Mushin-Sho

During a very helpful and wonderful conversation with Michael, I shared with him my project thoughts thus far, which he was able to subsume within a psychoanalytic framework. I was really grateful for this moment because it gave way to so many other explosions.

First, a quick project thought: Understanding the traumatic virtuositic performance of the crime boss as the Freudian ego-ideal, perhaps, can be folded into an understanding of labor; ego-ideal as labor. How is this different from the General Freud uses as an example? Too tired to think through at the moment.

The author of a recent reading found great pleasure in being characterized as a 19th century thinker. I’m not sure how I feel about the same characterization, but I’ve realized that my production paralysis is rooted in a very 19th century desire to encompass the breadth of existence in any given analysis. Again, Michael was helpful in realizing this. He helped me remember that my task for the routine ten-minute presentation is very narrow; open up moments in the text that you think are interesting and contribute to the larger course discourse. OK, I can do that.

The pressure I put on this particular presentation is reflective of the kind of pressure projects are subject to, which in turn is paralyzing. Somehow, making sharp decisive interventions that are very particular, at least initially, gave way to attempting to reshape academia at every turn. I exaggerate but not much.

All of this led me to a simple breaking point: get back to the basics. Allow me to use my two favorite physical metaphors, hockey and martial arts. Hockey; need to stop worrying about making the beautiful highlight reel play and get back to playing hardnosed, chippy, grinding hockey. Martial arts; my mind is on the jump spinning back kick that will finishing the gorgeous 10 step combination when I haven’t even landed the first strike.

To this end, I’ve decided to add to my ‘March initiative’ a very simple goal, practice everyday. I started with the convert’s zeal today and as I walk out of our workout/ practice space my roommate asks,

“Whoa, you all right?!”
“Yeah, why?”
“You came out of there like you just devastated three blondes…”

World, I’d like you to meet the infinitely creative rhetorician that is my roommate.

Here is the link to the article that got me thinking of a new project.

Potential paper title: The affective power of idiocy or, regurgitation that makes you vomit.

Here is one notable quotable moment:

While he was governor, Mr. Bush befriended a number of prosperous Indian doctors and businessmen, all Republicans, who captivated him as embodiments of the American dream and contributed handsomely to his campaigns.

One of them was Durga Agrawal, the founder of a Houston-based company, Piping Technology and Products, who was born 60 years ago in a village in central India without electricity or a water supply. Mr. Agrawal went to high school 14 miles away and returned home, by bicycle, only every three or four months. He went from there to the University of Delhi and then to the University of Houston for master’s and doctorate degrees in industrial engineering.

“I really admire the professors in this country,” Mr. Agrawal said in a telephone interview on Friday. “We foreigners come, and they pour their hearts, souls and minds into us, and we do not speak like them, but they educate us.”

This is probably just some of that hostility I mentioned earlier; otherwise I might have an actual response to this. Maybe. However, the possibility does exist that Mr. Agrawal’s comment is, in fact, simply the regurgitation of neo-con-imperialist rhetoric on benevolent mastership; this expectoration is powerful enough to actually inhibit certain brain functions such as thought.

A wave of food coma is rising and since coffee has failed to solve the problem, I’m going to take a moment to write in order to wake myself up. I offer a few observations:

Life sucks without headphones. Mine broke and I am awaiting a new pair, eagerly anticipating the noise cancelling seal and deep bass tones they are lauded for. In the undergraduate library, which for some inexplicable reason has two giant holes strategically placed to make it incredibly loud, I am forced to overhear teenybopper conversations that are both incredibly annoying and potentially fascinating as possible primary material. The materiality and flux of language these practitioners express is unrivaled save those interventions made by RZA and ODB; gotta love the Wu.

Stepping into the mezzanine of my psyche, I notice definite affective influences from watching the whole second season of The Wire and the many Olympic hockey games. These two normally unrelated events have evoked a level of aggression that I haven’t felt in quite some time. Gangster talk from the HBO show and hard competitive nationalism form the hockey games, I think, have contributed to this. This aggressiveness also manifests itself in more productive (positive) terms as inner drive to rock my semester’s projects.

Interestingly, this affords me an occasion to mention briefly a need I have recently felt for a physical metaphor in my life. Hockey was the first. Playing with friends and on teams was a venue in which to vent any undesired energy while also developing other energies. For instance, I could feel very tired and lethargic but be entirely motivated to play a big game with a lot of intensity, which in turn would mean a sharper more energetic attitude the next day. Martial arts was the next physical metaphor. The environment demanded a great deal of concentration, respect, intensity and in my particular role as student-instructor, enthusiasm and sensitivity. Again, lethargic days were quickly vanquished under the pressure of a demanding discipline that left one physically drained but emotionally recharged. But why call them metaphors rather than physical disciplines/ venues?

I found that these practices, especially martial arts, are extremely inspiring as frameworks, as comparative arenas where success and adversity become microcosmic examples of negotiating existence, the Real.

Know what would be really fun right now?

Bumping RZA in uber-headphones while sparring undergraduates, winner stays…

“The virtuosity of Tony Soprano” is the title my professor has given my brief sketches thus far. I am interested in tracing the connections between Virno, Hardt and Negri’s conceptions of immaterial labor, labor as virtuosic, and crime. More specifically, I’m interested in the crime boss as a principal node in criminal collectives but one whose presence, his performance of power, is the key element in controlling, directing, and retaining labor. Initially, my focus was to question how this performance was able to function through communication technologies, especially transnationally. One of this project’s implicit arguments is to complicate (especially Hardt & Negri’s) notion of the multitude by introducing temporality into the theory. Criminal collectivities specifically, and I would argue collectives generally, do act multitudinously, as disparate independent units unified ahierarchically for some given purpose at a given moment. However, this is always held in tension to larger organizational structures to which any given unit must return, and in the case of criminals, pay tribute to the heirarchy in specific codified ways.

What strikes me as especially curious is the power a criminal boss’s performative presence has in engendering these ties, wherein a particular unit’s independence is both encouraged and subsumed. To be sure this performance is tied to material realities, the use of violence, ability to provide goods and services etc., but these are not done directly by the boss him/herself. Rather, it is a subordinate who carries out these functions, while the former performs this power, wields it without materially manifesting it himself. Before adding a recently learned dimension, let me give you some suppressed thoughts, those that did not make it through the filters.

This feels like it will be both short and a bit polemical but here goes. There are some who, supposedly, have influence and are regarded highly in the public eye but are complete idiots. Even a semi-conscious monkey should be able to tell as much but somehow they are allowed to continue holding influential posts and reaching wide audiences. No, this is not a polemic against the president. No, it’s a polemic against two figures, only one of whom I will write about, who strike me as embodiments of these strange contradictions: Thomas Friedman, Op-ed columnist for the Nytimes, and John Davidson, announcer/ hockey analyst for ABC and its daughter stations.

I only want to focus on Davidson because his idiocy struck me especially hard today and also because he seems to be Friedman’s estranged clone. My brother recorded the Russia Finland game today so that we could watch after work. Davidson’s adoration of young Russian star Alexander Ovechkin was a hairsbreadth short of sexual, relegating the other amazing players on the ice to supporting roles in this inverted Oedipal play. Among his brilliant observations:

“We see Ovechkin on the bench here, and he nods after his coach tells him something…”

So I lied, here is a brief connection to Friedman.

There have been many reviewers who have carefully destroyed his mixed metaphors and generally idiotic observations, but let me briefly join my voice in the marginalized chorus (that was an intentional contradiction lest you think that I have taken on “Friedmanese as my primary language).

The World is Flat, the title of his latest book, is easily one of the stupidest extended metaphors to be used in recent history. Exaggerating? Perhaps, but that’s what polemics do. So, the book’s thesis is to note the economic and structural closeness of a new globalized order that renders physical location nearly irrelevant. To echo another’s critique, given any two points, they will always be closer on a globe than in a flat world. That’s why one flies west from California to reach Japan.

I might excuse my undergrads for either an obsession to one character at the expense of explicating the context or using a metaphor that entirely subverts the point they are trying to make…no, actually, I wouldn’t even excuse my undergrads.

How, then, do we explain these two frustrating particularities’ success on an (inter)national scale?

Polemic time over: back to researching the flat world.

I traversed all three title emotional stages, if they can be characterized as such, in one sweeping day that has left me, at this moment, feeling a bit better about things. The initial moment of panic came early in the day when I learned of Renuka’s scholarship. I purposefully chose not to apply for this particular ‘travel abroad’ scholarship because I have very specific plans during the summer months that would be required for it. Still, I was knocked back in my seat.

A few hours later, Justin announced his scholarship award as well, while Sarah and Kristine went off to Louisville to deliver papers at a conference. Raw panic began to set in as I realized I hadn’t ventured to a single conference, graduate or otherwise, in nearly a year nor had I applied for anything substantial. “What the hell am I doing?” The moment was terrifying, intensified by a sense of looming paper deadlines and the pressure of producing “publishable” work.

Breathe. Stay present. Breathe.

During the seminar session break, I brought this issue up with Ryan to have his sense of dilemma. “I don’t want to beat myself up about it though. I want to enjoy these years,” he said, before also revealing that the last year had some incredible life changes for him. I found the latter much more therapeutic as I remembered that the last year has not been physically or psychically pleasant in the least; major medical troubles that came from nowhere, highly invasive surgery, recovery, and relapse. fuck. Nevertheless, the proverbial show goes on and my expectations are no less because I’ve fallen down a bit. Here, however, I have to be cautious to maintain healthy levels of self-effacement (and the resultant motivation to keep improving) not the abnormal levels I am prone to, wherein I afford myself no leniency despite the circumstances. Always historicize right? As I encounter the current physical and psychic moment of myself, how much am I willing to relegate to the periphery in order to more clearly see that already imagined dreamed hallucinated path to OZ?

No, this will not be a rumination on the Kantian break between the transcendent and the immanent; I did not use his particular terms because, honestly, I don’t know how to spell them. Rather, let me briefly mention that I’ve caught myself in an all too common tendency but only after my students manifested it; the “I’ll do that during break” syndrome.

I offered them an extra-credit assignment and had them debate possible due dates, with supporting rationale and counters to my own arguments. Rhetoric makes a lot more sense to them when they are trying to convince me of anything that effects their grades. They all decided that the assignment should be due after Spring Break to allow them time to complete it. I yielded only because a major essay is due just before break; I scheduled it this way to allow them a real break, but the syndrome is just too powerful.

My Spring Break currently consists of reading several books (4 and counting so far) and deeply denting three seminar papers.

“In a week?” asks my rational side.
“Sure, it’s break” replies the syndromatic neurons
“But, I’ll need some kind of down time too”
“Yea yea, sure. You’ll have time to spend with family. After all, it’s break. You’ll have the whole day to yourself.”

Weekends often have this pressure placed on them, frequently yielding only frustration, self-annoyance and a fervent promise not to repeat the mistake. Two weeks later…

I have yet to formulate a precise way around this dilemma, particularly the expectations and goals for the upcoming break. The flip side of this dilemma, both as it manifests in the break syndrome and for goal setting generally, is to not shoot too low.

Too tired to think clearly, the banality of this post evinces that quite clearly. However, I am one day closer to successfully completing my February initiative. goal.

Before discussing what seems to me a rather interesting concept let me assess my semester so far. The artifacts project has yielded mixed results. Although the majority of students collected and blogged about really interesting artifacts they were less successful in bringing them together to make cohesive arguments. There are many variables to be considered as always; my own instruction/ direction, particular class talents, number of artifacts and readings required etc. However, the semester has hit “mid-season form” at this point and is really opening up to interesting new angles.

The idea:

Comedy/ comedians as theory/ theorists:

I have often stated in private conversation that comedians are brilliant theorists, and using select audio and video clips as supplemental texts would, I think, be quite productive. The simplest moment I can point to, other than any episode of The Daily Show, is Michael Moore’s use of Chris Rock’s comments in Bowling for Columbine.

“…wanna stop gun violence….make every bullet $5,000…”

Brilliant. Moore uses this clip in his film moments before his own efforts to confront K-Mart Corporation are shown; if you remember, he gets them to stop carrying bullets in their stores. Now, they’re bankrupt. Connections?

Regardless, I see productive possibilities in using comedic clips as ‘theory’ or attempts to theorize contemporary issues. Again, The Daily Show is replete with these moments, as are the stand up specials from Chris Rock, Robin Williams, Whoppi Goldberg, Richard Pryor, and the current trend setter, Dave Chapelle. Much of their comedy works by pointing out the absurdity of any given situation, which in addition to being entertaining, could be used to help unpack charged topics. Moreover, the best of these comedians/ comedic moments move beyond revealing the absurdity and/ or hypocrisy and actually offer solutions to an issue; Chris Rock’s call for raising the price of bullets to $5,000 is one wonderful example. Although the solutions may not have “real world” applicability, that in itself could be highlighted; why is it that we can’t do this? Considering the absurd logic of both the situation and solution would offer students a means to deconstruct these issues, while also implicitly joining in larger discourses, creative or not.

Brief blog posts could be made of their own versions of jokes. More precisely, students would use either the opening or closing of a joke and fill the missing half with their own writing. One would be forced, I think, to creatively address an issue’s cause, locus or solution. For example, Rock’s line could be altered in two different ways:

1)Wanna end violence, make every bullet [ at a Chevy plant: you’d boost the economy and be sure that the bullets wouldn’t work anyway]

2)[Wanna f—with the Republicans], make ever bullet worth $5,000:
There would a whole new breed of gangsters in Bloomfield Hills.

Again, rough ideas, but I would love feedback. I’m lucky enough to have some regular readers, so please do chime in, here or in person.

It was my roommate’s birthday today. I was the last one to give him a present, saving it until just a few minutes before midnight, and also the first one to give him a birthday hug almost 24 hours ago. During the brief conversation over a bottle of red wine from 1989, I told him that I am in the process of creating a less permeable barrier between my intellectual work and my everyday life. I admitted that I have been intellectualizing everything and perhaps walking away with a few insights or some unfounded sense of superiority, but almost always unable to enjoy whatever it was that I just brilliantly deconstructed. To be sure, this is not always the case, but it happens enough to be a problem.

“It’s like any addiction you know, you push in that direction looking for something until you burn out realizing that it was never there.”

Equating hyperintellectuality––which I am careful to distinguish from brilliance; the former simply means having the filters running all the time while the latter is distilling gold in the muck––and addiction was both astute and troubling. Anyone who reads this blog or knows me, will be able to discern a personality that tends toward the addictive, the obsessive: intensity carried just beyond that edge the normal are able to respect.

Much earlier in the day, another conversation opened the ground for the moment described above. Hilary, another astute observer of behaviors, noted that I presented myself rather formally without requiring that interaction partners do the same; however, this blankness of expectation was itself troubling (I assume because most adjust, even slightly, to their partner’s vibe and attempt to complement it). I offered my language use as the locus of this formality, to which she tentatively nodded implying that there is a broader aura to be understood, not simply the words.

I indulged myself today by sitting in front of my brother’s gigantic high-definition TV to watch two Olympic hockey games: Sweden v. U.S and Canada v. Finland. Both North American teams lost. I was delighted.

The delight did not stem from a sense of alignment with the marginal European states and vicariously living their victories as ones for marginality as such, although, admittedly the thought did occur to me. No, actually it was just damn good hockey played by damn good people. Why even ruminate on this?

“Come on, let’s get a goal….” and such, said my brother enthusiastically rooting the U.S team.

I simply couldn’t understand this. Why root for any team? To the obvious answers (patriotism, broader sense of belonging to the U.S, etc) I retort that some of the Red Wings’ best players are on the Swedish team, while only a few are on the U.S and Canadian teams; my allegiance is then a paradoxical one, simultaneously celebrating (relative to the Olympic ideal) the hyperlocal, Detroit team athletes, and the global, insofar as the hyperlocal celebration is also a celebration of skill and athleticism as such. For instance, it bothered me more to learn that Chelios and Schneider, two Red Wing defensemen, are struggling in the tournament than to know that the U.S team, of which they are a part, is also. I am simultaneously bothered that two Wings specifically are doing poorly and that their full skill is not being exhibited generally.

One could argue that there is no paradox here, that in fact when confronted with an international stage to which I feel entirely alienated, I simply chose to support the hyperlocal, fragments of which are spread throughout the “global” tournament. Perhaps paradox isn’t the correct term, since it designates that which has no solution. Rather, let us simply say there is a productive tension between these two allegiances. Let me try to map these out in greater detail…you know…for kicks (& sticks)....ohhh lamo…

The epigraph to the post below was supposed to help me stay on track, but as always, I drifted into other interventions, if one can even call them that. Let me here return to the original ground in which these two posts took root.

During the last few seminar sessions, I found myself increasingly vocal, willing to offer numerous interventions into the conversation. These surprised me because both classes were preceded by resolutions to be quiet, listen and make one or two particularly strong offerings (ala Michael Schmidt). Admittedly, this desire was less motivated by a sense of humility (or idiocy as we shall see later) but out of a fear of “being exposed” as one who had not completed the readings. (I akin the feeling to one who knows they are guilty and must now face the investigators gaze)

Unfortunately, but perhaps one shouldn’t expect anything more, all my voclality yielded a few intelligent comments and a lot of balderdash made worse by caffeine induced pronunciation troubles. Essentially, I walked away from the class feeling quite stupid. Here is the real point of departure.

“Shoot for the stars, hit the moon” ––Ancient proverb from anonymous self-helper

As I entered this semester’s courses I was afraid that I simply would not be able to hang with my classmates, many of whom I have a great deal of respect for. I determined a while ago that I needed to make one key insightful intervention during every class period, or more broadly understood, whenever I was in the presence of faculty. The simple logic of this desire is to “build my image” as it were, slowly and steadily reinforcing the connection between insight, professionalism, et al, and me. A few sessions into the semester, my fears have been assuaged for the most part. Unfortunately, the motive and depth of field are sometimes so shallow that one looses orientation in a larger (dare I say, transcendent) picture.

Focusing on deciphering difficult texts, placing them in larger conversations, and hopefully offering intelligent critique is, or can be, so intellectually exhausting that there is simply little left to think about larger projects. This kind of orientation where in the primary focus is on the immediate/ pressing tasks at hand, grounds our thought within those tasks. Any other project (papers or groceries) is then an excess, a luxury engaged by the hyper-brilliant minority (because it all comes so easy/ quick) or the indulgence available after paying the daily bills (10 hours of reading per day). The obverse orientation would ground all daily tasks within the frame of a larger narrative whose presence can be felt through the lashing whip on the back, attempting to motivate you to keep moving. Despite its ability to motivate, this orientation also places blinders on one’s vision not allowing them to fully engage the internal logic of the moment. Rather, one only sees the whipping master, the ground that is closed to all save that which reinforces it. (Pardon the mixed metaphors; exhausted).

I don’t believe that even a staunch fundamentalist operates in only one of the two orientations offered above, but like us all, oscillates between the two. Here, let me return to that earlier discussion about my brilliant classmates. The fear drove me to complete my readings and carefully listen to both the content and form of the discourse offered; it was this that allowed me to notice vibrant debates and friendships are not incommensurate. However, as I oscillated toward the narrower ground I lost sight of my own ethos and the larger frame that is constantly revised/ refined even as it is guarded.

I’m just catching up on some Daily Shows right now and had to blog about this;

Scale of Humor:

Pant wetting
Incredibly hilarious
Still funny…but…mmm..now a little sad
Funny Strange not funny ha-ha
Brechtian

Wow: it must be English Major day or something…

This is an interestingly dark, anti-utopian (in the Jamesonian sense), article from Jean Baudrillard on the contemporary conflicts; the inadequately labeled (now trite) clash of civilizations.

Some moments of note:

This is the change on the unequal bargain of ‘democracy.’

The very mechanism of their own survival and superiority would prevent them: mechanisms which, through all the pious talk of universal values, serve only to reinforce Western power and so to foment the threat of a coalition of forces that dream of destroying it.

Those who deplore the ideological bankruptcy of the West should recall that ‘God smiles at those he sees denouncing evils of which they are the cause.’

The superiority of Western culture is sustained only by the desire of the rest of the world to join it. Where there is the least sign of refusal, the slightest ebbing of that desire, the West loses its seductive appeal in its own eyes.

Paper Grading: A Non-Haiku by Shashidhar Rao Thandra

Wind roaring, water crashing, brains melting, Miles playing, not writing, not reading, not sleeping;

binding

There were two interesting pedagogical moments today, one of inspiring genius and the other a tragicomedy. Judging from the previous sentence, I think I’m becoming a kind of literary drama queen. Regardless; on to the episodes.

During class discussion, I told my students to take special note of a rhetorical strategy that the author was using. He had brought in a powerful counterargument from a very noteworthy source before moving on to decimate it in the paragraphs that followed. I asked my students to do something similar in their own group papers, to bring in the best counterargument they can think of and negate it with their own. They all nodded understandingly but one student made this astute observation;

“Oh, like Eminem does in that final rap battle in 8-Mile”

At first, I dropped my head in a kind of resigned disbelief but then realized the brilliance of his connection and…

“Absolutely, just like that. Tell us how he does it.”

I wrote a paper on the movie in my undergraduate times and am strongly considering showing the scene in the next class. I love my students (yea, I said it…kiss off).

Moment two:

This is a tragicomedy. I went to a coffee shop today to meet up with the wonderfully insightful high school student I tutor regularly. The opening conversation drifted to the Olympics, how the women figure skaters despite being (pusedo) scantily clad are not the “intended audience,” an inspired euphemistic term for…well…the obvious. We did agree, however, that a particular Norwegian skier was absolutely gorgeous; funny, because I actually blogged about her.

“Yea, she totally look likes a young Sharon Stone!”
“Who’s Sharon Stone?”

I was stunned. This young hormonal lad had never heard or known of Sharon Stone? How could this be? I simply had no conceptual framework to understand this moment; I was baffled and strangely angry. The realization that this was my first “generation gap” moment struck me, pissed me off, awed me then lit a lamp of empathy for all my professors who make historical references that fall on deaf ears; theirs (now mine too) is a passed historical present, a historical absent, only supporting rather than fully inhabiting the now’s culturation.

“To be (15), or not to be (15), that is the question”

The discussion from yesterday drifted in to philosophical tangents that missed both my original aims and inspiration. Although I thoroughly enjoy my gradschool mates, I cannot honestly say that I have non-performative moments with them very often. I don’t have any reservations in admitting this only because this is normal for any set of emerging relationships. The interesting moments for me are those in which non-performance sneaks through, spontaneously bursts through the veil of performativity. One such moment was the initial inspiration for this set of posts.

I forethought my office entrance on Valentine’s Day and burst in with this declaration:
“All right, who wants to give me [cranium]”

Crude, I know, but also a great way to introduce the ridiculous parts of my personality. After some good humored rejection, I was offered this by my dear Sarah:

“You’ve gotten chubby”
On seeing the shocked, terrified look on my face, she followed with, “like healthy looking, your cheeks have filled out.”
“Really?” I say, my shock soothed with the “healthy” comment. I pause for a moment and realize something.
“Do you like chubbier men?” I ask the always dashing Sarah.
“Yes. I like them short, dark and chubby. Better get eating.”

After removing the twice plunged, twisted dagger from my aortic bi-valve, you better believe that I came home and worked out that night.

Aside from the obvious humor, and sadness, the conversation strikes me as a beautiful moment where performative inhibitions were suspended in a spontaneous, honest, non-performative observation that helped me fully acknowledge an emerging (literally) problem. mi belli….

I haven’t been concerned about my weight per se in over 8 years, during which time I was either weight training or practicing martial arts; I much prefer the latter.

Another set of relationships has taken the reverse trajectory, toward a forced performance that is increasingly hard to maintain. I have disconnected myself with high school friends and was told by a sibling that they are deeply insulted by my disappearance. The differences between “dropping dead weight,” “abandonment” and a kind of mutual “distancing,” seem slight, internal and deeply obscured at this moment.

The relationship that garners the most amount of non-performative moments for me….you guessed it.

I would offer my baby nephew Samarth as a candidate but I don’t see him enough.

Side note: The nifty little Slide player, the scrolling pictures on the side, decided to put a falshing/ throbbing logo of itself on the show, thus annoying me deeply and forcing me to reframe it so that one would be able to see a picture without a logo in their face.

You can also scroll over them, which pauses them, and click on any one to view the full size photo.

I am a solitary, self-sufficient, brooding loner who, although not lacking social tact (at least most of the time), prefers a book and wine to a beer with the boys. I was so sure of this, of my independency, of my ability to carefully manage my environments that it has taken me this long to recognize and admit my deep dependence on friends. Yes yes, the desire for intimacy with other life is ingrained, even biological insofar as it is used in reproduction, but it is not sexual intimacy that concerns me. Rather, this brooding moment finds me particularly interested in those relationships that entail a kind of non-performance: no pretension, no guards, just dialogue.

What the hell am I blathering about…we’ll find out….

I am worldly enough to realize that such non-performative relationships don’t actually exist, at least as any kind of permanent entities. No, I submit instead that there are non-performative moments, which are more prevalent in certain relationships. That is to say, no relationship, friendship, is always non-performative but only relationships whose internal dynamics are such that these non-performative moments occur with greater frequency. I have obviously put a great deal of pressure on the term “non-performance” and variations thereof but have not clearly defined it. There is a vague intuitive sense one has of it, especially those versed in critical theory, but flushing it out will be helpful

Dude, it’s a blog post….
Yea….but I’m just that anal…

Music is one of my favorite mediums through which I find relief and expression; it’s one way to keep sane in grad school.

Just finished a new instrumental track for my crew: you can listen and download it here—the genre is hip hop/ electronica.

Let me first say that both Corvino and Stanton were extremely courteous and respectful to one another despite being strongly opposed over these issues. Their own friendship and sense of civility, however, could not be found in some members of the attending crowd who chose to make polemical attacks during the Q&A period. Although I cannot hold anything against them for their reactions, simply because of the nature of the topic, I did find the moderator, Dr. Kruman’s comment at the opening helpful in framing these reactions.

“This debate often creates more heat than light.”

I obviously support same-sex marriage, however, my commentary here will focus on one rhetorical choice and an interesting question from an audience member.

Glen Stanton’s staunch defense for marriage as a heterosexual institution rested most obviously on what I, unversed in the particular rhetoric of this debate, will call the “nature argument.” Heterosexual unions are the transhistorical, transspatial norm for humanity. Although Stanton granted that polygamy of various sorts were normative, he emphasized the heterosexual nature of these extended ‘unions.’ Interestingly, he ventured so far as to say that interracial conflict could not be similarly universalized because ‘there have been different races living quite nicely together;’ the gay black man directly in front of me shook his head. So as not to caricature his argument, Stanton did emphasize that he did not believe gender, especially as envisioned in these heterosexual unions, was not wholly a social construction or a slave to genetic determinism but a complex mix of the two. However, more often than not, Stanton could be heard saying, “if you look at the Anthropological texts…”

Anthropology was his undergraduate major and a field that continues to occupy his intellectual interests, especially as it intersects with his current political work. However, my own disciplinary prejudice silently roared in muffled speech and shaking head: “What about Foucault?!?”

My blogging session will begin a bit earlier than usual today because I’ve just returned from a public debate held on same sex marriage; John Corvino, a Philosophy professor from WSU and a man named Glen Stanton were the debaters.

Let me, as always, begin with superficial remarks, which obviously entail observations on the fashion ‘choices’ made by the two. Why put choices in quotes? Because I am beginning to question if it’s really a choice we make or if it’s a genetic thing.

Corvino: A brilliant fashionisto if there ever was one, is widely regarded as the best dressed man on campus who also served as inspiration and consultant when I was putting my own wardrobe project together. Black suit, with matching belt and shoes accented with a dark eggplant pinstripe button up shirt; no tie and relaxed collars.

Stanton: Yikes; but how much fashion sense can you expect from a moral majority member. Navy jacket, khakis, brown shoes, (couldn’t see belt/ didn’t want to), white dress shirt with blue pin stripes; white Hanes shirt visible underneath; scary stuff…

Here are a portion of my notes from the debate. Pardon the lack of cleanliness.

A mediocre article on the infamous Muslim political cartoons; here is the one line I particularly liked.

Freedom of opinion was the Siamese twin of freedom from fear.

Today is an odd day. My roommate blames it on the full moon saying that a spontaneous wave of depression came over him. None of the people he talked to today had a good day either. As much as I would like to accept that explanation, I’m far too self-effacing to blame my fluctuations on celestial bodies.

Grant me a moment of reflection on this topic because I have nothing substantial to write about: sorry, no treatises on ethics today.

Such explanations, like others that try to grant mastery of our lives to some grand Other (corporations, governments, aliens, gods, etc), obviously take the onus of action, of deliberate purposeful interactions with reality, away from the individual. Instead of responsibility such theories ask us to rest in an opium haze of submissiveness, promising comfort in exchange for dependence.

Unfortunately, my particular brand of leftism forces me to see some kernels of validity within these otherwise preposterous frameworks. If the gravitational pull of the moon causes the rise and fall of tides, perhaps it has some effect on us as well. Perhaps. Fortunately enough, my leftist openness is balanced with some sense of rationality, which, although allowing for the possibility, dismisses its efficacy as an explanatory force. No, it was not the full moon that made you do blow!

During my time at the dojo, as well as several spiritual retreats, I have seen far too many flaky people debating a detail of such inconsequence that it made me wonder if I was not in fact missing something. Academia could, of course, be accused similarly and often is, especially by those who choose to focus on more practical methods and manifestations of scholarship. To call for a balance between specificity and generality is trite; however, I would offer that the weight of an issue must be gauged in proportion to those other issues that could come into one’s purview. Pardon me, Hallmark is calling to offer me a signing bonus…

“Hmm…I don’t know if the ceremony should be done in a shirt with red French cuffs but I do think that you should stop beating your children….yea, the aliens don’t like that.”

Check the comments on my last post for a ridiculously funny link from Kristine.

Also, check this freaky set of contest winners out:

Here is one of my favorites: