Comm Dawg Blawg

Some Holiday Cheer

2008-12-10T14:49:00.001-05:00

Looking for a gift for that tough academic on your list? How about this....We can wear it at our next conference :)

holligrams on CNN

2008-11-06T11:36:00.001-05:00

We were talking about this Holigram thing in our visual class today, and I found a video of it online and thought you guys would be interested in this too. What would Baudrillard say?

Civic Forums at UGA

2008-09-01T12:45:00.003-04:00

Hey all,

Last summer Chris and I attended a workshop, hosted by the Russell Library, to learn how to moderate National Issues Forums. This training was one of the many initiatives the Library has undertaken to boost civic participation in the Athens area. Below is some info. about upcoming forums--I hope you'll go and encourage your students to go as well!

* * * * *
The Russell Library and the Jimmy Carter Library and partners across the state of Georgia are excited to announce the forums series, Georgia Deliberations: What Policy Decisions Today Will Get Us A Better Tomorrow? In 4 cities around the state, Athens, Tifton, Atlanta, and Albany there will be three forums on issues public concern. In each city a new issue guide on paying for healthcare will be the centerpiece deliberation. Students from the University of Georgia's Honors Program's Roosevelt Institution will moderate many of these forums. Here are the details for the Athens area forums. Please join us and encourage your family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and students to come as well!

Coping with the Cost of Healthcare: How Do We Pay for What We Need?

September 25, 2008, 7-9 p.m.

Russell Library, UGA Main Library, West Entrance

Making Ends Meet: Is There A Way to Help Working Americans?

October 16, 2008, 7-9 p.m.

Oconee Public Library, 1080 Experiment Station Road, Watkinsville

The Energy Problem: Choices for an Uncertain Future

October 28, 2008, 7-9 p.m.

Russell Library, UGA Main Library, West Entrance

We will also host "Debate Watch 2008" on October 7, 2007 at 7 p.m. at the Russell Library with Dr. Paul Gurian as our special guest commentator.

Brochures for the Tifton, Athens, and Atlanta forums are attached. Information about all the forums is available at
http://www.libs.uga.edu/russell/exhibits/deliberations.shtml

arts politics in Athens

2008-08-21T17:11:00.002-04:00

This Paste article got my attention because of the local reference, and then featured a somewhat nonsensical political quotation from Eric's favorite local band: Dark Meat. Does this say anything interesting about the relationships between arts, activism and politics?

Zombie Survival

2008-08-04T20:50:00.001-04:00

Test your knowledge... How prepared are you for the outbreak?

http://www.newsandentertainment.com/zFzombiequiz.html

My scores were B physical, B mental, B experience, and F emotional (my mantra is "numbness is the key to survival"--lol)

Overall, Z+--says I can survive a nuclear war. Whew! I was worried...

Remembering George Carlin

2008-06-27T00:49:00.002-04:00

As you know, comedian George Carlin died this past week. I would use the more sensitive "passed away," but Carlin would probably only despise the pretentious euphemism. Carlin was not only an important social critic, he was more specifically a student of rhetoric. So much of his humor centered on the absurdity of social symbols as well as their potentially destructive force. Sometimes this was set in a playful context, such as pointing out the differences between football and baseball jargon. At other times, his observations of public rhetoric were used to explain the atrocities of American foreign policy. Most recently, Carlin told us, "Fuck Lance Armstrong . . . and fuck Tiger Woods. I'm tired of being told who to admire in this country." This was not so much an attack on the athletes as it was an attack on the mindless approval and admiration of public figures he was rightfully afraid of. One might find it odd that Carlin did not think of himself and as a political comedian. While Carlin's humor may not have been as explicitly political as someone like Bill Maher, his humor was in a sense even more political or at least richer. He didn't so much criticize public policy as he did the discursive relations (though he would never use such an academic term) that produced those policies in the first place. I do not think I'm exaggerating when I call his observational humor a master class in contemporary rhetoric and popular/political (distinction?) culture. So in the wake of Carlin's death I encourage you to take advantage of all his footage being shown on TV. The first ten minutes of Jammin in New York will not only have you in stitches but also show Carlin at his most political, criticizing the Gulf War (the first one, the one that wasn't popular to question). But even when Carlin was doing airplane humor, which he spent the next twenty minutes doing, he was original and poignant, exposing the absurd language and other social symbols used to exert power, in this case, that of airlines. Carlin didn't limit his scathing observations to the government, probably because that would be the most obvious place to look. And Carlin didn't point out the obvious, but rather those things he made embarrassingly obvious for us to see.

So in the spirit of this stimulating and oddly inspiring social critic, Fuck George Carlin. Now, more than ever, we need more people like him.

Bakhtin stuff

2008-05-18T22:20:00.002-04:00

Since people on this blog love theorists whose names begin with B, I thought I'd let you know that I've made two posts on my personal blog summarizing Bakhtinian concepts and applying them to the context of Christian Worship. I know few of you are worship leaders, but I thought you might be interested in the summaries. They are here:

The Living Word

Ideological Becoming

Blogs of interest

2008-04-25T12:35:00.002-04:00

Hey All:

Since I teach my WMST class about the power of the Internet for resistance and feminist activity, I had them post their assignments this semester on a class blog. Today their media analysis projects are due and you can view them at the sites listed below. The students could either create a feminist text OR do a mini rhetorical criticism of a cultural text. I'm really proud of how much work went into the project.

If you'd like to check them out:

http://ugafeminism.blogspot.com/
http://wmst2010.blogspot.com/

I love a lot of the projects, but in particular I thought these videos were pretty powerful. I encouraged them to put their activism on Youtube as well. I hope you're as inspired as I am!

Barbie Culture: http://ugafeminism.blogspot.com/2008/04/clark-media-analysis.html

Tension between sex positive feminism and sexual exploitation:
http://ugafeminism.blogspot.com/2008/04/sexpos-expos.html

Taking on the Beauty Myth:
http://wmst2010.blogspot.com/2008/04/peyton-feminist-text.html

FEMINISTS UNITE!

Benjamin Post of the Day

2008-04-24T09:11:00.002-04:00

Hi, I wanted to finish the "On Language" essay...sorry for the delay

The Fall made language mediate, making multiplicity and linguistic confusion one step away. In this turning away from things, came the plan for the Tower of Babel, and linguistic confusion with it.

Nature begins its muteness, which we call the deep sadness of nature. Because she is mute, nature mourns. Also, the sadness of nature makes her mute. It's a deeper inclination to speechlessness (in all mourning) which is different from an inability or disinclination to speak. It mourns because it feels itself known by the unknowable. Men names them, they become overnamed. This overnaming (too many names for a 'tree' for instance) is the cause of the mourning.

“There is a language of sculpture, of painting, of poetry. Just as the language of poetry is partly, if not solely, founded on the name language of man, it is very conceivable that the language of sculpture or painting is founded on certain kinds of thing-languages, that in them we find a translation of the language of things into an infinitely higher language, which may still be of the same sphere. We are concerned here with nameless, nonacoustic languages, languages issuing from matter; here we should recall the material community of things in their communication” (73).

Crazy Cat Lady

2008-04-20T11:29:00.001-04:00

For the whole story, check it out: http://nicodauphineisevil.blogspot.com/

Please spread the word... Nico must be stopped.

I don't know what I think about this...

2008-04-17T14:58:00.009-04:00

But what do you think about it? Apparently a senior at Yale has done an art project by getting artificially inseminated and taking drugs to induce a miscarriage.

Here's the link...
and another one

Seriously, what do you think?

UPDATE: Bitch Ph.D. has also weighed in

UPDATE #2: Feministing has some more information, including that her project was just a "creative fiction" and another clarification that she went through the process without knowing whether she was actually pregnant.

FINAL UPDATE: The artist, Aliza Shvarts, has written a column in Yale's newspaper explaining the project, what it entails, and how she thinks it functions. I find her explanation fascinating in light of some issues we've discussed this semester, particularly Butler's arguments about the performative and semiotic capacity of the body.

visual, media, gender, sexuality theory and criticism?

2008-04-14T18:47:00.002-04:00

hi all,
i got assigned to teach a special topics class this fall 2008. i'd like to use any sources that you all think might work well, since many of you have expertise in some of the areas i'll be covering. please pass on any helpful cites! thanks... ~ jamie

fyi, the title of my course is: "Visual and Mediated Rhetorics of Gender and Sexuality.”

lessl needed a quick description of my course to publicize to the undergards, so here's a quick explication of it: "This course will survey types of media theory and criticism within and outside of the discipline of rhetoric. Extra attention will be given to the visual medium and the mediation of gender and sexuality. The purpose of the course is to introduce students to theoretical perspectives as well as case studies in order to enhance their ability to critically see, think, write, or in other ways create better rhetorical artifacts for heterosexual women and men and LGBTQ communities. This course is reading and writing intensive as well as it is heavy in discussion."

Benjamin Post of the Day

2008-04-13T09:44:00.002-04:00

Continuing from "On language as such..."

Now. this dual process of invention and reflection (or conception and spontaneity or we might call it reading and writing) has its own word in language. It is called translation. We translate the language of things into language of humans. Translation is not an afterthought but the deep grounding of a theory of language. Every evolved language is a translation of all others. Languages relate to each other as do media of varying densities. "Translation is removal from one language into another through a continuum of transformations" (70).

Translation of language of things into language of humans is not only the translation of mute into the sonic. It is also translation of nameless into a name. In doing this, it adds something--knowledge. The objectivity of this naming is guaranteed by God--the creative word resulted in an objective thing, with its own language. It also created humans. So each share this objective background and can be translated because of it. God gives each beast a sign, and they step before humans to be named.

This explains the multiplicity of language; the unspoken sign in things falls short of human naming language, which also falls short of God's creative word. Language of things passes into knowledge and name only through translations; multiple translations ='s multiple languages, at least since the Fall. Knowledge, like language, gets infinitely differentiated. Tree of Knowledge illustrates the unity before the Fall--Apples directly gave knowledge of good/evil. This knowledge is nameless. The Fall marks the birth of the human word, where the name steps outside itself. The name communicates something other than itself. This is true spirit of language. The Fall has a threefold significance for language:
1) Humans make language a means, a mere sign, which results in plurality of language.
2) A new immediacy arises--the magic of judgment.
3) The origin of abstraction in language, for Good and Evil are nameless and outside language. Name only refers to concrete things. Abstract elements of language are rooted in judgment.
We abandon the immediacy of name and the concrete for the abyss of the mediatness of all communication--the prattle, the word as mere means, the empty or arbitrary word.

Amun-Ra

2008-04-12T14:19:00.004-04:00

When I conduct research for my thesis, I frequently stumble across random facts that I have no intention of using--but they're still fun to waste time thinking about. Here's one such fact...

It was in 2008 B.C.--the mirror image of this year, if you will-- that the deity Amun-Ra joined the Egyptian pantheon. Originally just "Amun" or "Imn," the god of air grew in popularity and became associated with a number of other phenomena--including war--until he merged identities with Ra-Herakhti, the sun god (thus assuming the name "Amun-Ra"). Interestingly, the word "Amun" or "Amen" means "what is hidden" or "what is not seen" and "Ra" means "sun" or that which is "visible." This paradox that was not lost on his followers, and eventually the "invisible-sun" would assume the identity of a god that could not be perceived/experienced by mortals; whose form was unknown. While it seems counter-intuitive, it was indeed the least perceivable deity who would be heralded in many circles as the king of the gods (and some claim that worship of Amun-Ra indirectly paved the way for future monotheistic religions).

Now it is A.D. 2008, and though Amun-Ra may not exist per se, the idea of him seems to live on. After thousands of years, we still supplicate ourselves to the invisibly visible (the panopticon, big brother, the hand of the free market), we exalt the nebulous and unknowable (virtuality and Truth, respectively), and we fear/ are in awe of the spectral (terrorists). This is not to say that any of this is necessarily dystopic--I am not trying to moralize about anything here. Rather, I simply wonder how it is that the imperceptible can continue to be so powerful in an age of expanding fields of perception. I wonder how it can be that, after 4016 years, we still live in an age of Amun-Ra.

Benjamin Post of the Day

2008-04-12T12:10:00.003-04:00

I know you've all been waiting with baited breath... I have been chasing down a crazy cat woman in search of my stolen cat. It's a crazy story...

The point where human language participates most intimately in the divine infinity of the pure word is the human name. "The theory of proper names is the theory of the frontier between finite and infinite language." Humans are the only ones who name their own kind. So the personal name is closest to divinity because the name does not re-present or correspond to any knowledge. The name is the child. The mythological idea that a person's name is their fate expresses this idea. The proper name is the communion of humans with God's pure word. The human word is the name of things. So it is no longer conceivable, as in bourgeois language theory, that the relation between word and object is arbitrary, conventional (think Saussure). "Language never gives mere signs" (69). But it is also incorrect that the word is the essence of the thing (mystical language theory). The thing in itself has no word--it was created by God's word and known by its human name. The knowledge of the thing is not spontaneous creation and arbitrary. The name we give to things depends on what is communicated to us by the thing. In the name, the word has become not only creative but also receptive. (In other words, the name is not pure invention but comes from a read of the material thing).

Benjamin Quote of the Day

2008-04-05T11:53:00.002-04:00

Continuing...

Language of things is imperfect and dumb, denied formal principle of language--namely, sound. Things only communicate with one another through material community. The incomparable feature of human language is that its community with things is immaterial and mental, and the symbol of it is sound. Bible expresses this through idea that God breathes life and mind and language into humans.

In 2nd story of creation in Genesis, where God breathes life into us, it also reports we were made from earth. This is the only take where creation is mediated...Other stories, God speaks and there was, so it's unmediated. In 2nd story, man created through earth and given the divine gift of language.

This relationship between humans and language also recorded in first Genesis creation story. The rhythm of creation in Genesis 1 goes like this-- Let there be, He Made, He named. The deep and clear relation of the creative act to language appears every time. "Language is therefore both creative and the finished creation; it is word and name. In God, name is creative because it is word, and God's word is cognizant because it is name" (68). Only in God is there absolute relation of name to knowledge--God's names are identical with the creative words he used to make things. It is a pure medium. Humans, on the other hand, name through mediums.

"In the word, creation took place, and God's linguistic being is the word. All human language is only the reflection of the word in name. The name is no closer to the word than knowledge is to creation. The infinity of all human language always remains limited and analytic in nature, in comparison to the absolutely unlimited and creative infinity of the divine word" (68).

Benjamin Quote of the Day

2008-04-05T11:43:00.003-04:00

I'm gonna be gone a few days, so I thought I would double up today...

Continuing...

Now, the question: Is mental being of a linguistic nature? Saying they are the same is a tautology. “There is no such thing as a content of language; as communication, language communicates a mental entity—something communicable per se. The differences between languages are those of media that are distinguished as it were by their density—that is, gradually; and this with regard to the density both of the communicating (naming) and of the communicable (name) aspects of communication” (66).
These two are constantly interrelated and only united in name-language of humans.

However, the equation of mental and linguistic being is crucial because it leads to the concept of revelation. Within all linguistic formation, there is a conflict between what is expressible and inexpressible. One sees the last mental entity from the perspective of the inexpressible. The equation of mental and linguistic being means that what is most expressible is the purely mental. This is what is meant by the concept of revelation. In revelation, the highest mental region is the only one that does not know the inexpressible, for it is addressed in the name and expressed as revelation. Only the highest mental being rests solely in humans and their language--art rests not in the spirit of language but in the language of things. Language (human) is the mother of reason and revelation.

Benjamin Quote of the Day

2008-04-05T11:35:00.003-04:00

Continuing from "On Language as such..."

The names purpose and its highest meaning is that it is the innermost nature of language itself. "The name is that through which, and in which, language itself communicates itself absolutely (65)." Name as the heritage of human language vouches for the fact that language as such is the mental being of humans. On this is founded the difference between human and other languages... Man is the namer, by this we recognize that through humans pure language speaks. All nature communicates itself in language and so finally in humans. Only through linguistic being of things can we get beyond ourselves and attain knowledge of things--in the name. God's creation is complete when receives names from humans. Man is the speaker of language, it's only speaker (the name giver).

“Name, however, is not only the last utterance of language but also the true call of it” (65). Name materializes the essential law of language – where to express oneself and address everything else is united. Language only expresses itself purely in universal naming. “So in name culminates both the intensive totality of language, as the absolutely communicable mental entity, and the extensive totality of language, as the universally communicating (naming) entity” (66).

HOW do you see, think?

2008-04-04T11:49:00.002-04:00

please add to the below... HOW do you see, think because of that picture?

what do you see, think?

2008-04-04T11:44:00.005-04:00

please respond to this REAL picture since you'll help me with a paper/diss i'm writing:

WHAT DO YOU SEE, THINK?

Benjamin Quote of the Day

2008-04-04T09:34:00.003-04:00

Continuing from "On Language as Such..."

Applied to humans, the conclusions above mean that we communicate our mental being in language. But human language speaks in words. This means we communicate our mental being by naming all other things. We know of no other naming language than that of humans. “It is therefore the linguistic being of man to name things” (64).

Why name them? To whom do we communicate ourselves? The answer is different when applied to other languages...the mountain, the lamp, the fox--they all communicate their mental being to humans. They communicate to us and we name them. But to whom do we communicate by naming?

To answer we have to step back and ask: Does man communicate mental being by the names? or in the names? Anyone who assumes it is by names cannot also argue we communicate our mental being for mental being does not happen through the words/names. And equally, this view can only assume that we communicate factual subject matter, for that does happen through naming words. This is bourgeois conception of language. "It holds that the means of communication is the word, its object factual, and its addressee a human being" (65).

There is an other (better) conception of language. It knows no means, no object, and no addressee of communication. “It means: in the name, the mental being of man communicates itself to God” (65).

2008-04-03T22:48:00.002-04:00

I suppose my contribution to the blog will be posting absurd images of camo. Semi-intellectual comments are forthcoming, but for now, I'll let the image speak for itself...

Pic of the Day

2008-04-03T13:44:00.003-04:00

\

Branded, April 28th, 6-9 PM, Upstairs at Tasty World!

Send your students for extra-credit! There will be videos, art, music, and speeches on the issues of consumerism, including race, gender, ethics, democracy, labor, and the environment.

It's free, and will feature good times, prizes, and food!

Check the website

Benjamin Quote of the Day

2008-04-03T12:16:00.002-04:00

Continuing from "On Language as such and the language of man"

Now, Benjamin insists that the mental entity (in the previous quotation) and the linguistic entity are different. We seek to communicate the mental entity, but we do so through the linguistic entity (words, sculpture, etc.). Language communicates the mental being corresponding to it. What is communicable in a mental entity is its linguistic elements. Language thus communicates the linguistic elements of things, and only their mental elements insofar as this is directly included in their linguistic elements (think of an index or icon, only insofar as the relation is not arbitrary)

Thus, all language communicates itself. The language of a lamp communicates not the lamp but the language-lamp. The linguistic being of all things is their language. That which is communicable in a mental entity is its language. This capacity for communication is language itself.

“Or, more precisely, that all language communicates itself in itself; it is in the purest sense the ‘medium’ of the communication. Mediation, which is the immediacy of all mental communication, is the fundamental problem of linguistic theory, and if one chooses to call this immediacy magic, then the primary problem of language is its magic” (64).

seeing clearly?

2008-04-02T12:12:00.002-04:00

so i'm reading A LOT of bakhtin this semester since i'm in a theory class outside our department which is devoted solely to him. on a side note, i recommend that all rhetoricians read bakhtin, and, read more than just his theory of carnival which gets cited the most in our literature. bakhtin is especially interesting for any of you (like me) who are trying to theorize a material rhetoric, since he takes an explicitly materialist approach to language.

at any rate, i'm currently in dialogue with his 'toward a philosophy of the act.' it is his earliest work (early early 1900s), and very meta-theoretical, critiquing kant and such, so is in a sense a big overview of the intellectual tradition he is responding to. i'm posting about this now, however, because i find it interesting that even as bakthin proposes a new kind of ethics in reaction to all of the problematic transcendental philosophy that came before him, he continues to privilege his position as 'seeing clearly.' he writes, 'but from within the answerable act, the one who answerably performs the act knows a clear and distinct light, in which he orients himself' (p. 30). rather than propose an objective, outside, universal enlightened view from above (as plato, kant, other enlightenment thinkers did), bakhtin proposes a situated, embodied, lighted clarity from within. in fact, he even condems the earlier philosophers for being blind.

i guess what i'm seeing, is, a persistent privileging of seeing clearly itself. i know that the latter post-modern turn troubles this call for clarity, but what about troubling this call for seeing? do we ever, or should we ever, privilege blindness??

Benjamin Quote of the Day

2008-04-02T10:13:00.003-04:00

Benjamin has a very unique notion of language, so I thought the next few posts would try to elucidate... From "On language as such and the language of man"

He begins by stating that every human expression is a kind of language--sculpture, art, music, technology, etc. Communication in words is only one kind. There is a tendency in all of these to communicate the mind. But it's not just humans...

“There is no event or thing in either animate or inanimate nature that does not in some way partake of language, for it is the nature of each one to communicate its mental contents” (62)

Benjamin Quote of the Day

2008-04-01T11:01:00.002-04:00

From "The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction"

“For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at historical turning points cannot be performed solely by optical means—that is, by way of contemplation. They are mastered gradually—taking their cue from tactile reception—through habit” (120).

To help clarify, Benjamin is saying that we don't discover new forms and ways of perception via reflection, contemplation, analysis. We do so by habit. So, when cinema emerges, we don't discover how this changes the perceptual sensorium by reflecting or contemplating the form. We discover the changes as they become habit, as we watch a lot of cinema. This explains why every new media is greeted with comparisons to old media, that upon further review seem ridiculous and outdated. For instance, comparisons of the auto and the horse, or the computer and the typewriter, or television and cinema. We reflect on these new media and we make these comparisons. But as the media insinuate themselves into our habits, we realize their fundamental differences in shaping the perceptual sensorium.

Rhetoric is. . . .

2008-03-31T15:12:00.002-04:00

Hi all,

So I imagine that if you're like me, you've had dozens of folks ask you what exactly rhetoric is. The definition I'm most attached to at the moment is a version of James Boyd White's, something to the effect of--rhetoric is the study of how people create, define, and shape communities.

What about you? How do you fill in the blank: "Rhetoric_________"?

For Public Speaking Teachers

2008-03-31T15:08:00.001-04:00

Benjamin Quote of the Day

2008-03-31T09:34:00.002-04:00

From "The Path to Success in Thirteen Theses"

“People have no conception of the hunger for clarity. This is the supreme emotional need of any public. One center, one leader, one slogan. The more unambiguous an intellectual phenomenon, the greater its radius of action will be and the more the public will flock to it” (144).

“Strictly speaking, the public has an ear only for the message that the author would just have time and strength enough to utter on his deathbed with his last breath” (145).

Attention is a fickle thing. This also sounds a warning call for all those who would insist on intellectual "clarity" and "accessibility." This is often a call for dumbing it down, tinged with anti-intellectualism. The academy has an important role to play in thinking harder, deeper, and longer about issues than the average member of the public. This is an important function, one I think is challenged unfairly by the arguments about clarity and accessibility.

Hey there

2008-03-30T19:32:00.002-04:00

Hey everybody,

This is my first blog post (outside of WebCT) !

avoidance habits and/or free will?

2008-03-30T16:51:00.003-04:00

also, what if habit as avoidance = free will? i pose that connection because in daniel dennett's 'freedom evolves' (2003), one way he traces the evolution of free will is by discussing it as designed avoidance, allowing humans to predict, prevent, protect, etc. (p. 43). all of this makes me wonder, what is the difference between (avoidance) habit, free will, and agency? might they be the same thing, or various levels of a different overaching human activity? and, where does rhetoric fit into all of this?

Benjamin Quote of the Day

2008-03-30T11:47:00.003-04:00

From "Toys and Play"

“For play and nothing else is the mother of every habit. Eating, sleeping, getting dressed, washing have to be instilled into the struggling little brat in a playful way, following the rhythm of nursery rhymes. Habit enters life as a game, and in habit, even in its most sclerotic forms, an element of play survives to the end. Habits are forms of our first happiness and our first horror that have congealed and become deformed to the point of being unrecognizable” (120).

Continuing our discussion from yesterday, Benjamin here points to the importance of enjoyment or pleasure in establishing habits as well as the role of children. Habits are more easily established in children because they do not have as many other habits to replace or displace. Plus, habits form more easily when they are enjoyable. He also mentions not just happiness but horror--perhaps some habits are established in exactly the opposite way. The thing is so disgusting or horrible, etc., they we establish habits to stay away from it. Any thoughts?

Pic of the Day

2008-03-29T15:06:00.004-04:00

Check it out: Branded, Coming to Athens April 28th!

Benjamin Quote of the Day

2008-03-29T09:14:00.002-04:00

From "Ibizan Sequence"
“Foremost among the human capacities, according to Goethe, is attention. But it shares this primacy with habit, which from the outset vies with it for preeminence. All attentiveness has to flow into habit, if it is not to blow human beings apart, and all habit must be disrupted by attentiveness if it is not to paralyze the human being. To note something and to accustom oneself to it, to take offense and to put up with a thing—these are the peaks and the troughs of the waves on the sea of the soul” (592).

Attention and habit are big concepts in my still developing theory of rhetoric, especially when approached from a media studies angle. We can use blogs, and this one in particular, as an example. Attention is the prime cultural resource. Blogs grow, make money, become powerful through attention. When you sell ad space, you are selling the attention of your readers more than anything else. (in this context it is interesting that advertisements all seem to fall on the margins of webpages--as if they can insinuate themselves into our consciousness without our direct gaze. I think Ihde describes attention as the direction and intensity of our gaze). Television, radio, the internet all work this way. You provide a product to capture consumer attention and advertisers will pay for the production in exchange for a little piece of your audience's time. When that attention becomes habit, jackpot! Important questions then: How does attention become habit? What grabs attention, and are there certain characteristics of those messages that make them more likely to become habit? For instance, does a graphic depiction of violence grab our attention, and is it at the same time too intense to become habit? Perhaps most important: Is it the media that is responsible for habits and the content that is responsible for attention (i.e. we have a habit of watching TV or reading blogs, and the content on TV or on blogs directs our attention within this habit?

Playing with My Navel...

2007-01-23T01:28:00.000-05:00

Hi all (if any of you still exist, that is), I thought I would attempt a post at what I believe this blog was specifically designed for, so here goes. Becky and I have been exploring some texts dealing Derrida and differance. We had a brief discussion about what is termed variously as the navel, the textual knot, “the sleight of hand at the limit of the text”; that place in a text that is not a simple contradiction, but the location of the text’s own unreading where deconstruction can begin. I know several of you are far more versed in the matter, so I thought I would pose my question here.

I was thinking of a couple movies as texts and trying to locate their “navel”. First, I have always been struck by the moment in Hotel Rwanda where the UN general tells Paul “you’re not even a nigger,” referring to the fact that American’s won’t help African blacks because they see them as less important even that American blacks who are already discriminated against. This seems to me to simultaneously set up a hierarchy (white, African American/nigger, African black) and yet to call it into question and untie the foundation on which it sits. As far as I can see it, this seems the navel of the movie for understanding race in a deconstructive analysis. Anyone have thoughts as to how I am reading it?

Next, and more pertinent to my current writing, I am trying to find the navel of Brokeback Mountain. In reading sexuality similarly to race in the previous example, I keep coming back to the word “queer”, especially the line “I ain’t queer” spoken by Ennis. This seems to be more than a simple contradiction. While the terminology is denied, the act we traditionally assign to the signifier “queer” is variously performed throughout the movie. Sexuality is clearly structured in the movie as a hierarchy of shame, queer being at the bottom, yet at the same time it is portrayed in a sympathetic light where sexuality per se is subsumed under a broader hierarchy of “universal love” at least according to the mainstream read of the film. It seems that all those hierarchies are unraveled around the term queer and its conflicted identity within the terms of the film’s text.

Anyone have any thoughts? Am I understanding the concept of differance correctly? Do you agree with this understanding of the “navel”? Any differnt reads of these texts? I think it would be fun to have some theory-based conversations like we had when the blog began.

Cheers!
Jon

top speakers of 2006

2007-01-15T22:32:00.000-05:00

I was directed to a blog post on the top speakers of 2006, here.

Probably worth a discussion, if people have an opinion. I agree with the selection of Obama and Olberman, to begin (but it's no secret that i'm in love with Barack Obama). Anyway, I thought some of y'all might be interested.

Rhetorical Aritfact

2006-07-29T16:28:00.000-04:00

All Things Considered is reporting a really interesting series this month--the front porch. They are calling it a "state of mind" not a place. I find it a really interesting rhetorical study. Thought some of you may be interested. Here is one of their featured interviews.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5589974

Retreating to Humanism in the Queer Classroom

2006-07-25T08:22:00.000-04:00

This article posted today on Inside Higher Ed dealing with the bind of teaching queer theory to reluctant undergraduate students averse to its core politics. Written by Joshua Gunn at UT Austin, he describes a specific incident with a student’s parent in a large lecture class that made him fear for his job and subsequently “retreat” to liberal humanism. (Ken Rufo’s advice to him on the matter is included about half way down.) Like Gunn, I came to teach in a southern classroom via Minnesota, and the ensuing “culture shock” was indeed a lot for my sensibilities. Here’s a snippet from the end of the article:

I guess, then, I’m not radical enough. But I want to keep my job.

I’ll admit as well that deep down there is a part of me that cannot let go of the notion that liberal humanism keeps some people alive — a faith I’d like to think has some affinity to Spivak’s notion of momentary solidarity in “strategic essentialism” for social and political action. I say I’d like to think it has an affinity, but perhaps I’m more sheepish and cowardly than I’d like to admit? Nevertheless, institutional pressures, the increasing erosion of academic freedom and the decay of tenure protections, the general, cultural hostility toward the professoriate, parental and alumni demands and the PTA-ification of the college and university, and the consumerist drive-thru window attitude about teaching that some students harbor, these trends collectively suggest that the teach-it-and-then-deconstruct-it approach may be the baby bear’s porridge pedagogy of our time.

While I have yet to reach the stage in my career from which he is speaking, I can relate to his mindset and I struggle with some of the same questions. Moreover, I struggle with the relationship between my personal, academic, and pedagogical identities which all call me to different “performances” of myself. Sometimes I wonder if I’m radical enough in my teaching too…

Becky the Revisionist Historian...I'm not surprised...

2006-06-13T10:38:00.000-04:00

Hey gang, here are my results:

You are a Revisionist Historian. You are the Clark Kent of postmodernists. You probably want to work in a library or in social services. No one suspects you of being a postmodernist... until they read your publications!

999 other people got this result!
This quiz has been taken 102533 times.
1% of people had this result.

Dave the Theory Slut

2006-04-28T16:25:00.000-04:00

All other postmodernists bow before me!!!

"You are a Theory Slut. The true elite of the postmodernists, you collect avant-garde Indonesian hiphop compilations and eat journal articles for breakfast. You positively live for theory. It really doesn't matter what kind, as long as the words are big and the paragraph breaks few and far between.

3927 other people got this result!
This quiz has been taken 101912 times.
4% of people had this result."

Eric the Corporate Postmodernist...

2006-03-30T10:36:00.000-05:00

That quiz is funny... I take solace in the fact that only 3% of the people are my type:

You are a Cyberculture Floozie. The theoretical aspects of postmodernism interest you only insofar as they can be used to make cool blinky things. You probably take psychedelics and know at least one programming language (HTML counts!). Other postmodernists call you a corporate whore. They're probably just jealous because you make more money than them.

431 other people got this result!
This quiz has been taken 12934 times.
3% of people had this result.

What Kind of Postmodernist Are You?

2006-03-20T14:21:00.000-05:00

I recently found a test that asks what kind of postmodernist you are. As you can see below, I am a Gender Nazi. Bethany (a Theory Slut) suggested that I pass it along to the Dawg Blawg. If you want, it would be interesting to all post your results here so we can all see where we stand ;o)

What kind of postmodernist are you!?

You are a Gender Nazi. Your boundary-crossing lifestyle inspires awe in your friends and colleagues. Or maybe they're just scared you will kick their asses for using gender-specific language. Either way, the wife-beater helps.
Take this quiz!

Your First Public Speech...

2006-02-10T14:28:00.000-05:00

This may be inappropriate, but I thought it humorous enough to share. I recently asked my students to practice using a comparison technique by describing what it is like to give a speech. This is what one of my students came up with:

Giving your first public speech is like having your first sexual encounter. You are incredibly nervous, you have no idea what you are doing, and it seems to be over way too soon. You also get that feeling of accomplishment when you are finished and you always feel that you will be a lot better next time.

Contemporary Iterations of Situationists?

2006-02-02T21:46:00.000-05:00

Some of Dr Harold’s explanation of the Situationists in class this evening reminded me of this website: improv everywhere. This is a group in New York City that “makes scenes” in the city. My favorite events are the ones where they conduct boat tours from a park fountain, and throw a birthday party for a randomly selected stranger. Their most recent mission attracted police attention, which indicates that it is definitely subversive on some level. And it certainly inspires the “huh?” reaction Dr Harold was talking about. I’m not sure if they are in the same tradition, or if they are even aware of the situationist tradition, but there are some interesting parallels. What do you all think?

Classroom Monitoring

2006-01-19T16:41:00.000-05:00

Hey Everyone- I came across an article in the LA Times today that related to what Dr. Beasley was talking about in the Thursday meeting.

"Former U.S. Rep. James E. Rogan has resigned from the advisory board of a conservative UCLA alumni group after learning that the group's founder had offered students $100 payments to record professors' "non-pertinent ideological comments."

It is hard to believe but I guess the right really is attempting to protect students from leftist ideology...at least I'm guessing "non-pertinent ideological comments" would be leftist!
Read the article to get the full report!

The Dawg is Dead

2006-01-08T17:59:00.000-05:00

Hope everyone had a nice break... Mine was so busy I feel like I need a vacation now. Will/Can I make it through the semester or IS THE SKY REALLY FALLING?

Just some humor to try and revive the dawg. I can't wait for happy hour.

grandma millie

2005-12-06T23:55:00.000-05:00

in deluca's class this semester we talked a lot about, among many things, (re)connecting to nature, (post)place, new orleans, and of course rhetoric. thus, i thought it was pretty appropriate that over t-giving my cousin told me he set up a myspace account for my landau family, kicking it off by naming it after my grandmother mildred 'millie' landau, who had lived (and died) in new orleans for almost 80 years, and posting to the account oral recordings of her talking about her life and pictures of her... in any case, for those of you interested in any of the above themes, feel free to check out the website at: myspace.com-mildredlandau

Pop Language

2005-11-11T09:13:00.000-05:00

I have been reading a lot about the impoverishment of language recently, especially in relation to our disconnection to the natural world. Many of our metaphors come from comparisons to the natural world, and, it seems, as we become more disconnected with that world, then our language loses much of its flavor. This may be partially the result of new media and the popular mass society as well. At least, this is the conclusion of a new book called Slam Dunks and No Brainers by Leslie Savan. Here is an interesting excerpt:

Slam Dunks and No Brainers

Enjoy!!

Blog of interest for Hip Hop scholars

2005-11-05T19:12:00.000-05:00

Thought this blog might helpful for those interested in Hip Hop studies.

NewBlackMan

Peace!
CRG

An Interesting Link about the Future of Media

2005-10-24T23:48:00.000-04:00

Hey y'all...DeLuca emailed us this link for our Enviro Comm seminar--it's eerie in a "1984" kind of way, but intriguing nonetheless. Check it out--it's just an 8 minute clip that focuses on the future of the media (and made me consider the recent actions of Google more seriously):

http://www.lightover.com/epic/

Introducing Top Ten Book Lists

2005-10-16T21:46:00.000-04:00

I noticed how some professors throw around book titles we "should read" in class, and so I decided to start to compile a "Top Ten Books Any Scholar Worth Their Salt Should Read" list from some of my professors. I will launch it off with the amazingly well-read Dr. Thomas Lessl:

1. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures
2. Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy
3. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
4. Roland Barthes, Mythologies
5. Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative
Discourse and Historical Representation
6. Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics and Gnosticism: Two Essays
7. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man:
A Christian Interpretation, vol. 1, Human Nature
8. Marcello Pera, The Discourses of Science
9. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism
10. Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return.

Everybody should chip in and collect a few of these -- either inside or outside department, even other schools. I think they could be an incredible resource.!!

Wow! Talk About Visual Rhetoric

2005-10-05T19:36:00.000-04:00

You must check out this blog -- it is a person with journalism training posting news media images and analyzing the effects of the visual rhetoric. The stuff on katrina and iraq is amazing! This is probably the best blog I have ever seen

http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/

Blawgers Beware!

2005-10-05T18:06:00.000-04:00

I thought this might be of interest to some of you aspiring bloggers--I mean scholars.

It is a recent article in "The Chronicle" entitled,

The Blogosphere as a Carnival of Ideas

Enjoy!

Rappers and Basketball Players

2005-09-28T09:12:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-23T16:09:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-21T20:47:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-19T13:18:00.000-04:00

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?

2005-09-15T23:11:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-15T17:52:00.000-04:00

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...

2005-09-12T13:00:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-11T21:13:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-09T21:21:00.001-04:00

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

2005-09-09T08:54:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-07T22:02:00.000-04:00

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...

2005-09-07T20:14:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-07T11:20:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-06T02:37:00.000-04:00

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 ..."

2005-09-03T22:47:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-03T11:05:00.000-04:00

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.

2005-09-01T22:47:00.000-04:00

“... 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

2005-09-01T17:53:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-01T15:15:00.000-04:00

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

Some

Human

Faculty-

Psychic

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

2005-09-01T15:08:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-01T11:50:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-01T10:54:00.000-04:00

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/

kaotic katrina

2005-08-31T22:06:00.000-04:00

nature does not care for us... we cannot know it or own it; it is beyond... so one simply encounters the other on its own terms... the task is to unsettle... momentarily lose self-consciousness... embrace wildness!

in deluca's enviro comm grad class yesterday, we ruminated about neil evernden's book, 'social creation of nature,' and in particular highlighted the above, which is a paraphrasing, of his call at the end for a new way of doing/seeing environment(alism), or being/seeing (our)selves. as a postmodern thinker, i revel his reveling of chaos. but, as a landau whose trace of lineage zig-zags through new orleans, i gag! how am i to feel liberated rather than devasted by katrina?

2005-08-31T20:50:00.000-04:00

Downtown Chicago with a Dirty-Ass Beard! Life is Good.

Responsiveness

2005-08-31T20:34:00.000-04:00

I operate under the assumption that such a forum has the potential for productivity on two distinguishable planes. This, however, is not to say that at some point in time and space these planes do not—or better, cannot intersect. Primarily, as Eric has said, this space provides us all with an outlet to “publicly” rant, rave, dream, play experiment, and the like. If nothing else, it is a medium to work in and through our own ideas. After talking with several of you, I am continually fascinated by the processes for writing that each of us employs; perhaps, Dawg Blawg can become a part of those processes. As we all know, writing is rewriting.

On the other hand, I see this space as a fertile ground for the emergence of “responsiveness.” To be sure, viewing this plane of potential “responsively” has been informed by my recent (re) reading of Bakhtin’s (1953/1986) “The Problem of Speech Genres,” for my seminar. I am hopeful about the possibilities that this dimension of the Dawg Blawg holds for all of us. The “blawg” is a complex speech genre (to say the least!), comprised of many simpler ones—some visual, some poetic, but most prosaic. In its most vast sense, this utterance is one that will be animated with an array of voices. As I’ve alluded, not only can this space be colored, in the Vosslerian sense, with personal expressions of “individual discourse.” I pose the following as some food for thought-- echoing Eric’s contention about the necessity of an audience: if we are responsive to the voices of our colleagues—and we allow the voices of these multiple “Others” to interanimate our own—how might this dialogue transform other genres of speech? Discourses? Relationships between “real” people? It is a bit daunting when you consider the (transformative) potential tacit in “the response.”

To say the least, I look forward to the verbal play and the emergence of “new” insight. More importantly, I appreciate the power and productivity that comes from a profound recognition of the unity in our differences. I hope you’ll appreciate, as much as I will, watching these events unfold over the forthcoming months (years?). Keep smiling…Keep living!

"One cannot even really see one's own exterior and comprehend it as a whole, and no mirrors or photographs can help; our real exterior can be seen and understood only by other people, because they are located outside us in space and because they are others" (Bakhtin, 1953/1986, p. 7).

Interesting Link

2005-08-31T19:22:00.000-04:00

You probably all know about this link already but just in case you don't-- it is a really great resource for public address!

http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us/index.php

Welcome

2005-08-27T14:12:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the UGA Speech Communication Graduate Student Blog... Post as often as you like, as much as you like, but please keep the mesages confined to academic or intellectual insights. In short, this is not a board for departmental or personal politics. Also, let's spread the word about the blog, even if its only with our friends and parents. Blogs are inherently an attempt to project our voices into the broader public, so a larger audience is always better. Hopefully, our posts can inspire new thinking in ourselves and others, demonstrating the value a communicative perspective can bring to our understandings.

"Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes