Blurb Writing

This evening Lori Emerson, ebr's current book reviews editor (a job I once held, which is a lot of work) e-mailed me to ask if I would write the blurbs for several pieces I've written that will be published soon. Lori suggested it would only take me ten minutes, as opposed to an hour for her. If only. I'm an obsessive reviser and find that the word constraints that blurb writing impose only intensify my impulse to repeatedly rewrite. After a couple hours, I came up with the following blurbs. We'll see if they appear this way on ebr.

1. “What Would Zizek Do?: Redeeming Christianity’s Perverse Core”: Jokes play a fundamental role in Slavoj Zizek’s philosophizing. Is Zizek joking when he extols the virtues of Christianity to the Left? Eric Dean Rasmussen analyzes Zizek’s pro-Christian proselytizing as attacks on modes of PC-ness – political correctness and perverse Christianity - that sustain an undesirable neoliberalism.

2. “Putting the Brakes on the Zizek Machine”: Eric Dean Rasmussen traces the contours of Hanjo Berressem’s rigorous, bi-tempo reading of Organs without Bodies, which finds Zizek’s philosophical buggering of Deleuze to be wanting.

3. “Liberation Hurts: An Interview with Slavoj Zizek”: A post-9/11 discussion between Zizek and Eric Dean Rasmussen concerning liberation as a an act and a state of awareness. Topics include: biopolitics and belief, ideology and infinitude, violence and vulgarity, and the parallax view required to perceive various posthistoricist paradoxes.

Dissertation Work with DEVONthink

Since break began I've been working long days, rising around 6 a.m. and reading, researching, and writing until almost midnight. I'm still jetlagged, so I take a nap in the afternoon and time off to cook and eat, but having submitted grades the other day I've been a diligent dissertation worker.

Having read a glowing review of DEVONthink Pro, a database-based information-management program, in the New York Times, I recently downloaded a trial copy of the software. When the trial period expires, I will definitely purchase the program as it has been incredibly useful for organizing my academic files. I can download academic journal articles from UIC's databases and import them into my database's organizational structures.

For a rhizomatic thinker prone to forgetting or misplacing ideas that rapidly come to mind, the software serves a crucial purpose. It helps me to reign in conceptual 'lines of flight'. I just wish I had more time to learn about and make use of all its organizational features. Perhaps I'll write about the software in a future post. For now, this Macworld review DEVONthink Pro 1.0 will have to suffice. It contains a link to the DEVONtechnologies website.

An indispensable Guide to GOP D.C.

A word of advice to travelers destined for D.C.: watch yourself in Washington. Republicans rule our capital city (for now, anyway) so to avoid getting lost in the crooked city make sure to pack a copy of The New Republic's Rough Guide to GOP D.C.. Remember, power corrupts. Be wary about associating with right-wing politicos and avoid engaging in activites that might get you embroiled in a scandal.

Rachael Rips Sunoco Refinery For 'Abnormal Releases'

This is a shout out to my activist friend Rachael Belz - one of the leaders of Ohio Citizen Action, a 100,000+-member strong environmental group. She can be seen here protesting pollution by Sunoco Inc.

Let me take this opportunity to let Rachael know that I'm always impressed by her idealism, which does not remain at the level of theoretical abstraction (something we politically-minded academics tend to fret about in moments of existential crisis that tend to occur at the end of the semester when students' final papers and exams may prompt us to question the effectiveness of our pedaogic efforts) and gets things done in the world! You go grrrl! Kick some corrupt corporate ass!

(Thanks, Jim, for sending me this article).

Follow this link to learn more about Ohio Citizen Action's campaign to get the Sunoco Refinery to clean up its act.

Dirty Secrets in the War on Terror

In the global war on terror, the unofficial motto of America's intelligence agenies is "The end justifies the means." For an overview of the extralegal powers the Bush Admistration has granted the CIA as it wages a largely covert war read "On the Trail of the CIA."

There's no point in making a moral case against state-sponsored kidnapping, torture, and murder - all techniques apparently used by the CIA and authorized by the Bush Administration. It's apparent that the US intelligence agencies operate according to a morality that it beyond good and evil. But perhaps some people in the US government with the power to dictate policy in the CIA will insist that, in the long run, these violent abuses of power will serve to undermine US interests around the globe. These days who can take seriously the US's claims that it is fighting for freedom? It's disturbing to see America become (some would say this is nothing new) everything that it purports to be fighting against.