Eric Dean Rasmussen Online

Presidential Demeanor

2009-04-05T05:23:00.006-05:00

Some great observations about the Obamas' visit to London, and what Europe's response to the way the President and First Lady carried themselves suggests about USA-EU relations.

This essay will be useful when teaching students about class (in)visibility (Obama shaking the police officer's hand a 10 Downing Street) and Bourdieu's concept of habitus.

"The other thing that she [Mrs. Obama] rose above was Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip: Honey, we shrunk the royal family. If ever we needed a totemic image of the merits of a republic over a monarchy, this was it."

"The truth is that the French have never really got over being dumped at the altar of the “special relationship.” It should have been them. It was after all, the French who gave you the Statue of Liberty and the keys to the Bastille and who think Jerry Lewis is funny. What did the English ever give you? Muffins and a burnt White House."

Joking aside, it's true: the French are unfairly dumped on in the US. I suspect it has a lot to do with military-related issues, e.g. De Gaulle pulling France out of NATO's military (but not political) structure and evicting NATO forces from the country. So, I'll want to supplement this essay with reading about economics and social mobility. Given many Americans' proclivity for ill-informed patriotism, students need to know that it's more likely for a person born poor to move out of poverty in France than it is in the US.

But as this piece to suggests, America should feel proud about their First Family.

(Now, if only the Obama administration would listen to Paul Krugman...)

HUIN305: Week 10

2009-03-03T07:31:00.002-06:00

Hello all:

Just a reminder that HUIN305 will be meeting tomorrow, Wednesday March 4, at 10:15.

A number of you are preparing literature reviews and/or annotated bibliographies. Please send these and any and all new material that you have concerning the progress you're making on your projects out by this evening.

I'd like tomorrow's session to run like a true graduate seminar, i.e. with everyone providing comments on and constructive criticism about each other's projects.

For that to happen, you'll need to get your documents circulating in time for everyone to read them. In your email you might include questions or ideas that you'd like us to take up during the meeting. If there are materials to download from the course "My Space" that can't be send as attachments, let us know.

Also, I encourage you to familiarize yourself with the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) website and group. Take a look at some of the project descriptions posted on the site; they might provide useful models or inspiration. As you write your proposals and eventually your research, you might think of this scholarly community, and/or some of the digital humanities sub-groups affiliated with the site, as one of your target audiences. In fact, you might be interested in joining the organization and, once your practical project is nearly compete, posting information about it there.

I suspect the HASTAC network would be pleased to have more members from outside North America, and through the forum you might just make some valuable professional contacts.

Finally, please bring an extra hard copy of your paper for me to keep.

See you in the a.m.

Studs Terkel, 1912-2008

2008-11-01T05:20:00.005-05:00

I'd see Studs around the city periodically, out and about at events when he was well into his 90s. He was a progressive force for good and until pretty recently it seemed like he would live forever. Studs was a true patriot, populist, and a genuine journalist, someone who believed in America's egalitarian promise enough to listen, thoughtfully, to everyone - including those who are down and out. It's a shame Studs will miss Obama's victory, since he worked so tirelessly during his 96 years to keep hope alive in America. You won't be forgotten, Studs, especially not in your beloved Chicago.

French Theory in America

2008-10-02T07:49:00.010-05:00

TOPICS IN LITERATURE, CRITICISM & THEORY:
FRENCH THEORY IN AMERICA

Aim:
From the late sixties to the end of the twentieth century, a disparate group of French intellectuals greatly influenced Anglo-American arts and culture. Once imported to and disseminated in US universities, philosophical ideas and writing by figures such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari came to exert tremendous force both inside and out of the American academy. Rather quickly, a diverse and radical body of thinking was codified, first as intellectual movements (e.g., structuralism, deconstruction, poststructuralism) and eventually as simply “French theory.”

This course studies the reception of French theory in the US. Our aim will be to understand why and how it became such an integral part of American culture, shaping academic disciplines (especially literary theory, cultural studies, and media studies), sociocultural trends (e.g., identity politics, new historicism), and artistic practices (minimalism, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, surfiction).

In assessing French theory’s American influence, we will consider how it has been interpreted differently in the US and France, trace iterations of significant concepts (différance, discipline, abjection, simulation, minor literature, etc.), and evaluate the inflection of these concepts by US-based literary scholars (e.g., Edward Said, Judith Butler, Stanley Fish, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Walter Benn Michaels, J Hillis Miller, Gayatri Spivak, Fredric Jameson) and writers (Charles Bernstein, Raymond Federman, Shelley Jackson, Lynne Tillman, Gerald Vizenor, David Foster Wallace, Curtis White). Not least, we will speculate about theory’s relevance to twenty-first-century praxes.

Teaching Method: Short lecture followed by moderated seminar discussions and weekly presentations by seminar participants.

Requirements: One class presentation (5 pages), annotated bibliography (10–12 secondary sources), research paper (12–16 pages).

Reading List:
Cusset, Francois. French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States. Trans. Jeff Fort. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Deleuze, Gilles. Essays Critical and Clinical. Trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997.

Derrida, Jacques. Limited Inc. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1988.

Foucault, Michel. The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rainbow. New York: Pantheon, 1984.

Harari, Josué, ed. Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979.

Leitch, Vincent, eds. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001.

An Old School Professor Asks Students to Think

2008-09-22T05:21:00.003-05:00

The Thinker is an inspiring profile of a philosopher at Auburn University who has resisted the imperative to instrumentalize higher education, which is undermining humanities departments and cheapening the value of college degrees. A true practitioner of the liberal arts, Professor Jolley challenges his students, first-year undergraduates included, to think through difficult philosophical problems with him. In the process, his best students learn to do philosophy, which they come to appreciate and understand as a way of living, curiously, in the world, rather than just another subject to be mastered on the way to a degree.

1500 characters max. how many hours revising?

2008-08-21T11:47:00.004-05:00

Reading & writing are migrating to digitally networked environments; literature & literary studies must not be left behind. How are scholars & writers creating a sustainable literary presence within noisy, image-dominated media ecologies? My 3-part project analyzes & participates in the literary field’s evolution within an emerging, collaborative, network culture.

Editorial: ebr (www.ElectronicBookReview.com), a literary journal & networked database, hosts critical exchanges between distributed scholarly & artistic communities interested in digital writing & publishing, interface design, & cultural critique. I coordinate clusters, assign essays, & edit peer-to-peer-reviewed articles. Goals: keep conversations current, moderate debates, & solicit innovative scholarship.

Archival: Contribute to Archive-It, a curatorial experiment designed to preserve & disseminate the 1st generation of e-lit. On the Electronic Literature Organization’s international research team, I select works, write evaluations, & develop an e-lit lexicon. Over time, these efforts will provide a profile of the emergent e-lit field & scholarly tools for studying it.

Critical: Applying my editorial & archival expertise, I examine how changing communication systems affect world-literary formations (literary networks & innovative fictions) in the network society. Connect affective & ideological redistributions of the sensible to sense-making techniques in digital and printed networked narratives.

Seeking Satiric Sublimation

2008-08-17T03:10:00.007-05:00

Is Jon Stewart the most trusted man in America? Personally, I'd have to vote for Bill Moyers or Studs Terkel, because they're better listeners during interviews. But then, of course, there's Stephen Colbert, who liberates the truth so it may soar like an American eagle!

As an avid reader addicted to dozens of online journals and newspapers, despite being disgusted by the onslaught of lies, propaganda and stupidity reported (and too often uncritically repeated) there, I think I'd fit in perfectly at the "Daily Show."

The day begins with a morning meeting where material harvested from 15 TiVos and even more newspapers, magazines and Web sites is reviewed. That meeting, Mr. Stewart said, “would be very unpleasant for most people to watch: it’s really a gathering of curmudgeons expressing frustration and upset, and the rest of the day is spent trying to mask or repress that through whatever creative devices we can find.”

Could I get away with running a media studies course based on this model? Finding a humanities department that could afford 15 TiVos would be hard, but still...

Original Intent

2008-07-29T03:23:00.002-05:00

Patriarchy and Pathology

2008-05-16T05:05:00.006-05:00

Last night at dinner I asked Ira how one might productively analyze the Joseph Fritzl case in terms of systemic, rather than subjective, violence. (Yes, we do have dinner conversations like this. Whaddya expect? We're both PhDs in literature.) Ira's response: begin by looking at the way the Austrian State's patriarchal biases effectively enabled Fritzl to commit his crimes. The State, for instance, repeatedly ignored his daughter's attempts to run away from home, even though her father had a record as a sex offender. Ira's hypothesis is corroborated by "Joseph Fritzl's fictive forebears," a TLS essay, the gist of which is this: Symptomological analyses of Austrian literature, including Freud's case studies, suggest a systemic sociocultural tendency to indulge abusive patriarchs while disregarding patriarchy's victims, primarily women and children.

Will the minnestoa review Survive?

2008-05-08T12:27:00.008-05:00

Marc Bosquet reports on his blog and at The Chronicle of Higher Education that the minnesota review's days may be numbered due to budget cuts that"quality managers" at Carnegie Mellon Univeristy want to impose on the journal.

It would be a shame if the minnesota review closed shop. (Full disclosure: The mr has published my work.) Could Williams move to another university and take the minnesota review with him? Many public U's are hurting financially right now, it's true, but surely there's a shrewd dean somewhere who can recognize that hiring Williams and funding the mr would be a great opportunity to increase their English department's profile - for a reasonable price.

It's great that Jameson, Felski, Berube, Menand, etc. went to bat for the mr, but maybe it's time to call in Stanley Fish. As a specialist in contract law and the former head of Duke UP, I would think that Stan the Man could - and probably would - negotiate a sweet deal for the mr and Jeffrey Williams. In fact, if Fish was still the Dean of LAS at UIC, I'd ask him myself if it would be possible to bring the mr to UIC's English Department. It already hosts two fine critical journals, ebr and Mediations. Why not one more?

Part of the problem is that editorial work is not properly valued in academia. Editorial work is absolutely necessary for the publish-or-perish model to survive, but the time-intensive labor (too much of which is effectively outsourced) required to put out a quality publication is invisible, and editing is treated more like service than research, which is a serious mistake. Faculty and grad students need to make it clear that the editorial infrastructure needs to be maintained in order for the system to function.

Open Humanities Press

2008-05-07T04:33:00.004-05:00

With the current economic recession likely to result in budget cuts for cash-strapped university presses, the appearance of the Open Humanities Press could not come at a better time. More ventures like the OHP will be needed if the current "crisis" in academic publishing is to be resolved in a manner that doesn't pressure scholars to conform to the profit-driven dictates of the market. The OHP's Editorial Advisory Board is impressive, and the cultural capital these scholars have earned should help to legitimize digital-publishing initiatives in the eyes of those academics and administrators inclined to value printed monographs more than digitally produced texts.

Unfazed

2008-04-18T08:44:00.003-05:00

After Identity, Politics

2008-01-13T10:54:00.000-06:00

Thank you Lorrie Moore for rejecting the Clintonistas' sentimental appeals for female votes by reminding us of the Clintons' conservative political record and thank you even more for stating what no male educator dares to say in a public forum:

The children who are suffering [most] in this country, who are having trouble in school, and for whom the murder and suicide rates and economic dropout rates are high, are boys — especially boys of color, for whom the whole educational system, starting in kindergarten, often feels a form of exile, a system designed by and for white girls.

Pre-election discussions should be about material issues (rising inequality, a rotting infrastructure, health care, the cost of war, etc.) not about sentimental symbolic issues (role models). It's the 21st century people -- time to move beyond the identity politics that have paralyzed the American left.

Merry Pranksters

2007-12-24T06:42:00.000-06:00

Anarchism antifamily? The Target manager obviously doesn't know the Traverses.

Somebody tell these merry pranksters to shopdrop some Pynchon (Vineland and Against the Day) in Aisle 3, pronto. Make sure the books are prominently placed, please. Ideally, they'll be obstructing Oprah's mag. (Glad she's endorsing Obama, but I'm still sick of seeing her bloated ego everywhere.)

At the Movies

2007-12-16T02:57:00.000-06:00

Forget Integrity, In Politics It's Craftiness That Counts

2007-12-10T04:27:00.000-06:00

Stanley Fish proffers a bit of sage advice, courtesy of Machiavelli and Hobbes, to US presidential candidates and the voters who will elect one of them: Craftiness -- the ability to adapt one's actions to best negotiate tumultuous real-world conditions whist giving the public appearance of consistency -- not personal integrity, better qualifies one to assume a leadership role. The so-called character test that the MSM applies to political candidates, who are ostensibly judged according to their personal integrity, won't necessarily yield the strongest leader. In fact, Fish argues, it may disqualify them from holding office:

Integrity — the quality of standing up for the same values in every situation no matter whom you’re speaking to — is probably not a qualification for navigating the treacherous and ever-shifting waters of domestic and international diplomacy. Morals strongly held may preclude the flexibility and compromise so essential to political negotiation. And if character were really everything, candidates would be judged by their relationships with family and friends (Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton might not fare too well if that were the measure) rather than by their ability first to recognize, and then to deal with, the many problems facing the nation.

Fish is correct to emphasize flexibility over fixity when it comes to the diplomatic skills required of an effective leader. He is right, too, to reject the appeals to "character," particularly when it's assessed by the politician's private relationships. Clinton's marital infidelities and Reagan's familial conflicts are, or should be, irrelevant to voters because they don't affect the American public one whit; what ultimately matters is the president's ability to shape public policy making.

(On this count I find both Clinton and Reagan lacking.)

Fish's lesson: In short, craft before integrity, but have sufficient craft to produce integrity’s image.

Okay, craftiness is crucial, yes, but I would add that an ideal political candidate, while being flexible in terms of negotiating diplomatic solutions, should maintain a fidelity to the cause that he or she represents. I'd like to see a candidate who would remain committed to combating material inequality and poverty, but would be crafty enough to weather the predictable neoliberal attacks on those who dare to suggest that the state, as a body constituted by and for the people, has a responsibility to provide for society's least fortunate.

The problem with Fish's Machiavellian model of leadership is that it perpetuates a debilitating ethos of selfish individualism in which politicians seek, above all else, to perpetuate their reign, rather than striving to build a better society. This selfish individualistic ethos, of course, is one of the motors of capitalism, which explains why none of the "serious" candidates (in the estimation of the MSM) dare to propose the economic reforms that would overturn the neoliberal policies that have concentrated wealth in the hands of a privileged few.

One final question: Is the current Administration craftier than their bumbling figurehead, who, of course, has always sold himself as a man of integrity, would lead us to believe? That is, what if their ultimate agenda was not the neoconservative dream of establishing US hegemony in the Middle East but rather to promote the personal interests of a select group of insiders who have benefited from the instability in Iraq and the Middle East, the rising oil prices, the weakened dollar, etc.?

Freeloading

2007-12-09T09:10:00.000-06:00

In Rainbows is Radiohead's best record in years, though it's their only release I've not bought. I feel slightly guilty about my gratis download, as the band's pay-what-you-want, online-distribution experiment deserves support. One would like to see musicians be able to sell recordings "directly" to listeners and eliminate, as much as possible, the record companies that, historically, have deprived so many artists of royalties for their labor.

Regretfully, living hand to mouth precludes any purchases that aren't absolute necessities. (I'm sure Radiohead, as class-conscious Oxford lads, have read their Jude and would understand.) Even if I had "disposable" income, it would go first to books I want to read that aren't absolutely vital for my research. But when I finally land that tenure-track job I've promised to buy tickets to see Radiohead live. I take it on faith that neither securing a job nor securing Radiohead tix is a pipe dream, however horrendous the queue for both might be.

Paul Chan: Mixing Materialism and Activism

2007-12-01T08:14:00.000-06:00

I met Paul Chan a few years ago in NYC when I was working for the Electronic Literature Organization and he was a finalist for one of the two awards. Paul impressed me with his dynamism, and I wish I could get back to the States to attend his production of Waiting for Godot.

From a literary perspective, the move from producing morphing e-texts to staging Beckett in a New Orleans neighborhood left for dead makes complete sense. In both instances, there's a savvy literalism at work. A literalism that doesn't function, as some critics have argued, by nihilistically destroying meaning; rather, this literalism insists that although we ordinarily overlook meaning's material supports,it's senseless, and ultimately impossible, to remain always blind to the ecosystems in which meanings are enacted.

As I argue in "Senseless Resistances," the manuscript on which I'm presently working, the material resistances in the composition and the systems with which it comes into contact impede communication, generate affect, and catalyze the cognitive work required to bring the composition to life as a significant entity.

To those who would claim that such a materialist approach to literature and art is formalist, I would agree. To those who would claim that formalist approaches are inherently apolitical, I'd point to Beckett's involvement in the French Resistance or Chan's antiwar activism. Chan makes a distinction between politics (collaborative and goal specific) and art (individually produced, resistant to instrumentalized uses) that is worth retaining, if only to remind us that our lives are multi-faceted and engaging in one activity doesn't preclude another.

On a side note: Glad to see Paul rockin' the Nebraska cap, particularly after my beloved Huskers experienced such an awful football season. (The University of Nebraska Press continues to release quality books in literary studies, e.g., Nicholas Spencer's After Utopia and Marco Abel's Violent Affect, both of whom are
faculty members in UNL's English Department. If only they'd publish them in paperback.)

Puncturing the Pinhead Pundits (Who Promote Faux Patriotism)

2007-10-15T04:08:00.000-05:00

Bill Maher mocks the ostentatious display of patriotic symbols on the grounds that these accessories simply provide cover to faux patriots, people eager to give the illusion that they're supporting the country, the troops, the military, etc. but who would prefer not to make an actual sacrifice.

Kudos to Maher for his spirited defense of Barack Obama's explanation for not wearing an American flag lapel pin (the pins have become a "substitute for true patriotism") and for calling the mainstream media, including ABC's Claire Shipman, for its blantant hypocrisy and for manufacturing faux news events. The punditocracy promotes the notion that political candidates should be judged according to nebulous and subjective criteria such as "authenticity" and "character" and candidates who don't spout the predictable platitudes the pundits and their handlers want to hear are quickly deemed "unelectable."

Thanks to Jim for e-mailing me this article. On the one hand, I'm glad to get some breathing room here in Sweden from the moronic press coverage of the US presidential race. The vacuousness of the discourse is especially apparent when you're outside looking in to the fishbowl. On the other hand, I'm fascinated by the techniques used to depoliticize the public sphere by diverting attention away from real problems that the government leaders need to confront, e.g., the rotting infrastructure, the health-care crisis, the declining standard of living, the rising debt, etc. And these are just a few of the domestic issues.

Ralph Ellison's Endless Revisions

2007-08-21T08:57:00.000-05:00

Ralph Ellison's failure to publish a finished follow-up novel to Invisible Man during his lifetime has baffled critics and scholars of American literature. While a posthumous text, larger than Juneteenth, is imminent, the scholars who edited Ellison's volumes of writing into the forthcoming book to be published by the Modern Library suggest that Ellison's embrace of word-processing technology led Ellison to revise, repeatedly, already well-crafted sentences. Anyone fascinated as I am about how how technologies, particular the digital computer, alter the way we think and write will want to read The Invisible Manuscript, which contains something of a cautionary tale about writing with word-processing software: Computers make it easier to rework your writing, yes. But avoid the temptation to revise pepetually. Writers, particularly those with perfectionist tendencies, can get lost in syntactic detail and lose track of the larger project.

Summer Reading (ENGL 105: English & American Fiction)

2007-05-22T12:26:00.000-05:00

A list of what we'll be reading in my English and American Fiction course this summer: Books for ENGL 105, Summer 2007

Connected Composers: Making Music and Money Online

2007-05-13T13:03:00.000-05:00

Clive Tompson's "Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog" describes how blogs are changing the dynamic between musicians and their listeners. Blogs provide musicians a way to find an audience for their tunes, but fans are coming to expect more from them. Fans don't simply want music to be readily available for downloading; they want the musicians to be available for chit chat; they want the musicians to be their "friends."

Audience-artist interactivity is an interesting phenomenon, but I wonder whether the model is sustainable. Artists are often reclusive for a good reason: creation takes time and requires a level of attention that isn't possible when one must constantly check her e-mail or update her blog.

I've learned this lesson the hard way, through experience.

Questions this article raised for me: Are the Internet and e-networks making audience interaction necessary for artists and musicians who want to support themselves financially through their art? Will artists have the time both to communicate with the audience and to create quality compositions? To what extent will economic considerations - both financial and libidinal - shape the form of these compositions?

I know that my professional commitments - reading, writing, teaching, etc. - prevent me from blogging as much as I would like. Right now academia, at least the institution and the department in which I work, does not really provide the infrastructural resources to integrate blogging into the curriculum. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

While I love the convenience of networked discourse, electronic communication technologies can lead to hurried thoughts. Too often the aim is simply to hit send and make a connection. More time and thought must be given to the act of composition, to the creation of a message worth communicating.

As a teacher of literature, I devote much energy to making students more mindful readers: they need to be trained to slow down and pay attention to the workings of language, both their own and others's. I've found that electronic communications can distract students, who are no accustomed to being pereceptive observers of texts, or, for that matter, the world in which they live.

La Mort de Jean Baudrillard

2007-03-06T20:53:00.000-06:00

Aside from a short, superficial interview in the New York Times Magazine a few months ago, I hadn't read anything by Jean Baudrillard for several years. His post-911 pamphlet published on Verso, I suppose, which was dwarfed, for me, by Zizek's Welcome to the Desert of the Real. Last night, though, something compelled me to pull Cool Memories IV: 1995-2000 off the shelf. I thoroughly enjoyed reading his Zarathurstrian obervations on postmodernity, and found myself laughing aloud, quite loudly.

I need to return to Baudrillard, I thought. My favorite writers, mostly novelists and philosophers, are those who provoke this mad laughter, and I'd forgotten how deadpan hillarious Baudrillard can be. When I first read him in my early 20s, I took him too seriously, despite knowing that I shouldn't. Over the years I sort of lost track of Baudrillard. Perhaps unconsciously, I'd paid too much heed to those who decare Baudrillard's writing to be passe (and in making thinking into a fashion contribute to the implosion of meaning about which Baudrillard wrote so brilliantly...). Anyone who can't appreciate Baudrillard's aphorhisms from the abyss must be tone deaf.

Today, I recevied an e-mail informing me of "Le Mort de Jean Baudrillard." Dead at age 77.

Foucault, Lacan, Guattari, Deleuze, Lyotard, Derrida, now Baudrillard...

I'm still holding onto a small hope that Baudrillard's death will be revealed to be a simulation, the ultimate hoax by this brilliant sophist...

But, until that time, in Baudrillard's memory, a toast, and a few choice words. The first quote is exactly the right reply to the sense and thoughts of the uncanny news of Baudrillard's death provoked:

Thought is nothing but happy coincidence.

In the past, bad literature was made with high-flown sentiment; today, it is made with the unconscious.

Exess of information kills information; excess of meaning kills meaning, etc. But it seems that too much stupidity does not kill stupidity. Stupidity may be said, t hen, to be the only exponential phenomenon - one which even escapes the laws of physics. This is a miracle to rival perpetual motion.

The social order teaches you to keep quiet, it does not teach you silence.

Freedom is not as free as is generally thought: it produces antibodies which rebel against it. Truth, too, is threatened from within, like a state battling with its own police force. If values enjoyed total immunity, they would be as lethal as a scientific truth.

Current events are an incurable illness.

Oregon Orangutan Picks Bears

2007-02-03T14:29:00.000-06:00

And don't dismiss her pick as animal instinct either. The analytic apes I've consulted have crunched the numbers and screened hours of game film. They're all picking da Bearz as well, in a nail-biter.

Auster-cized

2007-02-02T09:27:00.000-06:00

James Gibbons's survey of Paul Auster's career is respectful, but doesn't shy away from making severge critical judgements. It concludes with this devastating dismissal of Auster's latest novel: "Travels in the Scriptorium sucks out whatever life there is in Auster's invented universe, leaving a sterile vacuum of self-regard."

Other reviews of Travels , if I recall correctly, have been largely negative as well, though they haven't been so forceful in their assessments. Nor have Auster's critics been as clear about their reasons for finding this novel to be a metafictional failure when compared with Auster's acclaimed New York Trilogy. For Gibbons, Travels is too gimmicky. Its protagonist, a Mr. Blank, "has no real resonance" and remains a "stillborn creation," an intert thing to fill "the echo chamber that Auster has made of his career." Unlike Auster's best work, this book doesn't convey adequately "the self's vulnerability, the revelation that... we are little more than sentient ghosts."

Gibbons's gloss on Auster's Beckettian project in that last sentence is spot on. At his best Auster is adept at demonstrating the extent to which we are fragile subjects, "spectral ciphers" whose existence is precarious, supported by our fantasies about the Other, whom, it turns out, is virtual, the product of a consensual hallucination and thus as vulnerable as we are.

On a personal aside, I'm curious about what Gibbons thought of Leviathan. Presumably not much, since it's passed over in his survey. Leviathan is my personal favorite and the book of his that I know best. I've taught it a couple times and am doing so again this semester. I'm also writing about it in Senseless Resistance. What attracts me to Leviathan is the way it adapts self-reflexive elements from The Locked Room but opens itself to a world bigger than New York City. Auster dedicated Leviathan to Don DeLillo, and the book is in dialogue with Mao II. In order to adequately respond to Mao II's anxieties about authorship and violence in an era of media spectacle the book must beginning look at the State - America - and its role in the world at large.

How to have all men against you

2006-12-23T04:03:00.000-06:00

George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People (2001):

Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.

Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Wanderer and His Shadow"(1880):

How to have all men against you. -- If anyone dared to say now, 'Whoever is not for me, is against me,' he would immediately have all men against him. -- This does our time honor.

Other Voices, Public Works

2006-12-02T11:04:00.000-06:00

Issue #45 of Other Voices, edited by Cris Mazza, is out. You can read my review of Christopher Grimes' Public Works: Short Fiction and a Novella on the reviews page of the Other Voices wesbite.

My review is rather short, due to editorial constraints, not choice. Other Voices is primarily a journal of new fiction, so it reserves only a few pages for reviews. The maximum number of words permitted was 750. I had much more to say about Grimes' short fictions, and my first version was about three times as long (and even in this draft I was aspiring to be concise).

At some point I expect to return to this material and incorporate it into a piece of literary criticism - a review essay rather than a book review. The distinction might not be immediately apparent to those not in the field, but it's a difference that matters.

On the topic of appearances, you might not know it, but I spent several weeks on this review, reading and rereading Grimes' stories, pinning down the ones that best exemplified the elements I wanted to foreground in my review, and, of course, writing and rewriting countless drafts of this essay. As I mentioned previously, Cris Mazza provided some excellent editorial assistance, enabling me to make cuts that were extremely painful. After spending hours crafting a few sentences, watching the words rapidly disappear as you hold down the delete key can be an agonizing.

But here's the really frustrating part: I've been told that since Other Voices is creative, not academic, journal my efforts won't count for much in terms of professional advancement. I can put the review down on my CV, sure, but book reviews, particularly ones appearing in a non-peer-reviewed publication won't count for much, if anything, in the eyes of most hiring-and-promotion committees. Such reviews are not regarded as real scholarship and might even be viewed as a diversion.

I appreciate the need to make a distinction between academic and non-academic writing, but given the systemic economic exploitation of intellectual laborers that is pandemic to academia, especially in the humanities and English departments in particular, there should be some credit given for efforts to write and speak to a non-specialized audience.

That's not likely to happen anytime soon. The paradox is that as university and scholarly presses publish fewer titles, the professions continues to raise the bar when it comes to the publications necessary to get - and remain on - the tenure track.

At least I'll know Public Works thoroughly when I teach it. If nothing else, the review could work to kickstart a class lecture. That's assuming, of course, that the teaching opportunities remain there. One shouldn't presume anything, particularly when it comes to work and universities, both public and private.

Against The Day

2006-11-28T18:08:00.000-06:00

Pynchon is back, and his new novel, Against the Day, finally arrived in my hands today. It's been sitting in the UIC English Department offices since last Friday, which was frustrating, but allowed me to remain focused on the tasks at hand over the past Thanksgiving weekend.

I've only had a chance to read twenty pages, and I've savored each one so far.

When Mason & Dixon came out (has it already been nine years?!?1?) I read the entire book in two days, but I was employed only part-time, and out of school, then.

Now, there's a stack of papers to grade, and much end-of-the-semester work to be done, so here's the deal. For each paper graded, I get to read three pages of Pynchon.

Ain't it funny how an teacher of American lit feels slightly guilty about taking time out to read from the latest work by America's greatest living novelist?

Writing and Resistance: A Response to Coetzee

2006-11-26T15:15:00.000-06:00

It is naive to think that writing is a simple two-stage process: first you decide what you want to say, then you say it. On the contrary, as all of us know, you write because you do not know what you want to say ... Writing, then, involves an interplay between the push into the future that takes you to the blank page in the first place, and a resistance. Part of that resistance is psychic, but part is also an automatism built into language: the tendency of words to call up other words, to fall into patterns that keep propogating themselves. Out of that interplay emerges, if you are luckly, what you recognize or hope to recognize as the true.

(J.M. Coetzee, Doubling the Point).

Coetzee's deconstructive account of the writing process directs attention to the materiality of language, the linguistic automatism that is a function of language's materiality, and the writer's stuggle to harness the autopoetic energies inherent to language during the act of writing. In this way, his remarks help explain why writing (and especially teaching composition) can be so challenging.

Writing, as George W. Bush might put it, is "hard work." The successful writer (and here I will resist constructing an extended metaphor of writing as war) must be prepated to encounter opposition and resistance throughout the writing process. Novice writers, and some experienced ones who forget what they've learned, tend to approach writing naively, as the direct expression of a preformed thought or idea.

However, as thoughtful and honest writers will tell you, writing - with a few instrumentalized exceptions (such as, perhaps, writing a grocery list, though Derrida's theory of differance makes even this act of writing more complex that it would initially appear) - is rarely, if ever, so straightforward a procedure.

If, to deploy a familiar trope, writing is a journey towards the truth, or at least some sort of knowledge, the route that the writer must take is a circuitous one in which the available pathways are not immediately recongizable. Indeed, the writer will frequently be disoriented and discover that what appeared to be the safest and most direct path is filled with obstacles that necessiate a rerouting.

Writing is a matter of resistances. Like thinking, or cognition, with which it is virtually synonymous, writing is a recursive process. As we write, the very transcription and inscription of our thoughts, which do not exist independent of the linguistic forms, words, in which they are materialized, makes it possible for thinking to continue into the future.

Coetzee characterizes this compositional proces as a kind of "interplay" during which linguistic pattern formation in which words come to cohere into units that are positioned or arranged in a recognizable and thus sensible and coherent shape. Coetzee's account of writing as a kind of linguistic pattern formation identifies two types of resistance with which the writer struggles.

Both of these types of resistance include an affective dimension.

The first type of resistance is "psychic," Coetzee's term for the psychological obstacles - doubts about one's authority, anxieties about being original, clever, aversions to exposing oneself to the gaze of the Other, etc. - that can generate writer's block and impede the process of composition. Here, then, the affective dimension involves the emotions the writer experiences when facing the space of writing, figured by Coetzee as the blank page.

Lacan and Zizek, not to mention numerous literary writers who offer testimony to the anguish and suffering (jouissance) involved in writing, remind us that these negative affects are a necessary component of writing. The writer must 'tarry with the negative' and work through these affects, which, particularly if one is excessively egocentrically oriented, can become debilitating obstacles. However, when the writer risks becoming a dupe of language and recognizes the impossibility of not falling into error, nonsense, or madness (the terrifying "night of the world" in which relations to the other are literally severed), these negative affects can shift valence. The extreme anguish writers feel when tarrying with the desubjectifying and inhuman force of language can morph abruptly into ecstatic jouissance.

Such shifts occur when these negative affects are not registered immediately as signs of one's personal failure but are instead posited externally as an element immanent to the act of writing. When looked at awry, from a dialectical perspective, these affects appear as obstacles that create productive resistances that exercise and test the writer's constitution or will to power in a way that ultimately makes him or her stronger. In this way the affects can act as catalysts, not obstacles.

The second type of resistance is material. It has to do with the machinic quality of words, which are always and already endowed with significance and meaning that is beyond our control. The connotative and denotative force inherent to language puts constraints on the writer's ability to make use use of them, to shape them into sensible utterances, the meaning of which is fixed within a particular composition.

In another post I will say more about the affective aspects of this second type of resistance.

Chicago Street Studio Project Portrait

2006-11-20T17:34:00.000-06:00

Photography by Thomas Marlow.

Believe it or not, this photo was shot out at O'Hare Airport, shortly before Ira had to catch a flight to Sweden. You wouldn't guess it from the photo, but Ira was worried about missing her plane and a bit camera shy during our quick photo session.

Thomas Marlow happened to be at the airport today shooting photos for his Chicago Street Studio Project, which I'd read about in a Chicago Reader article a couple months back. In fact, I'd traveled downtown to The Silk Road Oasis on September 30 to have my portrait taken, but Marlow had already pulled up shop. (The trip was not wasted, however, as I ended up catching a noontime performance by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, but that's another story). So, I was particularly pleased to spot him and his portable studio at O'Hare and to be able to get my picture taken with Ira.

Marlow's biography is remarkable. He'd never shot portraits when he began his project, which is being sponsored by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. I suspect that when he wraps up this project, he'll have plenty of potential clients seeking professional portraits.

Aesthetic Ideology: The Politics of Language

2006-11-06T11:19:00.000-06:00

Leading neocons exress despair at the Bush Administration's incompetence in Neo Culpa: Politics & Power.

As a literary critic with a keen interest in the relationship between affect and meaning, I'm intrigued by the implicit understanding of how language works in this quote by David Frum:

"I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything."

Notice how Frum avoids talking about trying to convince Bush to believe in a particular position. Instead of referring to reasons and arguments, he imagines a sort of understanding via osmosis. In this fantasy, ideas are objectified as the foundational substance of words, and these ideas, once spoken, get absorbed by the body, like lotion. Indeed, it's not even clear that "understanding" is the right term here, since Frum talks about a feeling - a committed feeling - towards ideas rather than a belief in them.

Thank you, Mr. Frum, for providing a textbook example of how a neo-Platonic, logocentric model of language can prove to be disastrous.

John Ashcroft On Belief: Why Christianity? It's Easy

2006-10-15T12:52:00.000-05:00

In this short but telling interview John Ashcroft basically attributes his embrace of evangelical Christianity to the fact that it provides him an "easy" means of excusing his sins. He explains, "I'm a Christian for a variety of reasons. Maybe because it's easy. What I have to do to please God is to confess that I'm a sinner instead of trying to prove that I am good."

Well, at least Ashcroft knows he's a bad man. But as Sartre would put it, Ashcroft is acting in bad faith by objectifying himself as a being-in-itself, in this case a sinner, whose identity is fixed. By failing to imagine that he could at least work at doing good in the world, Ashcroft denies our capacity for freedom.

Of course, this denial of freedom is completely consistent with his political views and deeds and helps explain his defense of the Patriot Act and, in this interview, a failure to recognize the universal applicability of the Geneva Conventions.

Now, I'm no theologian, but Ashcroft's last sentence is particularly perverse, in the psychoanalytic sense. That is, for Ashcroft Christianity is all about becoming one of the elect who knows how to provide pleasure for the Other. Ashcroft fantasizes that he pleasures God by confessing his sins, which, conveniently, absolves him of having to "prove that I am good."

Note how self-absorbed Ashcroft's framework for conceptualizing religion is. In the individualistic binary he establishes, it's all about him, John Ashcroft. Religion is either about proving that one is good, or, in his version of Christianity, pleasing God. Either way there's no consideration about one's responsibility to act as Christlike as possible in this world, which we share with God's creatures and our brothers and sisters, nor is there any sense of how difficult it is to perform good acts and deeds in a fallen world.

Clearly, Ashcroft needs to ask What Would Zizek Do? and listen to a little of that rock 'n' roll music.

As St. Paul sings, "Absolution is out of the question..."

No Answers from this Bush

2006-10-13T13:20:00.000-05:00

Around this time during an election year, we're all sick to death of being bombarded with political ads, the majority of which do little to educate the public about the way a politician has voted in the past and will likely vote in the future on specific issues. Instead of providing useful, accurate information, (which, it should be noted, can be found relatively easily online, if one is willing and knows how to search for it) these ads, whether they are attacking a politician's opponent or heralding the candidate, tend to dumb down everything in a crude effort to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Consequently, political ads usually remind me of the perverse state our union is in at present. The United States has become a virtual plutocracy, thanks in no small part, to the government's giveaway of the public airwaves to corporate broadcasters who have a media monopoly that puts tremendous constraints on the range of political discourse and debate. The situation that requires candidates to waste loads of time and money to publicize themselves and get their "message" across on TV and radio to potential voters.

But this ad by The September Fund is different. It's brilliantly simple. Please watch it.

Walter Benn Michaels Weighs In at The Valve

2006-10-13T11:17:00.000-05:00

Walter Benn Michaels responds to bloggers who've been debating the merits of The Trouble With Diversity. In my estimation, he does an excellent job of refuting the major arguments against made him, most of which turn out to miss his major point concerning the way the Left's efforts to combat economic inequality (the US once aspired to wage a War on Poverty, after all, though it ultimately decided to fight a war in Vietnam instead) have been eclipsed in the US, first by modes of identity politics and then by a more banal commitment to "diversity."

(Cue Luna's "Lost in Space.") "I've heard it all before" at various UIC forums, so what I found most intriuging in this exchange was Michaels' response to the University Diarist, a blogger who wonders why the dedication to The Trouble with Diversity made her "skin crawl."

Lately I've been researching about affect and literature, a project that I suspect Michaels would view as a dead end insofar as it would seem to privilege the subject's response to the stimuli produced by textual object over the author's intention. The critics and theorists I'm looking at try to posit a subjectless affect, and at this point, to be honest, I'm undecided about the viability of this model, at least when it comes to writing.

But to return to the topic at hand, the UD's rhetorical question could certainly serve as a example of the need to reason through our initial affective responses. The UD's visceral response to the dedication in TTWD that leads her to fantasize about Michaels and his wife dying while having sexual intercourse. I won't go into details. It's just a bit too gross, not least because Michaels and Jennifer Ashton are colleagues of mine at UIC. (Yes, my response is based partly on my subject position.)

Anyway, here's Michaels' reply, which provides an example of how to respond with dignity to a pretty outrageous remark:

All this is put a lot more provokingly in the chapter itself, and because it’s put provokingly, I am not surprised that people are provoked. UD’s also being provoked by the dedication, however, I can’t explain. Maybe it’s because she literally misread it (she says it’s to “my wife” but it never mentions “my wife”). Maybe it’s because she doesn’t recognize that “so necessary” is an allusion and hence doesn’t see that it involves a certain amount of irony. But as to where her coital death fantasies come from, I’ve got nothing.

Coital death fantasies. Where's Zizek when we need him? I'm sure he'd have plenty to say on this topic, particularly within the context of a - ahem scholarly discussion. More importantly, I'd like to hear Zizek and Michaels debate the claim that the truth of a claim has "nothing to do" with the speaker's subject position. As I've suggested in an ebr essay discussing Zizek's account of Christianity's pervese core both Michaels and Zizek insist upon a universalist notion of the truth against varieties of postmodern pluralism or relativism. They also agree that multiculturalism, particularly academic multiculturalism, is a strategy for eliding class-based inequality. However, what I didn't address properly in my ebr essay was how differently Zizek and Michaels understand the truth.

The difference, in short, has to do with Zizek's commitment to a universally divided subject and his model of ideology, two factors that lead him to insist that a speaker's motives (both conscious and unconscious) matter greatly when it comes to assessing the validity of his or her claims. For instance, it might be true that Sadam Hussein was a brutal dictator, but when VP Cheney was making this claim in the buildup to the Iraq war, what mattered was the deeper truth concerning the motives for repeating this assertion publically from a position of great authority. Michaels would argue that Zizek's position is based on notions of authenticity that he finds irrelevent. I should work all this out rigorously at some point, but there's work to be done...

First, one pressing question: What is the ironic reference to "so necessary" that Michaels suggests the UD misses? My guess: Jay-Z's "Change Clothes, lyrics by Pharrell. If Walter is at today's colloquium, I'll have to ask him.

Commodify your Dissent and Conformity

2006-10-10T14:34:00.000-05:00

Here's an informal, but effective analysis of the convoluted ideological messages conveyed in the current "This is Our Country" Chevy Truck. I'd refrain from describing it as a work of deconstruction, but I do want my American Literature and American Culture students, who read a piece by Rosa Parks earlier in the semester and are currently in the process of learning about various conceptions of ideology, to ask themselves "Can Rosa Parks Sell Pickup Trucks?"

Rushdie to Be Writer in Residence at Emory

2006-10-09T11:27:00.000-05:00

Salman Rushdie is joining the faculty at Emory University, where I earned my M.A. in English. Insofar as Rushdie will be teaching mini-seminars to Emory grad students, I'll admit to having twinges of regret at deciding to leave there so many years ago. But while UIC might lack some of the cultural capital and certainly a lot of plain ol' capital that Emory possesses (it's known around Hotlanta as Co' Cola Campus), graduate studies here have, by and large, been more to my liking for a variety of reasons, which I'll keep to myself as a matter of professional pragmatics.

Amis on the novel

2006-09-30T22:03:00.002-05:00

Martin Amis on the novel as a site for reflection and recognition: "A novel asserts nothing; it provides a framework for thinking about things. I suppose we're in the education business."

Tom Waits' Orphans

2006-09-28T17:55:00.000-05:00

Coming soon (the Nov. 21 release date coincides with the new Pynchon novel; how's that for a truly harmonic convergence): Tom Waits' new 3-disc collection Orphans, which is comprised of "Brawlers," "Bawlers," and "Bastards."

Shit, I wouldn't be surprised one whit to learn that Pynchon, or maybe ol' Tyrone Slothrop himself (whatever happened to him anyway?) make an appearance on the record, playing the kazoo, of course.

Scroll down to read Tom's commentary on what this project's all about. With such an eloquent account, what'll the rock critics have to add?

Note to Jeff: It includes a Jack Kerouac song (lyrics by him?) and the last two tunes on the "Bastards" disc are "King Kong" and "On the Road." Apes love 'dat shit.

Alternative Interrogation Techniques

2006-09-24T13:06:00.000-05:00

Students in my American Literature and Culture class are busy compiling examples of various tropes, figures of speech, that turn up in their readings, both novels and nonfiction. Although I'm confident that most have a fairly firm grasp on euphemism, I'll have to refer them to the following article by Andrew Sullivan to demonstrate why the ability to identify tropes is no purely 'academic' exercise.

Sullivan's article addresses the ongoing debates in the United States regarding the legality of torturing terror suspects by drawing attention to the way ethical considerations have been circumvented. The torture debates have degenerated into battles over the Bush Administration's efforts to redescribe "torture" as "alternative interrogation techniques," "coercive interrogation," or "harsh interrogation methods." Could we find a more pressing, or dangerous, instance of euphemism?

In general, I'm no fan of Sullivan, a gay Republican whose endorsement of the GOP's homophobic platform seems awfully opportunistic and cowardly, but it's refreshing to hear a conservative citing Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" in opposition to Bushco's use of doublespeak. In contrast to the obfuscating rhetoric on torture issued from the likes of Rumsfeld and Bush, Sullivan's argument is straightforward: Torture by any other name is just as vile.

The problem is that the very act of debating publicly whether, in some instances, torture should be tolerated and permitted changes the parameters of what actions are permissible in liberal-democratic states. The unthinkable--state-sponsored torture--has now become a viable option.

Now that the Bushies have effectively legitimized torture, it will require a concerted political effort to make the practice taboo again. This effort will require people from across the political spectrum to collaborate. Most likely, in a familiar political paradox, in the United States it will be a conservative politician like John McCain, who has acquired a certain kind of political capital that will prevent him from being branded as being "soft on terror," that will be most effective in leading the opposition to state-sponsored torture.

When Bathos Trumps Analysis: Remembering 9/11

2006-09-22T10:40:00.000-05:00

For the commercial broadcast media, the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks provided an opportunity to boost ratings through sentimental remembrances that compelled viewers "to think instead of feel." For Susan Douglas, a profession of communications at the University of Michigan, the lack of journalistic integrity has perpetuated the circulation of propaganda, misinformation, and lies that have served the Bush Administration, if not the United States, so well during its reign.

With a couple rhetorical questions, Douglas suggests how the media should have responded after 9/11, had they taken their mission to inform the public seriously:

How might the broadcast media have analyzed the path since 9/11 if it were non-commercial, not so craven for ratings and had the stomach for self-examination? Might we see an examination of the collapse of journalistic skepticism and backbone in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, or an expose of the Bush administration's blanketing the media with propaganda and PR techniques, or an explanation that bush squandered every ounce of goodwill we had in the aftermath of 9/11, or a reflection on the unnecessary killing of so many U.S. troops and Iraqis, or a condemnation of our country's use of torture?

Thus, the tragedy of those victims who lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks is compounded by a subsequent tragedy: the lack of fair, accurate and thorough reporting on the Bush administration's "War on Terror."

Douglas's call for analysis over bathos is sound, but it will take systemic structural changes in our corporatized, profit-driven media if we're to see the kind of informative, investigative journalism that we need.

One looming problem: Who will subsidize a media independent enough to produce intelligent, analytic investigative journalism, which is, of course, much more costly than producing news programs that superficially cover events?

Caution: Philosophy

2006-09-20T09:54:00.000-05:00

Here's a photo loaded with allegorical possibilities. It was shot at the Border's bookstore on State Street in downtown Chicago.

Does the yellow tape express some new managerial position about the dangers of philosophy? And why is the warning applied primarily to philosophy written by Germans whose surnames begin with the letter 'H'? Indeed, why the need for caution? Are the ideas expressed in the books considered dangerous? Or are such weighty tomes simply hazards impeding to the efficient sales of more marketable titles, e.g., the latest fad-diet title, a volume of New Age pop psychology, or the newest Harry Potter book?

As someone working in a U.S. English department I can't help thinking that the images register the shift away from so-called 'high theory' (Continental Philosophy) toward historicist criticism and cultural studies that has occurred over the past decade or so in the humanities, especially literary studies. The rise of historicist criticism and a naively simple modes of cultural studies in literary studies has led, in various forms, to a return of the long-standing opposition between philosophy and literature/poetics. The winner in this battle? In literary studies, anyway, both are losing, as language and lit departments face increasing pressures to churn out students whose ‘literacy’ ‘pragmatically’ enables them to secure jobs writing various genres of corporate copy.

I'm posting these images for a colleague of mine in literary studies (not at UIC) who has recently experienced resistance from his or her departmental colleagues for drawing so heavily upon Hegel in his or her work. Nevermind the fact that the project, is intended to demonstrate how Hegel's dialectical logic informs the manner in which Joyce depicts a day in Dublin unfolding Ulysses. Against those academics who bizarrely claim that Joyce was an apolitical high-modern elitist, this project presents a universalist Ulysses, i.e., Joyce’s efforts to materialize cognition via punning and cunning language experiments can best be grasped through a Hegelian framework that never forgets Dublin’s place within a larger totality – the world circa 1904.

S/he presented material at a departmental seminar and discovered that the many of the attendees hadn't read the larger manuscript circulated before the seminar, apparently because they were put off by the explicit philosophical content of the material. Then, during the seminar, they wasted time by asking this academic to define basic Hegelian terms and concepts that, had they bothered to read the essay, were explained carefully in the text. Moreover, they had the gall to imply that the philosophical concepts were somehow superfluous. It was disappointing to discover these anti-philosophical attitudes are prevalent in Europe as well.

Teaching and Technology: Will the Students Collaborate?

2006-09-14T14:42:00.000-05:00

This semester I'm giving my American Lit & Culture students several semester-long projects to work on. I've warned them that they will need to be disciplined and do a little bit of work for each class, because the project requirements are simply too great to put off until the last minute.

I suspect that students may be feeling overwhelmed, so I wrote them the following message in which I encouraged them to collaborate on the courses electronic discussion board, which is part of the BlackBoard software platform used at UIC.

Use this forum to post quotes, annotations and comments related to your semester-long project "The Rhetoric of Freedom: Annotated Quotes." I encourage you to show class solidarity and to help one another on this assignment. Your annotated remarks, of course, cannot be plagiarized directly from someone else, but you can and should share ideas.

One of my research interests is new media studies, and I'm particularly interested in communicative systems that emerge in networked environments such as this. I'm curious to see whether you, as a class, harness the potential inherent in this software platform to develop an efficient collaborative system for (re)marking on the course texts.

Good luck!

Based on past teaching experiences, my sense is that most students resist using BlackBoard, which is fine with me, if that's what they choose. My primary concern is that they read the books and other texts and learn various analytic strategies. However, I do think that electronic collaboration offers them opportunities that were unavailable when I was an undergrad.

But is it Activism: Springsteen Plays Seeger

2006-09-04T10:24:00.000-05:00

Ron Radosh reviews Springsteen's Seeger Sessions for the right-wing American Interest. It's a pretty well-written piece that raises an intriguing question: But is it activism? My quick-and-dirty and a-bit-too-easy answer would be that the songs are a mode of activism if Springsteen intends them to be. Of course that assertion says nothing about the song's effectiveness as a form of activism. As the article notes, some in Springsteen's recent concert audiences are apparently finding it more difficult to 'connect' with Seeger's folk songs than with Springsteen's rock anthems. Go figure.

Is the audience's disconnect due to hearing an out-of-style musical genre or the unabashed socialist content of the songs? Probably both, particularly insofar as form and content inform and shape one another. I'd like to remind Radosh, and others on the right who often make similar arguments when they find artists mixing pop and politics (to quote the great Billy Bragg whom I heard live again a few months ago): The fact that the leftist artists are making money from their art and perhaps even getting rich doesn't count as an argument against their progressive conviction in the necessity of eliminating material inequality around the world.

AOL Said, 'If You Leave Me I'll Do Something Crazy' - New York Times

2006-07-03T11:49:00.000-05:00

I've been warning of the evils of AOL for years, but for those of you who are still using AOL to access the internet, please read this horror story: AOL Said, 'If You Leave Me I'll Do Something Crazy'.

Damned to Fame

2006-07-03T10:54:00.000-05:00

Leland de la Durantaye comments on Samuel Beckett's cult of impersonality and the surprisingly enduring popularity of Beckett's art of subtraction.

File a copy for students to read the next time I teach Beckett.

Ambush in Afghanistan

2006-07-02T12:16:00.000-05:00

War correspondent Christina Lamb reports on being cornered with her photographer and British Army troops during a Taliban ambush in Zumbeley, Afghanistan. Lamb's essay, 'Have you ever used a pistol?', offers a gripping first-person account of the dangers coalition forces are facing in Afghanistan, where, contrary to previous claims of victory, the Taliban remain a powerful presence. Would the situation in Afghanistan be better today if the U.S. military had not rushed to wage war in Iraq? The deteriorating conditions in Afghanistant suggest that the U.S. military should have been allowed to soundly defeat the Taliban and Al Quaida in Afghanistan rather than being forced to redeploy its resources for the invasion of Iraq.

The $2.97 Gallon of Pickles, Sam Walton's Neoliberal Reality

2006-06-18T10:42:00.000-05:00

In my English and American Fiction class this semester, one of the ideas we're returning to regularly is the claim - often identified with postmodern, or post-Nietzschean theory - that 'reality' (as opposed to the Real) is inherently fictional. Variations of this claim - which understandably sounds rather esoteric to some ears, a piece of New Age obscurantism - I try to explain informs the way many people go about their business in a neoliberal world in which The Market is revered and feared like Zeus or some other fickle Greek god.

The following quote, from "The Price of Pickles" an essay by John Lanchester on Wal-Mart
illustrates how economic fictions shape our reality in mundane and profane ways:

Wal-Mart is about price, so much so that it has created a reification of cheapness, in which cheapness becomes a mystical quality, a Ding an sich or fundamental essence, separate from questions about utility or practicality or how on earth a thing can be put on sale for such a price. Charles Fishman, in his punchy and valuable book The Wal-Mart Effect, cites the example of Vlasic pickles, the most popular brand in the US. Wal-Mart talked Vlasic into pricing the pickles so that a gallon jar was on sale for $2.97. That is a bizarre, surreal price for a gallon of pickled cucumbers; no one had ever seen such a jar outside a deli, and no one had any real use for it, since even if you’re a pickleholic you’ll only manage to eat about a quarter of a gallon before the remaining pickles go mouldy. It had never occurred to anybody that there was such a thing as a market for a gallon jar of pickles. Even so, priced at $2.97, there was something so magnetising about this Brobdignagian vat of pickles – something so alluring about the way it embodied the Platonic ideal of cheapness, in and for itself – that Wal-Mart was soon selling 200,000 gallons of pickles a week. The ‘scary part of the Vlasic story’, as Fishman points out, is that:

The market didn’t create the $2.97 gallon of pickles, nor did waning customer demand or a wild abundance of cucumbers. Wal-Mart created the $2.97 gallon jar of pickles. The price – a number that is a critical piece of information to buyers, sellers and competitors about the state of the pickle market – the price was a lie. It was unrelated to either the supply of cucumbers or the demand for pickles. The price was a fiction imposed on the pickle market in Bentonville. Consumers saw a bargain; Vlasic saw no way out. Both were responding not to real market forces, but to a pickle price gimmick imposed by Wal-Mart as a way of making a statement.

Wal-Mart is so big and so powerful that it is in effect defining its own reality – creating its own products, and a market for them, by sheer act of will.

And the Wal-Mart reality, as critics have explained, is all about maximizing profits, which often means that people, particularly workers, and the environment must be exploited.

Czech Bud vs. American Bud: No Contest

2006-06-16T16:18:00.000-05:00

I don't follow soccer closely enough to know whether or not the Czech's World Cub victory over Team USA was an upset. But I'm not at all surprised to learn that Czechs Bud soundly defeated its American rival, which is the 'Official Beer of the World Cup' in taste tests outside the stadium. Word to Anheuser-Busch: Money can't buy you love.

Lest I be labeled 'anti-American' by some zealous patriot, let it be known that my sojurn in San Francisco convinced me that Anchor-Steam is a world-class brew, a worthy candidate for the prestigious, if not necessarily lucrative, 'beer-of-the-year' that I like to bestow annually.

Journal for Class 6

2006-06-10T15:38:00.000-05:00

“The Dead” by James Joyce; “On Truth and Lies in the Nonmoral Sense” by Friedrich Nietzsche; “Figures and Tropes” by Bennett and Royle

1. Bennett and Royle claim that “’The Dead’, which is above all about death, is also about dead language, dead metaphors” (83). They support their claim by providing a close reading of the story’s final paragraph that focuses on the figurative effects produced by the “verbal repetition” (84) of the word ‘falling.’ Find another passage from “The Dead” that is in some way ‘about’ dead language or dead metaphors and which Bennett and Royle could’ve used to support their argument. Then write your own analysis of this passage that explains how and to what purpose Joyce makes use of a particular figurative effect (or effects).

2. After reading Graff and Birkenstein’s “Three Ways to Respond,” identify one or more of the arguments that Nietzsche makes in “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense.” Then write a response to Nietzsche’s essay in which you summarize and/or quote some of his ideas and makes clear whether you’re agreeing, disagreeing, or both agreeing and disagreeing with what he says and why. Use the templates in They Say, I Say: see Chapters 1-3 for templates that will help you to represent Nietzsche’s ideas and Chapter 4 for templates that will get you started with your response.

Beware of Stray Voltage

2006-06-10T11:15:00.000-05:00

Wally, when you're out for walks in Delaware, you and Claire should take care to beware of 'stray voltage.'

Chimpanzee and human ancestors may have interbred

2006-05-18T09:03:00.000-05:00

Chimpanzee and human ancestors may have interbred the headline reads. Who sez it ever stopped? As the man on the 66 Chicago bus raged, "I've seen The Planet of the Apes. I know what you people are capable of."

Coursepack Contents, Summer '06

2006-05-16T23:16:00.000-05:00

My accomplishment for the day. Finished my xeroxing and dropped the Coursepack documents for this summer's English 105 class off at the printer's.

1. Auerbach, Erich. “The Brown Stocking.” Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Willard R. Trask. 50th anniversary ed. 1953. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. 525–53.

2. Coover, Robert. “The Babysitter.” Pricksongs & Descants. New York: Plume, 1969. 206–39.

3. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” 1899. College of Stanten Island Library, Stanten Island, NY. 16 May 2006. http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/yellowwallpaper.pdf

4. ___. “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper” 1913. College of Stanten Island Library, Stanten Island, NY. 16 May 2006. http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/yellowwallpaper.pdf

5. Kafka, Franz. “The Penal Colony.” The Complete Stories. Ed. Nahum N. Glatzer. New York: Schocken, 1971.

6. Kavanagh, James H. “Ideology.” Critical Terms for Literary Study, 2nd ed. Ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 306–20.

7. Mansfied, Katherine. “Bliss.” Arthur’s Classic Novels. 17 May 2006. http://arthursclassicnovels.com/arthurs/women2/blisso10.html

8. Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Purloined Letter.” The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. G.R. Thompson. New York: Norton, 2004.

9. McLaughlin, Thomas. “Figurative Language.” Critical Terms for Literary Study, 2nd ed. Ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

10. Miller, J. Hillis. “Narrative.” Critical Terms for Literary Study, 2nd ed. Ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 66–79.

11. Nealon, Jeffrey, and Susan Searls Giroux. “Ideology.” The Theory Toolbox: Critical Concepts for the Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003.

12. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense.” From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology. Ed. Lawrence Cahoone. Expanded 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003. 109–16.

13. Žižek, Slavoj. “Ideology Reloaded.” 6 June 2003. In These Times. 16 May 2006. http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/80/

14. ___. “Jack Bauer and the Ethics of Urgency.” 27 Jan. 2006. In These Times. 16 May 2006. http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2481/

Another Ideological Map...

2006-05-13T15:57:00.000-05:00

This is what happens to your politics if you spend too much time in Sweden. Trustees and endowers of academic chairs: I swear that I'm more open to entrepreneurial innovation than this chart would indicate. Does this mean that I'm going to have to sign a loyalty oath?

You are a
Social Liberal
(80% permissive)

and an...
Economic Liberal
(8% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Socialist

Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Reading Colbert: It's Time for Some Lit Crit

2006-05-12T11:47:00.000-05:00

James Wood's essay MSM S&M is the smartest piece I've come across yet about Stephen Colbert's performance and the media's timid reporting on it.

"It is time--it is always time--for some literary criticism," Wood writes. Yes it is, sir. Yes it is.

And Wood's lit-crit approach enables him to make a crucial point. In response to the blogsphere's indignation at the lack of coverage of Colbert's performance, the MSM and Bush supporters responded by changing the subject. Colbert just wasn't funny, they protested. Thus, Wood opens strong by immediately distinguishing between "being funny" and being "ironic" and "satirical" before proceeding to justify Colbert's "brutal" tactics eloquently: "These issues are just too painful for humor."

Spot on, James. Spot on.

Wood proceeds to explain how reading the transcript of Colbert's routine differs from watching the performance and explains why the strongest moments in Colbert's act are precisely when he's not being funny and is speaking the ugly truth to the president, sitting a few feet away. But there's no need to summarize his essay. Go read it yourself.

I've been considering devoting a day, maybe two, in my Composition II course on media studies to discussing Colbert's performance. I thought the whole episode would fit it nicely in our discussions about media bias and provide some comic relief to what can be pretty dry stuff. I confess: I'd rather be teaching a course on literature, literary criticism, and theory. Thankfully, Woods piece provides me the opportunity to do a bit of lit crit: distinguishing between types of irony, the subversive potential of performative reiterations, etc..

So, thank you very much Mr. Wood.

I consider James Wood to be possibly the best literary journalist writing today. What makes him so good is that he is skilled as both a literary journalist and a literary critic. That is, he writes short (compared to an academic journal article) book reviews for a non-academic audience that manage to be packed with critical insights and claims supported with well reasoned evidence from the texts under consideration.

Unlike, say, Michiko Kakutani (who is probably the most powerful book reviewer in America), Wood's reviews aren't one dimensional. When Wood weighs in on a book, he does so by placing it within a larger literary framework where he can make comparisons. He's got a scholarly mind and the scholar's reservoir of knowledge, but he doesn't produce scholarship. Not that scholarship is bad, but within academia we need more eloquently written literary essays -- as opposed to the dry academese that is arguably becoming the norm -- and lord only knows that the arts and culture pages of our mass-circulation publications need more smart reviews.

(I have my own pet theories about why academics can sometimes write such dry, often obscure prose, and it's got everything do with the constraints imposed by a routinized, corporatized university with a "publish or perish" model of professionalism. But I'll save those for the proverbial faculty lounge.)

Having celebrated Wood's writing, let it be noted that I don't always agree with Wood. In fact, his preferred literary aesthetic is quite different and often opposed to mine. His assertion, for example, in a mixed review of Underworld, that the novel "proves... the incompatibility of the political paranoid vision with great fiction" wrongly conflates DeLillo's views with those espoused by his characters. Wood finds Underworld repetitive thematically, whereas I think he neglects to pick up on Underworld's subtlety, DeLillo's repetitions with a difference.

Fortunately, Wood is a much more attentive reader in the Colbert case. Would it be too much to insist that all professional journalists be such adept readers?

Molecular Mixology, or, Color Me Impressed

2006-05-11T11:24:00.000-05:00

Does anybody really need a laser concocted cocktail?

Call me a Luddite, if you must, but when it comes to drinks I draw the technological line at the blender.

So, now that smoking is verboten in many bars, this is the next step: Two Parts Vodka, a Twist of Science.

"Molecular mixology," "freethinking bartenders"...

I shudder to think what the Final Solution might be.

Bartender, a Jameson's on the rocks please, and [wiping Beer Nuts salt and oil from hands whilst fumbling for some change] .... some quarters for the jukebox.

...Sanitation expert and a maintenance engineer
Garbage man, a janitor...

[Sips from glass, from which Irish whiskey overfloweth.]

Ahhhhhhhh.... Yes, comrades, the class warfare intensifies daily.

...Don't treat me special, don't kiss my ass
Treat me like the way they treat 'em up in first class...

One more round, Drinkers of the World, and don't forget to arm yourselves.

[Gulp]

Animals Reedemed in the Corpse

2006-05-11T10:49:00.001-05:00

Wally, have you read the Anti-Anthropomorphism or: Animals Redeemed edition of Exquisite Corpse?

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

2006-05-11T01:30:00.000-05:00

Kundera on his novel:

This story is not allegory. But my book is a polyphony in which various stories mutually explain, illumine, complement each other. The basic event of the book is the story of totalitarianism, which deprives people of memory and thus retools them into a nation of children. All totalitarianisms do this. And perhaps our entire technical age does this, with its cult of the future, its cult of youth and childhood, its indifference to the past and mistrust of thought. In the midst of a relentlessly juvenile society, an adult equipped with memory and irony feels like Tamina on the isle of children.

Much to consider here, but what grabbed my attention was the analogy Kundera makes between totalitarianism and postmodern technocratic society. He sees the two forces as similar in that they work to infantilize the population by denying people a sense of history. Memory and irony are presented as two potential counterforces. I may want to bring Kundera's views - and the literary aesthetic that they imply - to bear on the American postmodernists about whom I'm writing.

First question: How durable is the link Kundera makes between totalitarianism and technocracy? At what point does the comparison break down and why?

Second question: How do Kundera's remarks about totalitarianism, made, I believe, in the mid 1980s and based on his first-hand experience of living under Soviet rule, apply to the world today: a neoliberal world order of global networks in which the U.S. is said to be the sole superpower?

Abort That Thing

2006-05-10T12:53:00.000-05:00

I've always wondered why the 'culture of life' crowd are more concerned about the fate of unborn fetuses than the fate of the already living. Where's their compassion for the poor, the homeless, not to mention the millions of uninsured etc.?

The Onion offers a plausible hypothesis: New 'Anti-Abortion Pill' Kills Mother, Leaves Fetus Alive.

Of Rap and Racism

2006-05-09T15:50:00.000-05:00

The question posted in John Cook's article's title is stupid: If you don't like rap, are you a racist? But that's because the basic claim being assessed here - that one's cultural tastes and preferences correspond to or can be mapped onto one's racial identity - is ludicrous. If, say, Toni Morrison were to profess that she didn't enjoy reading or watching performances of Shakespeare plays, would that make her a racist? And what about black jazz musicians who don't like rap? Are they 'race traitors?'

If only someone - perhaps Jessica Hopper's and Sasha Frere-Jones's editors - would call two posturing writers on the racist logic informing their smears of Stephen Merritt, the singer-songwriter who is best known for his work with the Magnetic Fields, whom they attack for being an outright racist and a cracker. Someone please make these two read Paul Gilroy's Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line, which explains why it's a mistake - logically, politically, ethically, and morally - to divide humanity into identity groups based on skin color.

And if you want to say in response that race goes beyond skin color, that it's a 'social construction,' read Walter Benn Michaels' work to understand how modern and postmodern talk about cultural identity repeated the same, discredited logic of racial essentialism as did talk about racial identity in the late 19th and early 20th century.

I've a lot more to say, but I've got to get back to a paper on performance and DeLillo before heading to the MCA for a talk about Chris Ware.

More on the Media's Missing Colbert

2006-05-07T12:30:00.000-05:00

We know the answer to this question: Did media miss real Colbert story?

Kierkegaard on Islam

2006-05-07T11:53:00.000-05:00

What would the Christian existentialist and Denmark's most famous philosopher make of the violent reactions to the Muhammad cartoons? Carlin Romano consults with Howard Hong and Gordon Morino to find out: What Would Kierkegaard Do?

Thank You Stephen Colbert!

2006-05-05T12:12:00.000-05:00

Take a minute to say "Thank You Stephen Colbert!"

Kudos to your courageous performance, Stephen. Bush's lackeys in the corporate media weren't laughing and have responded like cornered rats to your subversive humor. Let's remember, these are the dolts who proclaimed irony dead after 9/11; they prefer outright lying and spread the propaganda that led the country to an ill-advised war.

Just want you to know that there are millions of us across America who are sick of being played for suckers by Bushco. We love to laugh at your smart, outrageous humor, which inspires us to keep fighting the good fight. Lenny Bruce and Thomas Paine would be proud!

Was Colbert Censored from "White House Letter"?

2006-05-02T15:59:00.000-05:00

Dear Ms. Bumiller,

Why didn't your article on the White House Correspondents' Association dinner report on Stephen Colbert's performance?

I've watched clips of Colbert's simulation of a right-wing pundit, and his performance was definitely newsworthy. While Colbert clearly didn't amuse the president, his ironically subversive performance has been celebrated throughout the blogsphere and other online forums.

Perhaps you refrained from reporting on Colbert's routine because you feared offending the White House? Or perhaps Colbert's barbed endorsements of Bush Administration policies revealed too much about the corporate media's complicity in manufacturing consent by uncritically representing political spin as the truth?

In the future, please be more fair and accurate in your coverage of events. This means reporting on dissenting voices in America, even when those voices question the professionalism of you and your colleagues.

With respect,

Attn, Mr. President: Colbert is in da House

2006-05-01T14:16:00.000-05:00

Stephen Colbert White House Correspondents' Association dinner performance before the President is brilliant. This man's fearless. No softballs thrown tonight.

It's pretty apparent that if I'm going to teach about media and cultural studies, I need tiVo and cable so I can study The Colbert Report.

Gangs claim their turf in Iraq

2006-05-01T12:51:00.000-05:00

It's heartening to know that gangs are enlisting their members in the military in order to receive urban combat experience . I suppose this gives the gun lobby another reason to repeal the ban on automatic weapons. After all, don't these vets, who fought for the U.S. in Iraq, deserve the same access to weapons and equipment here? Homeland security, indeed... [sigh]

Public Works

2006-05-01T02:09:00.000-05:00

This review is supposed to be under two pages, double spaced. Obviously it needs some cutting. But where?

Christopher Grimes, Public Works. Normal, IL: FC2, 2006. 200 pp. $15.95, paper.

Our most base desire, generally speaking, is to reduce and reduce matter into quantifiable nothingness, the last digit of pi that closes the circle for instance. Reduction to our ilk is an animal’s instinct for blood. Words, pictures, sculptures, buildings and nebula are like rabbit droppings on a field of snow from which we strive to infer the meal who produced them.

The Nobel Candidate in physics who makes this observation may be right, but her interpretation-as-scatology analogy does nothing to alleviate my anxieties about writing an overly reductive review of Christopher Grimes' debut short-fiction collection. Bottom line: this is some good shit. Grimes' short fictions are always clever and often profound, and aficionados of the masters of postmodern minimalism (Kafka, Calvino, Borges, Beckett, Barthelme) and maximalism (Pynchon, Gaddis, DeLillo, Coover, Wallace) must read Public Works. Grimes successfully fuses the maximalists' art of expansion - their will-to-master excessive amounts of information - with the minimalist's art of retraction - their sensitivity to the material signifier's tendency to short-circuit and generate surreal interference patterns.

If the great challenge facing contemporary writers is to make our globally networked systems of communication and exchange more intelligible, a project that by no means calls for a mimetic aesthetic, then Christopher Grimes promises to be an exemplary postmodernist. Although the most ambitious and successful postmodern fiction in recent years has been prodigious meganovels like Infinite Jest, Mason & Dixon, and Underworld, Grimes' fiction demonstrates that hundreds or even thousands of pages aren't required to address global complexity. Grimes brings a systems sensibility to short fiction, writing about potentially massive topics under extreme constraints. The short fictions range from about six to eighteen pages, the very short fictions from one to four pages, and even the novella is under forty pages, including extensive footnotes from Minot, North Dakota's Code of Ordinances. Rather than trying to give a gloss on a number of these stories (which would prove difficult since the tales tend to morph unexpectedly), let me comment on the way three exemplary fictions offer a vision of systemic interconnectedness that challenges the individualist ideology that dominates most political and fiction representations.

The narratees of the opening fiction, "Customs in a Developing Country: A Prefatory Story," are foreign visitors, tourists and businesspeople, who, whilst having their bags inspected by an alternately brusque and gregarious customs officer prone to puzzling digressions, receive a lecture on acculturation. The lecture is the story, and its genius resides in the way it interpellates readers as foreigners, a move that aligns Grimes with an authority figure whom we—sophisticated readers and free subjects vigilant about the need to ‘question authority’—will initially tend to regard ironically. After all, from the predominant neoliberal perspective—devoted to the efficacy of private enterprise and free-market’ initiatives, derisive of government (public works) programs, etc.—the customs officer appears as a somewhat anachronistic authority figure: a petty civil servant or a pretentious bureaucrat from a 'backwards' country.

Precisely because he is a petty authority not to be taken seriously, the customs officer functions as, if not exactly an author surrogate, than certainly a viable analogue for an ‘experimental’ literary writer (remember Melville) who, in an age of corporate-media conglomerates, cannot expect to be published by a commercial press and must turn to an independent press dependent upon funding: so, these fictions are literally public works. But Grimes makes it difficult to sustain our sense of ironic distance and superiority towards the customs officer. He does, after all, seem to be looking out for our best interest. And despite his severe tone and an exaggerated sense of self-importance, he provides some prudent and pragmatic travel tips designed to keep our “most private possessions” especially our (sense of) identity, safe and secure. Along with cautionary anecdotes about identity theft, polite conversation, and sexual mores, the customs officer advises us on how not to “insult the natives” as Zsa Zsa Gabor (a quintessential postmodern celebrity, a “hopelessly artificial creature,” more famous for her fame—her catchphrases, her social connections, etc.—than her talent) did during her visits by displaying a palpable “lack of interest” to her hosts and committing “countless...social blunders” whenever she spoke.

Of course, Grimes has set a trap for readers. Through the customs officer, whose lecture espouses, however obliquely, values typically regarded as progressive—the benefits of multiculturalist tolerance, the grotesqueness of celebrity culture, the necessity of remaining attentive to cross-cultural semiotic and linguistic differences, etc.—Grimes suggests that these values have become banal platitudes providing ideological cover for more systemic political and economic exploitation. His lecture repeats truisms that have become multiculturalist cliches: “embrace the common sense that a people foreign to you will live in a manner that is foreign to your sensibilities. You are somewhere new. Perhaps try to appreciate its novelty” (18). But while it’s easy to “appreciate” superficial cultural differences (blue toilet paper) or minor inconveniences (low water pressure) can we truly appreciate a culture comprised of “proud, haughty people” (18) where “prisons are used prophylactically” (17).

Advocates of Criminal Year legislation support a mandatory year of incarceration for the “young and simple-minded” (17) on the grounds that the experience will prepare the prisoners for the future by giving them a taste of reality, a reality understood to be difficult and unfair. In what these conservative advocates imagine as sort of pre-emptive strike on utopian fantasies of social change, only the prisoners who bribe the warden can expect to receive any kindness while in prison. This system of bribery will condition the prisoners to “feel what it’s like to have the infinite possibility of their dreams reduced to the singularly ugly and hard business of living” (17). Suddenly we realize that we’ve in a fascist regime, and when the officer, cast in the role of a contemporary Virgil guiding us into postmodern purgatory, remarks, “like everyone else who passes through here, there was no way to know where her [Zsa Zsa Gabors'] visit was going to lead. It’s ironic, a vicious, vicious irony that we are made to labor under. You will please keep this in mind as you strike out now amongst us,” his words sound doubly ominous. First, when we recognize the implicit threat; then when we realize that this “developing country” feels uncannily like our own homeland. A vicious irony indeed.

“The Public Sentence” is an eight-page, single-sentence story concerning a more benign civil servant, a young Doctor, the Assistant Regulator of Flowage for Bismarck, ND’s Public Works, who is struggling to respond to a bizarre environmental accident—a sewage spill and a “burgeoning turtle population” (24) that threaten the Missouri River ecosystem—for which he is partly to blame. Just how blameworthy is the multi-million-dollar question raised by this comic tale about 'agency panic' and the tragic tendency we humans, as egocentric individuals,, have for misunderstanding and misrepresenting systemic complexity. While a simple mechanical error, the Doctor’s failure to “close the outflow seals of the sedimentation lagoon” (25) directly led to the “raw sewage overwhelming the tertiary system,” assigning responsibility for the subsequent problems proves infinitely more difficult. Was the “bad advice given... by the Indian Municipal Government in Delhi,” which recommended releasing a species of turtles that “subsists on decaying matter” into the river, the “true and primary source” of the eco-catastrophe? Perhaps. But why didn’t the Emergency Advisory Committee foresee that the Midwestern Americans, unlike the Dehlians, wouldn’t keep the turtle population in check by eating them? Now, the swarms of turtles present a “collective shock to our senses matched only by how shockingly quick we are to lay blame when, truly, no one contributing factor can be blamed” (24).

I can't begin to recount the number of mini-narratives, from the Doctor's courtship and marriage of an Argentinean musician to turtle-eradication plans designed serve as “cultural events,” Grimes packs into this digressive tale. I can, however, cite for your reading pleasure the following sentence fragment which, in the growing annals of American Literature about waste and excretory systems may rank up there with Slothrop's mythical descent into the sewer in Gravity's Rainbowand the various riffs and ruminations about shit> and civilization that course through Underworld:

...each one of us now, who haven’t the vaguest notion of how our public waste is directed through a system second in complexity only to that one posteriorly balanced above it, who have, until this moment, been perched blind as bats on the great public commode without once having occasion to think past our ankles, down the wrought iron throat that connects us to the municipal digestive system, the intestines of tunnels, conduits and channels, the brick-lined bowels that release into the newly vulcanized slag tanks churning the corporate volume flowing from our homes and businesses for, individually, we are more concerned with by whom the sound of the soft scrape of toilet paper is being heard than we are with the workings of the sophisticated mechanism to which we are just then affixed...

The final story I want to discuss features a narrator who, speaking colloquially, we might say is 'full of shit.' Narrated by a self-absorbed psychotherapist perturbed by her inability to cure a client and friend exhibiting acute “automobile anxiety,” “Moving Vehicles” lampoons the presumptuousness of narrative therapy, which vulgarizes deconstructive and psychoanalytic theories concerning the way our experience of subjectivity is thoroughly mediated through language and symbols by reducing them into banal self-help slogans: the ‘healing power of narrative,’ ‘we are the stories we narrate to ourselves,’ etc.

The story begins with the therapist describing how the nomadic Kirghiz tribespeople annually cross the “wide and turbulent” Irtish River with their flocks of caribou in reach winter grazing lands. The “old and infirm” unable to make the dangerous crossing are left behind with enough provisions for a few days, but only after a ritual in which the Kirghizes express their love and say their final goodbyes. Although this poignant anecdote would seem to illustrate the sacrifices required for a pre-modern community to sustain itself, our narrator finds it a “perfectly instructive one for inclusion in the therapeutic environment,” where it serves to accommodate clients to the “ambiguous future” that characterizes neoliberal 'risk societies.' She unironically repeats the Kirghizes' story to her clients as a parable about the individual's need to make lifestyle choices. It serves, for example, “to illustrate how they must each say goodbye to things in their individual pasts—former lovers, unreasonable expectations of each other—in order to move to the other side of the river” and “to suggest how they had the option to leave their relationship behind…so they could continue on as healthy individuals."

Unfortunately, we learn, our narrator hadn’t figured out how to apply the story to her friend’s Pauline’s phobia, and her musings on this “intolerable” situation eventually leads to a startling revelation: Pauline was hit by a car and will probably die. Up to this point we’ve enjoyed laughing at the therapist’s ridiculous psychobabble psychobabble, but now we see how her native commitment to of a world shaped entirely by individual acts of renarrativization and her crudely materialist view of language (which she likens at one point to kitty litter covering up, you guessed it...) render her oblivious to the real suffering and death of other. So the story closes with the therapist’s imaginary (and strangely racialized) account of Pauline’s accident, which ends abruptly as she is utterly unable to imagine the moment when Pauline presumably went unconscious. This failure of imagination, it seems, parallels the therapist's constant failure to reflect upon the ethics of her multicultural appropriations and her utilitarian approach to narrative. At the risk of sounding overly reductive, I want to suggest that Grimes' collection provides a public service by presenting readers the opportunity for serious and fun reflections on our postmodern, or neoliberal, condition.

==

Not happy with the ending, and I need to fix all the typographical errors that resulted when I cut and pasted from Word to the blog, but it's getting late and I've been before a monitor for most of the past 14 hours. Ugggh.

Scholars Discover 23 Blank Pages That May As Well Be Lost Samuel Beckett Play

2006-04-27T17:13:00.000-05:00

Jim K. sent me this article from the Onion: Scholars Discover 23 Blank Pages That May As Well Be Lost Samuel Beckett Play. Although this is obviously a joke, the poet and critic Susan Howe, who takes a strong textualist postion, would claim that, yes, the meaning of a text is dependent upon its material form. Howe suggests, for example, that editions of Emily Dickinson's poems in which irregular spacing has been corrected and stray marks from the original manuscript pages omitted alter the poem's meaning. She also objects to editons of The Autobiography of Thomas Shepard that have omitted eighty-six blank pages from his journals on similar grounds.

Ahhhh, esoteric literary debates...

Gender and Education

2006-04-27T11:55:00.000-05:00

Does Feminism Control The Bush Administration? The preposterous title of Phyllis Schlafly's op ed piece doesn't really give a sense of the essay's argumen. Basically it decries what Schlafly regards as the pernicious influence of feminism on American higher education. She's upset about the Title IX law that regulates the proportion of men and women on athletic teams.

She claims that's the law has resulted in the "senseless abolishment" of 171 men's wrestling teams, and suggests that a similiar move to effect a more proportional gender representation in math and science will be equally, if not more harmful. What cripples her argument, I think, is her acceptance of the notion that males are innately better at math and science than females. I'm skeptical about this, just as I reject the notion that females are innately better at languages or teaching.

I'm intrigued by the way Schlafly closes her essay. First she decries the gender inequality in the field of teaching. She observes:

The number of male public school teachers has fallen to only 20 percent, and at the elementary school level fewer than 10 percent of teachers are men, giving boys the distinct impression that school is not for them.

I agree that the decline in the number of male schoolteachers in public schools is a problem, not least because young boys do need male intellectual figures as role models. (Based on what I've heard from people who've been certified as teachers, a degree in education and getting certified to teach can be a decidely un-intellectual pursuit. I won't elaborate, but it's the oft-repeated claim that knowledge in a particular subject matter gets trumped by a lot of touchy feely tips. I've often thought it ridiculous that academics with MAs or even PhDs are not automatically qualified to teach in America's high schools, many of which are strapped for teachers. But this is another topic altogether.) There's definitely a need for more men in America's classrooms - hired as teachers, not security guards - though I wonder if Schlafly, like most conservatives, would endorse higher pay for American teachers? A fair salary, coupled with smaller student-teacher ratios in the classrooms, would make teaching a more attractive field.

Schlaffly closes by appearing to support the Liberal Arts, or at least an initiative to get more men to major in these subjects:

Nor do we hear anything about spending taxpayer funds to force universities to attract more men into the soft Liberal Arts subjects that now have a big majority of women students.

I'll refrain from ranting about that modifer "soft," and state that I’m all for more funding for the Liberal Arts subjects (not just for men – but for the Liberal Arts peritod) but I’m willing to bet that’s just a smokescreen.

Bottom line: When we talk about inequalities that undermine the American education system, the root problem remains class.

What's Your Political Philosophy?

2006-04-26T14:48:00.000-05:00

This thirty-five answer quiz promises to pinpoint your political philosophy.

Not surprisingly, I found some of the questions worded using unnecessary absolutes (e.g. always, never, etc., that made me pause about fully endorsing ideological sentiments or positions with which I generally agree. How that impacted my score, I don't know. Had I more time, I'd retake the quiz to better guage how it determines one's score.

I don't take the results too seriously, though I'lll admit to being a bit disturbed by how high my "Foreign Policy Hawk" and "New Democract" scores were. It's pretty obvious that this quiz was made by a North American, probably from the U.S., since it completely forecloses the possibility of holding a socialist political philosophy. Anyway, here's my results. Do not assume these results accurately reflects my actual political positions, which, for professional reasons, I prefer to keep fairly private.

That said, I do appreciate the fact that my initials are EDR.

You scored as Old School Democrat. Old school Democrats emphasize economic justice and opportunity. The Democratic ideal is best summarized by the Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

Old School Democrat

95%

Green

85%

New Democrat

60%

Foreign Policy Hawk

45%

Libertarian

30%

Socially Conservative Republican

Pro Business Republican

What's Your Political Philosophy?
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Brothel Brouhaha: Muslim Mob Demands Removal of Pink Panty Poster

2006-04-26T13:42:00.000-05:00

Another brouhaha in Europe involving Muslims offended by Western imagery declared to be an insult to the prophet Muhammad. This time the locale is Germany, not Denmark, where a murderous Muslim mob threatened violence against a brothel that displayed an enormous seven-story poster featuring allegedly sacrilegious imagery. No, the poster didn't depict the prophet Muhammad. Designed to solicit World Cup customers, the poster a depicted a woman wearing pink panties lifting up her bra next to the slogan "A Time to Make Friends." Just below the panties were images of flags from the 32 nations that will be competing in the 2006 World Cup, including two Islamic countries, Iran and Saudia Arabia.

Personally, I'm not convinced Muhammad would be bothered enough by a silly poster to demand a bombing in retribution, but to defuse the possibility of a bomb attack or other acts of violence the brothel owners capitulated to the angry mob's demands. The whole scenario is even more ridiculous than the Danish cartoon scandal, but I find the violent imposition of censorship chilling and think those who profess to uphold the right to free speech should take the situation seriously and speak out against a blantant act of intimidation. Read more here: World Cup Row: German Brothel Removes Muslim Flags Amid Threats.

DeLillo Speaks (as little as possible)

2006-04-21T09:20:00.000-05:00

This reporter's interview with Don DeLillo yielded little new information about the private author, just a few anecdotes. It does provide some background on DeLillo's new play, Love-Lies-Bleeding, which opens in Chicago next week. I've got a ticket for opening night. In fact, it arrived in Thursday's mail. I'm excited.

Beaver Overthinking Dam

2006-04-19T12:38:00.000-05:00

Believe me, as someone struggling to craft a [ahem] 'damn dissertation' prospectus, I can relate far more than I would like to admit to the conceptual agonizing that this poor beaver is going through. Read more about Dennis Messner, a self-described "integration-minded postmodernist" beaver here: Beaver Overthinking Dam.

As for me, I'm off to see Slavoj Zizek speak at the U of C campus, but then must return to work and stop "treading water." Don't want to end up stuck in the mud like ol' Dennis has the past few years.

Yes, I'm Here for the Dialectical Behavior Therapy: Photo of the Day #

2006-04-18T21:52:00.000-05:00

... is Dr. Hegel available?

Actually, I don't believe that DBT has anything to do with the Absolute Knowing described in The Phenomenology of Spirit and I doubt 'The Awakening' employs any Lacanian psychoanalysts.

Nonetheless, in an attempt to help the New Agers whom I presume run this 'clinic' reach the truth through error, I would like to bring Slavoj Zizek here and have him present himself as a client seeking their services.

Would this not make a fabulous reality show?

Neil Young Sings "Let's Impeach the President"

2006-04-18T17:36:00.000-05:00

It's good to hear that Neil Young still has a heart of gold. If I recall correctly, he endorsed Reagan, at least for a time, back in the '80s, but redeemed himself by taking aim at Bush the elder in the classic rock anthem "Rockin' in the Free World." (1989). Truth be told, it seems as though the song is older than that, which only goes to show I'm aging. The "We got a thousand points of light/For the homeless man/ We got a kinder, gentler/ Machine gun hand" line definitely dates it a George the 1st-era tune.

The next lines, though, fit just as well today, with Big Oil again running the country: "We got department stores and toilet paper/ Got styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer/ Got a man of the people, says keep hope alive/ Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive."

If I were singing the song, I'd change "department stores and toilet paper" to "Wall Mart stores and... buried Nader" and substitute "styrofoam boxes" to "SUVs 'n' Hummers." Jeff, maybe the next time we get to see each other you can get out the gee-tar & humor me.

But the reason I've got Neil Young on the brain, and on the stereo (a 1987 live bootleg that I picked up in Italy), is that the man is about to release Living with War, a new LP which includes a song for Dubya. The song's titled Let's Impeach the President.Could this be the Indedpendence Day anthem of '06?

After treatment for a brain aneurysm in 2005, it appears as though Young is recovering well. He certainly has been busy. He released Praisrie Wind last year and now Living with War. I wonder if a brush with death inspired him to write some anti-Bush-regime protest rock?

Perhaps the Dead Kennedys could redo "Let's Lynch the Landlord" with lyrics updated to better reflect the realities of Dubya's 'ownership society'?

Media Policies and Media Reform

2006-04-13T18:04:00.000-05:00

Course descriptions for the Fall 2006 semester are due tomorrow, which meant I had to commit myself to a topic for the Composition II class that I'll be teaching. It's been a few semesters since I've taught comp, and I plan to do quite an overhaul on the way I organize the course. I'll be cutting down on the reading (which is hard to do since most students generally come with less background knowledge than one would hope) and placing more emphasis on the writing. I'm hoping that my daily use of rhetorical templates, as advocated by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein in They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing will help students to process the course material more thoroughly and enable them to generate ideas and structure their thoughts more coherently.

I'd like to have my students maintain blogs for the class, but will not do so unless I can get my class moved to a computer lab.

In my opinion teaching composition is the most difficult assignment one can get working in an English Department. Naturally, then, the task is generally passed along to graduate students and adjunct faculty, whom we all know are not well compensated for their efforts.

Strike up the band: "No-body said it was ea-saaaay..."

Course # 22418 ENGL 161 TR 11:00-12:15
Instructor: Rasmussen, Eric Dean
Course Title: Media Policies and Media Reform

The disciplinary focus of this class is media studies, with an emphasis on analyzing contemporary U.S. media policies and practices. We will be examining how the media system works in the United States and why, in the interest of democracy, academics and activists are calling for citizens to play a greater role in shaping the corporate dominated media sphere. To learn more about the course topic, visit mediaproblem.org and www.freepress.net.

I’ve designed this class to teach you to conduct college-level research and to write intelligently about your findings. At the macro level, you will focus on learning the basics of the craft of research, or writing analytically. That is, having surveyed a range of material on a general topic, media studies, you will then select a narrower sub-topic and independently conduct research on it. Your research project will require you to frame a relevant research question, locate source materials, marshal evidence, construct arguments, and craft a polished 10-page report.

At the micro level, you will focus on mastering the rhetorical forms that structure strong academic and argumentative writing. For each class reading you will be asked to identify the rhetorical moves that the text’s author uses to organize his or her argument. Then, with the aid of templates, you will deploy these same rhetorical moves in your own writing. With regular practice and concentrated effort, you will find that an awareness of these rhetorical moves enables you not only to comprehend better the texts you read but also to generate new ideas and enter into ongoing conversations. In short, you will become a more sophisticated reader, writer and thinker.

Students in this class will need to access and print out online materials regularly. To enroll, you must have daily access to the Internet and a printer.

Remaining Replacements Reunite to Record

2006-04-04T09:49:00.000-05:00

Must hear this...Remaining Replacements reunite to record

Charitable Capitalism

2006-03-30T10:06:00.000-06:00

Slavoj Zizek rejects the beneficent-business ethos promoted by today's (ironically self-annointed) 'liberal communists' who promote the notion that capitalist profitability and private enterprise can support social responsibility and humanitarianism. It's foolish, Zizek argues, to believe that "the ruthless pursuit of profit is counteracted by charity," because in this equation "charity is part of the game, a humanitarian mask hiding the underlying economic exploitation." The charitable mask simply provides the capitalists, liberal communists or otherwise, with a means of denying their "complicity in and responsibility for the miserable situation in the Third World."

We should have no illusions: liberal communists are the enemy of every true progressive struggle today. All other enemies – religious fundamentalists, terrorists, corrupt and inefficient state bureaucracies – depend on contingent local circumstances. Precisely because they want to resolve all these secondary malfunctions of the global system, liberal communists are the direct embodiment of what is wrong with the system. It may be necessary to enter into tactical alliances with liberal communists in order to fight racism, sexism and religious obscurantism, but it’s important to remember exactly what they are up to.

Etienne Balibar, in La Crainte des masses (1997), distinguishes the two opposite but complementary modes of excessive violence in today’s capitalism: the objective (structural) violence that is inherent in the social conditions of global capitalism (the automatic creation of excluded and dispensable individuals, from the homeless to the unemployed), and the subjective violence of newly emerging ethnic and/or religious (in short: racist) fundamentalisms. They may fight subjective violence, but liberal communists are the agents of the structural violence that creates the conditions for explosions of subjective violence. The same Soros who gives millions to fund education has ruined the lives of thousands thanks to his financial speculations and in doing so created the conditions for the rise of the intolerance he denounces.

Zizek is probably right about the lie underlying the logic of charitable capitalism (a term that, I think, is less confusing than the silly and misleading 'liberal communism' tag that the Davos gang adapted). It's more or less the same fantasy as 'compassionate conservatism' except that it takes more seriously the notion of corporate responsibility. Compassionate conservatives don't bother trying to reconcile corporate profitability with social responsibility; they simply propose (some sincerely, others cynically) that churches and other traditional charitable institultions, as opposed to the state, assume this role. However, I'm not certain what progressives - particularly those in the U.S., which lacks parliamentary representation and must work within the limits of a winner-takes-all two-party system, are supposed to do.

Modernist Representations of Consciousness

2006-03-29T17:09:00.000-06:00

Ira, this afternoon I read the introduction to Jed Esty's A Shrinking Island: Modernism and National Culture in England and came across a passage that struck me as relevant to your research. Esty takes a position on modernist representations of consciousness similar, I think, to the one you make in your dialectical reading of Ulysses. Like you, Esty is interested in the relationship between modernist nativism and what he sees as a 'cultural turn', that is, a literary move away from aesthetic to cultural investments. Esty's book focuses on late modernism, from roughly 1930 to 1960, but even though he reads literature from more of a historical than a philosophical lens, I think you'll find his approach to be informative, particularly as you consider how your project on Joyce links up more generally with recent modernist studies.

Anyway, I should be working with materials directly related to my research, not yours, so I'm putting aside the Esty until you return. For now, here's the quote:

Although I have suggested that the personal/impersonal antinomy of English high modernism reaches a new resolution via the supervening doctrine of anthropological holism, I do not read (as Lukacs does) modernist representations of consciousness as a cosmopolitan indulgence subsequently correctly when the return to national concerns enforces a properly sociohistorical aesthetic. Modernist representations of the subject were always, as Adorno insisted, shaped by (not detached from) specific and objective social conditions. Indeed, a genuinely critical or negative art required (more than ever) the language of subjectivity in order to avoid simply reproducing the real world in a naive attempt at mimetic objectivity or social realism. This Adornean model of 'objective subjectivity' as the key to modernist technique seems to have come under pressure in the midcentury, at least in practice, for English writers like Eliot and Woolf.

Coincidentally, the copy of Adorno's Negative Dialectics you ordered arrived today.

The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie

2006-03-27T18:23:00.000-06:00

Last Monday night, on the eve of our wedding anniversary, Ira and I saw Billy Bragg play live at the Double Door. That night Bragg debuted a new song that he had written earlier that day on the flight from Minneapolis to Chicago. The song was The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie, written about the late peace activist who was killed by an Isreali bulldozer in Gaza. You can read Bragg's remarks about the song and download it on The Guardian.

Douglas Coupland Meets the Moz

2006-03-24T11:07:00.000-06:00

Author Douglas Coupland, who named a novel after The Smiths' song "Girlfriend in a Coma", travelled around the world to interview Morrissey but concluded that the eccentric singer was "interview proof." Thus, while Coupland's piece offers a few impressions about Morrissey that he gleaned during their meeting ("he has an almost clinical, Tourette's-like need to blurt out thoughtless things to people, and he's not even aware he's doing it, so when people retaliate, he genuinely has no idea why) Coupland spends much of the essay reflecting on why the interview is an obsolete genre in the age of Google. (On the whole, he's probably right, at least for the celebrity interview.) He advises fans to pay attention to the artwork, not the artist and proceeds to practice what he preaches. The essay concludes with an enthusiastic, if somewhat endearingly amateurish, review of Morrissey's forthcoming album, Ringleader of the Tormented, which, I'll admit, I'm eager to hear. Early reports are that Morrissey is taking his sound in new directions. We'll have to hear...

Paper Shredder: Photo of the Day #74

2006-03-16T19:29:00.000-06:00

Time to destroy old credit card statements and other documents that a foolish identity thief might want to steal. Later we put this baby to work and were shredding docs like Fawn Hall (now there's a blast from the past).

Ira Downtown: Photo of the Day #73

2006-03-15T22:23:00.000-06:00

Balloons Over Wilson Avenue: Photo of the Day #72

2006-03-14T19:15:00.000-06:00

Happy Primates: Photo of the Day #71

2006-03-13T17:05:00.000-06:00

Ok, technically this is another primate photo from our Lincoln Park Zoo outing yesterday, Sunday, March 13. But there were lots of good shots from Sunday and none from Monday, so there you have it.

Nurturing: Photo of the Day #70

2006-03-12T21:32:00.000-06:00

Post-Conference Presentation: Photo of the Day #69

2006-03-11T21:24:00.000-06:00

A Good Day: Photo of the Day #68

2006-03-10T22:17:00.000-06:00

Siblings on the Sofa: Photo of the Day #67

2006-03-09T21:56:00.000-06:00

Unwinding (with some Wine): Photo of the Day #66

2006-03-08T12:11:00.000-06:00

Worksite: Photo of the Day #65

2006-03-07T23:55:00.000-06:00

The Birthday Gal: Photo of the Day #64

2006-03-06T23:55:00.000-06:00

Snow on Southport: Photo of the Day #63

2006-03-05T23:52:00.000-06:00

Sunset on Montrose: Photo of the Day #62

2006-03-04T23:45:00.000-06:00

Michigan Ave: Photo of the Day #61

2006-03-03T23:49:00.000-06:00

Untitled (For Now): Photo of the Day #60

2006-03-02T23:39:00.000-06:00

Coffee-Table Books: Photo of the Day #59

2006-03-01T23:57:00.000-06:00

Manifesto Against Religious Totalitarians

2006-03-01T09:19:00.000-06:00

A manifesto, originally published in France, and republished here in the Danish gallants-Posten calling "for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all."

Ira sent me a link to the manifesto on thegallants Posten, which she found on the Dagengs Nyeter, Sweden's largest daily newspaper. I was disappointed to learn that the Swedish paper only featured an article about the manifesto and a link to the reviled Danish newspaper. This gesture suggests perhaps that the Swedish editors want to distance themselves from the manifesto by reporting on it rather than endorsing it. In my opinion, they may be assuming the position of what Hegel dubbed the 'Beautiful Soul.' I'm wary of such efforts to position oneself above the frey. Sweden did this in World War II, when they remained neutral. I've heard that the Danes had a saying about this: "Swedes are Germans with a human face."

Lately I've been reading essays written by Salman Rushdie after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued the fatwah calling for Rushdie's life. Rushdie's writings which have increased my conviction that Western governments, institutions, publishers, and citizens must defend Enlightenment principles and refuse to cave in to pressure from religious fundamentalists who would reduce or eliminate our civil liberties. One of the most disgusting things that Rushdie writes about is the way Western governments - including the United States and Britain - would issue statements in support of free speech that condemned the Iranian theocrats but then, caving in to corporate pressures, refuse to follow through with the economic sanctions that would show Iran that they didn't want to do business with a totalitarian regime.

Aerobics: Photo of the Day #58

2006-02-28T23:56:00.000-06:00

Watchin' Telly: Photo of the Day #57

2006-02-27T22:44:00.000-06:00

I'd have to check WTTW's schedule to confirm, but my hunch is Ira's watching Mystery.

Making Manicotti: Photo of the Day #56

2006-02-26T23:37:00.000-06:00

I've cooked the stuffing and boiled the noodles. Now Ira helps me by stuffing the manicotti, a job that can get quite messy.