tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86178578526966754192024-03-17T22:04:00.581-05:00KritikConversations hosted by the Unit for Interpretive Theory and Criticism at the University of Illinois, Urbana-ChampaignAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13200566567765991464noreply@blogger.comBlogger307125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-2697292427103669512017-04-03T12:37:00.000-05:002017-04-03T12:37:07.238-05:00Jennifer Doyle: "Sex, Paranoia & the Workplace" - Response by Tim Dean[On March 30, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the lecture "Sex, Paranoia & the Workplace" The speaker was Jennifer Doyle, Professor of English at UC-Riverside. Below is a response to the lecture from Tim Dean, Professor of English.]<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><b>Response to Jennifer Doyle's "Sex, Paranoia & the Workplace"</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">by Tim Dean, Professor of English</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Jennifer Doyle and I met for the very
first time today; but I have admired her work for over a decade, and all the
more so after reading her recent book, <i>Campus
Sex, Campus Security</i> (published by Semiotext(e) in 2015). One of the things I admire most is her
capacity to keep the critical lens focused on <u>sex</u>, especially at a time
when the field of Queer Studies has retreated from the difficulties of thinking
sex in favor of other objects of study. From
her first book, titled <i>Sex Objects: Art
and the Dialectics of Desire</i> (2006), Professor Doyle has focused on how
libidinal energies and impasses shape the cultural and social fields. This focus strikes me as deeply psychoanalytic,
even when Doyle steers clear of particular psychoanalytic methods and
vocabularies. In my remarks today, I
want to situate her reading of Freud’s “Case of Paranoia” in relation to her
work as a whole, before opening the floor to discussion. I would like to articulate a number of
observations and questions, but I will try to be brief.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">In both her reading of Freud’s case
and her recent book, Doyle is interested in the desires, anxieties, and
disavowals that structure the workplace—including our workplaces at public
universities.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">In her reading of Freud,
she has an explanation for why the workplace has become intolerable for the
woman in question.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">And in her book </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Campus Sex, Campus Security</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">, she has an
explanation for why </span><u style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">our</u><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> working conditions at public universities have
increasingly become intolerable. </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">But
they are not the same explanation, even though both turn on “sex.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">In her reading of Freud’s case, Doyle
raises the possibility of a non-pathological paranoia—what she calls “a healthy
kind of paranoia.”</span><a href="file:///Z:/1-Spring%202017/3.30%20Jennifer%20Doyle/Tim%20Dean%20Response%20to%20Jennifer%20Doyle.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span></span></a><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">When conditions are structured to prevent a certain
possibility for a particular class of persons in the workplace (here, women),
then something like a paranoid response appears reasonable.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Calling it “paranoia” is a way of
de-legitimizing the response, a way of denying that what the woman has perceived
is real.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">It’s all in her head.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Doyle is right to claim that, no, it’s not
all in her head, it’s structured into the conditions of her workplace by the
gendered division of labor.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">The woman in
Freud’s case, quite apart from the “revenge porn” scenario she conjures </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">avant la letter</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">, is perceiving something
that the professional men involved staunchly disavow, namely, the workplace as
a sexual space.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">But what exactly does it mean to
describe the workplace as a </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">sexual</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">
space?</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">It means something different in
Doyle’s reading of Freud than it does in her reading of public university
campuses in the 21</span><sup style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">st</sup><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> century United States.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">In her reading of Freud, Doyle draws on a
particular Italian Marxist-feminist account of labor—associated with Silvia
Federici and Leopoldina Fortunati—to argue that the woman in Freud’s case is
caught in the contradictions that structure the capitalist division of labor
between production (in the workplace) and reproduction (outside the
workplace).</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">In this schema, sex is “not
only administered as that which ‘happens’ outside the sphere of work; it is
positioned as ‘the opposite’ of work.”</span><a href="file:///Z:/1-Spring%202017/3.30%20Jennifer%20Doyle/Tim%20Dean%20Response%20to%20Jennifer%20Doyle.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[2]</span></span></a><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">There is thus no conceptual space for
accommodating sex in the workplace and, indeed, no possibility of acknowledging
</span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">sex as itself a form of work</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">This is one way of explaining why our society
cannot really think through the category of </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">sex
work</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">—and why male sex work in particular seems to short-circuit rational thought.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">To grasp how sex and work are not each
other’s opposites likewise obliterates the distinction between pleasure and
labor that organizes Max Weber’s </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> (1930).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">At the end of her reading of Freud,
Doyle refers to “the collective disavowal of the fact that ‘work’ is always
already sexed.”</span><a href="file:///Z:/1-Spring%202017/3.30%20Jennifer%20Doyle/Tim%20Dean%20Response%20to%20Jennifer%20Doyle.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[3]</span></span></a><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Here, I believe the term “sexed” means </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">gendered</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">—i.e., the workplace is
structured by a gendered division of labor that uniquely disadvantages
women.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">I have no quarrel with that
claim, but I worry about how the term “sex” has slid from meaning something
libidinal—sex as in fucking—to meaning sexual difference, </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">sex</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> as a term European feminists use where we would be more likely
to use the term </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">gender</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">The fact, as Doyle puts it, that “‘work’ is
always already sexed” is not the same as saying that the workplace is a sexual
space.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Another way of articulating my
concern would be to say that the Marxist feminist critique of the gendered
division of labor, valuable though it is, keeps in place a distinctly
heterosexual paradigm for understanding sex.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">That paradigm makes it harder to see how, for example, </span><u style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">same-sex</u><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">
sexual harassment functions in the workplace or on campus.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">When gender difference organizes your concept
of sexuality, certain things become invisible, or much harder to perceive.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">This is a problem with the intellectual
tradition Doyle is drawing upon in her reading of Freud; but it’s a problem
that does </span><u style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">not</u><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> appear in her book </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Campus
Sex, Campus Security</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">, where she uses the term “sex” differently.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">What Doyle describes as a collective
disavowal of the libidinal dimension of the workplace takes an historically
specific, neoliberal form on contemporary college campuses.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">In my view, that disavowal helps to explain
how queer theory, once it became institutionalized in the university, stopped
paying attention to sex.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">In the mid-1980s,
Gayle Rubin announced—in an article (“Thinking Sex”) that inaugurated the
field—that “The time has come to think about sex.”</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">But by the end of the millennium, queer
theorists had simply decided they would prefer not to.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Jennifer Doyle represents a notable exception
to that institutional retrenchment, and I am profoundly grateful for the
searching brilliance of her latest book.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">One of the things </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Campus Sex, Campus Security</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> makes
evident is how “sex” has become what renders the campus and its administrators
insecure.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">The most acceptable campus
discourse about sex is how to stop it from happening.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">In the latest incarnation of a Foucaultian
nightmare, sex has become something that must be, above all, </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">administered</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">.</span><a href="file:///Z:/1-Spring%202017/3.30%20Jennifer%20Doyle/Tim%20Dean%20Response%20to%20Jennifer%20Doyle.docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[4]</span></span></a><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Outside of biology labs, there is virtually
no space on campus for actually thinking sex.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">There are plenty of campus spaces for thinking about how to </span><u style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">get</u><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">
sex.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">And every campus has multiple sites
for engaging intellectually with questions of gender (even though those sites
tend to be under-resourced and under attack).</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">But if you’re searching for a place on campus to theorize human
sexuality apart from a biological model, you are basically out of luck. </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Sex is not supposed to contaminate
the campus as a workplace.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Now, when I
went to college in the 1980s, it was precisely in order to </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">have</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> sex (and perhaps secondarily to reflect on what that meant).</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">All my undergraduate feminist friends talked
incessantly about which professors they wanted to shag; as students we
speculated endlessly, and in minute detail, about what various faculty members
would be like in bed.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">I’m not sure how
much has changed since then (you tell me); but what </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">has</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> changed is the growth of a large and complex bureaucracy to
administer sexual complaints.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">At
universities such as the ones Doyle describes in her book, the campus
bureaucracy has become increasingly militarized, not to mention paranoid about
securing boundaries in a way that deserves to be diagnosed as
pathological.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">(We are not talking here
about “a healthy kind of paranoia.”)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">When my college friends and I
generated a discourse whose sole object was our professors’ sex lives, we did
so as a result of the phenomenon that Freud named transference.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">“He whom I suppose to know, I love.”</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Transference is a psychoanalytic term for
describing the libidinal energies that pervade relationships structured
hierarchically.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Transference is the
engine that drives psychoanalysis in a clinical setting and it permeates
hierarchical institutions such as schools.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">It’s a way of talking about the libidinal component of our relationship
to authority.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">I would argue that sex
haunts the workplace in large part because transference goes unrecognized and
unacknowledged.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Freud said that the
essence of psychoanalysis lay in handling the transference.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">One might say that the essence of teaching
lies similarly in handling the transference that permeates pedagogical
relationships.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">When a teacher or a
student fail to recognize that what’s happening between them is transferential,
that’s when they are most likely to end up having sex.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">And by now we have a pretty good idea of how
that story ends.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Let me redescribe what
I’m trying to get at here.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">In the
Marxist-feminist critique of the division of labor that Doyle invokes, there is
a division between production and reproduction that creates an impasse for
women in the workplace and fails to acknowledge certain kind of labor as labor.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Partly in response to this impasse, Italian
Marxist philosophers such as Maurizio Lazzarato and Antonio Negri have
developed the concept of </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">immaterial labor</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">
to describe “labor that produces an immaterial good, such as a service, a
cultural product, knowledge or communication.”</span><a href="file:///Z:/1-Spring%202017/3.30%20Jennifer%20Doyle/Tim%20Dean%20Response%20to%20Jennifer%20Doyle.docx#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[5]</span></span></a><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">In my own research on sex work, I’ve been
using the idea of immaterial labor to think through forms of </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">affective</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> labor, </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">aesthetic</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> labor, and </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">glamour</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">
labor.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">What psychoanalysis adds to this
account of immaterial labor is the crucial idea of unconscious labor—the work
that our minds do, in the service of pleasure, unbeknownst to us.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">(Freud uses the term </span><i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">arbeit</i><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">, the basic German word for work, to describe this mental
labor)</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">We might say that the unconscious
is the ideal laborer of capitalism because our minds continue working even when
we’re asleep.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">What they produce is a
called a dream—an immaterial product if ever there were one.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Transference is a way of talking
about the unconscious component of all human relationships that are structured
hierarchically.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">It acknowledges that
there is another kind of work going on, work that is intentional but eclipsed
by consciousness.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">The workplace is a
sexual space because every human being who occupies that space is accompanied
by a ghost, namely, their unconscious.</span></div>
<br />
<div>
<!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///Z:/1-Spring%202017/3.30%20Jennifer%20Doyle/Tim%20Dean%20Response%20to%20Jennifer%20Doyle.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Jennifer Doyle, “Rethinking a Case of Paranoia as a Workplace Complaint,” <i>Studies in Gender and Sexuality</i>, vol.18,
no.1 (2017), 10.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///Z:/1-Spring%202017/3.30%20Jennifer%20Doyle/Tim%20Dean%20Response%20to%20Jennifer%20Doyle.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Doyle, “Rethinking,” 11.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///Z:/1-Spring%202017/3.30%20Jennifer%20Doyle/Tim%20Dean%20Response%20to%20Jennifer%20Doyle.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Doyle, “Rethinking,” 12.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///Z:/1-Spring%202017/3.30%20Jennifer%20Doyle/Tim%20Dean%20Response%20to%20Jennifer%20Doyle.docx#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Here Doyle’s account recalls political
anthropologist David Graber’s brilliant critique of contemporary bureaucracy in
<i>The Utopia of Rules: On Technology,
Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy</i> (2015).<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn5">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///Z:/1-Spring%202017/3.30%20Jennifer%20Doyle/Tim%20Dean%20Response%20to%20Jennifer%20Doyle.docx#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, <i>Empire</i> (Harvard University Press, 2000),
290.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17012501841858805854noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-30643367094951737652017-03-28T09:01:00.000-05:002017-03-28T09:01:10.686-05:00A State with No Budget (with apologies to America)<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="color: #4c1130;">By James Treat, Associate Professor, Religion</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ohRcUj_5-bPKwEfHqVI7TfzjlYitH1JUIolmQ79QPpJW5BfT-sly-WMwdnmCc6rCLU5X7264B4g1Jhyn9x7jbiGo0mD5ssYzMLXXmgjQEoSC3OOknM16Dd7xtf4SfSqkZfyEpenEjp4/s1600/America.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ohRcUj_5-bPKwEfHqVI7TfzjlYitH1JUIolmQ79QPpJW5BfT-sly-WMwdnmCc6rCLU5X7264B4g1Jhyn9x7jbiGo0mD5ssYzMLXXmgjQEoSC3OOknM16Dd7xtf4SfSqkZfyEpenEjp4/s1600/America.jpeg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">On the first part of the journey</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">I was looking at all the life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">There were plants and birds and rocks and things<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">There was sand and hills and rings<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">The first thing I met was a gov with a buzz<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">And the sky with no clouds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">The heat was hot and the ground was dry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">But the air was full of sound<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">I've been through the college in a
state with no budget<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">It felt good to be out of the money<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">In the college you can remember
your debt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">'Cause there ain't no one for to give
you no funds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">La, la, . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">La, la, . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">After two years in the college sun<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">My face began to turn red<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">After three years in the college fun<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">I was looking at a river bed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">And the story it told of a river that flowed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">Made me sad to think it was dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">You see I've been through the
college in a state with no budget<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">It felt good to be out of the money<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">In the college you can remember
your debt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">'Cause there ain't no one for to
give you no funds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">La, la, . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">La, la, . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">After nine terms I let the state run free<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">'Cause the college had turned to work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">There were plants and birds and rocks and things<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">There was sand and hills and rings<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">The world is a college with its life underground<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">And a perfect disguise above<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">Under the cities lies a heart made of stone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">But the leaders will give no love<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">U-C I've been through the college in
a state with no budget<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">It felt good to be out of the money<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">In the college you can remember
your debt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">'Cause there ain't no one for to
give you no funds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">La, la, . . .</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">La, la, . . .</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
Roman Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00332676942690719201noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-35839421582112377612017-03-27T13:01:00.001-05:002017-03-27T13:01:41.154-05:00Anita Say Chan: "Technological Futures & Networked Time at the Periphery" - Response by Gabe Malo & elizaBeth Simpson<span style="color: #333333;">[On March 13, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the lecture "Technological Futures & Networked Time at the Periphery." The speaker was Anita Say Chan, Associate Professor of Media & Cinema Studies and the Institute of Communications Research at UIUC. Below is a response to the lecture from Gabe Malo & elizaBeth Simpson (Institute of Communications Research).]</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">"Seeing Spaces: Re-centering Peripheries"<br />Written by:<br />Gabe Malo (ICR): Lecture, Q&A, and Conclusion<br />elizaBeth Simpson (ICR): Introduction and Response</span><div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><b>Introduction: </b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Prof. Anita Say Chan was introduced by Prof. Cameron McCarthy, who praised her “consistently stellar and brilliant scholarship and intellectual forward motion.” McCarthy began his remarks by drawing a contrast between <a href="http://www.academia.edu/3596310/Rostows_theory_of_modernization_development">W.W. Rostow’s five-stage theory of modernization development</a>, and Chan’s work which "contributes to subaltern efforts to rethink contemporary center-periphery relations in the digital age." In particular, he took up her book, <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/netperi">Networking Peripheries: Technological Futures and the Myth of Digital Universalism</a> in which she "explores cultural imaginaries of global digital connections expressed in Peru and the rising zones of subjugated and artisanal knowledges in transnational peripheries and in the rapidly transforming globalizing context of post-development states.” He placed Chan among feminist scholars such as <a href="https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/ics/people/researchers/ien_ang">Ien Ang</a>, <a href="http://www.saskiasassen.com/">Saskia Sassen</a>, and <a href="http://www.socialsciencespace.com/2016/03/the-geographer-of-space-and-power-doreen-massey-1944-2016/">Doreen Massey</a>, noting that Chan takes up <a href="http://www.academia.edu/7446970/James_W._Carey_-_Communication_as_Culture_Essays" s="">James Carey’s</a> call to assert the public significance of her work, and in so doing “to expand the field of reference in academic discourse.” </span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8FC0kTDoiSrmUrbY_bhxmWfX2ijWAmIAqZ52tQh7utNUVhWwOY4Pr1AzIct6k76kOYp0NE3vZszBbGKtuuhNjZ8srf45Kh061_CnlUBmSSQBOBXFnMSvGzpTbG-RHY3j-3a-T1xcemsGU/s1600/Image.3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8FC0kTDoiSrmUrbY_bhxmWfX2ijWAmIAqZ52tQh7utNUVhWwOY4Pr1AzIct6k76kOYp0NE3vZszBbGKtuuhNjZ8srf45Kh061_CnlUBmSSQBOBXFnMSvGzpTbG-RHY3j-3a-T1xcemsGU/s320/Image.3.jpg" width="215" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Source: <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/netperi">MIT Press</a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Anita Say Chan is Associate Professor in Media and Cinema Studies and the Institute of Communications Research. She is also Faculty Leader of the <a href="http://seeingsystems.illinois.edu/">INTERSECT Learning to See Systems Research Group</a> and Faculty Co-<a href="https://publish.illinois.edu/prairiefutures/">Leader of the Recovering Prairie Futures IPRH Research Cluster</a>. </span><b><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div>
<b><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div>
<b><span style="color: #20124d;">Lecture: Technological Futures and Networked Time at the Periphery</span></b></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">The talk began with Prof. Chan considering the notion of the technological periphery not only in its stabilized dimensions but also in its temporal dimensions. She argued that the relation between the technological “center”—places like Silicon Valley—and the technological “periphery” is largely shaped by the relations of labor, tech, and power to particular real and imaginary temporalities. Her talk focused on Peru as a site for digital culture in order to critique the physical and temporal localities that place it on the technological periphery in Euro-centric paradigms. Such a conception, she stated, ignored the advancements and adaptations which have occurred on the technological periphery. <a name='more'></a></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">She opened her presentation with a discussion of the </span><a href="http://one.laptop.org/">One Laptop Per Child</a><span style="color: #20124d;"> program, which was widely embraced by Peru at the time of its expansion, before turning to the more recent incursion of Intel and Hewlett-Packard on the scene as part of 2014’s </span><a href="http://virtualeduca.org/encuentros/peru/">Encuentro Internacional Virtual Educa</a><span style="color: #20124d;"> which was sponsored by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture. Such encounters seemed on the surface to reinforce the standardized temporal relationality between the technological periphery and the technological center; however, Prof. Chan’s analysis illustrated the fundamental disconnect between the real and imaginary temporalities that exist on the technological periphery. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">The temporality of Peru, in the Western imagination, is largely based in the past, whereas the trappings of technology are placed within imaginaries of the future. In this comparison, Prof. Chan drew parallels between her approach and that of Latin American scholars like <a href="http://waltermignolo.com/coloniality-the-past-and-present-of-global-unjustice/">Walter Mignolo</a>, who argued that sites such as Peru that are on the periphery are conceptualized as being outside history. These temporal stereotypes—those of a place without history, or a place in need of guiding technologicalization—are challenged by the actual experience of technology in the Peruvian sites of Prof. Chan’s study. For instance, Peruvian educators did not unquestioningly adopt the technologies presented at Encuentro Internacional Virtual Educa; instead, ideas of forcing accelerated adoption of new technology have been met by resistance as individuals instead attempt to rework dominant logic and tempos of technological economy according to their collective diversities, needs, and histories. These histories—both long-distant and quite recent—have frequently been ignored by those who are writing the codified histories of technological innovation.<br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCCvByzsYLhI0x0R2zHAYL2-ZwfNhFdUKvM1LQVPvmpJiPWFPzUqr9U6IEwnNRzbryeNnTtyIOqJR2qQ-id-CoUm4npEQRXTN9xWpMDAe7107cNKkTFr5Q1xnHmleoK6uZNDDMzmCR5lJ2/s1600/Image.2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCCvByzsYLhI0x0R2zHAYL2-ZwfNhFdUKvM1LQVPvmpJiPWFPzUqr9U6IEwnNRzbryeNnTtyIOqJR2qQ-id-CoUm4npEQRXTN9xWpMDAe7107cNKkTFr5Q1xnHmleoK6uZNDDMzmCR5lJ2/s320/Image.2.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Caption: A Scene from Encuentro Internacional Virtual Educa in Lima, 2014<br />Source: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Captura_durante_Virtual_Educa_Per%C3%BA_2014.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">It was with this idea of history that Prof. Chan closed her talk, drawing both upon her experiences with technological practices in Peru and her experience as a member of the <a href="https://publish.illinois.edu/prairiefutures/">Prairie Futures</a> group, which considers the technological significance of and contributions from the American Midwest, a peripheral place in relation to putative US centers of technological innovation such as Silicon Valley or MIT. Prof. Chan focused on Peruvian hackerspaces as examples of the uncomfortable and fraught frictions that occur when the temporalities of technological space intersect with traditional and local temporalities. In discussing these spaces, she was able to show that such frictions are not irreconcilable; modes of communication central to the Andean world, such as rituals, were made central within hackerspaces, and these practices opened the door for productive consideration of the relationalities between technology, humankind, nature, and that which is uncontrollable through humankind’s interventions. These intersections and new relationalities, Prof. Chan argued, represent ways in which history can be remembered, and through which the periphery can be seen as contributing to the technological landscape, rather than being eclipsed by it.<br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><b>Response: Intentional Interdisciplinarity</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><a href="https://ischool.illinois.edu/people/faculty/knox">Emily Knox</a>, Assistant Professor of Information at the School of Information Sciences at UIUC, author of <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442231672">Book Banning in 21st Century America</a>, and 2015 recipient of the Illinois Library Intellectual Freedom Award delivered the response to Prof. Chan’s talk. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Positioning her talk at the intersection of technological pasts, futures, and makerspaces, Prof. Knox introduced the concept of “disruption,” and unpacked the meaning of “informatics.” She described her presentation as having three anchors: people, information, and technology, particularly technology-in-the-world. Placing emphasis on the importance of story collecting in the information sciences, Prof. Knox returned numerous times throughout her presentation to the need for intentional interdisciplinarity, asking, “How do you give people access?” and “How do you offer the tools you have to others?” As example, she provided histories of technology-as-tool at UIUC including <a href="https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/1756">computer-based information retrieval circa 1966</a> and <a href="https://ischool.illinois.edu/academics/degrees/mslis/leep">synchronous online education courses beginning in 1996</a>.<br /><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYuVj7M4DxJavKz7j4sNGYpmSB40f-Sjc-gKw-54Ti7d-Dne6BCT8w22sR8PgOeJ6Ch1qH-smEl8NTgW6Nlyqaszgg9KeaAsnajxTAR5Z0k4x2LHKvhpdEM8-ixoIyqpRQwtojax2rPc23/s1600/Image.1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYuVj7M4DxJavKz7j4sNGYpmSB40f-Sjc-gKw-54Ti7d-Dne6BCT8w22sR8PgOeJ6Ch1qH-smEl8NTgW6Nlyqaszgg9KeaAsnajxTAR5Z0k4x2LHKvhpdEM8-ixoIyqpRQwtojax2rPc23/s320/Image.1.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Source: <a href="https://makerspaceurbana.org/">Makerspace Urbana</a></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Using hacker/makerspaces as points of access, Prof. Knox then made connections to Prof. Chan’s work of critically evaluating so-called technological peripheries, bringing specific attention to ethical concerns about gender in these spaces, which so often replicate dominant norms of white masculinity. Referencing support for blended practices at Makerspace Urbana (e.g. cross stitching with conductive thread and LEDs) as an example of intentional interdisciplinarity, Prof. Knox then engaged the <a href="https://makerspaceurbana.org/">mission statement</a> and <a href="https://makerspaceurbana.org/about-mu/makerspace-urbanas-anti-harassment-policy/">anti-harassment policy</a> of Makerspace Urbana as a pivot to emphasize the challenging but vital work of engaging foundational inquiries such as “what can we do to make sure the space is more inclusive?” when conceiving projects but also at points of transition. Demonstrating inclusivity in action, Prof. Knox closed by inviting attendees to visit Makerspace Urbana and consider learning to solder (“it’s very easy, it opens up a whole new world of electronics to you, I promise”); to participate in <a href="https://makerspaceurbana.org/projects/uc-mini-makerfaire/">Heartland Makerfest</a> as an attendee or table host; or to provide input as to how Makerspace Urbana can avoid de facto gender segregation as it expands into a second room. </span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #20124d;">Conclusion</span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Follow-up questions to both the main lecture and the response centered on the multiple sensibilities within local (and extrapolated global) contexts. When asked a question about the sensibilities of solidarity and safe spaces in the current political moment, Prof. Chan pointed towards </span><a href="https://people.ucsc.edu/~haraway/">Donna Haraway’s</a><span style="color: #20124d;"> conception of situated knowledge. She also gestured towards work on networks of care and feminist science as examples illustrating the importance of visibilizing not only data, but the labor that goes into the presentation of that data, and placing that visibility as critical to creating such spaces effectively. The visibility of old technologies in a modern context was also interrogated and brought into local contexts, with Prof. Knox discussing the care and mindfulness utilized when deciding which technologies to include in Makerspace Urbana. Also in this vein, a question about the uniqueness of studying Peru as an example of the technological periphery was answered via comparisons to the overlooked-but-vital centrality of the Midwest in the development of information technology. After the lively Q&A session adjourned, many of the participants—as well as the speakers—left to attend </span><a href="http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/news/story/ncsa_to_celebrate_breakthrough_cyberfest_20th_anniversary">Cyberfest</a><span style="color: #20124d;"> at the </span><a href="http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/">National Center for Supercomputing Applications</a><span style="color: #20124d;">.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17012501841858805854noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-80915748659045650062017-03-06T11:27:00.002-06:002017-03-06T11:27:45.513-06:00Nirvana Tanoukhi: "So, What's Wrong With 'The Relatable' As a Category of Judgment?" - Response by Helga Varden<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #929292; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">[On February 28, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the lecture "So, What's Wrong With 'The Relatable' As a Category of Judgment?". The speaker was Nirvana Tanoukhi, Assistant Professor of English at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Below is a response to the lecture from Helga Varden, Associate Professor of Philosophy at UIUC.]</span></span></span><br />
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<b><span style="color: #20124d;">Response to Nirvana Tanoukhi’s “So, What’s Wrong with the Relatable as a Category of Judgment?”</span></b><div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><b>By Helga Varden, Philosophy</b><br />First of all, I would like to thank Professor Tanoukhi for having written and for letting me comment on such a terrific paper. I’ve so enjoyed and felt so stimulated by thinking about the themes and about the moves Tanoukhi makes in her paper. Before sharing some of the puzzles I still find myself thinking about—including, ultimately, what Tanoukhi’s answer is to the question of what is wrong with the relatable as a category of judgment—let me give a quick summary of what I take to be the main points.<br /><br />The aim of the paper is to critique the concept of the relatable as it is being used both in relation to literary theory and education as well as how it was used in the 2016 presidential election in the US. To provide her critical analysis, she turns to Kant for help. She argues that in relation to both spheres (literature and politics), when people deem it important to be able to relate to (in the sense of identifying or empathizing with) the main characters, what is going on psychologically can be appreciated by understanding why Kant didn't write only the 1st and the 2nd Critiques. That is, in addition to the Critique of Pure Reason (critiquing the world as it is) and the Critique of Practical Reason (critiquing the world as it ought to be) – Kant also saw it necessary to write a 3rd Critique, a Critique of Judgment. Kant’s 3rd Critique, Tanoukhi argues, holds the clue to understanding what is going on in the category of the relatable because it provides a critique of aesthetic judgment, in particular judgments of beauty. Judgments of beauty, Tanoukhi continues, have four moments – as enabled by the four types of categories of the understanding, namely quantity, quality, relation, and modality – which in turn, Kant argues, captures the way in which we judge things as beautiful through the ideas he labels “subjective universality,” “disinterested interest,” “purposeless purposiveness,” and “sensus communis.” <br /><a name='more'></a><br />Moreover, where the 1st Critique concerns the ways in which we can engage the world through intuition and abstract concepts, the 2nd Critique concerns the ways in which our capacity to act on universalizable maxims enables us to be morally responsible. With regard to both spheres—the theoretical and the practical—Kant’s aim is to show how reasoning concerns an ability to engage the world through laws; we reason through general laws in terms of universality. In contrast, the 3rd critique concerns the way in which we are able to use our cognitive powers playfully and imaginatively, that is, without subjecting our thoughts to the quest for objective, universal truths about the nature of the world. Hence, ultimately, Tanoukhi argues, Kant thought we need a 3rd Critique, in order to capture the ways in which we subjectively assess the world aesthetically. She says “… taste is the faculty which… provides ‘the transition’ between the domains of pure and practical reason, and without which and in whose absence as a capacity, the human being would be condemned to experience the world as a tug of war between his sensuous being (which can be comprehended rationally…) and his moral being (as a free agent self-bound by duty).” Tanoukhi continues that Kant’s third critique is important to understanding people’s quest for relatability because without it all they have is “the motivation to act in a world where there is an entrenched sense of “how things are” (pure reason) and “the value we hold” (practical reason) with no vision of how the subject of everyday experience can navigate the gap between the cynicism of the first and the idealism of the second.“ More specifically, as Tanouki puts it, <br /></span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">“the relatable does significant work under similar conditions where the gap between how things are, and how I believe they ought to be, the challenge of a big and oppressive gap between the two expressed itself as a crisis of motivation. Judgments of the relatable index the experience of such a gap between all-too distinct realms of experience—theoretical and practical—which seem difficult to overcome. Judgments of the relatable refer the feeling of pleasure to the experience of access where obstacles could be expected. The first difference to note, then, in the structure of the relatable in comparison to other aesthetic judgments of taste (be it the beautiful or the interesting) is that it is associated not with an excitation, but with a release from over-excitement, the subject’s anxious anticipation of hardship.” </span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Hence, for Tanoukhi, the 3rd Critique allows for the category of the relatable which in turn helps to bridge the gap (experienced as an anxious anticipation of hardship) between truth and morality. Moreover, this “anxious anticipation of hardship” is seen as the point of similarity between the relatable in literature and in politics. Hence, and here I’m quoting Tanoukhi again: <br /></span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">“My argument is that Trump ran for president at a time when the American public was, arguably, yearning for a transition between the two ‘ways of thinking.’ In his form, Trump spoke to voters not as a whole judged by the coherence of his parts (on that basis of which he stood no chance of being favored) but on the basis of what was thought implicit in his intentionality: a purposive formlessness which bode the possibility of shrinking the distance between a naturalist account of “politics” or a moral code which could not be harmonized with it.” </span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br />Hence it was because of the way in which a large percentage of the US aestheticized politics that they did not “hear” any appeals to truth or to what is morally right.<br /><br />As mentioned when I started, I find this analysis fascinating. I do, however, have a few questions that I still find myself wondering about – and so would like to hear more about these issues, if time allows: <br /><br />1.) Assuming that this account of the relatable is correct, is the main point of the relatable not Trump as such, but all political movements of populism—and, so, including, say, George W. Bush’s populism? If so, would you say that this account of the relatable cannot capture the ways in which this particular movement is deemed much more dangerous than other populist movements, or why some worry that this is, for the first time in the US at the top level of politics, a movement with fascist tendencies? Is it, in other words, because of your focus on critiquing populism only that the statements you have cited primarily concern things like how many say they could have a beer with Trump? <br /><br />2.) Relatedly, I’m also not quite sure why you chose to use Kant’s analysis of the beautiful rather than his analysis of the “agreeable” to capture what his supporters thought relevant about Trump, such as that he is someone many find they “could have a beer with.” <br /><br />3.) Moreover, if one were to try to capture what may be more dangerous about this current populist movement—such as how people seem to respond so positively to Trump’s statements about how great and rich he is and how he is going to make the US great again—would you then need to add an engagement with Kant’s category of the sublime? And, again, relatedly, if one were to try to capture why Hillary Clinton did not win, is it because of the way in which women cannot win if aesthetics (or judging via aesthetic categories as opposed to truth and morality) is the name of the game? That is to say, one might plausibly argue that the European women political leaders who have won democratically for the first time, have won despite how they all were charged with being too much like men. They won only because they were able to reason better than their opponents, which means that the people and the media managed to keep truth and morality sufficiently in focus during democratic election campaigns. <br /><br />4.) For some other judgments deemed relevant to whom to elect, I’m not quite sure why, ultimately, in going to the Kant’s 3rd Critique you chose to use his analysis of the beautiful rather than his analysis of teleological judgments. For example, it seems to me that the judgment that I can see myself as part of a future world with this person in charge seems closer to a teleological judgment than a aesthetic one.<br /><br />5.) Finally, and returning to the question in the title of the paper: what is wrong with the relatable as a category of judgment, and especially in the sphere of politics? What is, in other words, wrong with political populism, and, if anything, what is right about it? And how does this account capture also what goes well when the relatable is used well and badly within literary theory and practices? Along these same lines, it seems that in populist movements, the relatable candidate often tracks somebody who denigrates one or more sectors of the citizenry or others (i.e. they tend to have sexist, xenophobic, or homophobic elements), whereas the relatable when used in relation literature is trying to achieve the opposite – to give voice to people with such historically oppressed identities and orientations (and hence who have been ignored or treated badly in the canon). Is this difference easy to explain given the account at hand?<br /><br /> In other words, as I said at the beginning of my comments – this is a really stimulating paper: thank you for having written it and shared it with me!</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17012501841858805854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-22678703756786454872017-03-02T11:47:00.000-06:002017-03-02T11:47:48.111-06:00"What's at Stake? Intersectional Conversations in a Post-Truth Era" - Response by Eman Ghanayem<span style="color: #333333;">[</span>On Monday February 20th, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory hosted a system-wide University of Illinois faculty forum titled “What’s at Stake? Intersectional Conversations in a Post-Truth Era.” The event was co-sponsored by the departments of African American Studies, Asian American Studies, Latina/Latino Studies, and Political Science. The UI forum included Professors Jodi A. Byrd, Ben Miller, A. Naomi Paik, and Gilberto Rosas from UIUC; Nadine Naber and Amalia Pallares from UIC; and Hinda Seif from UIS. Below is a response to the forum from Eman Ghanayem, Dept. of English.]<br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">"Truths — Known, Unknown, and Forgotten — in the US Past and Present"</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">Written by Eman Ghanayem (Dept. of English)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">The event was a timely response to the recent political developments brought in by the Trump administration, particularly <a href="http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/01/all-trump-executive-actions-000288">the executive orders related to immigration and border security</a> that were accompanied by the proliferation of “alternative facts” and sensationalized fear. In their presentations, the panelists adopted intersectionality as a method of reading and responding to social exclusions, and as a tool for community organizing and academic sanctuary building. Professor Ben Miller (Political Science, UIUC) overviewed Kimberlé Crenshaw’s definition of intersectionality and intersectional feminism, and emphasized their value as tools for understanding society and changing it. While most conservatives lean towards the former role because of its sanitized, apolitical nature, the capacities of intersectionality as a tool for social reformation was evident in the panelists’ critiques and hopes for the future. Professors Gilberto Rosas (Anthropology and Latinx Studies, UIUC) and Amalia Pallares (Political Science and Latin American and Latino Studies, UIC) modeled the practices of intersectionality as they explored the responsibilities of academics, themselves and others, towards vulnerable communities. Professor Rosas highlighted that current immigration policies <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/01/03/507925265/anticipating-trump-deportation-fears-give-immigrant-advocates-a-boost">were an extension of the Obama administration practices</a> that resulted in the deportation of nearly three million people. He explained how the Trump administration speaks truth post-truthfully to the legacy of deportation in US history. Professor Rosas reminded us that, in the current moment, the continuous televising of deportation and profiling cases promises a kind of transparency that can aid pro-immigrant activism. The resurgence of refusal within communities of immigrants of color is gradually and rightfully becoming the protest strategy that is bringing people together.</span><div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Professor Amalia Pallares also drew parallels between the Trump and Obama administrations. “Post-truth” as a descriptor of the Trump era echoes the ways “post-race” was used throughout Obama’s presidency. Pallares reminded us that “truth” is still here and has always been present, and that the recognition of certain truths can set the ground for resistance. Professor Pallares drew on her engagement in <a href="http://wgntv.com/2017/02/04/hundreds-rally-in-oak-park-to-support-sanctuary-city-ordinance/">recent efforts to turn Oak Park, IL, into a sanctuary</a>, immigrant-friendly place. One of the problems she and other activists have faced in the process is the reluctance of some staff members in the Oak Park municipal office to endorse an all-inclusive sanctuary ordinance that does not rest on exceptions of certain categories of undocumented immigrants from sanctuary. She described the difficulty of making a case for a sanctuary policy without exceptions, and explained how activists had dealt with this problem by reframing their demand as a call for sanctuary without loopholes. The rhetoric of loopholes suggested that those who sought exceptions were engaged in a dubious practice. This rhetoric of sanctuary without loopholes won over community members who were hesitant to embrace an inclusive sanctuary policy. She was hopeful as she articulated her conclusions about her experience, saying that she realized that “truth” in spaces of conflict can be harnessed by searching for and exposing loopholes in the system. More importantly, she sees great promise in the “creation of truth.” Truth is created when historical precedent is made through local efforts. Turning a place into a sanctuary, and having that backed by the community of that place, whether it be a town or a campus, can be a great goal to pursue and realize as she had worked with others to do in Oak Park. Like Professor Rosas, Professor Pallares ended with the questions: how can we protect our students and community members? And, how can we begin to enact our responsibility towards them as academics in a public university?</span><div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jodi Byrd, Nadine Naber, Naomi Paik, and Hinda Seif</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Following a similar thread of questioning, Professor Hinda Seif (Gender and Women Studies and Sociology/Anthropology, UIS) asked, what is the ability of Illinois educators at this time, and how can they offer truth to the government? Professor Seif referenced state cuts to public education as an issue that adds to the current climate of crisis and uncertainty. She highlighted the great diversity on UI campuses and how, as an educator, she always encourages her students to challenge unstable politics by drawing on personal narratives. These narratives can function as truthful accounts that undermine discriminatory state and federal policies and highlight the power of proper education and facts.</span><div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Professors A. Naomi Paik (Asian American Studies, UIUC) and Nadine Naber (Gender and Women’s Studies and Global Asian Studies, UIC) spoke of the recent spike in Islamophobia and its relationship to the Trump presidency and his executive orders. Professor Paik emphasized that Islamophobia and anti-immigration sentiments share the same root. She also reminded us that policing immigrants based on their backgrounds is not something new. Accordingly, the question to pose is not whether or not the Trump administration will deport or ban Muslims; rather, we should ask, what kind of social change and shift will this kind of rhetoric and strategy bring? And how can we track and resist these changes? Professor Paik proposed campus sanctuary movements as a necessary intervention. She specifically spoke of <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSezI8q-k326vRu3VXiE19tOC6odn65YZeXbLgOgrGa9cbjvKg/viewform">recent efforts by concerned UIUC faculty</a> to have the administration announce its campus as a sanctuary for vulnerable, underprivileged, and undocumented students. She argued that the current unstable political climate creates a threat to their safety; therefore, we should proceed with the belief that we cannot count on any institution to save these students because — the truth is — these institutions have partaken in creating instability and conflict.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">One of Professor Paik’s best commentaries was her critique of racial liberalism, sexism, and fascism as sharing the same foundation and as reproducing similar hierarchies of value and judgement. Her response to these structures is building horizontal relationships and intersectional practices that obliterate the role of the state as the purveyor of authority, security, and knowledge. She announced multiple efforts on the UIUC campus to help students, which include teach-ins on the sanctuary movement and know-your-rights resource and information databases. Her final advice was “staying woke” in the face of it all and practicing self-reflection and personal accountability always. Her concluding questions: How can we offer help to those who need it? Are we sacrificing anyone in the process? Are we producing new or old exclusions? And how can we take inspiration from the vulnerable few who fought before us and continue to fight beyond the register of visibility and public academic life?</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A slide from Professor Naber's Presentation</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Like Professor Paik, Professor Naber stressed the importance of seeing the truths about surveillance that have always existed. Her focus was the policing and censoring of Muslim students and community members in Chicago. She also emphasized how important it is that we engage with cases of deportation and surveillance that go beyond the seven countries listed on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/us/politics/fact-checking-claims-about-trumps-travel-ban.html?_r=0">Trump’s immigration ban</a>. According to her, they only need to be “Muslim” or “look Muslim” for them to be screened and questioned. Professor Naber referenced <a href="http://cities.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/26023/with-muslim-ban-trump-and-bannon-wanted-chaos-but-">Lelah Khalili’s recent article</a> on the “Muslim ban” and Maya Mikdashi’s scholarship on Islamophobia as important voices to engage with for a proper contextualization of anti-Muslim sentiments in the US.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Professor Naber explained how the confusion and chaos that accompanied the first couple of weeks of Trump’s presidency were a strategy meant to obstruct the possibility of resistance and its mobility. The confusion embedded in the executive orders is intentional, for how can we resist the law if the law is unclear? Professor Naber drew on multiple examples of policing Muslim students in the UIC campus and the horrifying reality of the kind of federal funding and interest that goes into watching and tracking these subjects and their respective communities. She spoke truth as she laid out these unknown or, at times, undermined realities, and reminded us all that there is more to learn about the deep roots of Islamophobia and the grim future it promises if unstopped.</span><div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Last but not least, Professor Jodi A Byrd (English and Gender and Women’s Studies, UIUC) reoriented the discussion around the focal point of indigeneity as the prior to US state violence, national borders, and political making. State-sanctioned exclusions and misappropriation of land grants and public resources emanate from an intertwined network of settler colonial past and present actions, a truth that unfortunately remain forgotten in the US collective consciousness. Professor Byrd referenced the indigenous resistance hashtag <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/indigenous-activists-immigration-ban-1.3960814">#NoBanOnStolenLand</a> as embodying a historical fact that can help us see the “line of continuity from Jacksonian removals and FDR’s Executive Order” to Trump’s immigration and Muslim ban. Professor Byrd drew on recent threats to water protectors in North Dakota as exemplifying a modern-day Indian removal that cannot be seen in isolation and must be productively tied to deportation and evacuation policies for the whole truth of US politics and exclusions to surface. Only then can we have the full narrative, and only then can we create intersectional forms of resistance that can support all.</span><div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRGtVza8IDoIsr0VhcGExP770iPolWDEfSkdJoNWK335wYnUxOQseFLBnbjvYH3ucJ1t5V_YtJYd-tT-9FuswAePyt0OGMjJhwER7kNd5-xLHGm4_8NaTmRB8GkEVwhU38azvd-9Z1pIlO/s1600/Blog.Image.3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRGtVza8IDoIsr0VhcGExP770iPolWDEfSkdJoNWK335wYnUxOQseFLBnbjvYH3ucJ1t5V_YtJYd-tT-9FuswAePyt0OGMjJhwER7kNd5-xLHGm4_8NaTmRB8GkEVwhU38azvd-9Z1pIlO/s400/Blog.Image.3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'No Bans on Stolen Land' (Medicine Wheel Version) - Source: <a href="http://justseeds.org/">justseeds.org</a></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">One of the many lessons I took from Professor Byrd’s presentation is the urgency of confronting colonial histories in public institutions. Before any securities can be ensured and successful curricula created, we have to remind ourselves that political presents are the products of the past. There are so many truths that go unnoticed and forgotten, and the only way to move forward is by seeking them and paying a long-overdue respect to their origins and protectors. At the end of the forum, I found myself assured by the knowledge these professors have generously shared. To account for one’s conscience, educational responsibility, and community, as professors, students, and academic professionals, and to understand the deep implications and stakes of intersectional lives, is now more pertinent than ever.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17012501841858805854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-69666467671530168132016-11-02T12:02:00.002-05:002016-11-02T12:02:55.757-05:00Mishuana Goeman: "Electric Lights, Tourist Sights: Gendering Dispossession and Colonial Infrastructure at the Niagara Falls Border" - Response by Ethan Madarieta<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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[On October 18, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the lecture "Electric Lights, Tourist Sights: Gendering Dispossession and Colonial Infrastructure at the Niagara Falls Border" as part of the Fall 2016 Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series. The speaker was Mishuana Goeman, Vice Chair and Associate Professor of Gender Studies at UCLA. Below is a response to the lecture from Ethan Madarieta, Comparative Literature.]<br /><br /><span style="color: #20124d;">"Making Haunting Matter"<br />Written by Ethan Madarieta (Comparative Literature)<br /><br />At the Niagara Falls border, the colonial infrastructure (the dam, tourist buildings, etc.) is a haunting, a reminder of the violent and gendered dispossession of Native lands and waters. Through colonial geography, environmental impact, and narrative, the settler-states (U.S. and Canada) continue to actively and passively dispossess and exploit Indigenous peoples, as manifest in both myth and matter. As the opening slide of “Before Dispossession, Or Surviving It” by <a href="http://liminalities.net/12-1/dispossession.html">Angie Morrill, Eve Tuck, and Super Haunts Qollective</a> states: “The opposite, the endgame of opposing our dispossession is not possession—not haunting, though I’ll do it if I have to; it is mattering.”</span><div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /><br />When visiting Niagara Falls, the New York State Office of Parks and Recreation claims, “the only way to experience one of the world’s most amazing natural wonders <i>right here in the U.S.A.</i>” is on the <a href="http://www.maidofthemist.com/">Maid of the Mist boat tour</a> (emphasis in original). This settler colonial myth of the Indian maid of the mist erases Native peoples, lands, and waters, while marketing tourism through a mock-Native story. There are many popular stories of Niagara’s “Maid of the Mist,” but one in particular, perhaps, dominates the settler colonial imaginary. This myth—a racist narrative of the settler-state—is that a male Elder yearly threw an anonymous, virgin Indian woman over Niagara Falls as a sacrifice to angry gods. This settler colonial narrative of the Native American woman in Niagara Falls speaks to the hetero-normative and patriarchal discourse of the “savage Indian,” and matches the polyvalent Niagara hydroelectric project physically, as symbolically manifest in the phallic Electric Building in Buffalo, NY.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><br />This settler colonial discourse affectively maps (<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674030787">Jonathan Flatley</a>) the nation-state and its technology with a gendered violence, and turns Native Americans into objects of an American imagination. In colonial nostalgia, the white colonizer must always remain essentially different, necessitating the pure fantasy of the savage other. Goeman draws our attention to how these narratives demonstrate a “masculinist rhetoric of capitalist endeavors” and turn Niagara Falls into “a sacrificing monument of death”—the death of a Seneca woman (Maid of the Mist). Such narratives de-property Indigenous relationships to the land and water by reconstituting them with the settler colonial myth of the savage other, and by commodifying and incorporating Indigenous bodies for the financing and reifying of the spatial power of the State. <br /><br /> An example of such an incorporation of Native bodies—peoples, waters, and lands—into the settler colonial logic of nationhood was the “accumulation of Indians and their labor into a tourist economy.” The regulation of, and eventual requirement of licensing for Indians selling arts such as the famed Tuscarora beadwork, was a way of regulating space through regulating sales. This, coupled with the exploitative economy of hucksters “performing Indian” in order to capitalize on the appeal of the “authentic” Indian in curiosity shops and hotels erased the unsettled historical context through which this economy emerged. This myth also extends into popular imagery where the whitening of the “Maid” over time serves as an allegory of the settler colonial whitening of Native lands and waters.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /><a href="http://www.americanindianstudies.ucla.edu/content/mishuana-goeman">Mishuana Goeman</a>, Tonawanda Band of Seneca, began her talk “Electric Lights, Tourist Sights: Gendering Dispossession and Colonial Infrastructure at the Niagara Falls Border,” by invoking the names of indigenous leaders from Central and North America engaged in struggles for water rights who have recently passed. She also drew our attention to current struggles over land use and water rights such as Native protests (e.g. Standing Rock Sioux) against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Goeman also thanked <a href="http://sharonirish.org/2009/06/25/yard-signs-in-solidarity/">the peoples whose lands we, and the University, are on</a>. This is a particularly salient invocation in a Federal Land-Grant University such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign which encourages cultures of racism through the “performing Indian” of the (ex) mascot Chief Illiniwek, and the Hollywood “Indian” music at half-time, which makes space for “performing Indian” through the singing and bodily gestures of the fans. This institution-sanctioned racism includes, but is certainly not limited to, the recent Illinois Athletics billboard campaign, which displays a racist pseudo-American Indian language. By evoking the presence of the Illinois and Miami people at the beginning of her lecture, Goeman reminds us of the colonized spaces we occupy in our daily lives. Goeman (re)maps settler colonial geographies through making matter this Native haunting (most Illinois and Miami were displaced to Oklahoma), by making these peoples present.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><br />Continuously throughout her talk Goeman makes matter the haunting of the “Maid of the Mist” by evoking particular geographic and narrative spaces such as the Haudenosaunee Territory and the Long House story of Niagara Falls (told best, Goeman says, by Turtle Clan Faithkeeper <a href="https://ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/OL070391.html">Oren Lyons</a> or OSWEGO professor <a href="http://www.oswego.edu/news/index.php/campusupdate/story/kevin_white">Dr. Kevin White</a>), thus rethinking and intervening in settler colonial power and disrupting the very idea of this haunting. Drawing on Avery Gordon’s “<a href="http://www.averygordon.net/writing-utopian-escape/some-thoughts-on-the-utopian/">Some Thoughts on the Utopian</a>,” Goeman thinks through haunting as “quintessentially an animated state in which a repressed or unresolved social violence is making itself known […]” (2004/2016). With this in mind Goeman asks: if this haunting ghost of the “Maid of the Mist” is a social figure, what social life is the death of this Indian woman making? Goeman suggests that the social life created through this death—a necropolitical project—is the consumption of hetero-patriarchal sociality, one that reinforces an epistemic violence that naturalizes male Native violence and sells Niagara Falls as a tourist destination and the “ultimate symbol of hetero-normative coupling.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><br />For such a social violence as that inflicted by the settler colonial powers of the U. S. and Canada, there can be no reconciliation, no possession for the dispossessed. The environmental, geographic, and molecular scars remain as a testament to the violent reality that the settler-state intends occupation to be a never-ending condition, which necessitates the kinds of refusals expounded by Audrey Simpson in <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/mohawk-interruptus"><i>Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States</i></a>, that is, the refusal to be incorporated into—to be ‘recognized’—by the U.S. The damming and diversion of the Niagara River was an environmental violence perpetrated at the same time as the U.S.-Canada treaty, which regulated the border (lands) and the distribution of hydroelectric power that has polluted and left colonial infrastructure still in place. Goeman says that this toxicity, too, has its own afterlife (haunting).</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Rosy Simas “We Wait in Darkness”</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Ending on a note of performative futurity in which the traumatic scars that have been carved on the DNA of generations of American Indians can be healed, Goeman gestures toward artist Rosy Simas’s performance and installation <a href="https://vimeo.com/99044041">“We Wait in Darkness”</a>. Goeman also brings to the present the continuing contestations by Native feminists of the flooding of Native lands through dam construction—capitalist endeavors which continue to displace Native peoples and affect their daily lives. Such demonstrations and practices draw connections between the violences perpetrated against women and the land, particularly the rivers, by settler-state powers that enforce the precarity of Native lands and peoples. The labor of making haunting matter, of bringing Native dispossession into the present, does not depict reality but brings into being—makes matter—Native voices, bodies, and places which destabilize and denaturalize settler colonial discourses. This labor presents the unsettled histories by which these discourses became real. It makes matter the Indian haunting in the American imaginary by disallowing the relegation of Native peoples and lands to the past, but evoking them as present. <br /><br />In “We Wait in Darkness” Simas comments on the idea that historical trauma is written on the DNA and causes a molecular scarring passed on generationally. Simas writes, “If time travels in both directions, we can heal the scars on our grandparent’s DNA.” Perhaps this is done by making this haunting matter. <br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Works Cited:<br /><br /> Flatley, Jonathan. <i>Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism</i>. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2008.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><br />Gordon, Avery F., and Leon Golub. <i>Keeping Good Time: Reflections on Knowledge, Power and People</i>. Boulder, CO: Routledge, 2004.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><br />Rosy Simas. “We Wait in Darkness” <a href="http://vimio.com/113249630">http://vimio.com/113249630</a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><br />Simpson, Audra. <i>Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States</i>. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2014.</span><br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17012501841858805854noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-11471841033880920622016-11-01T12:19:00.001-05:002016-11-01T12:19:29.632-05:00Paul C. Taylor: "What is Philosophical Race Theory?" - Response by Alex Jong-Seok Lee<span style="color: #333333;">[On October 25, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the lecture "What is Philosophical Race Theory?" as part of the Fall 2016 Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series. The speaker was Paul C. Taylor, Associate Professor of Philosophy and African American Studies and Head of the Department of African American Studies at Penn State University. Below is a response to the lecture from Alex Jong-Seok Lee, Anthropology.]</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #20124d;">“Racial Formation Theory Revised (with Semi-hostile Amendments)”
<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Written
by Alex Jong-Seok Lee (Anthropology)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Towards
the end of his lecture, Paul C. Taylor described his analytical approach as
rooted in U.S. pragmatism, a philosophical tradition pioneered by John Dewey in
the early 20</span><sup style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">th</sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> century. Broadly speaking, U.S. pragmatism challenges
any sharp distinction between theory and practice, holding that truth and
knowledge are obtained through a process of context-specific experimental
inquiry rather than merely reflecting on the world through passive
observations.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Taylor
returned to this point after being asked by an audience member how he reconciled
what he humorously dubbed the “weird sort of dance” between noting the
“peculiarities” of people like Hegel and Kant (e.g., the latter’s legitimizing
of racial differences he deemed natural) while also crediting the things that
they “got right.” Uneasy with providing overly general answers to context-specific
questions, Taylor instead advocated a case-by-case approach situated within the
discrete aims and interests guiding a single inquiry. (Consequently, we can
still appreciate W.E.B. Du Bois’ pioneering scholarship on race despite his traditional
silence on gender and sexuality). Tacit in this example is an admonition to any
scholars who are tempted to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater
when discussing theories deemed past their analytic sell-by date.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Malgun Gothic"; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Malgun Gothic"; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Taylor
situated this appeal within the context of Omi and Winant’s pioneering hypothesis,
racial formation theory (RFT). For him, RFT treated race as a processual affair
while also presenting a middle ground between the view that race was both
illusory and essential. This latter point emerged from the historical context
of the late twentieth century from which RFT emerged. The familiar maxim, “race
is neither real nor an illusion,” espoused by the likes of David R. Roediger,
revealed RFT’s “groping for a metaphysical vocabulary.” The discipline of
philosophy (albeit reconfigured), Taylor hoped, potentially could provide an
alternative theoretical language on the matter.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Malgun Gothic"; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDJcE0FA05PiABbUumqA6DeJpNIgtSQtyj6l2736uLQAx3nCYba23hQHj_WqTIPvDuV6ZwBbSP-YPr-5292rzRjeVpWZxCxjCAyJShcE543AYiwJ9_8YP6pDhKq0JJfTWmMSE2s46gHbrE/s320/KRITIC+Image+1+%2528Racial+Formation+Book+Cover%2529.jpg" width="213" /></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Racial Formation
in the United States</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">
(1992) by Michael Omi and <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Malgun Gothic"; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Howard
Winant</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">A
protégé of the pioneering philosopher of race, Lucius Outlaw, Jr., Taylor
expressed delight at discovering as a graduate student Omi and Winant’s magnum
opus, <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520273443">Racial Formation in the United States</a></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">. This was a
time when <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100505520">the 1990s Appiah debates</a></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> and widespread <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104797/">commodification of African American culture</a></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> put the question of race on continual trial. For Taylor, RFT was a social
construction thesis that considered race “real” insofar as social realities
grounded in social conventions were real. The theory’s true merit was its
ability to make this argument in the context of a view that was painstakingly political.
However, more recently, RFT has come under fire within scholarly works, such as
<a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498544184/Conceptual-Aphasia-in-Black-Displacing-Racial-Formation">Conceptual Aphasia in Black: Displacing Racial Formation</a></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> and <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520273443">Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century</a></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><i>. </i>Increasingly having to orient himself
in relation to these commentaries, Taylor viewed his talk as a participatory
process for rethinking RFT as less tethered to orthodox critical race </span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">theory
(</span><span style="background: white; font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">à</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> la Derrick Bell) than widely allied
with all scholarly fields aimed at understanding the meanings and mechanisms of
race.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJNz-Tw1uaXIRzvx6PAWRv6RIaP1Q_3sZCysQpgRWpiFYPGgcG-wR2TsfosVJa-GiXsNPij3tyh0rk1BuLpGMW21PqjTqL58hMexirkH_9Ix0Nq207L47lvcjLZHm7BfvWI1Er30SEFyo8/s1600/KRITIC+Image+2+%2528Do+the+Right+Thing+Film+Screenshot%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJNz-Tw1uaXIRzvx6PAWRv6RIaP1Q_3sZCysQpgRWpiFYPGgcG-wR2TsfosVJa-GiXsNPij3tyh0rk1BuLpGMW21PqjTqL58hMexirkH_9Ix0Nq207L47lvcjLZHm7BfvWI1Er30SEFyo8/s320/KRITIC+Image+2+%2528Do+the+Right+Thing+Film+Screenshot%2529.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><i>Do the Right
Thing</i> (1989) by Spike Lee. From indiewire.com<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Malgun Gothic"; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><span style="color: #20124d;">As Taylor noted, quoting from Barnor Hesse’s
introduction to <i>Conceptual Aphasia in
Black </i>(2016): “[RFT’s] exemplary social construction thesis has dominated
the critique of race in the intellectual landscape of the U.S. academy since
the late 1980s and made the critique of race thinkable only in a liberal
multicultural idiom that presupposes a decisive liberal-democratic rupture with
the racial ontology of the United States’ settler colonialism and its white
supremacy nation-state” (ibid). Chief among Hesse’s disapproval of RFT was its
supposed failure to foreground the centrality of violence to the constitution
of race in the U.S. This, wrote Hesse, hindered our understanding of race as a
deep, constitutive feature of Western modernity.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Malgun Gothic"; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnGG6yQyw_Myk2nuwQREcowgefiWlTS-JfLPUwbkvT2tqUaHkXj-5F820cLINLC-tGgpc0Mqi_iLcIe9Ac1eseNXIabYBGDOhsdXYpA9ZnUhhEH1ndiJSVjjIeH9-S67zau7sYcPuWbXxj/s1600/KRITIC+Image+4+%2528Conceptual+Aphasia+Book+Cover%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnGG6yQyw_Myk2nuwQREcowgefiWlTS-JfLPUwbkvT2tqUaHkXj-5F820cLINLC-tGgpc0Mqi_iLcIe9Ac1eseNXIabYBGDOhsdXYpA9ZnUhhEH1ndiJSVjjIeH9-S67zau7sYcPuWbXxj/s1600/KRITIC+Image+4+%2528Conceptual+Aphasia+Book+Cover%2529.jpg" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><i>Conceptual
Aphasia in Black: Displacing Racial Formation</i> (2016) by <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Khalil Saucier and Tryon P. Woods<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ5YqkFY2KFl-Q0GAPbUgYibJfatsx3SU7-huG5gg1SzfdwnWsznGZ8lysyxP2ffCV5eKY6N3XA72XrnHOQKMmhmxiFZ86gzILKJ4oQl6z2epMWOBbXM_W2J4vk5UaL4X6CwI-h6tTzRx2/s1600/KRITIC+Image+3+%2528Racial+Formation+in+the+Twenty-First+Century+Book+Cover%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ5YqkFY2KFl-Q0GAPbUgYibJfatsx3SU7-huG5gg1SzfdwnWsznGZ8lysyxP2ffCV5eKY6N3XA72XrnHOQKMmhmxiFZ86gzILKJ4oQl6z2epMWOBbXM_W2J4vk5UaL4X6CwI-h6tTzRx2/s1600/KRITIC+Image+3+%2528Racial+Formation+in+the+Twenty-First+Century+Book+Cover%2529.jpg" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Racial
Formation in the Twenty-First Century</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> (2012) by</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Daniel
Martinez HoSang, Oneka LaBennett, and Laura Pulido</span></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Seeking
further perspective, Taylor drew on an earlier critique of RFT, this time from
Roderick A. Ferguson’s contribution in </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">“Racial
Formation in the Twenty-First Century</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> (2012). Ferguson took greatest issue
with the obstructing effect of historiographical assumptions behind RFT. Resting
on a “declension hypothesis,” Ferguson wrote, Omi and Winant’s theory “tells a
story of bold and transformative anti-racist movements during the 1950s and
1960s becoming fractured and destabilized in the face of an insurgent New right
in the 1970s and 1980s” (2012:2). However, this periodization, Ferguson explained,
“occludes anti-racist movements that were no less significant than the social
formations around civil rights and national liberation… [movements that were]
initiated by women of color and queers of color within the United States”
(ibid).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Taylor
later turned his attention to Nikhil Pal Singh’s work within </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">.
Like Ferguson’s critique, Singh complained that RFT focused too narrowly on a
particular, historical and national context. RFT also undertheorized the
concept of race, in part because of its narrow focus on this particular, historical
and national context. Finally, in accordance with Hesse’s assessment, RFT
prioritized a certain a kind of normative politics over deployments and
resistances to sovereign violence. More specifically, Singh was referring to
how these limitations have blinded RFT from “a racialized law-and-order project
[that] was introduced during this period as the opening wedge in a broader
reorientation of the very forms and dispositions of governance” (2012:280).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Taylor
attended to these criticisms one by one. In terms of Hesse, RFT was viewed as
an obstacle to thinking productively about race today. However, Taylor
questioned the value of such an uncompromising view. Regarding Ferguson’s comments
about RFT’s problematic periodization, Taylor reiterated the essential merits
of Omi and Winant’s theory from a philosophical standpoint. It still offered a
much-needed social constructivist answer to what for so long principally was thought
of only as an abstract metaphysical question (i.e., the question of what
constituted race). Taylor claimed that when engaging with historical theories philosophers
generally were less sensitive to the kind of historical contextualization other
disciplines might deem compulsory. Thus, being a philosopher allowed him
certain license to interpret RFT in a looser fashion, namely the ability to effectively
distinguish epistemic worries (concerns over RFT’s logic or grammar) from
political ones over knowledge production. Lastly, Taylor suggested that Singh’s
critiques might have had more to do with differing notions over what
constituted the “political” than a fundamental flaw with Omi and Winant’s
theory.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Ultimately,
the recent attacks of RFT might have had less to do with the latter’s theoretical
failings than with other factors occurring in contemporary academia. According
to Taylor, criticisms of the theory could have been the effect of a certain
neoliberal logic within higher education wherein RFT was deemed obsolete in an
innovation economy. Another possibility was <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Disciplinary-Decadence-Living-Thought-in-Trying-Times/Gordon/p/book/9781594512568">what Lewis Gordon called “disciplinary decadence”</a></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> or how the popularity of certain academic disciplines permitted only their proponents
to dominate professional spaces over less powerful ones (e.g., the “decline of
Black Sociology”).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Taylor
closed his talk by reiterating his training as a philosophical pragmatist. As
such, he was less interested in the historical context of RFT’s development
than in the theory’s analytic efficacy, especially as it related to
social-justice aims. Consequently, the basic argumentative structure of RFT
still worked in accommodating the anti-racist story that race scholars wanted
to tell. Why not simply attach such criticisms (or “semi-hostile amendments,”
Taylor joked) to a suitably revised account of RFT? For all scholars interested
in how to think productively about the meanings and mechanisms of race in 2016
this is a question to consider.</span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17012501841858805854noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-13993170555383489252016-10-26T11:42:00.000-05:002016-11-30T11:42:46.342-06:00Thérèse Tierney: "Networked Urbanism: Geographies of Information" - Response by Peter Thompson<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p>[On October 24, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the Unit Distinguished Faculty Lecture, "Networked Urbanism: Geographies of Information," presented by Thérèse Tierney, Associate Professor in the Illinois School of Architecture at UIUC. Below is a response to the lecture from Peter Thompson, History.]</o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="color: #20124d;">"Networked Urbanism:
Theory and Practice"<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d;">Written by Peter Thompson (History)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d;">The 1980s and 90s saw an increased interest in space and
place among leading critical theorists. As Professor James Hay (Media &
Cinema Studies) pointed out in his opening remarks, the works of Michel de
Certeau and Henri Lefebvre were major motivating factors in this move toward
spatial thinking. This critical turn inspired the critical Marxist geography of
David Harvey as well as the conception of space and design developed in
Frederic Jameson’s well-known definition of postmodernism. A little later, in
the mid-90s, Doreen Massey advanced a feminist critique of spatial concepts,
while Meaghan Morris asked how these ideas of space played out in cinema and
literature. In various ways, these scholars argued that space is produced both
physically and semiotically, thus both shaping our material world and the way
that we discursively understand it. Professor Hay asked us to keep this field
of theoretical work in mind as we consider the (possibly) new ways in which
urban design and information technology are being integrated in the 21<sup>st</sup>
century.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d;">Thérèse Tierney’s presentation, “Networked Urbanism:
Geographies of Information,” examined and historicized the integration of new
technology into the development of urban spaces. With her academic home in the School
of Architecture, she applies her practical knowledge of architectural design to
examine the recent development of “smart cities.” The merging of contemporary
information technology and architecture is broadly reflected in her previous publications:
<i>New Urban Mobilities as Intelligent
Infrastructure </i>(2015), <i>The Public
Space of Social Media </i>(2013), <i>Abstract
Space: Beneath the Media Surface </i>(2007), and <i>Network Practices: New Strategies in Architecture and Design </i>(2007).
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d;">Tierney first discussed the ways in which the conception of
“the city” is in the midst of change. Challenges such as climate change,
migration, population growth, and advanced telecommunications have encouraged
architects, governments, and corporations to rethink the definition of the
city. Previous studies of urban development employed statistical studies of
fixed locations. However, considering the newly mobile (or flowing) nature of contemporary
city dwellers, the urban theorist Edward Soja has argued that cities should be
studied as systems in what could be termed as “networked urbanism.” The urban
designer William Mitchell echoed this idea and furthered the integration of
careful sociological study, architectural planning, and advanced computing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d;">The smartphone is the primary factor in the mobilization of
urban spaces. Thus, smartphones can be viewed as the various nodes that create
the urban system. Wireless apps for banking, car sharing, paid transportation,
etc. further contribute to the expansion of this mobile network. The increasing
development of these kind of technologies suggest that the 21<sup>st</sup>
century “smart city” will be dependent on information technology. And while
smartphones are privately owned technology, community WiFi and Hackathons can
expand access to this kind of mobile network.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfVdZ62rxkeghrIhLvZZwkURO2xQ-eF6YpgwWAr7dXxUYh3Scb3NiIbH1GVqjBuw6qrNwjYXtTNp9QDpOceg7W6iaOVKJ0ry_CV1Ihpy2EYgUbN-QRXqwK5b_14DR6utz00FmVW_sl8Iry/s1600/cell-phones-tracking-580.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfVdZ62rxkeghrIhLvZZwkURO2xQ-eF6YpgwWAr7dXxUYh3Scb3NiIbH1GVqjBuw6qrNwjYXtTNp9QDpOceg7W6iaOVKJ0ry_CV1Ihpy2EYgUbN-QRXqwK5b_14DR6utz00FmVW_sl8Iry/s320/cell-phones-tracking-580.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">“Nodes of the urban system.” From <i>The New Yorker</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d;">Professor Tierney argued that the utopian nature of the
“smart city” is not a new phenomenon. In the 1950s and 60s, modernist designers
and theorists hoped to improve city infrastructure through massive building
projects such as Disney’s Project X. However, these projects were
simultaneously progressive and conservative in their utopian visions.
Architects conceived of new designs and utilized new technologies, but they
assumed traditional and fixed lifestyles for the people who would populate
their cities. The sense of a failed alternative future that is often associated
with these midcentury designs can perhaps be attributed to the inability of
designers to account for cultural change and human agency.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdSWmMa86LxN1Z_GUYD-7rK-ES3-f3XGepGNMpIJb3bArbik97DlxhuOBGkczgOmjsKl80Xg4Nyox2ChYQD2ExvAcgk6tHJGVjrJIlABkx022f8rkmT_1kxTKYK8T-X13mghaoYCcjkjzN/s1600/gallery-1432079667-disney-city-of-tomorrow-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdSWmMa86LxN1Z_GUYD-7rK-ES3-f3XGepGNMpIJb3bArbik97DlxhuOBGkczgOmjsKl80Xg4Nyox2ChYQD2ExvAcgk6tHJGVjrJIlABkx022f8rkmT_1kxTKYK8T-X13mghaoYCcjkjzN/s320/gallery-1432079667-disney-city-of-tomorrow-3.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">“Renderings of the city center in Disney’s Project X.” From <i>Esquire</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d;">This should be a historical lesson for architects and urban
planners who are currently developing the “smart cities” of the 21<sup>st</sup>
century. According to Tierney, new designs should consider and incorporate the
ways in which people utilize the city. In this vein, the integration of new
information technologies should strive for a truly democratic process, one in
which all inhabitants have equal access and cultural power. For this reason,
governments might be better at developing the new “smart city” than private
corporations, which generate new networking technology for their own ends
(including tracking and targeted sales). The self-interested desires of these
private corporations also raise the issue of privacy and data mining. We must
ask ourselves who should control such massive amounts of private data and to what
ends should this data be used.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiF6YLD0Ep7xRf83fPF3XOaQ1DeCmqGIIMJ1G24af1CgnWGf4cx5kyzl1wvoUx_O7Jt17P86QAe-PTOvotbbGQPIdtMLaNjJBauFXq-yepYPOGy2nfghRybq5IjL4gv6uXcVEWWs1F-sfE/s1600/041814-Detroit.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiF6YLD0Ep7xRf83fPF3XOaQ1DeCmqGIIMJ1G24af1CgnWGf4cx5kyzl1wvoUx_O7Jt17P86QAe-PTOvotbbGQPIdtMLaNjJBauFXq-yepYPOGy2nfghRybq5IjL4gv6uXcVEWWs1F-sfE/s320/041814-Detroit.png" width="285" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">“The Digital Stewards set up DIY WiFi in Detroit for community access.” From Commotionwireless.net</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Professor Tierney’s talk exposed the ways in which “smart
cities” are being imagined and developed in order to raise these kind of questions.
While there are no easy answers to the problems of restricted access and
corporate use, Professor Tierney hopes to raise awareness of these problems in
order to inspire an inclusive collective imagination of our own future cities.
Tierney hopes that this collective imagination will use information technology
to encourage an idealized <i>civitas</i>, or
a community bound by an expansive conception of citizenship.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Professor of New Media, Kevin Hamilton, gave concluding
remarks. He viewed Professor Tierney’s presentation as the bridging of theory
and practice that the Unit for Criticism has long championed. Ideally, urban
designers are now incorporating the theoretical work on human subjectivity that
has long guided sociological concerns. This would lead to a view of the city
itself as ontologically dynamic. However, the historical view of this research
raises questions about whether or not the technological integration into lived
experience is especially new in any way. Perhaps we would prefer to decenter technology
in our vision of the future city, and rather start from the human ontological
definition(s) of technology. Perhaps we should consider what we are actually
striving for in the reimagining of urban spaces: are we trying to envision “the
good life” or are we simply aiming for basic survival? </span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17012501841858805854noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-59235059780006878902016-10-13T13:57:00.001-05:002016-10-13T15:23:08.814-05:00Christopher Taylor: "Empire and the End of the Postcolonial" - Response by Debojoy Chanda<span style="background-color: white; color: #929292; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">[On October 11, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the lecture "Empire and the End of the Postcolonial’" as part of the Fall Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series. The speaker was Christopher Taylor, Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago. Below is a response to the lecture from Debojoy Chanda, English.]</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><b>“Is the Postcolonial Also the Post-Revolutionary?”</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Over the last decade, critics have begun to ask whether postcolonial studies is a disciplinary formation whose moment has passed. A field that was consolidated between the end of the Cold War and 9/11, postcolonial studies was assailed by a sense of epistemological crisis after the World Trade Center attacks. Scholars worried that postcolonial theory appeared to have lost its relevance and efficacy, given its apparent inability to successfully anticipate or theorize these events. Against such a backdrop, Chris Taylor’s lecture, “Empire and the End of the Postcolonial” took up the question of temporality that he argues has haunted the field since its inception. Leading us through key articles by Anne McClintock, Ann Laura Stoler, and a PMLA panel, Taylor examined the question: when is the postcolonial? </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Taylor began his lecture by locating Afro-Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James’ 1938 history of the Haitian Revolution, <i>The Black Jacobins</i>, as a postcolonial text before its time. This was a text that took the Haitian Revolution as a prefiguration of a future revolutionary Pan-Africanism. James’ own position as an intellectual was located within a present defined by Italian Fascism and the rise of Hitler, a past that was the Revolution, and a possible future movement toward a Pan-Africanism. Given James' temporal location, postcolonial theorizations can be understood as situated either in a past or in a future moment. In other words, these theorizations are about chalking out revolutionary possibilities for an anticipated future, keeping in mind past anti-colonial revolutions and their lessons. If theorists critical of postcolonial studies fail to locate its topicality in the present, that is, according to Taylor, because postcolonial studies does not situate itself in a present. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Given the apparent linearity of past and future within which postcolonial studies seems to be located, many critics, Taylor suggests, tend to view the ‘postcolonial’ as a moment that is in tandem with a larger Enlightenment telos of a linear world history. As a result, postcolonial studies is made to look like yet another problematic Enlightenment version of world history that needs to be abnegated in favor of more ‘correct’ theorizations. However, suspicions of world history as a standardized modular form are in fact articulated by postcolonial theorists like Partha Chatterjee, who discuss how a ‘First World’ narrative of capitalist development cannot be seamlessly imposed upon an ex-colonized ‘Third World.’ In addition, gestures toward ‘correct’ theorizations, Taylor points out, are rather incongruously expressed in terms like ‘World Anglophone studies’—a term that is fast supplanting ‘postcolonial studies.’ The irony of an ‘English’ disciplinary formation against which ‘Anglophone’ is reduced to an ‘other,’ is inescapable: the ‘World’ in question is in fact the ‘rest of the world,’ making ‘World Anglophone’ yet another essentialist category based on an Anglo-American ‘selfhood.’ Such gestures are insufficient to replacing a field faulted for having outlived its scholarly relevance. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">In keeping with its suspicions of a world historical telos, when socialist formations like the Soviet Union were collapsing and romantic possibilities of the First World Left and Third World guerillas walking shoulder to shoulder in an anti-colonial cause began to disappear, postcolonial studies unsurprisingly emerged as a powerful scholarly presence. Postcolonial theory is therefore a post-revolutionary theory. This post-revolutionary stance, Taylor suggests, is an effect of postcolonial studies’ Janus-like posture of looking ahead to a future revolutionary moment, in the face of the failure of past revolutions: the field was consolidated as Communism became a political possibility of the past, while Third World liberation was deferred to a future. Thus, revolutionary time did not seem to be building up to a culmination in the present that the ‘postcolonial’ could locate. Given this temporal disjunction from the point of view of a present, Anne McClintock expresses skepticism toward the ‘post’ of ‘postcolonialism.’ In addition, she is doubtful of ‘colonialism’ as a rubric that encompasses forms of colonization as disparate as internal colonization and imperial colonization. However, McClintock fails to realize that given its alignment with post-structuralism, postcolonialism rendered its own nomenclature under erasure—it was a category that was, after all, trying to uncover and view a past through means that colonization had already rendered dubious, and to theorize a revolutionary future that Anglo-American neoliberalism had already jeopardized. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">As for the ‘Global South,’ this was a term that made the borders defining ex-colonized countries nebulous, as a member of the audience pointed out. Taylor agreed that the term ‘Global South,’ by effecting this haziness, added another level of essentialism to these countries’ identities. However, he simultaneously drew attention to Benedict Anderson’s seminal text <i>Imagined Communities</i> (1983). In this text, Anderson emphasized that nations were, in the end, constructed through a process of emergence facilitated by ‘print capitalism,’ to use his oft-quoted term. According to Anderson, with capital expanding markets, a standardized orthography arose, and with it, disparate people located in the same homogenous empty time, began reading the same print forms together. As a result, they formed deep, horizontal kinships, and were able to imagine a nation-in-development together—a nation that was not dependent on definitions in terms of borders. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">The notion of print capitalism, according to Partha Chatterjee, in no way gave up the modular form of development associated with a nation-state. What the Subaltern Studies collective—of which Chatterjee was a member—tried to articulate, was the inability of an ex-colonized country to attain nationhood via a bourgeois-democratic revolution of the classic nineteenth-century type. Postcolonial theory tried to cope with this loss of a world-historical horizon, thus rethinking how one would write historiography. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Adding to Taylor’s point about the loss of a historical horizon, I would say that postcolonialism is perennially haunted by the specter of a world history: according to Hegel, the Western colonization of a spatial entity actually <i>begins</i> this entity’s being-in-the world (and in world history) as a country (234). By this logic, if the emergence of countries qua nations is contingent upon their emergence on a world map, a map of a country can be said to emanate into a ‘world’ consciousness only when the West has ‘discovered’/colonized and written about this country. However problematic this may sound, until colonization happens, the country in question is not, by Hegel’s logic, globally recognized as an entity, and the writing of its history remains deferred. Postcolonial theory, from this point of view, can be seen as an attempt to question the writing of history as a whole—it writes against the grain. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Taylor closed his lecture with a reference to a 2007 PMLA roundtable discussion between several scholars who addressed the futility of postcolonial studies in the present. The truth, according to Taylor, was that 9/11 and the Iraq War had caught many intellectuals off-guard, and they displaced their disenchantment upon postcolonial studies’ apparently Eurocentric (and world-historic) tendencies. Hence, perhaps, the backlash against postcolonial studies. This is the space and time within which Anglo-American academia locates postcolonial studies at present; however, Taylor’s point is that the discipline never temporally located itself in a present to begin with. Taylor ended with the question of how postcolonial studies could deal fruitfully with and emerge from this crisis in which it found itself. In other words, he seemed to suggest that postcolonial studies had now to articulate its position in the present. Given this quandary, reconfigurations of postcolonial theory are being effected. It remains to be seen which of these reconfigurations will stand the test of time. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><u>Works Cited</u></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Agnani, Sunil, Fernando Coronil, Gaurav Desai et al. Editor’s Column: The End of Postcolonial </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"> Theory?. PMLA Vol. 122 No. 3. pp. 633-51. Print. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Verso: London, 1983. Print. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Chatterjee, Partha. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">The University of Minnesota Press: Minnesota, 1993. Print. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">---. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"> UP: Princeton, 1993. Print. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Richard Philcox. Grove Press: New York, </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"> 1961. Print.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Trans. S. W. Dyde. George Bell </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"> and Sons: London, 1896. Print.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"> Random House Inc.: New York, 1989. Print. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">McClintock, Anne. “The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term “Post-Colonialism”.” Social </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"> Text, No. 31/32 (1992), pp. 84-98. Print. </span></span></div>
Roman Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00332676942690719201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-77437274292281152232016-10-06T11:45:00.000-05:002016-10-06T11:46:10.834-05:00Penelope Deutscher: "Biopolitics'" - Response by Michael Uhall<span style="background-color: white; color: #929292; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">[On October 4, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the lecture "Biopolitics’" as part of the Fall Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series. The speaker was Penelope Deutscher, Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Northwestern U. Below is a response to the lecture from Michael Uhall, Political Science.]</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">Written by Michael Uhall (Political Science)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">Typically speaking, the concept of biopolitics gets
invoked in the context of its largely negative usage in Foucault’s theorization
of the term. For Foucault, the term refers to the manifold ways in which
political power affects, and is affected by, the bodily and material conditions
that inform and subtend the political, but especially insofar as politics takes
the alteration, management, or production of those conditions to be its
specific objective. Foucault describes a shift in the mode of political power, then,
or, rather, the emergence of a new kind of political power – called biopower –
that largely overtakes and transforms political power conceived as mere
sovereignty. On Foucault’s analysis, politics today is largely biopolitics –
<a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8314.html">sometimes called the politics of life itself</a> . Biopolitics takes its object to be the
administration or regulation of the body and the body politic alike, precisely
as bodies to be disciplined and populations to be managed and securitized.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">As <a href="http://www.philosophy.northwestern.edu/people/continuing-faculty/deutscher-penelope.html">Penelope Deutscher</a> argues in her talk, however, it is very important
to avoid disaggregating and reducing the terms and possibilities of Foucault’s analytical
framework into overly periodized categories. In other words, it is far too
simplistic to sketch the historical trajectory that Foucault recreates in terms
of a fundamental discontinuity between an epoch in which sovereignty functions
as the dominant form of political power and the epoch in which biopower
dominates. To the contrary, as Deutscher notes, quoting from Foucault’s <i><a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781403986528">Security, Territory, Population</a></i> (8): “There is not the legal age, the
disciplinary age, and then the age of security. Mechanisms of security do not
replace disciplinary mechanisms, which would have replaced juridico-legal
mechanisms. In reality you have a series
of complex edifices in which, of course, the techniques themselves change and
are perfected, or anyway become more complicated, but in
which what above all changes is the
dominant characteristic, or more exactly, the system of correlation
between juridico-legal mechanisms,
disciplinary mechanisms, and mechanisms of security.”</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNyrgjOnCAEI2VAjFu77YrKr7taKN4gYDINYQH0WaU0hwXCvdjRFGoFCygYGfqIG_c16Aj1X4Na_c5F16ql_QvrhXSU2wwEs-LikcwzVqxs5piMuMSPYafWBt0l6Mffc5gU8Hyd3scEiQ/s1600/Fig2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNyrgjOnCAEI2VAjFu77YrKr7taKN4gYDINYQH0WaU0hwXCvdjRFGoFCygYGfqIG_c16Aj1X4Na_c5F16ql_QvrhXSU2wwEs-LikcwzVqxs5piMuMSPYafWBt0l6Mffc5gU8Hyd3scEiQ/s400/Fig2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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(Fig. 2)</div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">For Deutscher,
then, Foucault’s refusal to periodize overly in his work lets us see the
various ways in which both biopower and sovereign power not only inform and
interpenetrate each other, but also how these conflicting modes of power
inflect and produce cultural formations or functional structures (i.e., <i>dispositifs</i>) in all their actual complexity,
difficulty, and irresolution.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">It is precisely
here that Deutscher effects an intervention in the discourse of reproductive
politics. On the one hand, she identifies the degree to which much of the post-Foucauldian
theorization of biopolitics tends to foreground necropolitics, or thanatopolitics
– that is, the tendency for biopolitics, ostensibly committed to the
maximization of vitality in a population, to become its opposite, effecting
broadly eugenicist programs intended to extirpate all life conceived as sick,
undesirable, or weak. Even a cursory overview of the literature shows how prominent
this emphasis is (e.g., in Giorgio Agamben’s <i><a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=2003">Homo Sacer</a></i> or in Achille Mbembe’s “<a href="https://www.dartmouth.edu/~lhc/docs/achillembembe.pdf">Necropolitics</a>”).
On the other hand, given the many ways in which reproductive politics appear to
fall well within the purview of the biopolitical, why, Deutscher asks, is there
not more critical attention given to how the biopolitics of reproduction
becomes imbricated with the “powers of death” Foucault so often foregrounds in
his analyses? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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(Fig. 3)</div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">Deutscher
employs an illuminating example of precisely such a place in which
necropolitics, reproductive rights, and various figurations of sovereignty
become entangled together – namely, in the visual rhetorics of anti-abortion
billboards and roadside displays (see Figure 1). Here we can start to see the
degree to which challenged, fantasmatic, multiple, and waning sovereignties get
articulated and imputed to various subjects in various ways, as well as how
discourses and <i>dispositifs</i> of affect,
animality, criminality, motherhood, racialization, responsibility, and
statistical enumeration traverse the contested political site: a site that is
ostensibly coextensive with the body of the mother as such.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">Particularly in
the context of how abortion gets racialized in many of these billboards, it
seems that Deutscher has put her finger on a very important and prescient example
of just how biopolitics and necropolitics intertwine so as to inform, and be
informed by, parallel and related discourses. In Figures 2-4, we can see how falsely
affected concern for the black subject gets performed visually by means of deploying
remarkably racist and storied rhetorics of animality (“Black Children Are An
Endangered Species”), aggressive challenges to the legitimacy of black motherhood
as such (“The Most Dangerous Place for an African-American Is in the Womb”),
and implicit appeals to violence as stereotypically imputed to predominantly
black communities (“End the Violence”). It is as if the only concern for people
of color is when they are not yet born, as if white supremacy vocalizes itself
quite explicitly in the following dictum: We care for you as long as you are
not yet born, while you can still be used as a weapon against your communities
and parents. After birth, you simply become our enemy again, no longer a weapon
to be used in the slow-motion genocide being visited upon communities of color,
but, now, only a target for systematic police brutality and harassment, subject
to degraded and discontinued social services.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMbq3AXS-hdSXbV_8aK7MXzyUjSjPHOoWIK0lLMKAf2bPTDgxpcMnlLuubjH6R9j_7cjrJXzSk_md7GA8Jmw1K3xYIY_x2Gb0Eu-oatlKPBEvuY7e7kDUe2LFGi_o6cP3Ran4W5r4IdvI/s1600/Fig4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMbq3AXS-hdSXbV_8aK7MXzyUjSjPHOoWIK0lLMKAf2bPTDgxpcMnlLuubjH6R9j_7cjrJXzSk_md7GA8Jmw1K3xYIY_x2Gb0Eu-oatlKPBEvuY7e7kDUe2LFGi_o6cP3Ran4W5r4IdvI/s400/Fig4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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(Fig. 4)</div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">Perhaps
perversely, this brings to mind a nightmarish illustration by the Swiss artist
H. R. Giger – “Birth Machine Babies” (Figure 5) – in which the fetal form,
environed in the firing chamber of some monstrous firearm, gets represented as
a bullet, simultaneously an instrument for killing and a rather strange sort of
subject whose brief existence gets figured entirely in terms of its
weaponization.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
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(Fig. 5)</div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">More generally,
Deutscher also draws our attention to some methodological principles or
suggestions drawn from how Foucault, in fact, articulates his analyses. First,
she argues, it is possible not only to read Foucault better by means of
attending more carefully and closely to the historical and theoretical contradictions
he emphasizes, but also to employ the categories and terms he provides us with
to more provocative ends. In other words, the Foucauldian frame functions not
just to show us how our subject positions are invalidated by their implication in
various states of affairs (e.g., structural injustices). Perhaps more
importantly, however, it enables us to articulate and examine the complexity of
the world in which we are acting and reacting.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">As Deutscher emphasizes, all modes of power are always
already multimodal. A hand raised to another person in care can be read not
only as a gesture of care, but also as a gesture of the assumption of right, or
of appropriation. Indeed, such a gesture might well be both of these things at
the same time – both care and appropriation, equally and incommensurably. This
is because any given mode of power traverses multiple registers, just as it is
traversed by multiple temporalities. As Deutscher notes, we all-too-often
expect a phenomenon we encounter to be one thing. We expect this from our
objects of study, but we also expect it from our theorists (such as Foucault).
To the contrary, she suggests, awareness of the multiple modes of power that
transect any given site of interest makes possible modes of productive
disruption that otherwise might remain inaccessible to us. This is as equally
true for our objects of study as it is for the theorists we employ.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Roman Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00332676942690719201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-73940006660198817392016-04-04T12:43:00.000-05:002016-04-04T12:43:27.764-05:00Alejandro Madrid: "Soundscapes, Sound Archives, and the 'Sounded City'" - Response by Marc Adam Hertzman[On March 31, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the lecture "Soundscapes, Sound Archives, and the ‘Sounded City.’" The speaker was Alejandro Madrid, Associate Professor of Musicology at Cornell University. Below is a response to the lecture from Marc Adam Hertzman, Assistant Professor of History.]<br /><br /><span style="color: #20124d;"><b>Soundscapes Past, Present, and Future</b><br />Written by Marc Adam Hertzman (History)<br /><br />I am extremely grateful for being invited to participate in this event, and for the chance to engage with this fascinating paper. Madrid’s critical appraisal of the Fonoteca Nacional brings to the fore questions about a number of perennially interesting, vexing topics—nationalism (and the “post-national”); the relationship between nation and city, rural and urban, and lettered and oral; new and old forms of cultural ownership and authorship; the “democratization” (or not) of cultural and political institutions and spaces; and the always complex personal and intellectual relationships that develop in “the field,” to name just a few. In ten to fifteen minutes it would be impossible to adequately address one, let alone all, of these topics. Aware of the limitations here I would like to elaborate three sets of questions that Madrid puts on the table for us.</span><div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">In assessing the Fonoteca’s self-consciously “bottom-up” project, Madrid is skeptical. Drawing on Angel Rama’s foundational text <i>The Lettered City</i>, Madrid suggests that, whatever its intentions, the Fonoteca project reproduces power relations and hierarchies that its architects had hoped to challenge. This, Madrid points out, raises troubling questions for those who see in today’s wired world a newly democratic, egalitarian public sphere. Rather than pointing us toward a world of more access and opportunity for a greater number of people – not to mention the valorization of previously marginalized groups and traditions – the Fonoteca becomes instead emblematic of how even the most well-intentioned national projects so often turn into “top-down, civilizing” projects. As a result, and whatever its intentions (stated or real), the Fonoteca doesn’t lead to a “democratization of sound” and instead functions more as a wall between the “late capitalist” present and the utopian “post-national” future that Madrid refers to at key moments throughout the text.</span><div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">His critique puts us face-to-face with some of the most important and challenging debates in Cultural Studies, Latin American Studies, and Ethnomusicology. And again, I’d like to talk about just three of those. <br /><br /><i>Beyond the Lettered City</i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">The first of questions grow from Madrid’s stimulating delineation of the “sounded city.” As noted, the paper dialogues with and, I think, effectively critiques Rama’s <i>Lettered City</i>, as well as its critics. Envisioning intellectual and public spheres, and their attendant power relations and hierarchies, in sonic terms is all well and good, Madrid shows, but moving beyond the fetishization of literacy does not, in itself, do us any good, and in fact may in some ways be more pernicious, buttressing old pecking orders under the guise of revolutionary change.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Madrid’s argument resonates with – and also diverges in key ways from – Joanne Rappaport and Thomas Cummins’ award-winning <i>Beyond the Lettered City</i>, set thousands of miles to the south, in the colonial Andes, centuries before the creation of the Fonoteca.<b>[1]</b> One of Rappaport and Cummins’ most important contributions is the challenge they present to the very notion of binary literate and non-literate spheres. Contrary to the idea that some forms of expression and knowledge production are often understood, as Madrid puts it, as “pre-modern,” Rappaport and Cummins show oral and written forms to be conspicuously intertwined. In Europe and America, “town criers” shouted out written pronouncements and proclamations. Maps, painting, and khipus – woolen knotted cords used to keep records, share news, and convey or perform any number of tasks that we often associate with writing – all suggest that the binary between written and non-written forms of literacy is a colonial invention. We find a similar point, for example, in the Koran, whose texts originated in oral recitations.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">One wonders, then, what makes today’s “sounded city” different than earlier ones. What exactly is unique about the moment in which we live? Ana Maria Ochoa Gautier suggests that the aural has intensified in the last two decades. Building off this idea, Madrid sees an “increasing relevance of sound culture within a sector of the educated middle and upper classes” and “a new epistemological model, one in which sound becomes as important as the written word in trying to make sense of the natural, social, and cultural world we live in.” “In a way,” he continues, “knowledge about sound and participation in alternative sound scenes have become markers of cosmopolitan intellectual distinction” that define Mexico’s “apparent postnational ‘sounded city.’” <br /><br /> These are provocative ideas, worth interrogating a bit further. How does the “intensification” that Ochoa Gautier refers to compare with the remarkable transformations in technology and modes of distribution that came with the rise of the phonograph and subsequent innovations in recorded sound at the turn of the twentieth century? Returning to the Andes and again going back in time, we find a truly vibrant, connected set of sonic universes in colonial Cuzco, what Geoffrey Baker calls an “urban soundscape” or a “sonorous city.”<b>[2]</b> How, then, does Mexico’s contemporary “sounded city” compare to those from hundreds of years ago? I ask not to suggest a trans- or a-historical reading, but rather in the hope of honing in more closely on what is and is not unique about the moment in which we currently live and in which Madrid’s paper is set.<br /><br />Along with Argentina, Brazil, and Cuba, Mexico was at the forefront of sound recording technology during the first half of the twentieth century. But the power of sound far exceeded the nascent technology. Corridos, the “soundtrack” of the Mexican Revolution, functioned as what anthropologist Robert Redfield called the “newspaper of the folk.”<b>[3]</b> In what ways, then, does today’s “sounded city” differ from earlier ones?<br /><br />Madrid emphasizes change especially among the educated and affluent in Mexico City. Here again, it would be interesting to also think about what came before, not only in 1970s and ‘80s, but the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s, when Mexican elites, much like their counterparts across the Americas, took special interest in folklore and used new technology to capture and reproduce sound, often with ideas and goals that, at least on the surface, don’t seem that different than those of the individuals under consideration in this paper. <br /><br />Moving on now to a second, related set of questions about the national and postnational…<br /><br /><i>The National… Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow</i><br />In the paper’s opening pages, Madrid frames the history of national music archives with the example of Austria’s <i>Phonogrammarchiv</i>, “the first sound archive in the world.” As he points out, the intention there was to collect music from all over, a project he writes, that was “encyclopedic, civilizing, and largely imperialistic-nationalistic.” That last term, “imperialistic-nationalistic,” is very interesting, especially given the paper’s juxtaposition of the national and the postnational. On one level, it seems that the Austrian example leads us towards thinking about the ways that external imperial projects become reinscribed or reinvented within national borders. Does Mexico City, in this case, represent a kind of metropole to the rural interior? On another level, the Austrian project to collect music from around the globe makes us think twice about the meanings of the postnational. In my own work, I’ve explored the way that Brazilian nationalism, and the fight against musical poachers from Europe and North America, helped galvanize the domestic defense of musical and intellectual property right. As imperfect and even oppressive as it is, the national has represented a refuge and source of support for musicians in a way that the postnational may not. If there is a single question here it is what, exactly, does this postnational looks like, and what specific impact it has on age-old global imbalances and inequalities in the music market. And here I’m thinking especially of Professor Madrid’s edited collection <i>Postnational Musical Identities</i>, which delineates a number of possible postnational pasts, presents, and futures.<b>[4]</b> Which kind are we dealing with here?</span><div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><i>Sonic Ownership</i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">This set of questions leads us to a final cluster of issues surrounding musical property and ownership. Here, the work that Brazilian ethnomusicologist Carlos Sandroni has done on Mário de Andrade is especially useful.<b>[5]</b> Like Robert Redfield, the Lomaxes, Zora Neale Hurston, and so many other anthropologist-ethnographer-cum-music-collectors of the era, Andrade endeavored to understand and preserve Brazil through field research, interviews, photographs, film, and recorded sound. In 1938, he directed a Folklore Research Mission that sent researchers into the rural North and Northeast to gather music, stories, and traditions before modernity and urbanization would destroy these “pure” cultures. (Interestingly enough, one of the four main researchers, Martin Braunwieser, was born in Austria.)</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">The project was funded by the city of São Paulo and produced several books in the 1940s and ‘50s. For the next three decades, the collection remained housed in a city office. Researchers began to work with it again in the 1980s, and their work was facilitated by an agreement signed in the 1940s with the Library of Congress in Washington, which held copies of all the sound recordings. During the 2000s, CD sets and a DVD were published.<b>[6]</b> Sandroni, a widely respected scholar, worked with the collection until the late 1990s, when he moved to Pernambuco, one of the states that received Andrade’s researchers. His first thought was to make the archive public and to create new recordings in the same localities in order to study “continuity and change in traditional music,” with many of the same intentions as the Fonoteca.<b>[7]</b> He soon had a different idea. In 1997, he traveled to Tacaratu, a small town in the interior. Using the notes from the original researchers, and relying on elders in the community, he tracked down a son of two individuals who Andrade’s team recorded in the 1930s. Rather than make new recordings, he shared. “Before our visit,” Sandroni recounted later, “nobody in Tacaratu knew that their city had been visited 60 years earlier by researchers from São Paulo, much less that photographs and recordings made their were deposited in a cultural institution 3000 km from there.”<b>[8]</b> Putting in the painstaking work of tracking down those individuals recorded decades earlier, Sandroni replicated similar encounters not only with descendants but also the original musicians, some of whom had never heard the sound of their own voice on a recording.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">These encounters, through which Sandroni in a sense repatriated sounds and images collected – taken – so many years earlier were invariably emotional and positive. They present interesting points of dialogue with the Fonoteca project, which I’d like to return to now to conclude: <br /><br />First, Sandroni’s project represents an interesting counterpoint to the Fonoteca, and not just because it focused on returning rather than recording. As Madrid shows, the Fonoteca originally hoped that individuals and communities from around Mexico would upload recordings, thus creating a map of the national soundscape. But the lion’s share of contributions came from urban areas. And so, like Redfield and Andrade before them, the scholars who Madrid discusses set out to record the hinterland. For me, the issue of whether those recordings are “bottom-up” or “top-down” is only part of a larger story. Indeed, and as Sandroni and so many other ethnographers readily admit, this kind of encounter is inevitably rife with hierarchy and imbalance. I wonder, then, whether we might focus not only on those things but also now in terms of the possible futures that the recordings, however problematic, may have. <br /><br />Some of the best possible futures might be post-national, but if the experience of Sandroni is any indication, that might be missing the point a bit, too. Many of the men and women who reencountered their music were proud to have been included in a project now being studied and celebrated as a rich chapter in national history. Less important than the impositions, blindnesses, and insensitivities of Andrade’s team was the ability to reconnect, now years later, with something that was theirs.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">What repatriation or reclamation mean – legally, morally, emotionally – is exceptionally complex and exceeds, I think, the analytical payload of “the democratization of sound.” As Sandroni argues elsewhere – and as others, myself included, have suggested – <i>Creative Commons</i> and democratic, universal access to intellectual or artistic production can have unintended, even perverse effects, such as hurting or limiting the rights of artistic producers.<b>[9]</b> For all the value that open access has on the consumption side, it can be brutal for producers of few economic means seeking to stake their livelihood on the art they create, especially when those producers reside on the wrong side of persistent social-discursive divides: literate-oral, refined-popular, individual-collective, etc.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">To close, I’d say that I think that the postnational and the “democratization of sound” are only parts of this fascinating story that cannot be fully understood or remedied in bottom-up/top-down terms and that instead must be confronted with more varied models and with an eye not only the past and present, but also the future. <br /><br />I’m grateful to Professor Madrid for writing such a stimulating paper and bringing all these fascinating issues to the table.</span><div>
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style='font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span></span><![endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[2]</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Critiquing Rama, Baker suggests that “music, sound, and performance” were “equally integral” to literature in the colonization and urbanization of the Americas. “The ordering of the city [was] conceived and enacted not only in verbal but also in sonic terms, exemplified by the concept and practice of harmony.” </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Geoffrey Baker, <i>Imposing Harmony: Music and Society in Colonial Cuzco</i> (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2008), 20, 22.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[3]</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">He titled one chapter of his ethnography of 1920s Tepoztlán “Literacy and Literature.” </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mark Pedelty, <i>Music Ritual in Mexico City</i> (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 122, 124; Robert Redfield, <i>Tepoztlán, a Mexican Village: A Study of Folk Life</i> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930).</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[4]</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ignacio Corona and Alejandro L. Madrid, <i>Postnational Musical Identities: Cultural Production, Distribution, and Consumption in a Globalized Scenario</i> (Lexington Books, 2007).</span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[5]</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Carlos Sandroni, “O acervo da Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas, 1938-2012,” <i>Debates</i>, no. 12 (June 2014): 55–62; Carlos Sandroni, “Notas sobre Mário de Andrade s a Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas de 1938,” <i>Revista do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional</i>, no. 28 (1999): 60–73.</span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[6]</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sandroni, “O acervo da Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas, 1938-2012,” 56.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[7]</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ibid.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[8]</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ibid., 57.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[9]</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Carlos Sandroni, “Propriedade intelectual e música de tradição oral,” <i>Cultura e Pensamento</i> 3 (December 2007): 65–80.</span></span></div>
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</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17012501841858805854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-22877163143268357062016-04-04T12:03:00.000-05:002016-04-04T12:03:06.898-05:00Alejandro Madrid: "Soundscapes, Sound Archives, and the 'Sounded City'" - Response by Jessica C. Hajek<i>[On March 31, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the lecture "Soundscapes, Sound Archives, and the ‘Sounded City.’" The speaker was Alejandro Madrid, Associate Professor of Musicology at Cornell University. Below is a response to the lecture from Jessica C. Hajek (Musicology).]</i><br /><br /><span style="color: #20124d;"><b>Whose City? Whose Sound?: Mexico’s Sonic Geography</b></span><div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Written by Jessica C. Hajek (Musicology)<br /><br />This presentation focused on the case study of the National Sound Archives of Mexico (known as <a href="http://www.fonotecanacional.gob.mx/">Fonoteca</a>) and the experience of, knowledge about, and intervention in the sounded city. This work is a recent research endeavor for Dr. Madrid, but is clearly situated within his other works dealing with music and cultural studies, modernity, globalization, and music and dance in Mexico. This particular topic is also positioned within the discourses of performance studies, sound studies, and space/place.</span><div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Dr. Madrid began his presentation with a personal recounting of his introduction to Fonoteca in Mexico City. While teaching a sound studies seminar at the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 2013, Madrid planned a field trip for his students to the archive. To his surprise, what he experienced was a disconnect between the congratulatory tone of the archive’s guides and the skepticism of his students regarding the purported “democratic access” to its celebrated collections and sponsored projects. In focusing on sound-based collectives like the Fonoteca, the objective of Madrid’s presentation was to construct a new epistemological model that would consider sound as an equally important object of study as the written word in understanding culture. <br /><br />In the first part of his lecture, Madrid examined how the collection methods of sound archives over the past century have shaped a sonic sense of our world. Madrid began by discussing the early endeavors to document sound in 19th-century Europe, which focused primarily on the encyclopedic capturing and documentation of the sound of traditional or exotic places. Madrid then showed that this was the model that Mexico attempted to recreate when opening its first audiovisual/sound archives in 1964—a model that represented a validation of the nation-state in a local, but patronizing and colonialist way. However, in an attempt to create something new with the opening of Fonoteca in 2008, the goals of this archive were to be more democratic, not only preserving the sound of Mexico, but also promoting educational programs to create a culture of listening and fostering participation among audience and artists alike. In order to discuss its varying degrees of success, Madrid introduced two of Fonoteca’s most prolific projects—<a href="http://www.fonotecanacional.gob.mx/index.php/escucha/mapa-sonoro-de-mexico">the Sound Map of Mexico</a> and the Soundscapes CD series. He posed the question: how did these projects identify and respond to the desires of its audience? </span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7k3Wi6Ss6qGYYrmcXAeWsxRhYdW4dQ7-sGOsyi2-L5LBkgauUKCZsq4NMZ1F64buk3HN6Ueu7tUSQcGk5zsUiqOye1h2vyPInEGBrVRvb5wZSQ7anAu550JhwQk87ZlhpzpAp5Kg3SvFL/s1600/Sound+Map.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7k3Wi6Ss6qGYYrmcXAeWsxRhYdW4dQ7-sGOsyi2-L5LBkgauUKCZsq4NMZ1F64buk3HN6Ueu7tUSQcGk5zsUiqOye1h2vyPInEGBrVRvb5wZSQ7anAu550JhwQk87ZlhpzpAp5Kg3SvFL/s400/Sound+Map.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal">
Sound
Map of Mexico showing origins and quantities of sound recordings uploaded to
the app</div>
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[source: <a href="http://melimelo.com.mx/mapa-sonoro-de-mexico-el-documental-colectivo/">http://melimelo.com.mx/mapa-sonoro-de-mexico-el-documental-colectivo/</a>]<o:p></o:p></div>
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</tbody></table>
<span style="color: #20124d;">The Sound Map of Mexico project is an interesting case in point. Here, Madrid looked at an attempt to create a “community of listeners” and a “sonic geography” of Mexico. Beginning in 2010, everyday Mexicans were encouraged to record sounds of their own environments and upload it to the app. The catch? Fonoteca requested that the sound be in the style of “field recordings”—capturing the sound of a specific place in time including ambient noises—and not professional studio recordings. Not surprisingly, the community created by the Sound Map ended up skewed toward urban sounds, with currently 224 of 380 recordings coming from Mexico City itself. Even more interestingly, a majority of recordings from outside of the capital were captured and uploaded by Fonoteca staff.</span><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span><div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">The Soundscapes CD project elucidated even more how the actors involved in these archival endeavors helped to shape the documentation of sound through a process that Madrid referred to as “performing in the field.” To make his point, the contrasting approaches to the CD project under its two directors Jorge Reyes and Francisco “Tito” Rivas were examined. Under Reyes, Madrid discussed how the goal of the project focused primarily on an artistic perspective rather than an archival one in order to create an art music CD based on sounds captured in the field. Subsequently under Rivas, the project shifted its focus onto the process of collecting the sounds themselves. According to Madrid, these examples demonstrated two ways in which the field can be performed based on the role of the recorder in his or her environment. On the one hand, Reyes was more active in selecting locations and personally interacting with the sound environment. On the other hand, Rivas was more passive, focusing more energy on the pre-production process to target the desired sounds and then setting out to find them.</span></div>
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Fonoteca
recording crew member for Soundscapes of Mexico CD project</div>
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[source: <a href="http://www.cultura.gob.mx/movilprensa_detalle.php?id=24107">http://www.cultura.gob.mx/movilprensa_detalle.php?id=24107</a>]</div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><br />However, even with his more democratic approach to the Soundscapes project, Rivas was still instrumental in determining what sounds were collected and heard. For example, a narco-military conflict in the State of Guerrero made it too dangerous for Rivas’ team to make recordings in certain locations. Could this be considered a refusal to listen to the sound of everyday violence in the lives of these people, or even a state-sponsored project ignoring state-sponsored violence?<br /><br />In the final part of his presentation, Madrid used Angel Rama’s concept of “the Lettered City” to suggest a discourse of “the Sounded City.” Madrid claimed that the power of recorded sound stems from its sensorial and transmittable nature, suggesting that the “Sounded City” can be considered as a cosmopolitan epistemic model of post-national circulation of knowledge and cultural belonging beyond national borders. In returning to the case study of Mexico City, he asked two questions: What kind of Sounded City is at stake with Fonoteca? Is the archive recreating older models of behaviors or offering new alternatives? In conclusion, Madrid proposed that while although the experience of sound may be more democratic in 21st-century Mexico, the institutions and artists responsible for maintaining that sound are still the heirs of the 19th-century colonial model.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkvNUYpLCAsaILSTZ5LT__FbHAoJkxdvYkt-Wy8dNrRwqknJbOskg81Xf9AAu8nA4OsrL-kTrJSSCt89Ilsry-ho0s1NxETJDEJBq5UX-r_ByBj3pMYtZd-_RsX3PVGMvOzhh_NI4e-is7/s1600/Fonoteca+Nacional.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkvNUYpLCAsaILSTZ5LT__FbHAoJkxdvYkt-Wy8dNrRwqknJbOskg81Xf9AAu8nA4OsrL-kTrJSSCt89Ilsry-ho0s1NxETJDEJBq5UX-r_ByBj3pMYtZd-_RsX3PVGMvOzhh_NI4e-is7/s1600/Fonoteca+Nacional.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkvNUYpLCAsaILSTZ5LT__FbHAoJkxdvYkt-Wy8dNrRwqknJbOskg81Xf9AAu8nA4OsrL-kTrJSSCt89Ilsry-ho0s1NxETJDEJBq5UX-r_ByBj3pMYtZd-_RsX3PVGMvOzhh_NI4e-is7/s1600/Fonoteca+Nacional.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkvNUYpLCAsaILSTZ5LT__FbHAoJkxdvYkt-Wy8dNrRwqknJbOskg81Xf9AAu8nA4OsrL-kTrJSSCt89Ilsry-ho0s1NxETJDEJBq5UX-r_ByBj3pMYtZd-_RsX3PVGMvOzhh_NI4e-is7/s1600/Fonoteca+Nacional.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkvNUYpLCAsaILSTZ5LT__FbHAoJkxdvYkt-Wy8dNrRwqknJbOskg81Xf9AAu8nA4OsrL-kTrJSSCt89Ilsry-ho0s1NxETJDEJBq5UX-r_ByBj3pMYtZd-_RsX3PVGMvOzhh_NI4e-is7/s400/Fonoteca+Nacional.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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Translation:
“Fonoteca National Sound Archive – </div>
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We preserve sound memory for the future” </div>
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[source: <a href="http://rva.fonotecanacional.gob.mx/fonoteca_itinerante/">http://rva.fonotecanacional.gob.mx/fonoteca_itinerante/</a>]<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkvNUYpLCAsaILSTZ5LT__FbHAoJkxdvYkt-Wy8dNrRwqknJbOskg81Xf9AAu8nA4OsrL-kTrJSSCt89Ilsry-ho0s1NxETJDEJBq5UX-r_ByBj3pMYtZd-_RsX3PVGMvOzhh_NI4e-is7/s1600/Fonoteca+Nacional.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">In the case of Fonoteca, who then has decided what Mexico sounds like? According to Madrid, urban centers dominated the contributions to the Sound Map of Mexico. These sounds were supplemented by Fonoteca staff who strategically sought out the idealized fantasy of authentic sounds from the countryside. In instances when the reality of the countryside was in contrast to their desired image—as with the Soundscapes of Guerrero project—these sounds were avoided. Therefore, the epistemological implication of Madrid’s soundscapes project is to better understand the processes that result in the fragmentation and compartmentalization of local sounds as a consequence of focusing only on the aural within an otherwise multisensorial experience. Although this presentation represented only the beginnings of a larger project, Madrid intends to continue unpacking the implications of both the essentialist search for sounds and the naturalization of identity as a strategy to attract listening audiences.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17012501841858805854noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-25913354395779090162016-03-29T10:14:00.001-05:002016-03-29T10:22:11.810-05:00"Unflattening: Reimagining Scholarship Through Comics" with Nick Sousanis: Response by Carol L. Tilley<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><i>[On March 17, the Unit for Criticism
& Interpretive Theory hosted a lecture "Unflattening: Reimagining
Scholarship through Comics" followed by a hands-on workshop,
"Thinking in Comics." The speaker was Nick Sousanis, Postdoctoral
Fellow in Comics Studies, University of Calgary. Below Associate Professor
Carol L. Tilley's (Graduate School of Library and Information Science) response
to the lecture.]</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><b>A Response to Nick Sousanis’ <i>Unflattening</i></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Written by
Carol L. Tilley (GSLIS)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Slumped and bowed, they trudge in an endless row. Visionless
humans, lacking not only eyes with which to see, but the ability to imagine
something, anything, more. Nick Sousanis opens Unflattening with this
nightmarish tableau. To me, these characters look broken and defeated, like
prisoners of war. On a more metaphysical level, they are soul-less.But what has
broken them? What has, as Nick nods to Herbert Marcuse’s (1964) <i>One-Dimensional Man</i>, “reduced [them] to
the terms of this universe”?<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;"> [1]</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbc7uGZI5rJmmtZSJBUf8J0eigyVP8capewC5u8hMq1KtvdhT04VlbDvzja-WNSAn0VDf_zQa-KPg55Hp-c4lBT0pougzwd_TczmMzF6rroPp16n9Y8U7K0EHlrFwM-jMGWszOiXqtvBk/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbc7uGZI5rJmmtZSJBUf8J0eigyVP8capewC5u8hMq1KtvdhT04VlbDvzja-WNSAn0VDf_zQa-KPg55Hp-c4lBT0pougzwd_TczmMzF6rroPp16n9Y8U7K0EHlrFwM-jMGWszOiXqtvBk/s320/1.jpg" width="229" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Industrialized society with its accompanying rationalization
and technological determinism? Neoliberal education and its infantilizing
fervor for high-stakes testings? The primacy, or as cultural historian Walter
Ong might say, the imperiousness<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;"> [2]</span>,
of text that shapes our understanding of and engagement with the world? In
Nick’s view, all are equal contenders for the source of these de-spirited
creatures, who inhabit our contemporary society and “exist as no more than
shades, insubstantial and without agency.”<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;"> [3]</span> We are those slumped and
bowed, the sightless persons, or at least we are in danger of becoming them.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">“Languages,” Nick writes, “are powerful tools...but for all
their strengths, languages can also become traps.” He continues, “In mistaking
their boundaries for reality, we find ourselves...blind to possibilities beyond
these artificial borders.”<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;"> [4]</span> So it seems that we have not lost our eyes, but only that we are trapped inside
a perceptual and intellectual ‘Flatland.’ Happily for us, Nick proposes an
elegantly and deceptively simple solution: we must only learn new ways of using
our eyes. We can escape the borders—unflatten our worlds—through visual
education and multimodal thinking. Nick’s book, through its sequential,
experimental, and wholly effective visual narrative, models the value of his
proposed solution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">I met Nick online through Twitter in the winter of 2013. Our
friendship was formed around comics. Although I’m a comics scholar, I don’t
really study comics as artefacts or medium; I’m more interested in what people
do with them. And as Nick was quick to tell me back in 2013, although his
dissertation—the text that became <i>Unflattening</i>—uses
the medium of comics, it isn’t really about comics. Instead it’s more about the
value of interrogating our world through comics and visual media. We’re both
comics scholars, but ones that tend to step a little outside the artificial
borders for the discipline. It seems most reasonable then that I step a little
beyond the perhaps expected intellectual boundaries for this talk to consider
how the work of Otto Neurath—my current intellectual crush—might illuminate
Nick’s thesis in <i>Unflattening</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr4C_zrC35E9zqaaM_yCg72emDKsnmL2dyoHxyN0kQk6DupBTSE_gDYHytjKLGrsM1_164yvL4rYPeW4cxA4C9xug0gT4KULlgoPSuxujjU6BQpGvK3AIC0Ecp6zc_nKWkdwocUBWFwhk/s1600/2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr4C_zrC35E9zqaaM_yCg72emDKsnmL2dyoHxyN0kQk6DupBTSE_gDYHytjKLGrsM1_164yvL4rYPeW4cxA4C9xug0gT4KULlgoPSuxujjU6BQpGvK3AIC0Ecp6zc_nKWkdwocUBWFwhk/s320/2.jpg" width="249" /></a><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Otto Neurath was a philosopher and social scientist whose
lasting achievements grew from the ruins of World War I, a war that required
Neurath’s hometown Vienna along with the rest of the nation of Austria to build
itself politically and economically anew.
Post-World War I Austria was perceived to be <i>lebensunfähig</i>, unlivable. Despite the lack of food, fuel, and
housing, and a tenuous government infrastructure, Neurath recalled these years
fondly. “After the lost war,” he wrote, “there were more difficulties in the
world, but more chances that things could change.”<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;"> [5]</span> Neurath, like Nick, saw hope
amid despair, and both scholars believed that the visual is that source of
hope.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">In the early 1920s, Neurath established in Vienna the
Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum, the Social and Economic Museum. Neurath
conceived this institution as one that appealed to the immediate needs that the
Viennese had to understand and improve their individual and collective status.
It was not a conventional museum; Neurath alternately described it as a
“popular educational institute for social enlightenment.”<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;"> [6]</span> Rather than exhibits of
machinery or dioramas of ancient times, Neurath’s museum used specially
constructed charts alongside films, lectures, and similar tools as the focus.
Unlike many of his contemporaries who privileged fine arts and classical
literature, Neurath was inspired by the mass media’s engagement and efficiency
in communication.<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;"> [7]</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Neurath believed that visual communication was key to
emancipation.<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;"> [8]</span> As a socialist working in what was then a socialist government, Neurath viewed
knowledge as a necessity if citizens were to gain full economic, political, and
social rights. Like Nick, Neurath believed in the absolute imperative for
people to be liberated from the boxes, tracks, and systems that constrain them.
Where Nick proposes restoring our abilities to ‘vision’ the world, Neurath
offered us new ways to see the world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">In his work at the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum,
Neurath developed and refined his vision for a system for “the metamorphosis of
statistical material into pictorial sketches.”<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;"> [9]</span> He didn’t want simply to
show <i>how many widgets Austrian workers
produced</i>, Neurath wanted to “visualize <i>invisible
phenomena</i>, that is, social and economic processes that were not accessible
to the naked eye.”<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;">[10]</span> Over the course of the next two decades, Neurath worked alongside mathematician
and physicist Marie Reidemeister (who later became his wife) and artist Gerd
Arntz to build the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics. Later Reidemeister
renamed their language system Isotype, or International System of Typographic
Picture Education. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqJueWd4teJxVB84bfdLDUolCXELfkDHvl7mxLQQvq0H4-fj84d9J4id9nlQ0bLJkmuM05G4Plun1kFNv25b9O3yfBNM3kfx26mOgQJKnCC2XuNAinSRebnEa_b-LT9xhdS8iruYCuTbE/s1600/3.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqJueWd4teJxVB84bfdLDUolCXELfkDHvl7mxLQQvq0H4-fj84d9J4id9nlQ0bLJkmuM05G4Plun1kFNv25b9O3yfBNM3kfx26mOgQJKnCC2XuNAinSRebnEa_b-LT9xhdS8iruYCuTbE/s320/3.png" width="320" /></a><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Isotype does not eschew the use of text, but primacy is
given to the pictograms. These pictograms are simplified images, comprising a
vocabulary of sort, and can be combined, ordered, sized, aligned, and repeated
to convey meaning.<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;"> [11]</span> Isotype: a visual argument; a basic juxtaposition of words and images in
sequential form. <span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;">[12]</span> We wouldn’t mistake an Isotype chart for Nick’s work, but they arise from the same foundation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">The key to Isotype is the transformer. It is the transformer
that enables the metamorphosis of raw data into visual arguments.<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;"> [13]</span> Neurath wrote, “A scientific specialist may be ever so eminent in his own
field—indeed, he may even have high qualifications as an educator—but that is
no reason for supposing that he necessarily knows what is the best way of
translating his intentions into visual reality.”<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;">[14]</span><sup> </sup>The transformer oversees
the translation process, serving as a partner to both scientist and designer,
but primarily as an advocate for the learner. The transformer is “a sympathetic
listener who gently refuses to go away” until the communication process is
complete.<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;">[15]</span> It is probably not coincidental that Marie
Reidemeister was both Neurath’s transformer and later his wife. There’s an
intimacy and sensitivity required in the transformer’s work, much the same as
what is required for a loving relationship.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjdzLO41xpil4XklIOuWqjybDRIitLcXKovZMTmipwmjbL1vKjSYCvpYm0iiRMiTWL-8moxJpPTF2F6RfIkKrFY0jSW1_yJ4l-WI77zh0C4BSESAK7150w_-X6pDtNP7Laio662AAi-qc/s1600/4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjdzLO41xpil4XklIOuWqjybDRIitLcXKovZMTmipwmjbL1vKjSYCvpYm0iiRMiTWL-8moxJpPTF2F6RfIkKrFY0jSW1_yJ4l-WI77zh0C4BSESAK7150w_-X6pDtNP7Laio662AAi-qc/s320/4.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Neurath’s museum and visual education projects led him to a
partnership with Belgian Paul Otlet, a pioneering information scientist. One of Otlet’s many aspirations was to create
the <i>Palais Mondial</i> (World City), a
global scientific information repository and cooperative resource network.
While Neurath was skeptical of some of Otlet’s plans (and vice versa), they
agreed to cooperate on a new project <i>Novus
Orbis Pictus</i>, an atlas of human civilization, that combined Neurath’s
interest in visual education and Otlet’s goals for information sharing. It’s
worth noting that the project’s name pays homage to Johann Comenius, a Moravian
theologian who created in the 1650s the first illustrated textbook, <i>Orbis Sensualium Pictus</i>. In the book’s
opening, Comenius’ tutor apprises the student reader,<i> ibimus Mundum, & spectabimus omnia</i>. “We will go into the
world, and we will view all things.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Although Neurath conceptualized a new mode for scientific
discourse and education, he did not live long enough to see it fully realized.
In fact seventy years later, we are still waiting. In <i>Reading Images</i>, semioticians Kress and van Leeuwen propose that
perhaps, “visual representation is more apt to the stuff of science than language
ever was, or even that a science which is visually constructed will be a
different kind of science.”<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;">[16]</span> Nick’s work, which asserts that it is past time for the visual to have primacy
over text, encourages us to discover whether a different kind of science
happens. Some of my own work reflects on young people’s use of media and
technology. For many young people, stories and information, narrative and
content, matter far more than than format or platform. Thus, I have hope that
while it may be too late for our generation of scholars to see the kind of
radical social and scientific change that such a revolution in representation—a
transformation to the visual—would bring, a future generation soon will.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">In a reconsideration of Neurath’s contributions to visual
communication, designers Michael MacDonald-Ross and Robert Waller provided an
apt synthesis of the transformer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">“The message is humanistic: break
down the barriers in the interests of the reader. Take responsibility for the
success or failure of the communication. Do not accept a label or a slot on the
production line. Be a complete human being with moral and intellectual
integrity and thoroughgoing technical competence. Be a transformer.”<span style="font-size: 11.1111px; line-height: 12.7778px;">[18]</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">With <i>Unflattening</i>,
Nick is scientist, transformer, and designer all at once. Like Comenius’ tutor,
he is leading us into the world, encouraging us to view all things. Moreover,
he is showing us that comics themselves have the power to serve as
transformers, bridging scholars and lay readers, encouraging all of us to break
down barriers and be more than another slot filled on the production line.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><u>References and Further Reading</u></i><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Burke, Christopher, Eric Kindel, and Sue Walker (eds). <i>Isotype: Design and contests 1925-1971</i>. London: Hyphen Press, 2013.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Cartwright, Nancy, Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck, Thomas E. Uebel. <i>Otto Neurath: Philosophy Between Science and Politics</i>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Comenius, Johann. <i>Orbis Sensualium Pictus</i>. 1658 (1887 edition). Retrieved from <a href="https://archive.org/stream/cu31924032499455#page/n41/mode/2up">https://archive.org/stream/cu31924032499455#page/n41/mode/2up</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. <i>Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. 2nd ed. </i>London: Routledge, 2006.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">MacDonald-Ross, Michael and Waller, Robert, “The Transformer Revisited.” <i>Information Design Journal</i> 9 (2000): 177-193.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Marcuse, Herbert. <i>One-Dimensional Man</i>. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">McCloud, Scott. <i>Understanding Comics</i>: <i>The Invisible Art</i>. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Neurath, Otto. <i>International Picture Language: The First Rules of Isotype</i>. London: Kegan Paul Trench Trubner, & Co., 1936.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Neurath, Otto. “Museums of the Future.” <i>Survey Graphic</i> 22/9 (1933): 458-463, 479, 484.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Ong, Walter. Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought. In <i>The Linguistics of Literacy</i>, edited by Pamela A. Downing, Susan D. Lima, and Michael Noonan, 293-319. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing, 1992.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Sousanis, Nick. <i>Unflattening</i>. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Stadler, Friedrich. Written Language and Picture Language <i>after</i> Otto Neurath—Popularising or Humanising Knowledge? In <i>Image and Imaging in Philosophy, Science and the Arts, volume 2</i>, edited by Richard Heinrich, Elisabeth Nemeth, Wolfram Pichler, and David Wagner, 1-30. London: Verlag, 2011.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">Vossaoughian, Nader. <i>Otto Neurath: The Language of the Global Polis</i>. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2007.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;">_____________________________________________</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[1]</span></sup></sup> Sousanis, <i>Unflattening</i>, 21.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[2]</span></sup></sup> Ong, Writing is a Technology, 293.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[3]</span></sup></sup> Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[4]</span></sup></sup> Ibid, 52.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[5]</span></sup></sup> Burke, Kindel, and Walker, <i>Isotype</i>, 23.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn6">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[6]</span></sup></sup> Ibid, 47.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[7]</span></sup></sup> cf. Vossaoughian, <i>Otto Neurath</i>, 59.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[8]</span></sup></sup> Neurath believed that knowledge was emancipatory (cf. Cartwright et al, <i>Otto Neurath, </i>92) and because of his valuing of visual communication as a means of educating for knowledge, it fits that he would view visual communication as a tool for emancipation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn9">
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[9]</span></sup></sup> Burke, Kindel, and Walker, <i>Isotype</i>, 63.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn10">
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[10]</span></sup></sup> Vossaoughian, <i>Otto Neurath</i>, 59.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn11">
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[11]</span></sup></sup> cf. Neurath, <i>International Picture Language.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn12">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[12]</span></sup></sup> cf. McCloud, <i>Understanding Comics</i>. Although I find weaknesses with McCloud’s definition in terms of what it excludes, it works well enough for this essay’s purposes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn13">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[13]</span></sup></sup> Burke, Kindel, and Walker, <i>Isotype</i>, 85.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn14">
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[14]</span></sup></sup> Neurath, “Museums of the Future,” 479.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn15">
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[15]</span></sup></sup> cf. MacDonald-Ross and Waller, “The Transformer Revisited,” 179.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn16">
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[16]</span></sup></sup> Kress and van Leeuwen, <i>Reading Images</i>, 37.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn17">
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: inherit;"><sup><sup><span style="line-height: 12.7778px;">[17]</span></sup></sup> MacDonald-Ross and Waller, “The Transformer Revisited,” 188.</span></div>
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Roman Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00332676942690719201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-31678817009731589682016-03-28T12:59:00.000-05:002016-03-28T13:06:48.382-05:00Unit Faculty Fellows Symposium: Panel 1, Samantha Frost & Hina Nazar - Response by Wendy J. Truran<i><span style="color: #666666;">[On March 14, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the Unit Faculty Fellows Symposium, highlighting the research projects of our current Faculty Fellows. The first panel of the day featured Samantha Frost, Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender & Women's Studies, and Hina Nazar, Associate Professor of English. Below is a response to this panel from Wendy J. Truran (English).]</span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: #cccccc;"><br /></span></i>
<span style="color: #333333;"><b>The habit and <i>habitus </i>of subjectivity</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333;">Written by Wendy J. Truran (Department of English)</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333;"><br /></span><span style="color: #20124d;">
The first panel at the Unit Faculty Fellows Symposium, held on March 14 2016 brought two, seemingly very different, projects into conversation. <a href="http://www.pol.illinois.edu/people/frost">Samantha Frost</a>'s project sought to shift our conception of the human animal. <a href="http://www.english.illinois.edu/people/hnazar">Hina Nazar</a>’s project shifts assumptions regarding John Locke’s ideas on education from the long eighteenth century. Despite their projects’ apparent dissimilarity, both speakers focused on subjectivity. Both papers outlined forces which contribute to the creation of a political subject and addressed the limits of contemporary critical theory, offering ways to reconceive of its application in their respective fields. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><b>Samantha Frost</b>’s paper offered an ontological argument regarding the “it-ness of the body,” or what she called the “corporealization of culture.” Frost’s paper brought together the unlikely bedfellows of contemporary theory and life sciences in the service of creating a more nuanced, fleshy, multi-scalar idea of subject formation. Her discussion of the materiality of the subject was given in the form of ten theses, not all of which I’ll be able to cover here, but more information can be found in her upcoming book: <i><a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/biocultural-creatures">Biocultural Creatures: Toward a New Theory of the Human</a></i>. Life Sciences are trying to account for social influence, or as Frost put it, ‘how the social gets under your skin.’ Life sciences are finding evidence for what feminist theorists and literary scholars have long known: culture and imagination changes you. Scientific findings are demonstrating that even if the event does not take place, even if it is imagined, the effect can still remake biological matter. The formation of self must be thought of as a corporeal, social, and subjective phenomenon. Frost therefore offered a conception of a “biocultural human” (<i>thesis four</i>), which insists that, even at a cellular or hormonal level, “meaning shapes matter.”</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPW_BOPut8XEdK8UfUiHqF8QdvLBRusNSSB7Fw2ssycCXwgnZ2u7Xxwuwg3X4Z9LWPQkm5bk4Hkmxx8PnQ2xJ2cx3tJ-Qks1idMfn4UJ1O1COlAslAAMm8M6MT96XrpsXzHm_xKWZVPd8G/s1600/Frost+book+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPW_BOPut8XEdK8UfUiHqF8QdvLBRusNSSB7Fw2ssycCXwgnZ2u7Xxwuwg3X4Z9LWPQkm5bk4Hkmxx8PnQ2xJ2cx3tJ-Qks1idMfn4UJ1O1COlAslAAMm8M6MT96XrpsXzHm_xKWZVPd8G/s400/Frost+book+cover.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Frost began by exploding the commonplace belief that biology is a stable substance, a fleshy given, when in fact - at the level of cells or genes for example – biology is very responsive to a wide range of influences. Going further, Frost pointed out that biological processes do not exist before the environment in which the subject functions. The biocultural organism is a dynamic system, living is a process. Frost offered this new picture in <i>thesis one</i>, stating that “all living organisms, including humans, are porous.” In addition, <i>thesis three </i>offers that “a living body is a temporally particular configuration of processes of composing and decomposing.” There is influx and efflux of environmental influences, such as toxins, nutrients and air-quality. Indeed all organisms are influenced by their habitus, and can be affected all the way down to the biochemical or even molecular level. What is key for Frost is that culture forms an integral part of the habitus, and therefore living bodies are always influenced by culture. The fleshy materialization of norms within living creatures means that we must think of the ‘environment’ as mental, emotional, social, cultural, biological, material, and even imagined. In the act of “composing and decomposing and recomposing” the human is open to influence and change. Not infinite change, Frost cautions, but change nonetheless, and therefore she asks, how might corporeal change be affected by social, political, and material changes in the environment? Whilst this increases the complexity of how we conceive of the human, both biologically and culturally speaking, it also allows for a new conception of the ways living bodies “inhabit place, history, and time.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Frost cautioned that we must stop thinking about bodies as “stuff” and begin thinking of them as processes. She points out in <i>thesis six</i> that there is a lag, “the responses of biocultural creatures to bio-culturing are non-contemporaneous with their current habitats” and in <i>thesis seven </i>adds that “living organisms, including humans, are distinct from the habitats that culture them.” Past responses to previous habitats prepare biocultural organisms for future habitats, so that responses now can have a multi-dimensional sense of time: they may have immediate effects but also a futurity, lingering for generations. <i>Thesis nine</i> brought Frost’s work most clearly into conversation with contemporary theory: “Material environments shape biological processes as well as processes of identification, and social and representational environments shape biological processes as well as processes of identification.” She elucidated by suggesting that a living subject’s response to social norms or institutional inequalities have hormonal, neurochemical, immune-system consequences that then convert, for example, into habitual anger, or stress, or depression. So that to study subjectivity, Frost contends, means that we need to account for “all the biocultural constituents formative of living human subjects,” cultural and biological.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Something tremendously fascinating comes forth in Frost's theses: the idea that culture isn’t something ‘out there’ that may or may not affect the stability of the ‘in here’ of living bodies, but rather that the environment microbiologically shapes and reshapes the composition of the living creature, and the experience of inhabiting a body. Frost’s claims seem to extend the scope of responsibility for those who have the greatest influence on the habitus of each organism – which means each one of us. Depending on the scale by which we think of the habitus, we might think of influencing a biocultural organism’s environment as eating a nutritious meal, or ensuring that built environments have green spaces, or organizing politically for social justice for living bodies most at risk of permanent decomposition. Or as Frost put it in the Q&A: by thinking of humans as collectively responsible, thinking in terms of communities we might live in rather than the responsibility of the individual, we find the possibility of collective action at various scales of influence.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><b>Hina Nazar</b>’s paper “Locke, Education, and ‘Disciplinary Liberalism’” draws upon her book project entitled <i>Educating for Freedom: Enlightenment Narratives of Autonomy, Gender, and Social Influence</i>. Nazar focused on two discursive developments in the long eighteenth century – the rhetoric of education and the rhetoric of freedom, concentrating on the paradox of John Locke’s idea of “teaching freedom,” most explicitly discussed in <a href="http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1692locke-education.asp">“Some Thoughts Concerning Education”</a> (1693). Nazar positioned her argument against scholars that she labelled the “disciplinarians": those who draw on Michel Foucault’s work to levy criticism against Locke’s ideas on education and liberalism. The disciplinarians suggest that the Locke’s conception of family, community, and system of education produces a disciplined child who can only reproduce the inherited performance of freedom, rather than be truly free. Nazar, however, complicates this reading by drawing on all of Locke’s work on education including <a href="https://archive.org/details/lockesconductofu00lock">“Of the Conduct of the Understanding”</a> (1706) and <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/locke/john/l81u/%3E">"Essay Concerning Human Understanding"</a> (1689). Whilst she concedes that there are certainly authoritarian strains in “Thoughts,” taking his work on education as a whole means that such discipline can be “transformed in an autonomy-friendly direction.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Nazar points out that Locke did not think that freedom was an instinctive feature of the will, but rather the cultivation of habits. In refusing the binary of habituation versus autonomy, Locke offers a complicated (and inconsistent) vision of education producing free, rational subjects. It is this inconsistency that allows Nazar to find a means to reconcile Locke’s liberalism and his thoughts on education. Locke claims that our character is formed through our habits, and this is why the right education is so important, because without it “habits will still be formed” but they will be formed “without due regard to the duty to exercise one’s power of freedom.” Nazar identifies a split in Locke’s thinking and thereby offers two ideas of education that emerge from Locke. The first she called “child-responsive,” which conceives of teaching as educating children to attain future freedom. Second, “adult-imitative” sees education as teaching children to imitate adult freedom. The first, Nazar argues, is the more compelling when looking at Locke’s ideas on education as a whole. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Given that a child lacks reason, or the self-command to be reasonable (in Locke’s conception), is it possible to teach the habit of free thinking? What habits, Nazar asks, are autonomy-friendly habits? Early in “Thoughts,” Locke claims that until children have mastered self-command, which is a necessary condition for freedom, they must submit to parental will. Through compliance to adult reason, they are cultivating their own reason. This is what Nazar calls the “adult-imitative” model. On the other hand, his “child-responsive” model demands that educators “respect the given talents and temperaments of their pupils” and be responsive to each child’s “habits of desiring.” Parents, he suggests, should talk to their children as rational beings and encourage them to participate in a community of rational adults, so that self-command and a love of reason will develop in the future.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">These issues still filter into our classrooms today: how do we teach individuals to be critical thinkers without telling them what to think? Locke in his “child-responsive” form, Nazar suggests, suggests we should emphasize “<i>how </i>rather than <i>what </i>to think.” One means of creating a free thinking child is by engaging others in “dialogue, debate, and critical reading” in order to form a greater awareness of how ideas are put together in general. Nazar argues that Locke’s subject is a more complicated figure than the disciplinarians allow, and that ultimately Locke offers a modest scope for autonomy. Nazar suggests, however, that this is a more compelling and accurate picture of Locke and education, and “of the freedom of the socialized subject.” Indeed, Nazar’s conception of the subject, like Frost’s, is one that is porous; that is capable of change. A subject who through a change of habit, or Frost’s habitus, achieves the possibility of limited autonomy.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17012501841858805854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-66815672422568806762016-03-18T14:45:00.001-05:002016-03-18T14:45:17.647-05:00Unit Faculty Fellows Symposium: Panel 3, Derrick Spires & J. David Cisneros - Response by Ben Bascom<span style="color: #20124d;"><i>[On March 14, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the Unit Faculty Fellows Symposium, highlighting the research projects of our current Faculty Fellows. Panel 3 of the day included Derrick Spires, Assistant Professor of English, and J. David Cisneros, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication. Below is a response to this panel from Ben Bascom (English).]</i><br /><b><br /></b></span><div>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><b>Citizens as Verbs: The Politics of Belonging in Nineteenth-Century and Contemporary American Citizenship </b><br />Written by Ben Bascom (Department of English)<br /><br /><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Gr_4nnIAVKUnMemmEKA5IB8_YXzuYiGT0gSBQzIjfe5GFh_zchmZt5thdir5ZinLDMmt20ixyq8SNBi2x8kNAgh9DiW8BtS1bimyGwqnzG26LjQN8THu4OFy8bfQFUK7-4vQ4o7BUFWr40TRFQ"><br /></a>As part of the Unit Faculty Fellows Symposium held on Monday, March 14, <a href="http://www.english.illinois.edu/people/dspires">Derrick Spires</a> (English) and <a href="http://www.communication.illinois.edu/people/jdcisnrs">J. David Cisneros</a> (Communication and Latina/Latino Studies) shared portions of their current projects. Their fortuitous combination on this panel illuminated a series of overlapping interests, particularly highlighting how their scholarship reimagines the cultural work of citizenship as a workable ideal within the lives of marginalized groups—either from those outright disenfranchised as black men in antebellum America or those demarcated as transgressors of law through rhetorics of illegal immigration. Although they focus on disparate contexts and time periods, both offered insightful readings of belonging in the United States through focusing on citizenship as a cultural value that both contests and revises the state’s buttressing of rigid legal definitions. In this blog post, I will recap major portions of their arguments and illuminate a few questions that their work provokes. <a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/lUxvutg0GmbFOOfuraAzv7btA5oGjD0fhFAq9ivZjYjYdKQ2w7GJOFUR3MVl1Y9l6KKnLG-9emvr7fYHeH6PnkI3PZGEcLPlfzS6J5ptwcYb4fXP3L298TgCyf2VXkX6zGja5u5JsjW70RHiCA"></a><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/9oxG6INHmQF4PTJOVL_rkPyVMxi3pW38rvIEa4ASQeh7g3cpVd19L37zKKcwz4vw1mDmQcDztUnI0p3SGyZILV5v5nKs2vPdkGmxc2rvI3-39EoZxp4Ii2h27bS0Y_CN-ngAfa1skz5d5Sicyg"></a><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/LMPxwljgoYT8g7bPs6oK5bhGpqrLkd3mCOCKQTfxv0rdGrpmxIl5p2k9bi9fnjENiHIf1tuhVmx24TeP1_B0YvPtZI3MJD-yaeuWoWXZqWMx6XBhiom46B2e8E3V0mM19B0seaunPoGg0cwtfw"></a><br /><br /></span><div>
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<a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/lUxvutg0GmbFOOfuraAzv7btA5oGjD0fhFAq9ivZjYjYdKQ2w7GJOFUR3MVl1Y9l6KKnLG-9emvr7fYHeH6PnkI3PZGEcLPlfzS6J5ptwcYb4fXP3L298TgCyf2VXkX6zGja5u5JsjW70RHiCA" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/lUxvutg0GmbFOOfuraAzv7btA5oGjD0fhFAq9ivZjYjYdKQ2w7GJOFUR3MVl1Y9l6KKnLG-9emvr7fYHeH6PnkI3PZGEcLPlfzS6J5ptwcYb4fXP3L298TgCyf2VXkX6zGja5u5JsjW70RHiCA" width="228" /></span></a><span style="color: #20124d;">Spires, a scholar of nineteenth-century African-American literature, titled his presentation “On Violence and Citizenship in Frances E. W. Harper’s American, 1854–1861” and in it he demonstrates how black nineteenth-century American writers pulled from histories of violence in order to produce revolutionary understandings of citizenship and belonging. Examining references to <a href="http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Margaret_Garner">Margaret Garner</a> in the poems of <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/frances-ellen-watkins-harper">Frances E. W. Harper</a>—the author of the first short story published by an African American—Spires shows how Harper appeals to scenes of violence in her writings in order to envision revolutionary, as opposed to sentimentalized, modes of citizenship. Harper conceived of a revolutionary politics based on everyday life, Spires contends, through mobilizing a radical sensibility that resisted a politics of right feelings as promoted by Harriet Beecher Stowe in her bestseller <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=0SCu8izLV04C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Harriet+Beecher+Stowe+%3C%3Ein+her+bestseller+Uncle+Tom%E2%80%99s+Cabin;+or,+Life+Among+the+Lowly&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwijndn-1MbLAhUJWSYKHR4oBQUQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly</a>. The thrust of Stowe’s argument is that sentimental representations of slavery can influence readers to “feel right,” in her words, through inducing them to shed tears of sympathy for the plight of the “lowly.” Instead of this model, Harper wishes to speak back to the subjecting and abjecting powers of slavery, actively reinterpreting the past and imagining new possibilities.<br /><br />For Spires, Harper provides a crucial case study to think about black theories of citizenship because of the subtle differences between her 1854 and 1857 editions of Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects. Where the earlier version includes poems that sentimentalize enslaved bodies as objects in need, the 1857 version moves to instead give voice to previously erased subjects: in the case of a poem about Margaret Garner, Harper actively gives voice to her calculated decision to pursue violent means to keep her children from a life of slavery. Quoting <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=MpN0ikR6-f4C&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=%E2%80%9Cthe+expression+of+our+movement+from+object+to+subject,+the+liberated+voice&source=bl&ots=OOvh0Zr409&sig=_a6HrDDwtmOWJEB4nvAxPKYvBL8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_5Yr34MHLAhUFeSYKHWLwDh0Q6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Cthe%20expression%20of%20our%20movement%20from%20object%20to%20subject%2C%20the%20liberated%20voice&f=false">bell hooks</a>, Spires calls this “the expression of our movement from object to subject—the liberated voice.” As such, the 1857 version works against dominant anti-slavery work, refusing to bridge an experiential gap between how it feels to be enslaved to instead expose the structuring devices that naturalize and normalize such dynamics. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><br />Between the years of Harper’s editions, Spires reminds, a series of violent encounters with slavery circulated in the print public sphere, from stories about John Brown and “Bleeding Kansas” to massive slave uprisings all over the southern United States, and of course to Margaret Garner freeing her child from a future life of slavery. In his overall project, Spires examines how sites of violence become understood as scenes of revolutionary practice in the writings of nineteenth-century African Americans, and so he collates these violent events under the heading of “the spirit of 1856” to associate black American responses to the limits of citizenship and the bondage of slavery with a metonymic connection to <a href="http://www.history.org/almanack/life/politics/giveme.cfm">Patrick </a><a href="http://www.history.org/almanack/life/politics/giveme.cfm">Henry’s</a> iconic “Give me liberty, or give me death!” speech from the era designated “the spirit of 1776.” Through arguing that Harper and other African-American writers were attuned to “the spirit of 1856,” Spires makes visible the ways sentiment and sentimentality hold at bay determinations to violent actions, the possibility of which disallows revolutionary change and possibility.<br /></span><div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><br />Spires had begun his presentation by distinguishing between the what and the how of citizenship, specifically clarifying that he is interested in a practice-based notion of citizenship in antebellum U.S. political culture that allows for the work of someone like Harper—doubly disenfranchised as a black woman—to be imagined as an engaged citizen. While it would be easy to locate within the canon of U.S. state and federal law how citizenship has historically been reserved for white (often property-owning) men, Spires instead is interested in how African Americans sought to fashion lives that expand and contest such static notions. Resisting conceptions of citizenship as a fully formed, self-evident category, Spires theorizes citizenship as a participatory practice, capaciously open to those who are ostensibly defined in negative relation. <br /></span></div>
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Similarly wishing to trouble normative conceptions of citizenship, J. David Cisneros in “The Cruel Optimism of ‘Coming out of the Shadows’: Affect, Emotion, and Immigration Rhetoric” examines new imaginaries of citizenship as propelled through contemporary activist and protest work. Building from his current project, “Feeling Citizenship: Migration, Mobility, and the Movement of Affect,” Cisneros examines how feelings about immigration not only saturate the public sphere but also surface and rupture in significant ways—ways that both trouble and reify the state’s interests. The particular archive that he uses comes from the <a href="http://www.iyjl.org/comingout2013/">“Coming out of the Shadows”</a> campaign, a series of videos and texts where undocumented residents publicly declare their outsider status with relation to the U.S. nation-state’s protocols of citizenship. Undocumented youth helped begin this project, Cisneros explains, and they drew from LGBTQ discourses around closetedness to highlight the vectors of queerness that inhere to the state’s interactions with policed populations.<br /><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">The “Coming out of the Shadow” narrative emphasizes the tremendously brave act that is to publically declare one’s precarious status as an “illegal” resident, unprotected by the legal rights, recognitions, and prerogatives of citizenship. The conventions of this genre emphasize an emotionally powerful story that narrates an individual’s journey to the U.S., struggles to fit in and the overcoming of trials, and finally a gesture toward future hopes and aspirations. In one such video, an 18-year-old Colombian living in Queens, NYC declares her desire to become a teacher to bridge achievement gaps while simultaneously lamenting how her status as undocumented by the federal government prohibits her doing so. Such narratives transition from the negative affects of shame, fear, and anxiety to pride, empowerment, and dedication. Key to such narratives is the validation of a “good” citizen that undocumented individuals already are—indeed, that they are markedly different from the image media portray. “Next time you hear a bad story of an undocumented immigrant,” she concludes, “think of me.”<br /><br />To trouble such hopeful associations, Cisneros suggests that even as these narratives may help shift public attitudes and emotions, they also rely on an optimism that might appropriately be understood as cruel. Indeed, Cisneros calls “Coming Out of the Shadows” a textbook example of what <a href="https://english.uchicago.edu/faculty/lauren-berlant">Lauren Berlant</a> has equipped “<a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/Cruel-Optimism/">cruel optimism</a>.” “[C]ruel optimism exists,” Berlant avers, “when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing.” Clarifying this point, Berlant goes on to describe this mode of interacting with the world as “a relation of attachment to compromised conditions of possibility whose realization is discovered either to be impossible, sheer fantasy, or too possible, and toxic.” Within the rhetoric and lived-reality of extra-legal immigration, one’s desire for recognition from the very state formation that articulates one’s illegality further entrenches the vulnerability of such lives. Even as a politics of recognition may shift public opinion, the normative structures of belonging still impact their material lives, especially when desire for attachment and recognition actually opens one up to more precarious living. <br /><br />Cisneros notes that national belonging and citizenship is the primary form of attachment in these “coming out” narratives. While such desires for citizenship, belonging, and normativity attempt to de-stigmatize illegality, they illustrate an investment in an unreciprocal relation, one where recognition is a one-sided endeavor. “Inside my heart, I feel I am American,” one narrative asserts: “I just wish I would feel loved back at some point.” But the U.S. nation-state is far more hardened in the heart to be moved by such declarations of feelings, Cisneros reminds, as the breakup of families have been key to the mass of deportations under <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/obama-family-deportation-raids-217329">President Obama’s </a><a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/obama-family-deportation-raids-217329">administration</a>. Instead, the nation-state has the power to indefinitely defer citizenship, refusing the appeal to feeling and recognition. <br /><br />As an example that resists this self-defeating relationship of cruel optimism, Cisneros concluded his talk by a reading of <a href="https://www.blogger.com/">Stephanie Camba’s</a> “Walang papeles, walang takot! (No papers, no fear),” a short online text that challenges normative forms of citizenship. The story Stephanie provides doesn’t seek to prove she’s a good immigrant, nor does her narrative detail personal achievements, but instead she expresses a sense of precarity and a refusal to defer to “a system that ranks us in order and does not see us for our human qualities and complexities.” This text doesn’t pinpoint illegality as a problem that needs to be solved, but rather points at how the state’s subjection produces the very conditions it poses itself as being couched to solve. This example negotiates the normative attachments of citizenship itself without proceeding toward “cruel optimism,” interrupting the system while offering what Cisneros calls a “wary optimism”—a critical cruel optimism that refuses the self-defeated effort at recognition to instead refuse the interpellation of state power. Cisneros concluded by wondering if this mode of wary optimism could imagine something beyond citizenship, producing a new possibility outside the dynamics of state recognition that actually ground the problem in the first place. <br /><br />Such questions are particularly resonant in the year of a presidential election where discourses of outright exclusion, the demonization of marginalized groups, and the active violence at political spectacle are <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kicker/oh-yes-donald-trump-defin_b_9461016.html">not merely tolerated by the Republican frontrunner </a><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kicker/oh-yes-donald-trump-defin_b_9461016.html">but encouraged</a>. What I gain from both Spires and Cisneros is an invigorated perspective regarding the need to continually work toward justice when it comes to examining the limits and constraints of citizenship, specifically to think of citizenship as a verb—an action to be shared and extended, shaped and transformed—as opposed to an exclusive noun to be policed and normalized. </span></div>
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Roman Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00332676942690719201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-53754439829458051562016-03-18T11:39:00.001-05:002016-03-18T13:32:04.124-05:00Unit Faculty Fellows Symposium: Panel 2, Rini Bhattacharya Mehta & Michael Silvers - Response by Jessica C Hajek<span style="color: #20124d;"><i>[On March 14, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the Unit Faculty Fellows Symposium, highlighting the research projects of our current Faculty Fellows. Panel 2 of the day included Rini Bhattacharya Mehta, Assistant Professor of Comparative & World Literature, and Michael Silvers, Assistant Professor of Musicology. Below is a response to this panel from Jessica C. Hajek (Musicology).]</i><br /><br /><b> Immoral Noises: Bollywood Cinema and Brazilian Castrati</b><br />Written by Jessica C. Hajek (Musicology)<br /><br /><b>Rini Bhattacharya Mehta (Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and Religion): "Embracing the Noise: Bollywood and Neoliberal India"</b><br /><br />This presentation provided a brief snippet of Mehta’s book manuscript Unruly Cinema: A Counterhistory of Bollywood, which is her contribution to the recent explosion in research interest on Indian cinema. Her contribution to this scholarship is the story of how Bollywood has continued to grow as an important aspect of Indian identity despite every attempt to control, reform, and refine it. <br /><br />By centering on the case study of Shah Rukh Khan — “<a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2011/11/shah-rukh-khan-ra-one-bollywood.html">the biggest movie star you’ve never heard of</a>” — Mehta explored the idea of being Indian in the world of cinema. In looking at the trajectory of the marketing of Indian cinema during the 20th century, Bollywood films can be understood as a consequence of economic liberalization and post-nationalism in India since the 1990s. Mehta suggested that this time period represents a shift from the view of the “immoral” pro-corporate nation-state in cinema to the identification of the success of capitalism with the success of the nation.<br /><br />Her discussion was framed as a reverse chronology that investigated three points in time in the history of Indian cinema. Starting with Bollywood’s presence at this year’s upcoming Cannes Film Festival, Mehta demonstrated that there has been a recent and well-concerted effort to popularize and sell Indian cinema to a world market. Several organizations—including <a href="http://ficci.in/">FICCI</a> (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry) and the <a href="http://mib.nic.in/">MIB</a> (Ministry of Information and Broadcasting)—have been explicitly involved in marketing Indian cinema as a brand in order to make the country attractive to foreign investors. However, as she pointed out, the penetration of this market has only just begun. <br /><br />The second point in time focused on the first Hollywood ventures into making Bollywood films in 2007. Citing a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/business/worldbusiness/07iht-bollywood.1.7017281.html?_r=0">NY Times article</a>, she noted that American film companies like Sony, Fox, and even Walt Disney began collaborating with Indian companies to make Indian films that would cater better to Indian audiences and compete with domestic pictures. Using the example of the Sony/Columbia release of “Saawariya,” Mehta showed how these Hollywood cinematic endeavors were in fact hardly distinguishable from Bollywood-financed films of the time.<br /><br />The third point in time focused on the impact of the liberalization of Indian media in the 1990s in an attempt to answer the question of why Hollywood ventured into Bollywood in the first place. First, Mehta unpacked the relationship between foreign and domestic market saturation pre- and post-1990. For example, Coca-Cola was squeezed out of India and replaced by locally-manufactured Thumbs-Up in 1977. But after liberalization, PepsiCo entered the Indian market in 1991 and Coca-Cola bought Thumbs-Up in 1993 to compete better in the Indian market. Second, she looked at liberalization’s impact on Indian media, including an increased availability of private cable channels and imported Hollywood films dubbed into Hindi—such as “Jurassic Park” (1993) and “Speed” (1994). Whereas there had been resistance to foreign films in India since the 1920s that helped spur domestic consumption of local-language films, Mehta pointed out that after the 1990s, actors like Keanu Reeves were speaking Hindi in these films. How could domestic films compete?<br /><br />At the same time that Hollywood films were saturating the Indian market, the increase in available cable channels also created an increased demand for new, local content. As a result of this, Mehta suggested that Indian film music underwent a kind of “MTV”-ization (emphasizing staging as much if not more than signing). The newly emerging middle class became the source of growing consumerism and confidence as a part of a new nationalist image of “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11485711/Why-its-finally-time-for-India-to-start-shining.html">Shining India.</a>” This paved the way for a resurgence in the production of Indian-language content—along with Bollywood films—and the need for a supra-national Indian identity.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/we3fPGTZBc8j1trveRRgEQfoV6VLcw7UG0chzhos3rZg5Xs3qtKYD3Xps3RGU7UqvkyYWNWkw0rL5wKxV5dWXzxf_RBDE_dQNMU79kO0tSxSoTylLzF8CA4aP6ezT07pL6U2hqwQb0TVeIkd4A"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/we3fPGTZBc8j1trveRRgEQfoV6VLcw7UG0chzhos3rZg5Xs3qtKYD3Xps3RGU7UqvkyYWNWkw0rL5wKxV5dWXzxf_RBDE_dQNMU79kO0tSxSoTylLzF8CA4aP6ezT07pL6U2hqwQb0TVeIkd4A" /></a>'</span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Movie Poster of Bollywood Film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilwale_Dulhania_Le_Jayenge">[Source]</a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">In conclusion, Mehta stressed the role of the Indian diaspora in particular as a strategy of economic development in post-1990s neoliberal India. With the example of the film “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” from 1995, Metha returned to actor Shah Rukh Khan as an example of the expatriate Indian as a central figure of Indian cinema. Following this, Mehta brought her discussion back to the critical year of 2007 with scenes from the film “Guru”—which premiered at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. This film captured the realization of “Bollywood noise,” as we see the central character (loosely based on a successful Indian businessman) become the hero of the film and a source of national pride.<br /><br /><b>Michael Silvers (Assistant Professor in the Department of Musicology): “A Naturally Immoral Voice: The Story of Castrato Paulo Abel de Nascimento”</b><br /><br />This presentation was based on an excerpt of the second chapter of Prof. Silvers’ manuscript Voices of Drought: Forró Soundscapes in Northeast Brazil, informed by recently completed ethnographic research on the subject. <br /><br />By focusing on the case study of “natural” castrato Paulo Abel de Nascimento, Silvers explored how Nascimento carried the marks of his hometown of Ceará with him into the world. In doing so, Silvers unpacks the relationship between music and drought in Northeast Brazil as both a natural and social phenomenon and how this relationship pertained to identity construction and marginalization. Silvers suggested that Nascimento’s “immoral voice” serves as the locus for nature versus materiality and gender/race categories in Northeastern Brazil.<br /><br />Silvers began his discussion by looking at the height of Nascimento’s career after returning from a world tour in 1985 and appearing in the 1988 classic “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SynIoCn9mU4">Dangerous Liaisons</a>.” At the same time, he pointed to the contradiction of Nascimento embodying a “natural” castrato, who was also criticized for the strangeness of his voice. Silvers clarified that, in fact, Nascimento’s condition was not given to him by nature, but instead a consequence of a testosterone deficiency brought on by malnutrition—a so-called “stigma of hunger.” <br /><br />Silvers continued his discussion by exploring the sociality and materiality of the voice. Interestingly, Nascimento referred to his own condition as a by-product of growing up in the state of Ceará in Northeastern Brazil not from a social standpoint, but a material one. Nascimento explained his condition by recounting how he was the 13th boy in his family (the youngest of fifteen overall—nine of whom died in childhood) and that therefore, there was no testosterone left for him. Nascimento also ascribed ethnic mixing as a cause of his natural voice.<br /><br />However, these material effects on the voice also suggest social issues. Silvers explained how 20th century Brazilian national racial identity was steeped in the notion of racial democracy and the balanced miscegenation between Portuguese, African, and Indigenous roots. In contrast, the local identity unique to Ceará was based on drought and physical traits attributed to the population's mestizo (Portuguese and Indigenous) heritage. Therefore, Brazilian miscegenation from a Cearense point of view was responsible for the projected shame and prejudice that became associated with Nascimento’s voice. Thus, what was called “an immoral voice” by fellow Cearense Maestro Eleazar de Carvalho can be attributed to “chronic provincialism” and prejudice-filled art music institutions that had little room for otherness and non-gendered normativity.</span><br />
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<a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/v6Ywnd5-2jbklQn3w5LwOyxBaE29bFFkycW-zrR6LSAYtfUJIbEP9T61nL9JAj0HFabNa2rqZq11k6OEz7PzoTKUqwnOdKpmaQoDH_PHxW8VerYqmLfLWmuAaQuXowhtC2ySb06yr4151pjRzQ"><span style="color: #20124d;"><img border="0" height="277" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/v6Ywnd5-2jbklQn3w5LwOyxBaE29bFFkycW-zrR6LSAYtfUJIbEP9T61nL9JAj0HFabNa2rqZq11k6OEz7PzoTKUqwnOdKpmaQoDH_PHxW8VerYqmLfLWmuAaQuXowhtC2ySb06yr4151pjRzQ" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Map of the States and Regions of Brazil <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SynIoCn9mU4">[Source]</a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;">However, despite being marked by his hometown experiences with drought and hunger, Nascimento was able to achieve great success abroad. Silvers posited that this was due in part to a confluence of events that allowed Nascimento to transcend his local identity and tap into cosmopolitan values. First, by the 1970s, Nascimento openly identified as “homosexual” (a term that was still rare in Brazil, when Brazilians still preferred a variety of local alternative terms to categorize sexuality). Nascimento’s behavior stood in stark contrast to standard Northeastern gender norms where at the time, regardless of sexuality, masculinity was rooted in violence and bravery. Second, Silvers showed how Nascimento was also readily able to garner success abroad in the 1980s because of a resurgence of interest in historically accurate performances. In Europe and North America, the stigma of Nascimento’s natural voice was able to fit into current art music tastes. In other words, his “stigma of hunger” could remain invisible and be recast into the Western patriarchy. </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17012501841858805854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-56220601738381149072016-02-24T14:43:00.000-06:002016-02-24T15:27:02.090-06:00Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series: Zsuzsa Gille "Politics and Materiality: European Capitalism with a Human Face?" Response by Ned Prutzer<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 21.6px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;">[On February 22, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the latest installment in its 2015-2016 Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series, "Politics and Materiality: European Capitalism with a Human Face?" The speaker was Zsuzsa Gille, Associate Professor of Sociology. Below Ned Prutzer's (Institute of Communications Research) response to the lecture.]</span></i><br />
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;"><b>On the Politics of Materiality </b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">Written by Ned Prutzer (Institute of Communications Research) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">The recent Unit for Criticism Distinguished Faculty Lecture on February
22 featured Professor Zsuzsa Gille from the Department of Sociology. Gille’s
work responds to the lack of attention toward materiality in the social
sciences. As she explained at the beginning of her talk, drawn from her
upcoming book, careful attention to materiality highlights how the physical
object-world is organized and spatially constituted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">Professor Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi began his introduction of Gille’s
work by describing how he, Gille, and Professor Emanuel Rota, the respondent
for the talk, first met around their shared knowledge of Marx. He credited her
expertise in thinking relationally across scales to her early engagement with
Marxism. He noted that her multi-scalar approach is evident in her first co-authored book, <i><a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520222168">Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World</a> </i>(which argues that “global institutions could only become comprehensible
through a thick description of local contexts”), and in her focus on waste in
her second book, <i><a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=41653">From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History: The Politics of Waste in Socialist and Postsocialist Hungary</a></i>. Gille
began her talk by acknowledging the Unit for Criticism as a co-author of her
latest monograph since many Unit events over the years had inspired and
informed her work. Without these events she said she would never have written
the kind of book she did. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvXPm4eamfZraFO7ScuHc9BgkW4SOsoMuY6bIaY20AmIMo1nrdWaP3HniPIDrHukFot6uW6W2D6J5Mid9O9MhNfCgG3kF0k-wS3DV-CI8qma3YOYNbGCvOYgYdcozGEUL4G8Bv9CjSZNA/s1600/Pic+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvXPm4eamfZraFO7ScuHc9BgkW4SOsoMuY6bIaY20AmIMo1nrdWaP3HniPIDrHukFot6uW6W2D6J5Mid9O9MhNfCgG3kF0k-wS3DV-CI8qma3YOYNbGCvOYgYdcozGEUL4G8Bv9CjSZNA/s320/Pic+1.jpg" width="217" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">She began her analysis with a series of images that brought out the
differences in perspective between the European Union and Hungary in their respective
visions of the EU. While most images of the EU produced by the EU were grand
depictions of unity and idealism, images of the EU emerging from Hungary emphasized
frictions and tensions. The Hungarian images effectively capture the internal debates
surrounding EU policy within the country. To illustrate, Gille examined the frictions evident
in three case studies from Hungary involving the regulation of food and waste products.
To her, each case revolves around “unique materials heavy with national
symbolism.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEHowVapiWiaDedzYi5zPklmkbWt3UjW5RsyS-lKratqqAe0GHk-hGlsTHLHO4ZVWWOAlFDT3HSIWIDpbQeCwuLx3m81eYGqE_WDoW0NHJgCgIq9XVgy54h5QK_59srX3y7OaOlzqFOcs/s1600/Pic+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEHowVapiWiaDedzYi5zPklmkbWt3UjW5RsyS-lKratqqAe0GHk-hGlsTHLHO4ZVWWOAlFDT3HSIWIDpbQeCwuLx3m81eYGqE_WDoW0NHJgCgIq9XVgy54h5QK_59srX3y7OaOlzqFOcs/s320/Pic+2.jpg" width="320" /></a> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">A
grand, ethereal image of EU unity discussed in Gille’s lecture<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">The first case study dealt with a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/hungary/1475367/Hungary-in-stew-over-cancer-ban-on-paprika.html">2004 Hungary government ban on the sale and use of paprika</a> due to the presence of aflatoxin, a carcinogenic fungus, in the spice. The ban
on paprika, a staple of Hungarian cuisine and an important cultural symbol, created a
furor in the country. The government attributed the contamination to the illegal mixing of
higher-grade Hungarian paprika with imported paprika from the tropics (Brazil and Spain), since aflatoxin cannot survive in Hungarian conditions. Despite
notoriously strict EU regulations on food, the contamination occurred because Brazilian and Spanish peppers became cheaper in the EU economic system. The Hungarian government suspended imports, but the EU refused Hungary’s request to test imported peppers
as a potential solution to the problem. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">The second controversy, also related to food, was a <a href="http://eep.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/07/23/0888325410374090.abstract">German and Austrian boycott targeting foie gras</a> that extended broadly to include all poultry from Hungary, resulting in the suspension of production and a significant loss of income for Hungarians.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">The third case study was <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2011/09/a-flood-of-red-sludge-one-year-later/100158/">the red mud disaster</a>,
involving a wave of red mud flooding three villages in Hungary, when the wall of
the reservoir where it was held breached. The disaster resulted in 10 casualties from
drowning and burn wounds. Red mud is a by-product of aluminum processing that is highly alkaline. Under state socialism, before the EU, it was
considered hazardous waste in Hungary, but since Western European red mud, which was used as the benchmark, has a
significantly lower pH level, red mud was not deemed a hazardous material under
EU regulations. As in the paprika case, the EU rejected the Hungarian
government's requests to classify red mud as hazardous. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">Gille read these three case studies, not as a condemnation of the
EU’s ability to ensure security, or as a critique of deregulation in general.
Rather, she sees them as raising questions about who gets regulated, who makes regulatory
decisions, and how. The EU’s denial of locally-based regulations makes higher-level
regulations necessary. Thus, transformations in the material production of
goods occur through the imposition of standards that may not have been arrived at by the local
community or the laborers being impacted by the decision. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">In framing her research through Actor-Network Theory (ANT), Gille
argued that these issues come down to a question of which scale’s
socio-material assemblage wins out in these local contestations. Actor-network
theorists, for instance, would contend this research conveys how the nonhuman
is mobilized by the human in pursuit of a human goal and then asserts its own
politics. But ANT, according to Gille, only gets at the micro-scale, and given
the amount of friction between scales that Gille’s research reveals, she
distances her work from this theoretical perspective. ANT's flat topology, to Gille,
is a research agenda designed to continually prove its own modus operandi. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">In contrast, Gille contends that social research needs to situate
big dynamics and global flows while avoiding a reduction of their specificity.
The alternative perspective that Gille proposes is, in her own words, to
“politicize the material!” This means making issues surrounding materiality
explicitly political and advocating for transparency and accountability from the
global actors involved in these issues. Gille remarks that it is not best to
continue seeing the game as rigged, as many Hungarians do, but rather to rework
it as a means of better attending to these concerns. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit;">In his response, Emanuel Rota applauded Gille’s book. He went as far as to call it “fantastic” multiple times
while recognizing his divergent views on the EU. He details his points of disagreement in depth
within <a href="http://unitcrit.blogspot.com/2016/02/distinguished-faculty-lecture-series.html">his own Kritik blog post</a>.
The Q&A portion of the talk picked up on these remarks in large part,
particularly about how the East-West narrative in Gille’s research pertained more to
how it was co-opted by the right, rather than being used as a totalizing
narrative. To this end, there was also some commentary on the image of the EU (see above) and how it reveals that the EU can be considered to
have an “off-the-ground” perspective, a vision not necessarily sufficiently
attuned to local, material circumstances that comprise it and often come into conflict
with it.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Similarly, in Gille’s
estimation, the nation-state is still a pertinent unit of analysis. Historically, for
ethnographers, the nation-state has been the most important unit by which the
population airs its grievances. The important distinction within Gille’s
research, however, is between the dissolution of the modern nation-state (something that
the EU shows in its macro-scale, united vision) and the domination and
subsumption of the modern nation-state within such a vision.</span></span>Roman Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00332676942690719201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-49531854522465489192016-02-23T12:19:00.000-06:002016-02-23T13:44:47.300-06:00Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series: Zsuzsa Gille "Politics and Materiality: European Capitalism with a Human Face?" Response by Emanuel Rota<div class="Body">
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 21.6px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;">[On February 22, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the latest installment in its 2015-2016 Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series, "Politics and Materiality: European Capitalism with a Human Face?" The speaker was Zsuzsa Gille, Associate Professor of Sociology. Below Professor Emanuel Rota's (French & Italian/History) response to the lecture.]</span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130;"><b>Tiny Apocalypses </b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130;">Written by <a href="http://www.history.illinois.edu/people/rota">Emanuel Rota</a> (French & Italian/History)</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPY2Dbz6OxBXkRg-mbbojRd1_O9oc974-FzyYBxWoLHAKtkS8MDrSiglgYnWbBiNYEtsyGq_uJa7O2gYJS40nngqXOTF8_2DC8SzUW95qea9SgeP0l1N9Xdffpfk3F3wi2E7Wmg499zq8/s1600/IMG_1768.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPY2Dbz6OxBXkRg-mbbojRd1_O9oc974-FzyYBxWoLHAKtkS8MDrSiglgYnWbBiNYEtsyGq_uJa7O2gYJS40nngqXOTF8_2DC8SzUW95qea9SgeP0l1N9Xdffpfk3F3wi2E7Wmg499zq8/s320/IMG_1768.JPG" width="240" /></a><span style="color: #4c1130;">Hungary joined the European Union in 2004, after a popular
referendum held the year before. Since Hungary became a member of the EU,
Hungarians have had many quarrels with the European institutions, and the
populist right wing party that has been in power since 2010 has been voicing a
strong popular resentment against Europe. The powerful Western European nations
are accused of having a colonial attitude toward Eastern Europe, preaching
equality, integration, and development, while exploiting their less powerful
Eastern neighbors. In her recently published book, <i>Paprika, Foie Gras, and
Red Mud</i> (Indiana University Press, 2016), and in her Unit for Criticism
Distinguished Faculty Lecture, Zsuzsa Gille analyzes three crucial moments
where the relation between Hungary and the EU took a turn for the worse. Her
goals are both political and theoretical. As a political activist, she wants to
understand the modality of power relations between the EU and Eastern Europe
without falling back on the conspiracy theories of the populist right or the
self-denigratory mantra of Hungarian liberal intellectuals. As a
sociologist, she wants to use the ethnographic research that she has conducted
to create a theory of power that can account for the way power operates at the
level of the European Union. At the center of her approach to these two
problems is the concept of materiality, a post humanist and nonhumanist
approach to power and society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4c1130;">The three ethnographic studies are in themselves extremely
fascinating because of their undeniable symbolic power. A large-scale contamination
of paprika, an essential ingredient in Hungarian cuisine; a boycott of <i>foie gras</i>, a specialty food produced in
great quantities in Hungary; and the “red mud” spill of 2010 are all connected
to and shed light on the role of the EU in Hungary. By opening the Hungarian markets to red
peppers produced in warmer climates (Spain and Brazil), the EU created the
conditions for the use of “foreign” and untested peppers, which contained a
contaminant dangerous for human health. The boycott of foie gras promoted by an
Austrian animal rights organization caused economic damage to Hungary, while
France, thanks to its political influence within the EU, remained untouched.
The need to conform to EU rules in the production of aluminum forced
Hungarian firms to absorb the costs of converting their technologies and to cut
corners to save money and remain in business. In all these cases, Gille shows
how, rather than improving the quality of products or the health of citizens, EU policies favored the most powerful Western countries and damaged
Hungary.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">What makes these cases theoretically interesting is that
governance structures within the EU were neither the result of colonial
projects, as claimed by right wing populists, nor the effect of Hungarians’
inability to become fully European, as suggested by Hungarian liberals.
Rather, Gille states, it is the result of frictions and adjustments between the
materiality of things and the EU policy regulating things, including small
things. She enters into a productive dialogue with Bruno Latour and actor-network
theory (ANT) to understand how objects can become equal participants with
humans in networks, and can substitute human agency with nonhuman agency. Thus, in the
clever title she chose for her talk, “Capitalism with a Human Face,” she refers
not only to the famous idea of “socialism with a human face” that inspired
the dream of reforming Communism in Eastern Europe, and to the self-representation
of European capitalism as “humane,” but also to the nonhuman agency that shapes,
through the regulation of material things, power relations in the EU.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">By taking advantage of her large theoretical toolbox, she
explains, rather convincingly, how the lofty, quasi-ethereal ideals of European
integration co-exist with the feeling, shared by many Hungarians, of being
disenfranchised and even colonized. By focusing on regulations and small
things, she claims, what is subtracted from public opinion is a democratic
discussion. From “doing the right thing” to “doing things right” political
discussions are neutralized and left to the slow abrasive power of things to
integrate Eastern Europe into the logic of Western Europe. The demise of
democratic debates encourage rather than discourage the emergence of the very
right wing populism that the EU aspired to overcome.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWcATuPNdt56Q-duWB06xOXa18naSjU7MPTmeVSMBlFdZTAcE2XjoGedGmJcPHqHpmt8wDWxneotbfo13ZcCF_jdl7vA44Booc_beZQXjjLssIAWM8zqXdWR_SGx8-_l-2YbacCEpts6s/s1600/IMG_1778.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWcATuPNdt56Q-duWB06xOXa18naSjU7MPTmeVSMBlFdZTAcE2XjoGedGmJcPHqHpmt8wDWxneotbfo13ZcCF_jdl7vA44Booc_beZQXjjLssIAWM8zqXdWR_SGx8-_l-2YbacCEpts6s/s320/IMG_1778.JPG" width="240" /></a><span style="color: #4c1130;">Personally, I found Gille’s approach extremely productive and I
believe she is fundamentally right in her description of the phenomenology of power
and materiality in the EU. However, I actually believe that the intellectual
history of the European Union shows that the approach that she describes is not
so much an unintended consequence of unplanned evolution, as the desired course
given to European integration by Jean Monnet’s functionalism. As in the case of
the inclusion of Eastern European countries in recent years, the European
communities were designed to bring together nations that had been at war with
each other in the recent past. Those who had observed the rise of fascism in
Europe knew all too well that various forms of radical and authoritarian
nationalism had been very successful among Europeans. Confronting the problem
of bypassing both the resistance of national governments to giving up power and
the attachments of populations that had been successfully nationalized, the
European communities turned to things that could create automatic, impersonal
spillover effects. In this perspective, Jean Monnet should be regarded as one
of the early proponents of ANT. Unfortunately, the intellectual history of the
process of European integration is also a victim of this impersonal movement
and only a few scholars are willing to research this history which is so tied to the nonhuman.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">A more substantial objection to Gille’s book should be her lack
of comparative analysis between the events in Hungary and other areas in the
EU. Since Italy and France, to mention two places that I have studied, have a
large number of stories that would compare well with her three ethnographic
studies, it would have been interesting to test her theory through comparative
analysis. In particular, I believe that she would have discovered that the
opposition between East and West would not hold up in a comparative frame.
Italian and French farmers and small producers could easily add their
testimonies to show that EU regulations have often disrupted or even destroyed
local industries without producing tangible benefits for consumers and
citizens. If there is a unifying feeling among Europeans today it is precisely
that the EU governs small things without benefiting citizens or the democratic
process. Hungarians are less isolated than they feel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="Body">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">Finally, I also suspect that the Hungarian position in the EU
should be explained not only in terms of the European policies, but also in
relation to the dynamics of European capitalism, humane or otherwise. As we
know very well, the division of labor does not stop within countries, but
extends to the realm of international relations. As a matter of fact, the place
of birth is still by far the largest factor in determining the income of
anybody born on our planet today. The income of the poorest five percent of the
US population is still significantly larger than any five percent of the Ethiopian
population. Semi-peripheral countries like Hungary feel exploited by the core
economies, while aggressively guarding their privileged position compared to
peripheral economies. Thus, the Hungarian government could loudly protest the
British proposal to exclude EU citizens living in Britain from their welfare
state, a change which would impact numerous Hungarian migrants in the UK, while
simultaneously building a fence to keep Syrian refuges and other migrants
out of their country. I believe that Hungary’s position in the world economic
system provides an alternative explanation of the role of right wing populism
in Hungary. The European Union certainly creates tiny apocalypses, but the effect
of the economic system of which Hungary and the rest of Europe are a part
cannot be ascribed to EU bureaucrats. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
Roman Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00332676942690719201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-11088234292985591842015-12-10T10:21:00.000-06:002015-12-10T10:22:17.797-06:00Author's Roundtable with Michael Javen Fortner: Response by Margareth Etienne<span style="color: #333333;"><b>Comments on <i>Black Silent Majority: Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment </i>by Michael Javen Fortner</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333;">Written by Margareth Etienne</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333;">Professor of Law and Nancy Snowden Research Scholar</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">Dr. Fortner’s book, <i>Black Silent Majority</i>, has ignited critical
conversations in the academy and in public discourse. The conversations aptly range from the
politics of respectability within the black community (and who polices it) to
the very notion of privilege and representative democracy within the black
community (and who speaks for whom) — see the book's reviews from <i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/books/review/black-silent-majority-by-michael-javen-fortner.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a></i> and <i><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Black-Silent-Majority/231983/" target="_blank">The Chronicle of Higher Education</a></i> for example. What interests me most as a Criminal Law scholar, and the
subject to which I will limit my brief comments, is the reason the (mostly)
privileged group of black New Yorkers (preachers, politicians, middle and
working class folk, the so-called “talented tenth,” and others) — the “silent
majority” — became harbingers to the institution of draconian drug sentences.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">To understand the ramifications of his argument, we must
remember the cultural vibrancy of New York between 1920 and 1950. This was a
period in which Harlem became a mecca of artistic, cultural and intellectual
engagement. This was the time of
Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Zora Neale Hurston, and Josephine Baker. This renaissance was seeded by the great
migration — the movement of more than 6 million people to the North from the
South in Harlem. Harlem, in this time, was as close to a capital of Black
America as there could be. Let’s pause
for a thought experiment: if this Harlem
was on the brink of destruction, what measures should be taken to save its
cultural, political, and intellectual fruits?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">This question is important because the Harlem that emerged
between 1950 and 1980 was a very different place, a community on the verge of
collapse, for much of what Harlem represented was at stake. The Depression of
the 1930s, followed by WWII and the Cold War, hit Harlem and its poor and
working class folk as hard, maybe harder, than anywhere else. This later Harlem was plagued by poverty,
unemployment, organized crime and drugs. Fortner describes “the wreckage” of
Harlem in chapter four in great detail. He depicts the struggle – moral and political
– that the so called Black Silent Majority faced in watching the decline. The decline they observed was real and the
desperation was palpable. Drugs and
doping were viewed as the primal cause of the problem. Criminal scholars and sociologists now know
the inadequacy of that assessment, with its sole focus on personal
responsibility without a similarly rich account of structural problems (e.g., how
did the dope get to Harlem?). But the
black leaders did not seem to act out of this understanding. They acted out of desperation. And anger.
In Chapter 5, Fortner tells movingly of a mother whose 18-year old
daughter died of a drug overdose. Her response
to the drug problem: “Kill the pushers” (179).
Desperation and anger were among the many factors driving support for draconian
drug laws. So, if we are to judge the
decisions made by the “Black Silent Majority,” let’s fairly reconstruct the
choices they had and how they perceived them at the time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">The War on Drugs and the devastation it caused was relatively
new. Poor communities had long dealt
with the ravages caused by alcoholism and intoxication. The history of this on American soil goes
back to the abuse and victimization of Native Americans. But the impact of dope – heroine and then
cocaine – was viewed differently. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">The progressive reform movement of the 1930s through 1950s — a
movement focusing on rehabilitation for wrongdoers and drug users — was widely
viewed as a failure by the 1970s. Progressive
rehabilitative prisons had originated in New Deal era thinking. The
reform experiment was premised on the notion that offenders could be educated
and rehabilitated. Education, service and treatment programs became mainstays
of the prisons and were eventually integrated in parole and release
decisions. The reformers succeeded in championing a system, backed by
legislation that was focused less on conservative concerns about coddling
prisoners and more on liberal concerns about rehabilitation and re-entry.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">So why didn’t the Black Silent Majority continue to support
rehabilitation and prison reform in later decades? By the 1970s, the formerly reformist prison
had devolved into the maximum security, violent, highly racialized,
resource-poor, over-crowded institution we have today. Rehabilitation as a legislative measure was also
no longer a realistic political option.
How then to save Harlem and the rest of the black community? Facing this Hobsons’ choice, the Black Silent
Majority chose the Rockefeller drug laws and unduly harsh sentencing
penalties. In retrospect, we may feel that
they were wrong to do so, but their options were limited. Fortner’s
contribution is a careful and meticulous account of the role they played. It would serve us well to consider also the
realities of their motives and choices.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12820171915786765926noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-16276623607220466942015-12-02T14:28:00.000-06:002015-12-02T10:58:13.170-06:00WTF: Worldings, Tensions, Futures - Wrecking The Format of Affect Theory (Part 1 of 2) - Commentary by Wendy J. Truran<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #20124d;">From October 14-17, 2015, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, over 380 academics across diverse disciplinary boundaries <a href="http://www.affecttheorymu.com/">came together to consider the aesthetic, social, ethical, and political potential of affect theory</a>. Organised by Greg Seigworth and Melissa Gregg, co-editors of the touchstone text <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-affect-theory-reader"><i>Affect Theory Reader,</i> </a> this unique conference hosted by Millersville University aimed to cultivate affective community, artistic interaction, and scholarly stimulation. At once intense and intimate, the conference offered <b>seven</b> plenary talks with <b>eighteen</b> of the <a href="http://www.affecttheorymu.com/#speakers">leading theorists in affect theory</a>, and over 250 academic papers. Intellectual inquiry that draws on affect theory has addressed a wide range of social, political, and aesthetic problems from a variety of standpoints. Affect theory continues to morph and shift: the intellectual and conceptual possibilities this emerging field of study are still unfolding. The inaugural conference of Affect Theory gathered together leading and newly emerging thinkers in the field in order to take stock of what has gone before and imagine what might come.<br /><br />Inspired by Laurent Berlant and Kathleen Stewart’s alternative ethnography, <i>The Hundreds</i>, where the form of writing uses details and feelings to create “a scene;” the following summary of each plenary aims to evoke the spirit of the moment. To see the actual order of events and the many other panels you can <a href="http://www.affecttheorymu.com/program/">download the schedule</a>. All quotes are taken from notes made at the time of the presentations and should be attributed to the speaker unless otherwise stated. Recordings of the plenaries will be made available by December 2015 on the <a href="http://www.affecttheorymu.com/">conference website</a>.<br /><br /><b>Scene 1: Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart, <i>The Hundreds</i></b><br />Afternoon: packed auditorium, a buzz of excitement as two giants in affect theory sit: <a href="http://english.uchicago.edu/faculty/lauren-berlant">Lauren Berlant</a> and <a href="https://utexas.academia.edu/kathleenstewart">Kathleen Stewart</a>. Their presentations capture the spirit of the conference by ‘wrecking the format’ of plenary speeches. The two women calmly trade statements back and forth that don’t answer one another--it’s not exactly a conversation but it is communication, an exchange of experiences which coalesce into a patchwork of vignettes of life. <i>The Hundreds</i> are “episodic swatches” that are affective and alive, that require aesthetic attention and a sense of play, that carry revelation and critique. Themes emerge across <i>The Hundreds</i>, but as it is “form on the move” in order to counteract “the heavy words of cultural politics,” they are weaving “story problems” because “toying with things is critical to the game of social poesis.” There is no argument laid out for you here, but rather lyrical pyrotechnics that leave smoke trails of ideas, tropes, and concerns to haunt you. Some of the smoke trails that linger include: life is hard and tender and beautiful, neoliberalism kills, friendship can be political and productive, and problems of racial and sexual violence are intimate and ubiquitous. Berlant tells a story of city life – a dog takes a dump on the sidewalk, its owner gathers it up and responsibly disposes of it, funneling this waste into compost so that “even a shit has got to enter the work force.” This talk was a masterclass in carefully crafted writing; showing that criticism and theory can be beautiful and also attempt to represent life affectively. In fact, this is a necessary and political act. More information about this creative ethnographic work can be found in <a href="http://www.culanth.org/articles/138-precarity-s-forms" target="_blank">this interview</a> with Kathleen Stewart in <i>Cultural Anthropology</i>. You can read more of this work on <a href="http://supervalentthought.com/" target="_blank">Berlant’s website</a>.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /><b>Scene 2: Tavia Nyong’o, Shaka McGlotten, Zizi Papacharissi – <i>An Invitation to be Affected After-Hours</i></b><br /><br />Our first late night plenary invited the audience to experience affective community as well as think about it. The panel opened with University of Illinois’s own Professor <a href="http://tigger.uic.edu/~zizi/Site/ziziweb.html" target="_blank">Zizi Papacharissi</a> describing the new structures of feeling made available through new media, specifically the affective publics created via Twitter during the live reporting during the Egyptian Uprising in 2011. Papacharissi described how Twitter became a new news reporting mechanism which offered a sense of “instantaneity.” Political revolution, and its communication blackouts, precipitated a media revolution, creating a new idea of who is able to speak and their alternative “listening publics.” Using mixed methods and big data (1.5 million tweets) she analyzed the “streams” of news and feeling which she found had a rhythm and pacing of its own. Papacharissi identified the creation of “affective publics,” wherein affect is reported as event and the networked publics connected via expressions of sentiment which <a href="http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199999743.do" target="_blank">“interrupted dominant narratives by underrepresented viewpoints.”</a> Papacharissi closed with the powerful statement that “technologies network us but it is our stories that connect us.”</span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2uwzTdmrlgTkYqvkkxdT_Fzfz643a8RFEzuD6xS9CJX-5rgotCZipcNgpmtxwsipWCmzantwlm3dCH8oAndOlGm3UE7Fv3g_VMcgZo0vp16DCKj_zngYV7_3Q3wTyTS8NQxQjHvHnWbwD/s1600/McGlotten%252C+Papacharissi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2uwzTdmrlgTkYqvkkxdT_Fzfz643a8RFEzuD6xS9CJX-5rgotCZipcNgpmtxwsipWCmzantwlm3dCH8oAndOlGm3UE7Fv3g_VMcgZo0vp16DCKj_zngYV7_3Q3wTyTS8NQxQjHvHnWbwD/s320/McGlotten%252C+Papacharissi.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">McGlotten, Papacharissi</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: #20124d;">“What’s normal anyway?” <a href="http://tisch.nyu.edu/about/directory/performance-studies/1543603126" target="_blank">Tavia Nyong’o</a> asks as he performed an exquisitely crafted scholarly story which revealed the “crisis ordinary,” of normality, claiming “we are strangers to our statistically average selves” – and race is central to the crisis. Drawing on <a href="http://claudiarankine.com/" target="_blank">Claudia Rankine’s <i>Citizen: An American Lyric</i></a>, Karen Tongson’s comment on normcore in her <a href="http://www.publicbooks.org/artmedia/normporn" target="_blank">conceptualization of normporn</a>, Miquel Wildheart’s singing the refrain <a href="https://youtu.be/EWO_jl26MK4" target="_blank">“what’s normal anyway?”</a>, and Malcolm McClaren’s <a href="https://youtu.be/FZ4jMSCBswY" target="_blank">all too normal cultural appropriation</a> in “Double Dutch,” Nyong’o gave a beautiful indictment of the “median, middle, the default called normal” which centralizes whiteness. Nyong’o posited that “angular sociality” and “angular world making” is vital in order to blend the “normotic” and “antinormatic.” Nyong’o concluded with the sound of Marvin Gaye’s protest song asking us (to ask) “<a href="https://youtu.be/2p5qeGWKlFY" target="_blank">what’s going on?</a>”<br /><br /><a href="http://openscholar.purchase.edu/shaka_mcglotten/" target="_blank">Shaka McGlotten</a> ‘wrecked the format’ of traditional academic plenaries with an interactive performance which embodied the notion that “affects are always in relation.” Citing Ben Anderson’s concept of “bodily capacity collectively performed” McGlotten discussed “diverse intimacies” in all their fragility and queerness through the forms of #emojis, #touch – via the nudebitionists, and #discomakeout – which invited the audience to “disco makeout” their plenary. Audience participation was required. Shaka McGlotten challenged the audience to <i>experience </i>affective community rather than simply think about it. Fun times #whathappensinlancasterstaysinlancaster.<br /><br /><b>Scene 3: Lisa Blackman and Heather Love – <i>Queer Science and the Ethics of Description</i></b><br /><br /><a href="http://www.gold.ac.uk/media-communications/staff/blackman/" target="_blank">Lisa Blackman</a> asked us Alice-like to “believe six impossible things before breakfast.” One of those impossible things is to consider that science and computational cultures might be haunted by the history and excess of their own storytelling. Blackman suggests that by tracing the “threshold phenomenon” and the ever-roiling discourse of PPPR (post publication peer review) she is able to establish a “digital hauntology,” both as an object and method of study. This excess of material is often moving and moved (as in removed from the digital sphere) and so necessitates swift and focused attention of big (haunted) data, which blurs the distinctions between proper and improper objects of study. Focusing on “controversial” science such as <a href="http://dbem.ws/" target="_blank">Deryl Bem’s</a> article “<a href="http://caps.ucsf.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/bem2011.pdf" target="_blank">Feeling the Future</a>,” which states that that the future affects the past, the storm of PPPR and its excision is just one example of the potential for creating “alternative imaginaries, part cultural imaginary and part speculative forecast” and points to science’s propensity to sanitize ideas which “contaminate” it with queerness. </span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXepHScLi-PoiVqJHM3ze_Okaq7N4BhKOhUJQO0ya4cnCii1EtoEFHoLExCyuBOBlB30zMsSSkFX3q1FkrY3QvvMOtdftwxviH3G2zUFgU44Te-nu9WzmxvFFIpDhayKKIAsb1xfr2U8mM/s1600/Seigworth%252C+Blackman%252C+Love.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXepHScLi-PoiVqJHM3ze_Okaq7N4BhKOhUJQO0ya4cnCii1EtoEFHoLExCyuBOBlB30zMsSSkFX3q1FkrY3QvvMOtdftwxviH3G2zUFgU44Te-nu9WzmxvFFIpDhayKKIAsb1xfr2U8mM/s320/Seigworth%252C+Blackman%252C+Love.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Gregory J. Seigworth, Blackman, Love</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Chiming beautifully with Stewart's and Berlant’s reading from <i>The Hundreds</i>, <a href="http://www.english.upenn.edu/people/heather-k-love" target="_blank">Heather Love</a> reminded us that reading methods have consequences on affect studies. Love proposed that we think of affect studies as a descriptive practice, and asked: can there be a politics of description? Love posited that there could be “a metaphysical complicity of things as they are,” in other words do we reproduce what we describe? As such she called for “an ethics of not projecting.” Drawing on her work in microsociology, Love asked us to pay attention to the “politics of scale”: the small scale (details, richness of description) and the large scale (distanced observation and surveillance). Using Claudia Rankine’s <a href="https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/citizen" target="_blank"><i>Citizen: An American Lyric</i></a> as an example of a writer attuned to the politics of scale, Love suggests that Rankine’s portrayal of racial microaggressions in America reveal “the link between intimacy and violence.” Her writing also makes clear the “daily distribution of institutional power” which conflicts with our position as observer/describer/writer. Love thus cautions us to pay attention to the affectivity of our reading and writing methods, but offered the hope that the details and descriptions can be an affective/effective means of resisting the status quo through the “politics of the micro.”<br /><br /><b> WTF</b>: <b>W</b>orldings, <b>T</b>ensions, <b>F</b>utures (2015) (<a href="http://www.affecttheorymu.com/">http://www.affecttheorymu.com</a>) was a rich, inspiring conference with incredible intensities, and made clear that Affect Theory has a vibrant future. And yes, to answer the most asked question of the conference, the acronym of the conference was entirely deliberate: @affectWTF <br /><br />For ‘scenes’ from the next eleven <b>plenary</b> speakers (Jasbir Puar, Patricia Clough, Ben Anderson, Melissa Gregg, Natasha Dow Schüll, Lawrence Grossberg, Jason Read, Jeremy Gilbert, Steven Shaviro, Brian Massumi, Erin Manning) <a href="http://unitcrit.blogspot.com/2015/12/wtf-worldings-tensions-futures-wrecking_1.html" target="_blank">click here</a>.</span>Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12820171915786765926noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-58360897393586832582015-12-01T14:28:00.003-06:002015-12-01T16:41:06.049-06:00WTF: Worldings, Tensions, Futures - Wrecking The Format of Affect Theory (Part 2 of 2) - Commentary by Wendy J. Truran<span style="color: #20124d;">For scenes from the first <b>seven </b>plenary speakers (Laurent Berlant, Kathleen Stewart, Tavia Nyong’o, Shaka McGlotten, Zizi Papacharissi, Lisa Blackman and Heather Love) <a href="http://unitcrit.blogspot.com/2015/12/wtf-worldings-tensions-futures-wrecking.html" target="_blank">click here</a>.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">From October 14-17, 2015 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, over 380 academics across diverse disciplinary boundaries </span><a href="http://www.affecttheorymu.com/" target="_blank">came together to consider the aesthetic, social, ethical, and political potential of affect theory</a><span style="color: #20124d;">. Organised by Greg Seigworth and Melissa Gregg, the co-editors of the touchstone text </span><a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-affect-theory-reader" target="_blank">Affect Theory Reader</a>,<span style="color: #20124d;"> this unique conference aimed to cultivate affective community, artistic interaction, and scholarly stimulation. The conference offered </span><b style="color: #20124d;">seven </b><span style="color: #20124d;">plenary talks by </span><a href="http://www.affecttheorymu.com/#speakers" target="_blank">eighteen of the leading theorists in affect theory</a><span style="color: #20124d;">, plus over 250 academic papers. All quotes are taken from notes made at the time of the presentations and should be attributed to the speaker unless otherwise stated.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><b>Scene 4: Jasbir Puar, Patricia Clough, and Ben Anderson – <i>Posthuman and Antihumanity </i></b></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anderson, Clough, Puar</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">The “datafication of the 21st century” makes us porous and multiple, and therefore what, asks <a href="http://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Doctoral-Programs/Sociology/Faculty-Bios/Patricia-Clough" target="_blank">Patricia Clough</a>, has become of the human subject and psychoanalysis? Datafication leads to “a displacement of consciousness as a hub of experiencing meaning,” reconfiguring sensory fields to create a “society of microsensibilities.” Clough claims that since our modern psyche comes into being in a nonhuman environment, it creates a “thingself,” meaning that we must consider a “nonhuman <i>un</i>conscious of dissociated selves.” Indeed, Clough claims, the sociopolitical trauma of this time creates a new type of wound which requires us to rethink the death drive in the light of this quintessential 21st century relational form. For Clough this is no longer the human or the conscious self, but rather relations of media – the “it:it” relationship. </span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Inhumanist forms of trauma were taken up by <a href="http://www.jasbirpuar.com/" target="_blank">Jasbir K. Puar</a> within her devastating description of necro-politics in Palestine. For Puar, affect theory allows us to describe nonhuman entities and “how certain human are rendered nonhuman.” Puar gave a harrowing analysis of settler colonialism in Palestine and how “computational sovereignty” is extended under occupation to the “control of control itself.” The scale of computational sovereignty encompasses debilitating both bodies and infrastructures. Rethinking Foucault’s concept of biopower, Puar suggests that the Nation-State does not enact "make live and let die" but rather a right to maim, a “will not to let die.” A necro-politics, Puar claims, wherein Israel is perpetuating a deliberate “asphyxiatory maiming” tactic of “shooting to cripple” and to stunt by the control of food and resources to Palestinian children, which is an “inhumanist biopolitics” designed not to destroy bodies but resistance itself. </span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><a href="https://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/staff/geogstaffhidden/?id=985" target="_blank">Ben Anderson’s</a> discussion of the moods of neoliberalism connected to Puar in considering how we remain emotionally and affectively mobile in order to create change in the context of a State’s created disaffection. Anderson called for scholars to “not presume the forms of neoliberalism,” in order to (quoting Stuart Hall) “provide a more hospitable climate” for “understanding and resisting neoliberalism.” Anderson beautifully illustrated this method of openness to form through two “scenes” which reconsidered reified forms of thinking and feeling about neoliberalism: scene one focused on the <a href="https://www.montpelerin.org/montpelerin/index.html" target="_blank">Mont Pelerin Society</a> and the genesis of a “reconstruction of liberalism.” Scene two reconsidered Margaret Thatcher and the structures of feeling which constituted the conditions of Thatcherism. The value of this kind of reevaluation, Anderson suggests, is that in redrawing multiple structures of feeling under neoliberalism we might avoid acquiescing to the “fatalism which is attached to anxiety” and especially the anxiety attached to the state. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><b>Scene 5: Melissa Gregg and Natasha Dow Schüll – <i>The Biopolitics of Measurement </i></b></span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><a href="http://homecookedtheory.com/" target="_blank">Melissa Gregg</a>, ex-Professor and now a Principal Engineer at Intel Corporation researching the future of work, asked when and how did the vision of the good life become about being more productive? How did “appropriate professional conduct” become equated with being hyper-productive? Under capitalism, Gregg suggests, labor politics weaves social pressure into productivity, leading people to exchange the “athleticism of accomplishment” for happiness. By immersing people in particular atmospheres, especially of anxious competition, which is beneficial to the work environment but not workers, she suggests that “individual immunity is only possible as co-immunity.” </span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">In conversation with Melissa Gregg’s analysis of the monitoring of bodies at work in order to become hyper-productive, <a href="http://www.natashadowschull.org/" target="_blank">Natasha Dow Schüll’s</a> ethnographic analysis of <a href="http://www.livescience.com/topics/wearable-technology/" target="_blank">wearable technology</a> considered the self-monitoring of our bodies. Wearables “record <i>and correct</i> you,” Natasha Dow Schüll warned that we are “transferring our vigilance to computers and self-monitoring to the gadget.” Dow Schüll’s research found that wearables create a “double insecurity” which leaves us unable to trust ourselves. Rather than autonomy Dow Schüll warns we are “outsourcing our responsibility to technology.” </span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><b>Scene 6: Lawrence Grossberg, Jason Read, Jeremy Gilbert – <i>The Feeling and Politics of Labor</i></b></span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><a href="https://unc.academia.edu/LawrenceGrossberg" target="_blank">Lawrence Grossberg</a> cautioned those working in affect studies “in order to understand the affectivity of politics,” not to subtract anything from the analysis but to “add, add, add” layers of complexity. Pointing out that we are living in a time of political pessimism, he also posited that “it doesn’t help to articulate this bad mood unless we understand the assemblages of complexity that creates despair, and we cannot transform it unless we understand it.” In an attempt to create the complexity he called for, Grossberg posited a <a href="http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/ebooks/we_all_want_to_change_the_world.html" target="_blank">“diagramming of affect”</a> which aimed to capture the affective formation of a changing political landscape.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><a href="http://www.jeremygilbert.org/" target="_blank">Jeremy Gilbert</a> spoke about an unexpected affective twist in UK politics characterized by the recent election of <a href="http://www.jeremycorbyn.org.uk/" target="_blank">Jeremy Corbyn</a> as leader of the Labour Party. In distinction from the “disaffected consent” of most people under neoliberalism, the changing mood Corbyn is harnessing offered “an enhancement in the capacity to act,” which may indicate a “weakening of neoliberal hegemony.” This mood from the “death-throes of the left” offers a “collective potency” and “transindividual potential” which might lead to joy in the collective. Gilbert finally called for a theorization of interests rather than identities, claiming that shared interests hold the potential to harness this new mood into a new collectivity that might drive the political struggle. </span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><a href="http://www.unemployednegativity.com/" target="_blank">Jason Read</a> focused on what he called “transindividuality.” Transindividuality Read tells us “is the mutual implication and irreducibility of the individual and the collective.” Framing his analysis through two thinkers that deal with affect and the political, Gilbert Simondon and Benedict Spinoza, Read considered these figures in order to posit a “collective ethics of affect.” Read’s method allows us to understand how political and economic structures can only exist if they are mirrored in the individual and collective at the level of affect and desire. To understand them is to attempt to formulate a “collective ethics of affect” which might make living politically possible. Much of Jason Read’s paper can be read <a href="http://www.unemployednegativity.com/2015/10/affective-reproduction-thinking.html#more" target="_blank">on his blog</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><b>Scene 7: Steven Shaviro, Brian Massumi, Erin Manning – <i>Affecting Others Otherwise</i></b></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Manning, Massumi, Shaviro</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Never have <a href="http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/protista/slimemolds.html" target="_blank">plasmodial slime molds</a> been so entertaining or so controversial. <a href="http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/" target="_blank">Steven Shaviro</a> offered a humorous and provocative venture into speculative realism. He challenged the dogmas of analytical philosophy by extending the question of mind and mentality, proposing a shift from consciousness to sentience. Responsive to their environment, able to make choices, appearing to have emotional tones observable by the rhythmic pulsing of their cytoplasm plasmodial slime molds, Shaviro claims, offer evidence of <i>cognition without brains</i>. Shaviro suggests therefore that sentience rather than human consciousness should be the guiding principle of posthuman analysis. </span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><a href="http://www.brianmassumi.com/" target="_blank">Brian Massumi</a>, with characteristic brilliance and complexity, offered a “new idea of mixity and multiplicity” to create a kind of “additive realism” that might upend the binaries which create the exclusion of many people through a logic of mutual exclusiveness. Addressing the logical problems of binaries and difference which Massumi characterized as a logic of mutual exclusiveness. He offered rather an “affective logic of mutual inclusion.” Rather than a “substance predicate logic” i.e. defining things by the qualities or predicates that it has, Massumi posited the possibility of an “undifferentiated multiplicity” and a mutually inclusive logic. This logic begins with activity rather than characteristics and is therefore more inclusive of both human and nonhuman entities.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;"><a href="http://erinmovement.com/" target="_blank">Erin Manning</a> focused on her work with emerging authors, thinkers, and scholars who are also autistic, for example <a href="http://www.jkp.com/uk/lucy-s-story.html" target="_blank">Lucy Blackman</a>. In her work Blackman describes a sense of “carrying the feeling,” in which the felt experience has an emergent relation which <i>incorporates </i>the environment. Manning suggests that this non-normative experience of relationality might offer insights into how the lines and limits of subjectivity are defined. The boundaries of experience, what the human is, and can be, is often constructed by neurotypically inflected limits, creating a “neurotypical myth.” Thus a politics of neurotypicality emerges. Autistic scholars and artists suggest a feeling of multiplicity that is not so fixed, a “hyper-relationality,” claims Manning, which offers a widening of the field of experience and therefore of the scope of the human.</span>Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12820171915786765926noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-10024028669404934472015-11-16T12:51:00.000-06:002015-11-16T13:17:45.414-06:00Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series: Eleonora Stoppino, "Necessary Beasts: Making Humans in the Middle Ages" Response by Ryan Stock<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
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<i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 21.6px;">[On November 2, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the first installment in its 2015-2016 Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series, "Necessary Beasts: Making Humans in the Middle Ages." The speaker was Eleonora Stopiino, Associate Professor of Italian and Medieval Studies. Opening remarks were given by Martin Camargo (Associate Dean for Humanities and Interdisciplinary Programs), with an introduction by Charles D. Wright (English/Medieval Studies), and a response by Craig Williams (Classics). Below are reflections on this event from graduate student Ryan Stock.]</i></div>
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<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Necessary
Beasts: Making Humans in the Middle Ages<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444; line-height: 17.12px;">Written by Ryan Stock (Geography and Geographic Information Sciences)</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Throughout her lecture, “Necessary Beasts: Making
Humans in the Middle Ages,” Professor of Medieval Studies and Italian, <a href="http://www.medieval.illinois.edu/people/stoppino">Eleonora Stoppino</a>,</span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">enjoined
us to critically engage the human-animal dichotomy by considering the following
questions: 1) <i>How did people think about
animals in the Middle Ages?</i> 2) <i>What
is “necessary” about the animals represented in medieval texts? </i>Her use of the
term “necessary” was inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, who famously declared that
dragons are necessary monsters, much like the unknowable universe, because they
play on the human imagination. Stoppino asserted that our shared humanity has emerged
in the process of differentiating ourselves from the animal kingdom. For
Stoppino, the Middle Ages are particularly useful to understanding the
historical process of the making of humans because the Cartesian dualism
between human and animal took form during that time. Citing representations of the
Black Plague as an exemplary case study for understanding the production of the
human-animal distinction during the Middle Ages, Stoppino focused her
discussion on the ideas of contagion and contamination in Giovanni Boccaccio’s <i>Decameron</i> and a few other medieval texts.
She argued that contagion is such a crucial phenomenon because it catalyzes efforts
to imagine our “humanness” as we confront birth and death. Thus, medieval texts
such as the <i>Decameron</i>, that are emblematic
of the era, provide a window through which we can witness how we finally “became
human.”</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJLv8nOvqgLLypR9Q3wx_29jWAKgAgyWSvuqV-zE_sVjb430YLGt8UrP9h_REcRilWlg29XKeRk4m2i2wMU8z1yyF-nRb4pG8RvbXQLvViu3sgrfNWxyjNMOfUMdkJzEgvwRfrIHqfY1M/s1600/Stoppino1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJLv8nOvqgLLypR9Q3wx_29jWAKgAgyWSvuqV-zE_sVjb430YLGt8UrP9h_REcRilWlg29XKeRk4m2i2wMU8z1yyF-nRb4pG8RvbXQLvViu3sgrfNWxyjNMOfUMdkJzEgvwRfrIHqfY1M/s320/Stoppino1.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Published soon after the Black
Death epidemic of 1348, Boccaccio’s <i>Decameron</i>
is a rich source for its protoscientific understanding of anthropozootic
contagion. Boccaccio’s text provides valuable historical information about
responses to the plague including prophylactic measures used by the authorities
to combat the disease. But the text also diverges in crucial ways from other contemporary
accounts of the disease, most notably in omitting references to <i>mirabilia </i>and in its observations about
methods of transmission of the disease. Whereas his contemporaries drew on
theories of miasma and putrefaction in explaining the causes of the plague, Boccaccio’s
account anticipates lines of inquiry developed in the work of Girolamo
Fracastoro, one of the early and little-known proponents of germ theory, whose
groundbreaking <i>De contagione et
contagiosis morbis</i> appeared nearly two centuries later. In the <i>Decameron</i>, Boccaccio correctly infers that
transmission was related to touch. He depicts pigs playing in the clothing of
infected humans that then became infected with the plague. Even though germ
theory was not widely accepted, Boccaccio seems to understand that tiny
invisible particles carried the plague from the clothing to the pigs. Stoppino
argued that Boccaccio’s novel representation of contagion illuminates one of
the key moments in the demarcation of the boundary between the human and the
nonhuman.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Stoppino
explained that animality occupies center-stage in the <i>Decameron</i> and is associated with contagion in its physical and
moral aspects. In various tales animals serve as the agents of contamination.
Even in the parable of two young lovers, Pasquino and Simona, who die suddenly
and mysteriously after they rub sage leaves on their teeth, what appears to be
a tale of poison is revealed at the end to be a story of contagion. When the
authorities order the sage bush to be burned, they discover hidden beneath it a
toad, the unseen animal vector of contamination. The <i>Decameron</i> also brings out the role reversals produced by the plague
as people become like beasts, while animals assume human-like attributes.
Boccaccio describes in detail the de-humanizing effects of the plague on the
population. At the same time, he shows how animals assume human-like aspects in
response to the devastation of the plague. Finally, Stoppino discussed how for
Boccaccio, contagion was also a moral phenomenon, citing the literal and
figurative uses of the animal bite to depict how physical and moral contagion
is spread. Bringing together all these examples, Stoppino proposed that the
“animal risk” in the <i>Decameron</i> was
the loss of the distinction between the human and the nonhuman. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Beyond
the written word, Stoppino referenced other art works that provide great
insight into human/non-human animal relationships in the Middle Ages. Palermo,
Sicily, boasts the magnificent <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triumph_of_Death">“Trionfo della Morte” (<i>Triumph of Death</i>)</a></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> mural that artfully depicts human mortality. Beside the skeletons that bring
death in a scorched earth landscape, there are numerous animals represented in
this painting as purveyors of death. The two species that Stoppino highlighted
were the toad and the horse.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Stoppino
then expanded her discussion of human-animal relations beyond medieval artists.
According to her, there are “two souls” within the field of Animal Studies: the
hermeneutical path and the activist path. Despite leading us down the former,
it seemed as if Stoppino was tempting us to wander away down the latter,
enjoining us to analyze the power and politics behind the discourses of
human/non-human disease transmission. This seems even more relevant in the wake
of global epidemics today (i.e. swine flu, avian flu, Ebola). Boccaccio’s ideas
link up in important ways to the work of contemporary theorists. In <i>The Animal
That Therefore I Am</i>, Derrida refutes the Cartesian dichotomy between human and
animal. Similarly, Donna Haraway celebrates the “messmates” of bacteria that
cohabit within our bodies in <i>When Species Meet</i>. Giorgio Agamben takes up this issue in <i>The
Open: Man and Animal</i> and calls on us to establish a non-hierarchical ontology
of biopolitics. Animal Studies is indebted to these modern thinkers, though it would
be remiss to neglect the conceptualization of human-nonhuman relations in the
work of Boccaccio. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWb_RllwKnk2xcRze3UXMSw7bydnGGbs_Ac4n381CgESbJ34rM0ttB3fO3jwHt5qqsyhHJxOtm5G5HlITmRn-pTQacc7PmNz1dBzjr1Qnr1P2ZPL8RpeSB0N7NT7RnNh0bsQWAX7giqBY/s1600/Stoppino2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWb_RllwKnk2xcRze3UXMSw7bydnGGbs_Ac4n381CgESbJ34rM0ttB3fO3jwHt5qqsyhHJxOtm5G5HlITmRn-pTQacc7PmNz1dBzjr1Qnr1P2ZPL8RpeSB0N7NT7RnNh0bsQWAX7giqBY/s320/Stoppino2.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://www.classics.illinois.edu/people/cawllms">Professor Craig Williams</a> (Classics) </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #444444;">offered the response to Stoppino’s lecture. Reflecting upon Iroquois and Hopi texts,
Craig Williams encouraged us to bridge the Cartesian human-animal divide. He called
on the audience to consider how these texts focus on our inter-relatedness and welcome
a dialectic between the human and the nonhuman. The fascinating subject matter
elicited a flurry of questions, such as, <i>“To
what degree is contagion a helpful metaphor for other types of transmissions
such as literary transmissions of moralistic fables with animals that have
spread across cultures?” </i>Another
audience member asked, “<i>What about other
fantastic or imagined creatures, i.e. the dragon?”</i> These questions came from a range
of disciplinary perspectives reflecting the importance of the issues raised
by the lecture.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Roman Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00332676942690719201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-46453408114988784622015-11-05T12:17:00.000-06:002015-11-05T12:45:18.329-06:00Author's Roundtable with Michael Javen Fortner: Response by Ronald W. Bailey<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<i style="background-color: white; font-size: 12px; line-height: 21.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[On October 19, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted an Author's Roundtable with Michael Javen Fortner (CUNY); Ronald Bailey (African American Studies) and Margareth Etienne (College of Law) responded. Below is Professor Ronald W. Bailey's response given during the Roundtable.]</span></i></div>
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<b style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;"><i>Black Silent Majority</i> and U.S. Politics</b></div>
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<span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Written by <a href="http://www.afro.illinois.edu/people/rwbailey">Ronald W. Bailey</a> (Head, Department of African American Studies)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505;">I want to join others in welcoming Professor Fortner to the University of Illinois. And I want to thank Susan Koshy and the Unit for Criticism for their timeliness in organizing this panel discussion of Professor Fortner’s book, <i>Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment </i>(Harvard UP, 2014). Coming in the middle of all of the issues facing U.S. society, and coming in the middle of an intensifying discussion of politics and policies as part of the run-up to the 2016 Presidential Elections, and in the middle of an escalating global crisis, this roundtable was a good call. I had read a review of Professor Fortner's book a few days before the invitation to join the panel came and I used the invitation to make sure I would get the book and consider it more fully.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505; line-height: 150%;">I also want to thank Professor Fortner for his work on producing an important book, and a provocative read! There are some ways in which it is deliberately provocative, probably reflecting his own choices and the choices of editors (as in the title). I came of age during some of that period, old enough to remember some key historical events. I remember the 1954 Supreme Court Brown desegregation decision, if not the decision itself, the fact that it pushed White school boards to build new segregated schools in a hope to stem the tide of desegregation. I started the first grade in what was called an "Equalization" school (a reference to the 1896 <i>Plessy v. Ferguson</i> doctrine of "separate but equal"), where, as in many of Georgia’s schools, the separation of races continued until 1970.</span><span style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505; line-height: 150%;">Professor Fortner has done us a service in pointing to important primary sources, some of which will be new to most people, and some of which have not been recently studied by others. These sources create a more accessible and detailed record of the social conditions between the 1950s and 1970s, and show how the dialogue about these conditions especially within sectors of the black community shaped the development of public policies to address the drug crisis in urban communities.</span><span style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #050505; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is not the place for a full book review so let me briefly comment on a few select points within the prescribed time constraints. If you have not read the book, here is the chapter outline and its six main chapters:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505;">Preface</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505;">Introduction: </span><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">"The </span><span style="color: #050505;">Reign of </span><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">Criminal </span><span style="color: #050505;">Terror Must Be Stopped </span><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">Now"</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505;">1. Rights </span><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">and Wreckage in </span><span style="color: #050505;">Postwar Harlem</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">2. </span><span style="color: #050505;">Black Junkies</span><span style="color: #484848;">, </span><span style="color: #050505;">White Do-Gooders</span><span style="color: #313131;">, </span><span style="color: #050505;">and the </span><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">Metcalf-Volker Act of </span><span style="color: #050505;">1962</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505;">3. Reverend Dempsey's </span><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">Crusade </span><span style="color: #050505;">and the Rise </span><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">of </span><span style="color: #050505;">Involuntary </span><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">Commitment </span><span style="color: #050505;">in 1966</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505;">4. Crime, </span><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">Class, </span><span style="color: #050505;">and Conflict in the Ghetto</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505;">5</span><span style="color: #313131;">. </span><span style="color: #050505;">King Heroin </span><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">and </span><span style="color: #050505;">the Development of the Drug </span><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">Laws </span><span style="color: #050505;">in 1973</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">6</span><span style="color: #484848;">. </span><span style="color: #050505;">Race</span><span style="color: #313131;">, </span><span style="color: #050505;">Place</span><span style="color: #313131;">, </span><span style="color: #050505;">and the Tumultuous 1960s </span><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">and </span><span style="color: #050505;">1970s</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">Conclusion: </span><span style="color: #484848;">"</span><span style="color: #050505;">Liberal Sentiment</span><span style="color: #313131;">s </span><span style="color: #050505;">to </span><span style="color: #1c1c1c;">Conservative Acts</span><span style="color: #484848;">"</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #030303;">Fortner's intent in the book is to draw attention to the role of what he calls “black agency” in the development of historical and contemporary public policy regarding crime and punishment, especially as it disproportionately impacted the Black community. As he states in his more recent piece in </span><i style="color: #030303;">The New York Times, </i><span style="color: #030303;">"The Real Roots of '70s Drug Laws" (9/28/2015):</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #030303; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 35.4pt;">Today's disastrously punitive criminal justice system is actually rooted in the </span><span style="color: #030303; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 35.4pt;">postwar social and economic demise of urban black communities. It is, in part, the </span><span style="color: #030303; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 35.4pt;">unintended consequence of African-Americans' own hard-fought battle against the </span><span style="color: #030303; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 35.4pt;">crime and violence inside their own communities. To ignore that history is to </span><span style="color: #030303; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 35.4pt;">disregard the agency of black people and minimize their grievances, and to risk </span><span style="color: #030303; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 35.4pt;">making the same mistake again.</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #030303; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0in;">This has been the main bone of contention regarding Fortner’s analysis: to what extent does it reflect a “blame the victim” assignment of responsibility, while minimizing and letting broader social and political dynamics off the hook.</span><span style="color: #030303; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0in;"> </span><span style="color: #030303; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0in;">Let me address this question by making several points.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #030303; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="color: #030303; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0in;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Income Inequality in Black and White</span></b></span><br />
<span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">While there is considerable attention to class differences in <i>Black Silent Majority</i>, I don't see enough discussion of income inequality <i>within</i> the Black community. This might help explain why we see a divergence of public opinion regarding crime: people with more money, including Black people, might be able to escape the ravages of crime and its impact, and thus may feel differently about crime based on their social class interests, and not be as vocal about crime as others. The median income of Black households did not change much between 2011 (when it was 61% of what White households earned) and 1970 (when it was 60.9% of what White households earned). But during this period there was significant change within the Black community that cannot be captured by statistics on median income. As one analyst seeking to explain the clear mobility of one segment of the Black community during this time explained:</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The
answer to this question is largely that the distribution of income among Black households is very unequal, even more unequal
than the distribution of income among White
households. So many of the prominent Black people who appear to be doing so well are indeed doing well. At
the other end are the Black households that
are doing worse. Between 1970 and 2011, the upper 5% of Black households saw their average (mean) incomes rise from about
$114,000 to about $215,000 (measured in 2011
dollars), while the incomes of Black households in the bottom 20% saw their average income fall from $6,465
to $6,379.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #050505; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He continues: “Among White households, the
pattern of change was similar but not quite so extreme. The average income of the
top 5% of White households rose by 83% in this period, as compared to the 88% increase
for the top Black households--though that elite White group was still taking in
50% per household more than their Black counterparts. The bottom 20% of White households
saw a 13% increase per household in their inflation-adjusted incomes between 1970
and 2011.” <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/18473-black-white-income-differences-whats-happened">www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/18473-black-white-income-differences-whats-happened</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505;">I
want to emphasize this because of the formulation in Chapter 1, which points to
the dramatic progress that Black people made in the decades of the 1950s and 1960: “African Americans in NYC between 1950 and
1960 had not only won important civil rights; they had also begun to enjoy economic
freedom" (p. 41). Fortner lists the
numbers on which this “freedom” is based: an increase in the number of accountants
(220%), engineers (134%), teachers (125%), and doctors (56%). On this basis he suggests that </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">"civil </span><span style="color: #050505;">rights and economic opportunity
erected a ‘consumers republic’"—“an economy, culture, and politics built round
the promises of mass consumption”</span><span style="color: #2d2d2d;"> in the ghetto (p. 43).</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My
main point here is that this is not the whole picture. Income differences among sectors of the
population are a manifestation of class conflict, but it is not the most
decisive conflict that shapes the society. I say this because if this is not understood,
we don’t end up with a view of Nelson Rockefeller and the Rockefeller drug laws
that will allow intelligent action in the coming decades.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>How Do We Understand Class?</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505;">Related
to the above, and more important, is a broader discussion of how we understand
“class.” There are generally two approaches
to class that are important to this discussion, especially since Professor Fortner
is concerned about what he titles in Chapter 4, "Crime, Class, and Conflict
</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">in </span><span style="color: #050505;">the Ghetto."</span> <span style="color: #050505;">One approach to class is that it is determined by
stratification-- either economic stratification (e.g., educational achievement,
income) or social stratification (based on occupational status or other factors,
including skin color within Black communities in an earlier period of U.S.
history). The second approach would be associated
with Marxist political economy, based not on how much money you make but on whether
or not your wealth—not just your wages—derives from your ownership of the means
of producing wealth in the economy—factories, banks, etc. This view would posit what classical
political economists (e.g., Adam Smith, Karl Marx) labeled a "Labor Theory
of Value" which focused on the labor of working people as the source of surplus
over and beyond wages, and constitute funds that are distributed as profits, interest,
rent, etc.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #2d2d2d;">How
do we understand Nelson Rockefeller, a man whose public policy interests figure
so prominently in <i>Black Silent Majority</i>? My introduction to </span><span style="color: #050505;">Governor Nelson Rockefeller
is perhaps different from that of many others.
As a kid growing up in rural Southeastern Georgia in the 1950s, I was a big
fan of a Sunday news show, which I think was “Meet the Press,” and is now known
as the longest-running television show in history. It was brought to you by Exxon, though it
might have been called Standard Oil in those days. Its commercial stated: “If a map of the world
was based on where the oil supply is located, it would look like this.” In the image, the Middle East would get real
large and the rest of the world would shrink.
“But if a map of the world was based on where the oil was used, it would
look like this.” In the image, the U.S
and Western Europe would get real large and the rest of the world would shrink.
“Exxon’s job is to get the oil from there to here!” This was perhaps my first lesson in
geo-politics and my first introduction to what I would later learn was called
colonialism and imperialism.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505;">It
was later on that I learned that the Standard Oil/Exxon empire was owned by the
Rockefeller family and made up one of the largest personal fortunes in the
world. And it was even later that I
learned that Nelson Rockefeller was one of the guardians of Rockefeller
political and economic interests and played a special role in state and
national politics. He was the 49th Governor of New York
(1959-1973); sought the Republican nomination for President in 1960, 1964, and 1968; and served as the 41st Vice President of
the United States (1974-1977) under President
Gerald
Ford. He chose not to run with Ford in 1976, in
part because his views were rejected by the mass base of the party. Rockefeller was described as "liberal</span><span style="color: #2d2d2d;">, </span><span style="color: #050505;">progressive, or moderate."
My point here is that Nelson Rockefeller
was desperately interested in developing policies that would address the deepening
economic, political, and social crisis that the U.S. was facing both here and
abroad. This is the context of his role
in the development of policies regarding mass incarceration, on the one hand,
and his attempt to find an approach that would address what many saw as the
root cause of this crisis in broader social dynamics that included the need for
rehabilitation of offenders.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0in; mso-line-break-override: restrictions; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0in; mso-line-break-override: restrictions; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505;">I would summarize Fortner's discussion as seeking to understand the relationship between class position and economic conditions, ideological dynamics, and policy choices.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0in; mso-line-break-override: restrictions; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #050505;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0in; mso-line-break-override: restrictions; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Fortner
appears to conclude that it is the ideological dynamics that are central, and not
the economic conditions of these communities, nor their struggle to shape and
control public policies which are generally dominated by elites. And this control
is not just what is battled out in state legislatures or at the local level. It is also a function of who controls what makes
it onto the agenda for public discussion and consideration. And who has access to the funding which can be
used to entice, if not bribe public officials, and even the general public to
support one policy or another. Any
lingering doubt about how money can influence, indeed corrupt, the public
policy process and politics should have been answered with the impact of the
Supreme Court decision in Citizens United.
The concentration of wealth is increasing, and the impact of wealth in
the public arena is escalating.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0in; mso-line-break-override: restrictions; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0in; mso-line-break-override: restrictions; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I think
this approach to understanding the development of public policy has to be extended
to how we understand and deploy history in our analyses. Do our paradigms cover all of the key periods
in our history, especially the periods of the slave(ry) trade, the rural
period, and the urban period? I worry about
the approach in Fortner’s book because there has never been a period in which “Black
agency” has not contested the powers that dominate the society. There has never been a period where the public
policy outcome did not respond in some way to this contestation—to oppose it,
to support it, or even to co-opt it. And
despite this contestation or challenge, there are many examples where the final
shape of the policy outcomes did not serve the best interest of the Black community. Governor Rockefeller’s prison reforms are a
good example. We have not yet developed
a theory of how to successfully combat co-optation and achieve the desired
results which are the goals of Black agency.
I will leave it for others to complete the many examples from history. My main point is not that Black agency has
been lacking; it is more the fact that scholars and other analysts don’t study
it closely enough and make it central in our efforts to convey the full
picture.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0in; mso-line-break-override: restrictions; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Implications for Scholarship and Activism</b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0in; mso-line-break-override: restrictions; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In closing, let me suggest several points for further consideration in light of Professor Fortner's book:</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
</div>
<ol>
<li><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="color: #030303;">First,
we need to pay careful attention to sharpening our understanding of the nature of
capitalism and its impact on Black communities.
This is an interesting period when there is open discussion about
whether capitalism can survive, with evidence from the Pew polls and other
opinion surveys showing support for socialism, and a “democratic socialist”
mounting a credible campaign for the U.S. presidency. The mass media should not be the sole or the
main source we use to develop our understanding of these issues, especially
when history says we can expect the kind of red-baiting and accusations of
un-American, foreign communism to escalate and shape the public
discussion. Especially important is
Black intellectual history: what did scholars such as Ralph Bunche and others
say about these concerns? </span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #030303; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0in;">It is essential that we revisit the long
discussion in the Black community regarding “reform and revolution,” what I
think Malcolm X was getting at when he titled one of his most important
speeches as the choice between “the ballot and the bullet.”</span><span style="color: #030303; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0in;"> </span><span style="color: #030303; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0in;">What kinds of reforms are needed to address a
whole range of issues, including crime, social decay, and economic
underdevelopment? We need to be clearer on what it means when Bernie Sanders
and others say that "people want a revolution!" What does this mean? How
will it be brought about? How does it differ from what earlier movements and
individuals attempted over the decades, including during the 1930s and the
1960s?</span></span><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 42.3pt; mso-line-break-override: restrictions; punctuation-wrap: simple; tab-stops: 24.5pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</li>
<li><span style="color: #030303; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">How
do we understand the “Linked Fate Lens" analysis which is central in
Michael C. Dawson's <i>Behind the Mule</i>: <i>Race and Class in African American Politics?
</i> I am concerned about the view in <i>Black Silent Majority</i> that people
repudiated this approach, both then and now.
I grew up in a family and in a
supportive Black community in which people firmly believed, as many did in
other communities, that Black people had a common destiny that required
collective unity: let us all march and march on for each other until victory is
won! Politically, my generation tried to
adhere to the "Unity without Uniformity" concept of Black community.
We need to understand what this means in 2015 and beyond, and how it must be transformed
to rally people to some degree of united action on a list of concerns that we can
agree upon. As I have tried to point
out, it is the deepening of social class divisions within the Black community
that has done as much to hamper this possibility as much as anything else.</span></span></li>
</ol>
<div>
<span style="color: #030303;"><span style="line-height: 24px;"><b>Conclusion</b></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #030303;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Regardless
of what our ideological preferences are, it is important to encourage deeper
study of these issues and I applaud Professor Fortner for provoking more
discussions of these questions. What do we
need to study? What do we think we
know? What do we feel ought to be done? One
of the criticisms of the conservatives on the “right” is that the “left” is so ideologically
narrow that it does not want our students to understand and think critically about
everything! And to some extent and for some that may be true. But it is perhaps no more true for the left than
for conservatives.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #030303;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #030303;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To have an accredited interdisciplinary curriculum, NCBS required three areas of scholarship as essential: (a) historical studies, (b) cultural studies and (c) social and behavioral studies. We have fared well with the first, reasonably well with the second, but today many Black Studies programs need to revisit the amount of attention we pay to the third: social and behavioral studies (including public policy). (See <a href="http://j.b5z.net/i/u/2146341/f/Model_Curriculum007.pdf">http://j.b5z.net/i/u/2146341/f/Model_Curriculum007.pdf</a>; Introduction to African American Studies at <a href="http://www.eblackstudies.org/intro">www.eblackstudies.org/intro</a> applies this framework).</span></span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #030303;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The
term "silent majority" has a particular and important history in political
discussions over the last several decades.
Generally it referred to the large majority of citizens in the 1960s who
were not a part of the very vocal protests over both domestic and international
policies. I wonder if the problem is with
the “Black silent majority” as a group, or with the failure of generations of historians
and social scientists over the past fifty years to be more attuned to the sentiments
of the masses of Black people, which is a concern at the heart of <i>Black Silent Majority</i>. Recording this sentiment
in great detail is a key contribution of the book. It remains to be seen what we make of
Professor Fortner’s argument, and how we deepen and probe its content and meaning,
and what lessons we come away with, all especially important in this era of mass
movement around Black Lives Matter/All Lives Matter.</span></span></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12820171915786765926noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-7492388972142702822015-10-27T12:51:00.000-05:002015-10-28T12:02:02.223-05:00Author's Roundtable with Michael Javen Fortner; Response by Estibalitz Ezkerra Vegas<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="color: #20124d;">[On October 19, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted an Author's Roundtable with Michael Javen Fortner (CUNY); Ronald Bailey (African American Studies) and Margareth Etienne (College of Law) responded. Below are reflections on the event from graduate student Estibalitz Ezkerra Vegas.]</span></i></div>
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<b><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></b></div>
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Giving Voice to the Silent Majority and Its Limits</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Written by Estibalitz Ezkerra Vegas (Comparative & World
Literature)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Michael Javen Fortner’s <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674743991"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug
Laws and the Politics of Punishment</i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
</i>(Harvard UP, 2015) analyzes the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>involvement
of Harlem’s black working- and middle-class community<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>shaping
Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s drug laws in the 1970s. Despite the book’s title,
the majority of black men and women were not silent at that time, though their testimony
hasn’t been taken into account up to this point. Fortner’s provocative argument
has generated vigorous debate <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>some
of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it critical and “unfounded,” according
to the author. He began his presentation at the Author’s Roundtable, organized
by the Unit for Criticism, by explaining the context from which the book emerged in
order to clarify some<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>aspects of the
argument.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFQlYFyuVA3uVtrEbv9nYGNickjVc5Plt2LkKvHJPANyGgeOBwb8YXWLyWesx7ivaPl4ISXe6LR3vztAk3nHt4mvh1lCRi3GXCcGmdbRQWrMtrYeRIhgljvjTHEiVJfA3LA8jkFqKG0Q8B/s1600/Fortner.Web.Small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></a><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFQlYFyuVA3uVtrEbv9nYGNickjVc5Plt2LkKvHJPANyGgeOBwb8YXWLyWesx7ivaPl4ISXe6LR3vztAk3nHt4mvh1lCRi3GXCcGmdbRQWrMtrYeRIhgljvjTHEiVJfA3LA8jkFqKG0Q8B/s1600/Fortner.Web.Small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFQlYFyuVA3uVtrEbv9nYGNickjVc5Plt2LkKvHJPANyGgeOBwb8YXWLyWesx7ivaPl4ISXe6LR3vztAk3nHt4mvh1lCRi3GXCcGmdbRQWrMtrYeRIhgljvjTHEiVJfA3LA8jkFqKG0Q8B/s320/Fortner.Web.Small.jpg" width="247" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fortner explained that there is a personal dimension to the
book, as one of his brothers was stabbed to death when he was young and another
brother is in prison. He and his family are victims of crime and of the criminal justice system. The second aspect that pushed him to write about
the context from which the Rockefeller Drug Laws emerged was the contrast
between the memories of his parents’ more positive image of the former governor
and the governor's current reputation as the infamous founder of mass incarceration. At
home Rockefeller was usually referred to as a noble man, and Fortner was
curious about where this sentiment came from. He was also prompted to write the
book because of the uncritical reactions of some of his friends during the
confrontations between the Black Lives Matter protesters and the police after
various episodes of police brutality. To Fortner’s surprise, one of them posted
on social media in response to recent events in Chicago that “it’s time to
bring in the National Guard.” The recourse to aggressive policing to resolve a
crisis, particularly from individuals who espouse radical critiques of police
brutality, struck him as contradictory and telling. He also felt compelled to
write because of the partial picture of the history of the drug laws provided
by widely publicized publications such as <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_New_Jim_Crow.html?id=reDzBZ3pXqsC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the
Age of Colorblindness</i></a> (2010) by Michelle Alexander. Alexander does not take
into account the voices and stories of those who have mobilized against crime
in the black community. For that same reason, whereas he agrees with Alexander that
the system of mass incarceration has created and perpetuated an incarcerated
class, he finds the book’s functionalist theory of the durability of white
supremacy faulty. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thus, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Silent
Majority </i>looks at 1948-1973 New York in an attempt to elucidate what the
Black population thought about crime and violence, why and how they
mobilized against it. At that time there was a robust anti-crime movement,
predominantly middle-class, that mobilized on behalf of punitive policies: life
without parole, the death penalty, and more police presence in the streets.
While they acknowledged structural causes for crime, they saw the
need for greater security and order to deal with the havoc drugs had wreaked on
their neighborhoods. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fortner was careful to note that these anti-crime movements
need to be understood vis-à-vis the conjuncture of the political situation: how
the suffering of black people in Harlem was used and exploited for political
purposes by the Governor’s campaign, and the relation between the responses of
working- and middle-class blacks and the development of institutions at this
particular time. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.afro.illinois.edu/people/rwbailey">Ron
Bailey</a> (African American Studies) and <a href="https://www.law.illinois.edu/faculty/profile/margarethetienne">Margareth
Etienne</a> (College of Law), the two respondents in the Author’s Roundtable
the Unit for Criticism hosted on October 19, concurred that Fortner’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Silent Majority </i>is a “provocative”
book that has ignited conversations inside and outside the academy. Bailey
praised the “archaeological work” behind the making of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Silent Majority</i> which points to the shortcomings of African American
Studies scholarship these days. Bailey argued that recently the field has
tended to offer students mostly humanities-oriented approaches to the African
American experience, whereas sociological approaches that made Kenneth B.
Clark’s <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=AbTsBSRMZB0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power</i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>(1989) such an important contribution
to the field have been largely set aside. However, he argued that Fortner’s
book has limits regarding how African American communities at that
time (between the 1950s and the 1970s) are represented. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to Bailey,
the book doesn’t put enough emphasis on income inequality inside these
communities, something he considered key in shaping their interests. By the
same token it would be a mistake to think that Rockefeller’s ego influenced
his political maneuvers and policy-making. Rather, both should be understood from
a Marxist perspective: Rockefeller was a member of the capitalist elite, those
who own the means of production, and he acted accordingly. “It is not a
mystery,” Bailey continued, “that the African American middle class wanted to
get rid of crime. How we interpret this attitude in the midst of policy making
and the impact of capitalism is what matters.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Etienne, on the other hand, focused on the debate on
sentencing and the reality of the constrained choices facing the black
community in Harlem. She said that we need to understand Harlem at that time,
how from being a Mecca for the African American diaspora, “the closest we can
get to the capital of Black America,” it turned into an unsafe area from the
1950s to the 1970s, plagued by drugs, crime, and poverty. The African American
community was afraid of losing what they had and their desperation was
political and personal, with each factor influencing the other. <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">The choice they made in supporting
punitive laws grew out of that desperation and should be understood in the context of their limited
and constrained choices.</span> </span>Etienne explained that we tend to think about
criminal justice and its outcomes as a choice between rehabilitation and
punishment. However, this dichotomy of choice is not necessarily applicable to the
situation the black community found itself in at that time. Unlike alcoholism
or other social ills, drugs were a new threat: “the impact of dope, heroin,
cocaine, was not a problem they had encountered and dealt with before.” The
spread of drugs coincided with an era of prison reform in the country that
promoted rehabilitation, “but by the 1970s the notion of rehabilitation as a
choice evaporated as a political and also a social matter.” Thus, according to
Etienne, the choices for the Black “silent majority” were already “cut short.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In response to his respondents’ comments, Fortner said that
his book traces how Rockefeller’s policies changed over time based on his shifting
political interests, and how crime created a context that he exploited for
political purposes. The goal of the book is to showcase voices that we haven’t
encountered yet when analyzing the factors that contributed to the creation of
the current prison system. “It is a book on black agency,” he emphasized. Yet,
as Etienne pointed out, that’s a tricky business. On the one hand, claiming
that the “Black silent majority” was not silent but spoke loud at that time suggests
that African Americans had a means to contribute to and participate in policy
making; yet it is clear that didn’t happen. On the other hand, to argue that
they just happened to be there and that the dominant political forces co-opted
their voices is to deny their agency. Thus, according to Etienne, it all ties
back to whether or not African American experiences are representative of and
represented in legal discourse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bailey shared his concerns about whether the book offers a
fair portrayal of the “thickness of the moment,” with so many movements and
protests happening in other parts of the country that did not necessarily echo
the sentiments of the community represented in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Silent Majority</i>. James Kilgore added that many things were
going on in those days, and that too much emphasis on one group could offer a
distorted picture of the struggles back then. <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">A member of the audience pointed out the risks of
misappropriating and misinterpreting the thickness of the affect evinced by the people represented in Fortner’s book, who
were enduring very difficult circumstances.</span> </span>Emotionally charged statements
such as “Kill the Pushers,” a response attributed to the mother of a teenager
who died of a drug overdose, need to be read carefully as evidence. Bailey added
that what people thought they were doing is also crucial in understanding the
situation and its outcomes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Towards the end of the evening Kilgore asked Fortner what lessons are to be learned for Black Lives Matter. Fortner responded that
traditional black middle class leadership should not be trusted as they have
their own economic interests that do not necessarily converge with<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>anti-racism. He encouraged the movement to
constitute a new leadership and to seek alliances with white liberals and other
groups who share the same concerns. Bailey added that it shouldn’t be an
“either / or” proposition. He mentioned a banner with the slogan “Blue Lives
Matter” that he encountered during a visit to Georgia, and pointed out how misleading
it is to think the choice is between black people’s or police officers’
lives. He advocated for reaching out to the “good people,” including cops, who
are aware of the problems effecting the country in general and the African
American population in particular.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I share some of the concerns both respondents and some of
the members of the audience mentioned throughout the evening with regards to
Fortner’s book. However, although the problems of the prison system in the US were
acknowledged and its sources were more or less established, I felt that the
structures that make larger and smaller scale, intra- and trans-national punitive
and violent mechanisms possible were left unquestioned. Maximum security
prisons, the militarization of the police, the high esteem many people have for
the army, the policing and surveillance of citizens by state agencies but also
by citizens themselves, are all a reflection of a country obsessed with
security. A security, we are told, whose sole guarantor is the state, and the
police the body to <i>protect</i> and <i>enforce</i> it, even against the very
citizens the state is supposed to protect in the first place. (I find quite
amusing the liberal dream that the police can be rehabilitated, but I’m aware
of its roots and routes.) Let us be clear—violence is constitutive to the
state, and the state keeps its business running through the “legal” use of
violence in its varied manifestations. Thus, it is not enough to raise our
concerns against the implications of this or that law. We need to understand the
histories of violence in this country, and their afterlives in all their
current ramifications and implications. My students at Danville Correctional
Center, where I teach as part of the <a href="http://www.educationjustice.net/home/">Education Justice Project</a>, are
pretty much aware of it. </span></div>
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Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12820171915786765926noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-79200452681643460432015-04-22T16:11:00.000-05:002015-04-22T16:17:58.843-05:00Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series: Jodi Byrd, "The Beast of America: Sovereignty and the Anarchy of Objects" Response by Kevin Hamilton<span style="color: #333333;">
<i>[On April 22, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the latest installment in its 2014-2015 Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series, "The Beast of America: Sovereignty and the Anarchy of Objects." The speaker was Jodi Byrd, Associate Professor of English, American Indian Studies, and Gender & Women's Studies. Below Professor Kevin Hamilton's (New Media) response to the lecture.]</i><br />
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<b>Playing the "State of Injury"</b>
<br />Written by <a href="http://www.art.illinois.edu/people/kham/">Kevin Hamilton</a> (New Media)<br />
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I am thankful for many things about Jodi’s paper, and this opportunity to discuss it, but I want to focus on just two in my comments here. One is somewhat disciplinary, the other more institutional. Both concern the rather urgent question of how to play in a way that casts light on the conditions that make play possible.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHiXO17en7NtJAW8OnVkLrStXhq66KHc0nZ2jk5o45iQbu-229anVQpiRWEpm1RA2tiyHycB5-Yn_C2llnLzTS6_DIz1woh5RZO1S_JWuvcBTWFyqWtYgtctYaXHQ8qFRX6RYzj0cx-ug/s1600/Columbia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHiXO17en7NtJAW8OnVkLrStXhq66KHc0nZ2jk5o45iQbu-229anVQpiRWEpm1RA2tiyHycB5-Yn_C2llnLzTS6_DIz1woh5RZO1S_JWuvcBTWFyqWtYgtctYaXHQ8qFRX6RYzj0cx-ug/s1600/Columbia.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Bioshock Infinite</i>'s Columbia</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #333333;">On the disciplinary front, I see in Jodi’s paper a welcome intervention into technology and software studies, a field that at times seems overly-focused on the task of uncovering and translating obscure or opaque technological processes. Through taking on both the examination of a particular sociotechnical object – that of the game <i><a href="https://www.bioshockinfinite.com/?RET=&ag=true">Bioshock Infinite</a></i> – and a critique of a popular critical frame for examination of such objects – that of <a href="http://bogost.com/writing/blog/what_is_objectoriented_ontolog/">Object Oriented Ontology</a> – Jodi has made here a crucial contribution to a growing and vibrant field. I will return to this in a few moments. </span><br />
<span style="color: #333333;">But first I want to express some thanks for how this paper and its presentation here addresses an institutional question – namely, the question of what we are to do when critique, a primary tool for most of us as scholars, teachers and persons, not only meets with lack of response, but is characterized as injury.</span><br />
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I speak here of the space Jodi’s paper launches from - a set of conditions enacted in multiple instances across online and physical worlds in which state power "enacts a state of injury that feeds on itself to simultaneously hail the necessity of its own existence to adjudicate that injury on the one hand and to hermetically seal off critiques of structural injustice as injurious in and of themselves." I see this as a kind of loop, and I think Jodi does too, aided in part by <i>Bioshock Infinite</i>’s own looped narrative.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span class="fullpost">This description certainly captures the loop I've walked around puzzling about here at Illinois for some time - both about our campus' specific conflicts and the larger white hegemonies on which they depend. This "state of injury," and its attendant rendering of critique as source of such injury, in many ways fulfills Audrey Lorde's <a href="http://collectiveliberation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Lorde_The_Masters_Tools.pdf">admonition about the Master's Tools</a>. It turns out that not only will they not do to dismantle the Master's House, but the Master incorporates even their misuse by revolutionaries into his own imperial regime. There is no salvation in mere tactics.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span class="fullpost">We should not be surprised at this utter lack of creativity on the part of power, given that no order of death can originate life. But still, this seeming futility stymies, stifles, and suffocates. It sucks out life through the rage and hopelessness it leaves behind. And in the case of the particular spaces Jodi is describing, its injury stems from how it also deflects or defers address of other, older aggressions. When historical settler colonial violence barely registers as a reality, where are one's hopes to go for address of the settler colonial present? </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span class="fullpost">I've thought all year that more answers or escapes from the loop of state claims to injury must lie waiting in our own scholarship, our strengths as not only a critical community but an originary, creative one. Jodi's paper finally answers this for me by doing the necessary work of critique, but not stopping there. She moves past critique to name the conditions that make this loop possible, and manifesting through her own performance a way out. This research, from Jodi’s playthrough of <i>Bioshock Infinite</i> through the act of inscription through which she thought about it, to her delivery of that inscription into this space and this community, constitutes a performative act of seeing, writing, and speaking, an act of play itself. As such, it activates a space that in recent times has seemed to many of us especially scripted, deathly, airless and sealed.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span class="fullpost">How did she do this? First, through approaching critique through inhabitation – she played the game, subjected her own senses and subjectivity to it. Because her scholarship never lets go of the critical question of what is revealed through the presence and subjectivities of her particular body, Jodi’s inhabitation also called out the game’s hidden dependencies, the bodies missing or present that shore up narratives and contribute to the production of affect necessary to propel the shooter on his mission. But most importantly for me, Jodi then thought through this process while holding other worlds present and simultaneous with that of Columbia and <i>Bioshock</i>’s gamespace. Like you, no doubt, I too couldn’t help but compare Columbia to this campus, given their common heritage in Chicago but also their common loops of state-claims of injury. If as a player Jodi was always both herself and Booker, the space she played through the performance of this research was always both Columbia and Illinois.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span class="fullpost">As a result, the paper constructs and enacts critique on other terms than those expected by the discipline or the loop of state injury claims. And to explain what I mean by this, I want to turn back to this paper’s contributions to the emerging fields of software studies and gaming critique.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333;"><span class="fullpost">The paper’s path here begins in Jodi’s critique of "the material turn" as manifest in Object Oriented Ontology. If much OOO seeks to grant agency to the non-human, it does so, at least in Jodi's analysis (and one I share), while leaving intact an understanding of difference and definition that precludes any possibility of a "<a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/Vibrant-Matter/">vibrant matter</a>." </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span class="fullpost"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVWcCbUDqxE0SCEo5r-XQtYOHi7g29I65EjN9r8p4jjtgLMVsVtBKaf-DCvQgp8jXU0AsD2Gd-Mthbjlu0plEVF8Q-Sodp-9jgMhPz40-sK84pADdc1TrwUaRxggZGj167pgjzHwfPAAk/s1600/Byrd+Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVWcCbUDqxE0SCEo5r-XQtYOHi7g29I65EjN9r8p4jjtgLMVsVtBKaf-DCvQgp8jXU0AsD2Gd-Mthbjlu0plEVF8Q-Sodp-9jgMhPz40-sK84pADdc1TrwUaRxggZGj167pgjzHwfPAAk/s320/Byrd+Poster.jpg" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #333333;"><span class="fullpost">In OOO - at least as I understand it - the rabbit is never defined by the wolf that eats it, nor the wolf by the rabbit. Eating rabbits is just an inherited action of the abstract class "wolf," which comes with properties like sharp eyes and sharp teeth. The grass interacts with the sun but remains separate from it, joined by actions, but not by atoms. Contrast this with, for example, the materiality of islands in the work of <a href="http://savageminds.org/wp-content/image-upload/our-sea-of-islands-epeli-hauofa.pdf">Epeli Hau'ofa</a> (which I learned about through the work of Jodi's colleague <a href="http://www.anthro.illinois.edu/people/vmdiaz">Vince Diaz</a> (Anthropology/American Indian Studies/Asian American Studies/History)). Islands here are not isolated objects inheriting properties from an abstract class called "island," but collections of material in constant flux, moving through volcanic flow, continental drift, tidal surge and the gullets of seabirds from one place to another. No island ever ends or begins. I might also think here of Medieval European or Arabic approaches to light, which in different forms imagined the sun as traveling as "corpuscles" of matter and joining with those of your eye to constitute sight.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span class="fullpost">OOO, which like any area of discourse I readily admit is a space of argument and far from unitary, might still be characterized as an imagining of the world composed of interactions and relationships between highly differentiated and autonomous objects. Action into this space must take place in ways that leave the objects themselves intact - they join as assemblages only by the bonds of their interrelated actions. In fact, in an Object-Oriented frame, it is not only unnecessary to know anything about the human or non-human object with which one is interacting; it is inefficient to do so. To act with agency within such a space is to act on knowledge not of an object, but of its actions, and the web of conditions that call up these actions in scripted form. Mastery and power consists of efficiently learning and storing how these actions manifest as a result of contingent processes and properties. To command an object-oriented world is to enact and know elaborate algorithms. But objects themselves have no standing - they follow along, dragged by the net of orchestrated (or accidental) programs of actions. Once they are set in motion, the objects themselves are largely missing from OOO, and life becomes a race to uncover, map, and wield the algorithms of control.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span class="fullpost">Jodi brings OOO to the picture here, as I understand it, not as a definitively descriptive analysis of either <i>Bioshock Infinite</i>'s gameplay nor the "state of injury" that Columbia’s political narrative manifests. She's not pulling back a curtain to critically reveal the "real" politics of OOO or of Columbia, any more than Elizabeth's "tears" in Columbia reveal a more real state of that city. Rather, taking advantage of the fact that <i>Bioshock </i>itself likely relies on an object-oriented code structure, Jodi calls our attention to a kind of rhyme or homology between OOO's missing objects, Columbia's missing Indians, and the missing victims within contemporary "states of injury." She wields critique not as a form of revelation, nor as defeat of a script through mapping its total contours. Instead, she casts the conditions of play into light through stubborn insistence on the copresence of worlds.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span class="fullpost">In a state where power relies on mastery of operations among a flat hierarchy of objects, it becomes all the more important that critique not start and end with mere description of operations. If as critics in the face of violent systems, we are content with the staging of heroic unveiling of what goes on inside hegemony’s black boxes, our protests will always be subsumed within hegemony’s logics. The critic stepping outside a system to critically account for its effects and affects will likely find herself inside another system. The power of the “state of injury” relies on an expectation that critique ends with mere explication, a description of previously invisible processes that leave the objects on which they depend unseen.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span class="fullpost">Jodi’s work presented here today represents another approach. Her conclusions about <i>Bioshock Infiinte</i>, OOO, and the “states of injury” on which contemporary settler colonialism depends are the result not of her mapping a state of operations, but of her inhabiting a world of matter, reporting for us for how it acts on her, and acting back. Jodi did great work on our behalf by simply playing this game, getting her senses and reflexes into the flow of a large-scale technosocial operation. By playing <i>Bioshock Infinite</i> she let it into conversation with her other experiences, and physically invited others in as well, through last week’s gaming sessions at the Unit.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span class="fullpost">Though we need video game criticism and software studies at this institution, what we need more are scholars who are not only willing to get themselves emeshed and enmired in such systems as these, but who can do so from a perspective of heightened attention to the external conditions and bodies that make these experiences possible. And we need them to be supported, every day, through a plenitude of tangible resources – fulfilled hires, reliable spaces, brilliant students, and importantly, statements of support that go beyond mere operations to effect what bodies and what stories we see and hear in our everyday spaces.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span class="fullpost">Seeing the invisible objects and bodies on which our institution’s operations depend will require the disciplined cultivation of our senses – in other words, it will require play. In light of the highly proscribed nature of speech as a domain to do this work of late, perhaps play will offer a space where we can work more mindful of the conditions on which our operations depend. If so, we have a lot of playing to do. So let’s get to work. </span></span><br />
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</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1