it. Forty-one shots to two raised hands, cell phones and wallets that are confused with illegal contrabands. I'd introduce them to pigs who love making their guns click like wine glasses. Everlasting targets surrounded by bullets, making them a walking bull's eye, a living piñata, held at the mercy of police brutality, and then we'll see if they finally weren't aware of the truth, if their eyes weren't finally open like a box of Pandora.

I'd show them how the other side of the tracks carries the weight of the world on our shoulders and how society seems to be holding us down with the force of a boulder. The bird of democracy flew the coop back in Florida.

See, for some, and justice comes in packs like wolves in sheep's clothing. T.K.O.d by the right hooks of life, many are left staggering under the weight of the day, leaning against the ropes of hope. When your dreams have fallen on barren ground, it becomes difficult to keep pushing yourself forward like a train, administering pain like a doctor with a needle, their sequels continue more lethal than injections.

They keep telling us all is equal. I'd tell them that instead of giving tax breaks to the rich, financing corporate mergers and leading us into unnecessary wars and under-table dealings with Enron and Halliburton, maybe they can work on making society more peaceful. Instead, they take more and more money out of inner city schools, give up on the idea of rehabilitation and build more prisons for poor people. With unemployment continuing to rise like a deficit, it's no wonder why so many think that crime pays.

Maybe this trip will make them see the error of their ways. Or maybe next time, we'll just all get out and vote. And as far as their stay in the White House, tell them that numbered are their days.

Same Theme, Different Day

With recent popularity numbers at an all-time low, poll numbers showing that support for the war is waning-- Bush is getting desperate. In a speech yesterday, he decided to pump up the fear appeals and resort back to the "if you're not with us you're against us" rhetoric. Sounding eerily similiar to speeches from around 9/11-- Bush retorted that America's enemies are pleased to see the devastation caused by the hurricane. Anyone else see that he is clearly trying to link the country's natural disasters to the "evils of terrorists"? Here is a nice little soundbite from the speech (before the Jewish

"We look at the destruction caused by Katrina, and our hearts break," he said. Turning the subject to terrorists, he said: "They're the kind of people who look at Katrina and wish they had caused it. We're in a war against these people." I heard the audio clip on NPR this morning and it was an awkward, tense moment. You could almost hear the wheels turning in his head-- "Do I go there...do I go that far..." Oh, he went there all right.

In another speech from yesterday, he pushed the issue a little further when he responded to the people who argue that we should pay for the cost of hurricane repair by scaling back the war in Iraq-- "The only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon the mission."

WOW! Lots of fuel for rhetorical critics!

Nerd Aid

Howdy.
So I got myself a DVD burner, and I want to, um, borrow some scenes from rented DVDs and downloaded AVI and DIVX files. I'm having trouble finding a good piece of software to do this. Any suggestions?

-Dylan

Very Helpful Link

This is a link to a professor in our field discussing the basic differences between epistemology and ontology (with examples from the meta-theory of our field). I think it's a quick and insightful overview to some important issues (although the specific framing may be questioned)....

META-THEORETICAL ISSUES TO CONSIDER IN
THE STUDY OF INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION

minority who?

barely one out of 37 paragraphs of bush's update katrina speech to the nation tonight explictly (at least as explictly as he ever has) talked about the racial politics of the city, of the nation (see below). what first catches my attention is in bush's mention of rebuiling new businesses, he then emphasizes that minority-owned businesses are included in that (yet by distinguishing them here, he excludes them!). i also have to wonder what minority he was talking about (or wanted us to think about), since as cornell west wrote in davi's earlier post, 68% or so of new orleans residents were african-american...

"Our third commitment is this: When communities are rebuilt, they must be even better and stronger than before the storm. Within the Gulf region are some of the most beautiful and historic places in America. As all of us saw on television, there's also some deep, persistent poverty in this region, as well. That poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action. So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality. When the streets are rebuilt, there should be many new businesses, including minority-owned businesses, along those streets. When the houses are rebuilt, more families should own, not rent, those houses. When the regional economy revives, local people should be prepared for the jobs being created."

Cornel West on Katrina

Exiles From a City and From a Nation, by Cornel West (from the Guardian)

It takes something as big as Hurricane Katrina and the misery we saw amongthe poor black people of New Orleans to get America to focus on race andpoverty. It happens about once every 30 or 40 years.What we saw unfold in the days after the hurricane was the most nakedmanifestation of conservative social policy towards the poor, where themessage for decades has been: 'You are on your own'. Well, they reallywere on their own for five days in that Superdome, and it was Darwinism inaction - the survival of the fittest. People said: 'It looks likesomething out of the Third World.' Well, New Orleans was Third World longbefore the hurricane.It's not just Katrina, it's povertina. People were quick to call themrefugees because they looked as if they were from another country. Theyare. Exiles in America. Their humanity had been rendered invisible so theywere never given high priority when the well-to-do got out and thehelicopters came for the few. Almost everyone stuck on rooftops, in theshelters, and dying by the side of the road was poor black.In the end George Bush has to take responsibility. When [the rapper] KanyeWest said the President does not care about black people, he was right,although the effects of his policies are different from what goes on inhis soul. You have to distinguish between a racist intent and the racistconsequences of his policies. Bush is still a 'frat boy', making jokes andtrying to please everyone while the Neanderthals behind him push him moreto the right.Poverty has increased for the last four or five years. A million moreAmericans became poor last year, even as the super-wealthy became muchricher. So where is the trickle-down, the equality of opportunity?Healthcare and education and the social safety net being ripped away - andthat flawed structure was nowhere more evident than in a place such as NewOrleans, 68 per cent black. The average adult income in some parishes ofthe city is under $8,000 (£4,350) a year. The average national income is$33,000, though for African-Americans it is about $24,000. It has one ofthe highest city murder rates in the US. From slave ships to the Superdomewas not that big a journey.New Orleans has always been a city that lived on the edge. The white bluesman himself, Tennessee Williams, had it down in A Streetcar Named Desire -with Elysian Fields and cemeteries and the quest for paradise. When youlive so close to death, behind the levees, you live more intensely,sexually, gastronomically, psychologically. Louis Armstrong came out ofthat unbelievable cultural breakthrough unprecedented in the history ofAmerican civilisation. The rural blues, the urban jazz. It is the tragi-comic lyricism that gives you the courage to get through the darkeststorm.Charlie Parker would have killed somebody if he had not blown his horn.The history of black people in America is one of unbelievable resiliencein the face of crushing white supremacist powers.This kind of dignity in your struggle cuts both ways, though, because itdoes not mobilise a collective uprising against the elites. That was theBlack Panther movement. You probably need both. There would have been noPanthers without jazz. If I had been of Martin Luther King's generation Iwould never have gone to Harvard or Princeton.They shot brother Martin dead like a dog in 1968 when the mobilisation ofthe black poor was just getting started. At least one of his survivinglegacies was the quadrupling in the size of the black middle class. ButOprah [Winfrey] the billionaire and the black judges and chief executivesand movie stars do not mean equality, or even equality of opportunity yet.Black faces in high places does not mean racism is over. Condoleezza Ricehas sold her soul.Now the black bourgeoisie have an even heavier obligation to fight for the33 per cent of black children living in poverty - and to alleviate thespiritual crisis of hopelessness among young black men.Bush talks about God, but he has forgotten the point of propheticChristianity is compassion and justice for those who have least. Hip-hophas the anger that comes out of post-industrial, free-market America, butit lacks the progressiveness that produces organisations that willthreaten the status quo. There has not been a giant since King, someoneprepared to die and create an insurgency where many are prepared to die toupset the corporate elite. The Democrats are spineless.There is the danger of nihilism and in the Superdome around the fourthday, there it was - husbands held at gunpoint while their wives wereraped, someone stomped to death, people throwing themselves off themezzanine floor, dozens of bodies.It was a war of all against all - 'you're on your own' - in the centre ofthe American empire. But now that the aid is pouring in, vital as it is,do not confuse charity with justice. I'm not asking for a revolution, I amasking for reform. A Marshall Plan for the South could be the first step.Dr Cornel West is professor of African American studies and religion atPrinceton University. His great grandfather was a slave. He is a rapartist and appeared as Counselor West in Matrix Reloaded and MatrixRevolutions.© 2005 Guardian Newspapers, Ltd

Listen to this...

I gotta give credit to my friends for this one, but I'm glad to share it...

George Bush Don't Like Black People

Might Fool Me Once

In his book on Deleuze, Zizek claims that freedom is “inherently retroactive”: “At its most elementary, it is not simply a free act that, out of nowhere, starts a new causal link, but rather a retroactive act of endorsing which link/sequence of necessities will determine me” (114). The first dozen or so times I read this, I was bewildered—not only does Zizek do little to bring “clarity” to Deleuze, but conventional notions of freedom imply intentionality, or a determination of action before it happens. I came back to this recently because of my fascination with the social science (IP) research on perception. Much of the research suggests that intentionality is hogwash (and we don’t need Deleuze or Derrida to get us there). In other words, there is good evidence that we make up the reasons for our actions after the fact, and illusion is inherent to perception (for instance, one study asked women to pick amongst several stockings which was their favorite—all had a host of reasons for their choice, such as texture, color, etc., but really all the stockings were the same. Or the alcohol studies that show that people who think they are drunk will slur, stagger, etc. even if they haven’t had a drop of alcohol. And, as the Kanye discussion shows, attribution is always an act of interpretation that does not align with some determinate “reality.” Or the memory studies that show that people can easily be led not only to forget what actually happened, but to remember things that never happened—Elizabeth Loftus’ research is solid on this). In neuroscience, there are these interesting studies done on “split brain” patients (right and left hemispheres have been severed and cannot communicate with each other). The patient can be made to laugh, for instance, by stimulating the left brain, but the right brain is not able to know why the laughter is occurring. Instead of claiming ignorance, the right brain—control of language abilities is here—will make up a reason (you guys sure are funny). Or if the left brain is made to wave, the right brain will say it saw someone it knew. All in all, my “point” is this: science suggests that illusion is an essential part of our consciousness, and intentionality, rationality, and the like—comforting as they are—are not the rock solid foundations of our identity that we like to think. So back to Deleuze/Zizek: what does freedom mean if intentionality is a myth, or at the least, wildly overstated? Can a “retroactive freedom” exist, and is it worth fighting for?

Golden Nuggets from Wikipedia

This post is dedicated to my Communication Theory class.

In my recently acquired obsession with Wikipedia (and my forthcoming defense of its merits) I happened across an article called "Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense" (aka BJOMGWTFBBQAODN). Wikipedians (yes, they actual call themselves that) are very adamant in upholding their deletion policy, which includes jokes inserted into factual articles. Occasionally, however, their sense of humor kicks in and they keep record of the joke in the BJOMGWTFBBQAODN archive:

The first BJOMGWTFBBQAODN edit that still exists within Wikipedia edit history (see below) strangely enough contains an actual joke on the concept of logical positivism. This is hysterical to Dr. ParkingStones as he is the only person in the whole of the known universe who would ever find such a joke funny.

The joke follows:

Logical positivism asserts that only statements about empirical observations are meaningful, effectively asserting that all metaphysical statements are meaningless.

Unfortunately, this fundamental tenet of logical positivism belongs to the family of statements that it asserts to be meaningless. As a result, the entire edifice of logical positivism vanishes in a puff of logic.

This insight appears not to have occurred to the logical positivist school of philosophers.

Now back to reading Kaplan...

BlogComments-FYI

It is easy to see when someone posts, but sadly this blog doesn't flag new comments. If you are concerned about missing comments, you can go to settings and put your email address in where it will email you the full text of all new comments posted (not posts, just comments). If you are becoming-addict re: the blog, this is a nice way to keep up with stuff.

CNN video--They're so poor, so Black

Kristen's last post, as well as Eric's comment about priviledge, reminded me of this CNN clip that Monica sent. I think it's Wolfe Blitzer. Regardless, it gives those of us who believe that identity politics "matter," another reason to write tomorrow.

http://thatvideosite.com/view/629.html

Don't Become-Dawg Without Instincts...

There are certainly some shared premises between Davi's post and Gilroy. I, however, want to point to where I (through Gilroy) differ. Gilroy argues, as you do, for a different mode of being - as dog, celbrating freaky sexuality as act instead of agent (identity). Likewise, he argues against "revolutionary conservatism" - the very kind of moralizing politics Davi is critiquing. He sees the advantages as twofold. First, (in the context of Snoop's dog) it forces a discussion about sex (one that any cursory glance at rape, harassment, and teen preganacy statistics could show was needed). Even if most of the response is revolutionary (preachy) conservatism, at least these discourses are not hidden. Second, it offers another mode of being that challenges racial/national/bodily/identity purity (all are linked for Gilroy). Freaky sex is not a naturalizing/autheticating move but is still an encounter which offers the possibilities of connection beyond identity (or as Gilroy says Against Race). I think this is consistent with Davie's argument.
Where we differ is where to put ethics once we accept becoming as a different mode of being. Davi believes we should throw them out completely, as evidenced by the rhetorical venom reserved for such "cliche" and "naive" moralisms. For myself, this does not move ethics out completely but moves them to a pre-ontological place. We do not have to infest our notions of being with a naive moralism, but, in those dice rolls and chance encounters (in the moments of becoming), we do need ethics -- Not an ethics enshrined either in universal ontological principles nor, for certain, the brick and moratr of legal institutions but a pre-ontological ethics, one that emerges, like instinct, only in the moment. An ethics that exists before the realm of thought about being and all of our (inevitably) false and exclusionary ontological notions of identity.
I know Davie will ask what criteria we use for this ethics and how we determine it (preontological or not). For Gilroy and for myself (and I imagine for dogs and cats, etc), mostly by memory. We do this by keeping alive the memories of dice rolls which went all too wrong. For Gilroy, this memory is the holocaust. For myself, I usually speak in terms of privilege because of my experiences and encounters. For Jon, I suppose it is gender oppression. These memories can serve as guides or clues in the "chance encounters" or "the experimentations." When we start to sense familiar patterns, we might seek another becoming, another dice roll, another option. The question of privilege absolutely does matter. Even the very ability to experiment in becoming utterly depends on the privileges some have that others do not. At the very least, becoming is much more open to the privileged of this society than the outcasts. Just ask one of the trapped black New Orleans residents. No matter how much they may seek to become a finder of food, their race continually marks them as looter instead.


This is not a call to pre-define the Dawg. We should be open to experimentation and dice rolls and not limit ourselves to an ontological definition of the Dawg as being. My call for input on the Dawg was one to reflect and criticize on the becoming even as it barely started to occur. We can only do this, however, if we have memories (instincts) which guide our criticisms and reflections and even new becomings. These memories do not need to become enshrined in ontological proscriptions or conservative reactions, but instead should themselves (and necessarily will) remain open to becoming anew as the flow of life brings chance encounters. The possibility of rolling the dice without at least remembering what game we are playing leaves little hope for any outcome but the craps.


PS - A quote from Dreyfuss about Heidegger's pre-ontological may help explain:
"In sum, the practices containing an interpretation of what it is to be a person, an object, and a society fit together. They are all aspects of what Heidegger calls an understanding of being. Such an understanding is contained in our knowing-how-to-cope in various domains rather than in a set of beliefs that such and such is the case. Thus we embody an understanding of being that no one has in mind. We have an ontology without knowing it” (Dreyfus, 18)

Comm Dawg Blawg

Maybe you've already heard of this....

“Finding or Looting?” Yahoo news posted two images from the AP regarding the flooding in New Orleans. One picture showed a white couple dragging food through the water that they had “found” in a store. The second picture showed a black man dragging food through the water that he had “looted” from a store.
the caption on the first picture: Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and
soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through
the area in New Orleans, Louisiana.

While on the second one, the caption was: A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a
grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Flood waters
continue to rise in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina did extensive
damage when it made landfall on Monday.

This is what happens when you stay up till 2 and still can’t fall asleep because you stayed up till 4 accidentally (sorta) the last two nights

Browsing the editorial page for tomorrow’s NY Times (woot for RSS), I came across an article discussing No Child Left Behind. It caught me off guard because it argued (indirectly) for a positive effect of NCLB—something I haven’t heard before from anyone who seemed to know anything about the American education system.

The author claims that “The great achievement of No Child Left Behind is that it has forced the states to focus at last on educational inequality [between poor and rich students], the nation's most corrosive social problem.” Then goes on to the point of the article that we must also focus on the fact that the US is “rapidly losing ground to the nations we compete with for high-skilled jobs that require a strong basis in math and science.”

Indeed, we are losing out on jobs with highly specialized skills in math and science. But I cannot help but ask: who cares?

How many mathematicians and scientists do we really need to be considered an intellectually advanced society? If that seems to be another nations field of excellence, good for them. We don’t need to be top in everything, it’s not like we’re a global empire or anything. (wait a second…)

Either way, the article focuses on high school, which I would argue is misplaced on any side of this argument and further belies the true problem this country faces. High school is crap any way you cut it. The mythically important math and science experts that the author desires are truly cultivated from excellent collegiate training. Sure, you need an adequate background to start from, but who didn’t have to relearn everything in college anyway?

The problem is there: access to higher education. Still split down class lines, but wholly unrelated to NCLB (which BTW the author—aptly—makes no mention of its horribly unfunded mandates that are further destroying our schools to the point that Connecticut has finally decided to take it to the Supreme Court!).

So basically, let’s end this outdated Industrial Revolution notion that math and science are penultimate to supreme knowledge. As communication in all its expanding forms becomes the central locus of world activity, fields such as Speech Communication, Literature, Sociology, and other Humanities must be given their rightful place as central to a good education.

"I do it all the while, I do it ..."

Doggystyle...from paul Gilroy, author of the Black Atlantic, in Against Race

"A dog is not a fox, a lion, a rabbit or a signifyin' monkey. Snoop is not a dog. His filling the mask of undiffrentiated raciaized otherness with quizzical canine features reveals something about the operation of white supremacy and the culture that answer it. Choosing to be a low-down dirty dog values the infrahuman rather than the hyperhumanity promoted through body-centered biopolitics and its visual signatures in health, sports, fitness, and leisure industries... In opting to be seen as a dog, he refuses identification with the perfected, invulnerable male body that has become the standard currency of black popular culture cementing the dangerous link between bodily health and racial purity... His low-down, dirty, animal self directs critical attention to the difficult zones where some people fall through the cracks in the Kantian moral edifice into the fiery pit of infrahumanity." (203)

"However, their moves are not legitimated by references to any notion of love. The dog and the bitch belong together. They are a couple, but their association does not bring about sexual healing. There is no healing in their encounter because the power of sex is not at work here as a means of naturalizing racial difference. Nor is the unhappy union of bodily health and racial purity being celebrated. In this bathtub, cleanliness is not next to godliness, though funkiness may be. Their funky, bestial sex is not about authenticity and offers neither a moment of communal redemption nor any private means to stabilize the reconstructed racial self -- male or female...In this sense, Snoop's dog may help to sniff out an escape route from the current impasse in thinking about racialized identity... We can bring the etho-poetics in his call to 'do it doggy style' into focus by inquiring why individuals should recognize themselves as subjects of freaky sexuality and asking about the premium that this talk about sex places on touch and the moral proximity of the other... The radically alienated eroticism toward which Snoop and his canine identified peers direct our attention might perversely contribute some desirable ethical grounding to the de-based black public sphere. It confirms that we need to talk more, not less about sex...It breaks with the monadological structure that has been instituted under the stern discipline of racial authenticity and proposes another mode of intimacy that might help to recereate a link between moral stances and vernacular metaphors of erotic, worldly love... The sociality established by talk about sex culminates in an invitation to acknowledge ... the pre-ontological space of ethics. In this setting we can call it a being for the other or even a willful nonbeing that exists prior to the racial metaphysics that currently dominates hip-hop's revolutionary conservatism." (204-205)

Becoming-Dawg

Why are we so often compelled to articulate our projects in terms of some progressive moral or ethical vision? There seems to be an assumption in the humanities that often functions as an unspoken obligation: the justification for our scholarly efforts hinges on its political advocacy, its participation in various ethical discourses that seek justice, freedom, liberation from exploitation and suffering, and so forth. Even though the language of morality is old-fashioned, morality wears many disguises: equality of rights, democracy, sympathy for and abolition of suffering, empathy with "the other," happiness, social responsibility and even knowledge and truth. Even when a guiding moral vision is rejected on the grounds that it is unduly "totalizing," it seems that one always enters through the back door when the justification for this rejection is concern for immoral consequences: for instance, universal morality is rejected because it does violence to minority thought.

The imperative of social responsibility, felt as an obligation to summarily contribute to liberation and the end of repression/oppression, manifests itself as a duty to situate oneself _against_ something: racism, sexism, binary thought, the dogmas of modernity, etc. The privileged posture is essentially reactionary, and the flip side of opposition--progressive advocacy--shares this reactionary character. For Nietzsche, the death of God was a relatively meaningless event because man simply substituted his own values: "The reactive man takes the place of God: adaptation, evolution, progress, happiness for all and the good of the community; the God-man, the moral man, the truthful man and the social man."

I would question this knee-jerk moralizing on at least two grounds: first, it is not an effective form of "resistance": the "system" does not live by bread alone but is maintained even, and especially through its dissidents: the monotonous drive to undo and to deconstruct the falsehoods of capitalist ideology is a case of pushing against an open door: "Long live difference! Down with essentialist binaries" (Empire, 138). Second, this morality functions to preserve man (in the terms of Nietzsche/Foucault/Deleuze)--with these thinkers, I wonder what the "afterman," as Rabinow prefers, is like. The point is that one never knows in advance which way a line is going to turn, or what new configurations will result--it is a dice throw, a question of chance and experimentation, not a question of justice. It is "what we ought to think but cannot as yet do so."

I like Eric's discussion of the Dawg as body: not a body with a predetermined form, but an emergent figuration that is not a Dog, but "becoming-Dawg." The blog/Dawg is a body, not just metaphorically, but literally: a dynamic material composition. As Spinoza says, you do not know beforehand what a body can do, in a given encounter, a given arrangement, a given combination.

“... what matters is not, as in bad novels, the opinions held by characters…. But rather the relations of counterpoint into which they enter and the compounds or sensations that these characters either themselves experience or make felt in their becomings and their visions,” "... as if they were monuments which by incorporation give new life instead of solely actualizing something;" where “personae proliferate and branch off, jostle one another and replace one another.”
~ Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy? er, what is the comm dawg blawg?

more thoughts about self-definition

Recent posts about the purposes and possibilities of this blog have lead me to a number of different thoughts, some of which are more reflective and less academic in nature and posted on my personal blog (which, apparently, Kristen has already visited).

Here is a question I have as I read and consider writing for this blog: who is our perceived audience?  A number of people have mentioned sharing ideas with each other and promoting dialogue and responsiveness.  So are we speaking primarily to each other in a public context?  Are we speaking to the larger academic community?  Are we hoping to bring the benefits of our knowledge to lay-people?  After all, as I tell my public speaking students, your notion of the audience will lead to certain types of topics and certain types of language, and specific expectations.

Whatever it becomes, I am excited about the possibilities.  Many intellectual movements and respected writers have come out of this sort of intellectual-writing community (although they did not have the advantage/challenge of internet-mediated communication) and I think only good things can come from fostering intellectual community here.

Our Dawg Bites Back: Exploring Blogging

The Dawg is alive. This is no metaphor. This is not a test. The Blawg is alive. We should see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, and touch it. We should admire it, fear it, love it, consume it, and feel it. I am already amazed by the responses, but please do not read this as narcissitic back-patting. The idea of the blog has already left my grasp and is currently lifting it's leg and marking new teritory. My own ideas for launching the blog have been left behind and the dawg is making me re-think. We are often controlled by our pets as much as we are by our words. Just listen to the words thus far. Kristin, Chris, Jamie, and others have made lucid and compelling cases for the shapes this forum may take. I particularly enjoyed Kristin's post emphasizing the participative nature of this spectacle. I love the line, "Here are the days where our discourse on the Internet begs for response." Perhaps she is echoing Chris's take on Bahktin, but, either way, I am resonating like a digeridoo.
I could not help but hear Marshall McLuhan reverberating in my ears when I read these posts. Regardless of your stance on McLuhan, his emphasis on understanding media as extensions of ourselves is certainly crucial. A quick quote from McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage for the unfamiliar. "The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.

All

Media

Are

Extensions

Of

Some

Human

Faculty-

Psychic

Or

Physical” (pg. 26)"

For instance, the tire is an extension of the foot. Radio is an extension of the ear. I suppose a microscope is an extension of the eye, etc. He speaks more of these media as affecting the ratios of our sense perception ( think of the common usage of the notion "visual learners"). Does the media force perception in a way which emphasizes seeing, hearing, touch, etc and how are the ratios (how much of a particular sense is used or unused) of the senses affected by the media.
So, our question becomes, "What kind of media is a blog?" And, "What kind of extension of ourselves is this particular dawg?" I thought this might be a fun exploration as a communal launching to the site. We have many thinkers who can comment on the content or message (in the non-McLuhnian sense) of blogs from a rhetorical perspective. For instance, there are present many features of academic writing in a little less formal and shorter format. What does this tell us about blogs from the perspective of rhetoric? John does an excellent job starting this process with the commentary on Times New Roman. Also, both Kristin and Chris emphasize the interpersonal nature of blogs, so perhaps some of our colleagues can comment on the function of this blog for this community. I think we can contribute much more to the conversation than merely seeing blogs as predictable outcomes of the "internet revolution" or as simply extensions of the technique of writing (and hence the visual sense) from a McLuhnian perspective.
I got the sense reading both Chris and Kristen's post that blogs might be extensions of our ears more than the eyes (or, at least, of listening with our eyes). This desire to respond emanates from the call of the other, so perhaps blogs give us the opportunity to listen with our eyes and speak with our finger tips. Now, you can start to see the Dawg taking shape. It has a tounge, some fingers, some ears, and, before we know it, will have a body (of work). I told you this was no metaphor. The Dawg lives! Long live the Dawg!

Endless Possibilities

I really enjoyed Lessl's lecture today. I thought he gave us some interesting pedagogical food for thought. His idea of pre-writing, re-writing and multiple drafts was of utmost personal importance to me. I realize after looking back through paper ideas and journal entries that the two are intercity connected. Many of my ideas come from my observation and recording of daily life. I turn a lot of poor, personal ramblings into (somewhat!) scholarly papers. So many personal passions are able to be located in the literature I read for class. I suspect that is the same for many of you. I really see this site as a place for us to shell out ideas and take simple observations and knowledge (such as the NOLA blog) and turn it into rich data. I am excited to read other young scholars' ruminations. As I peek into the blog sites listed on ya'lls profiles (yes, I am nosey), I see that your spaces are also filled with interesting personal observations and data. While the understanding that blogs are a fascinating and provocative communication vehicle is nothing new, you can't help but continuously hypothesize about their meaning and power. Gone are the days when the Internet is a foreign machine for communicating, fading are the days when the Internet is an attractive mechanism for communication because of its anonymity. Here are the days where our discourse on the Internet begs for response. I observe so many of my fellow bloggers calling for "comments" and responses to their ideas. A friend of mine actually called out his reading audience as being "selfish...simply reading the words and choosing not to give any feedback." Blogs are more than just a space for us to pour out our innermost and comment on daily happenings they are a discursive space to also receive acknowledgement for these ramblings. The words of the NOLA blogger are so poignant and open but even more telling of the situation are the outpouring of responses s/he is receiving. I look forward to this space being a sounding board for our ideas but also as a place for response to occur. In a move of arrogance (one in which I hope others can relate) I started daydreaming about a fictional day when our blog entries resurface. Who knows what the academic future holds but maybe some of us are the future Goodnights, Leffs, Zarefskys (sorry, I don't know any HCP folks really) and students can trace the roots of a famous work back to a simple blog entry. It is too soon to fully understand the importance of blogs. I am hesitant to compare them to the letters, diaries and tapes of past generations but maybe someday! The possibilities truly are endless!

Font Credibility

Why is it that something as seemingly insignificant as a font can still carry a weighty dose of credibility (or a conspicuous lack thereof)? I am a firm supporter of Arial and non-serif fonts in general. I find them incredibly easier to read than the likes of the ominous Times New Roman.

The rest of the world seems to agree with me. Every font in Windows is non-serif and certainly no professional website uses serifs (except the NY Times—and even they use non-serifs for the navigation bar!). I’m currently writing this in MS Word and using Times new Roman because I was too lazy to go through the hassle of changing the default font, and even the words “Times New Roman” in the font selection box at the top of the page are in a non-serif font!

That said, I was recently advised by two separate undergraduate professors before leaving Luther that I should stop submitting my scholarly papers in Arial because it looks “unprofessional.” Why is it that Arial has been awarded the status of unprofessional while Times New Roman has some innate credibility? Scholarly language is already harder to read to lay people, are we trying to further disrupt any possible communication by making it even physically more difficult to read?

Perhaps I am going too far in this, and I am sure many readers will think just that. Nonetheless, I have a dream that one day our papers will be judged not by the font of their skin, but by the content of their analysis. (read: MLK Jr. reference)

live new orleans blog

FYI: a london times newspaper article today mentioned a live new orleans blog being written by a computer guy who is still in the city. it is frighteningly fascinating: http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/