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??