Mushin-Sho

Is this how Humanities scholars or their projects percieved?

The best reply so far can be found here. My counter argument follows. Since it hasn’t been posted by NYSun yet, I might have to trim it down and resubmit. Anyway, the whole of it follows below.

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There are several important arguments you bring forward and I would like to address them in the order you make them.

First, the Maxim gun. You are absolutely right to state that there is no obvious military advantage to producing a “false” image of one’s enemy. Indeed, as you note, such misunderstandings have created protracted conflicts, including those you mention. However, my use of the phrase “false picture” was provisional and merely took on the terms Mr. Warraq used. That is, the “false” picture is not merely distortion for the sake of making those producing it feel better, i.e. more civilized, about themselves, although that is one entailment. More important for me, and for Said, is that the proliferation of Orientalist discourses helped dehumanize the Arab world so that doing violence to the people is not doing violence to human beings as such. They are flattened to targets, obstacles preventing the spread of rational civilization proper. This is not a direct military advantage, one that helps strategize the battlefield. Dehumanization, rather, is how one gets to the battlefield in the first place and I just described one path to get there. The “false” picture is, rather, something akin to an ‘ethical’ advantage––ethics is not the appropriate word but it is the only one that comes to mind at the moment––one that oddly allows for the eschewing of ethics altogether. That is, if the enemy we are fighting is not human but more like a plague, a virus that produces barbarism, then it is our duty to fight such a force. We, in turn, are allowed to use any means necessary to fulfill this duty.

Although I allude to mass bombings and atomic weapons in my last clause, it is very important to remember this (ill)logic is not the sole property of the ‘West’. Indeed, the Rwandan genocide and its use of machetes to cut down the Tutsi “cockroaches” is a tragic reminder that dehumanization and its consequences are not so easily isolatable.

Second, the rise of Eastern economies:  While I disagree with your overall assessment of both the historical and contemporary economic landscape, you do usefully point to a huge gap in Said’s analysis, namely the lack of attention to economic forces. Said is not blind to their influence, but does subsume them into a larger argument focused on particular discursive strategies and their affects. Scholars, even those sympathetic to Said’s basic project, have often noted this flaw and a lot of important, original work has been done to think through this gap.

My disagreement, however, does not rest there. Rather, your reading of the Meiji Restoration presumes some kind of voluntaristic decision made on the part of the Japanese imperial court. The presence of weapons was less a mark of Western superiority with which to contend than, say, a case of realizing Western belligerence in the sake of promoting economic interests. Indeed, there were already places in the world that served as living lessons for those who would doubt the possibility of economic colonization; Africa and India come readily to mind. My knowledge of American relations with Japan, and Japanese history is bare so that is all I can offer at the moment.

In regards to India specifically, and the rise of “developing world” economies generally, your argument rests on a similar assumption of voluntary action. They see Western superiority and are attempting to catch up with it, having learned from Japan. Of course, choosing not to follow this lead is not really available as a choice. The density and power of the world economic system overdetermines––that is, shapes them with pressure from multiple angles––national decisions. Governments must contend with world trade, find a way compete within it, or see their citizens languish in poverty. Even attempting to compete, however, produces poverty; producing cash crops, for instance, rather than basic nutritional foods for the local population is an all too common world reality. Lastly, economic development within these nations does not necessarily mean a cultural overhaul as well. That is, most nations in the midst of this process, and India specifically, are also battling to indigenize and adapt industrial logics to their cultural situations. They are not, in other words, simply kowtowing to “Western superiority,” but negotiating world economic pressure.

Finally, Iraq. Your assessment of the Neo-Conservative position and its opposition is interesting. There is, indeed, a logic in play that they are or could be “just like Americans;” overthrow the dictator and all will be well. There is, however, another logic behind this one. The presence of the dictator is a clear sign of the Arabic backwardness, which can and must be modernized/ civilized into a democratic sensibility. Of course, this quickly forgets the ways such regimes are and have been supported by the ones who heroically topple them. Arguing that these regimes are necessary to control some inherent Arab cruelty forgets that Iraq’s national boundaries were formed by the United Kingdom after WWI. Forget these histories and, yes, Iraqis are waiting to reveal their true American core.

All of this is, of course, a counter position to the NeoCons that does not rely on the Orientalist tropes you described: Islam is not fit for democracy, it’s “different” etc. But like the gunboat diplomacy you mentioned earlier, democracy isn’t really being offered as a choice. If absolute democracy were offered, my guess is that you would see three separate states, two of which look to Islamic law for guiding principles. No, this is not a possible choice. The only choice, to use your phrasing, is a “western-style democracy.”
 

I have recieved two more replies. Here is the first, and my response follows.

How is thinking about violence, both epistemic and bodily, a utopian project? And what is the teleology of this project, or postcolonial criticism generally? 

 

My post at the New York Sun prompted a response accusing me of being an apologist for the "inherent" curelty of the Arab world. Here is my response, which was an interesitng way to start my writing for the day.

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 To argue against you, Mr. Kaltenberg, I hope you won’t mind that I quote you quoting me.

"...The argument is reductive insofar as it denies the long and continuing history of Western involvement…."——thus whining is considered to be a valid proof of not whining?

If I understand your counterargument correctly, I am contradicting myself by reproducing the very critique I am attempting to debunk. Taken out of context, this would seem to be true. However, that sentence particularly, and a major part of my argument generally, was about locating the blame on Said alone. Hundreds of years of history cannot be laid aside for the sake of one scholar’s book that is a mere 40 years old. Said did not invent imperialism, or it’s bloody fallouts; rather, he describes one self-reproducing mechanism that allows for conquest without guilt. I am not sure how remembering, and articulating, the various histories that bring us to our present moment is “whining”?  

On the subject of vocabulary and sentence shaping, I happily admit my own inadequacies, but also ask you not to use infantilizing words like “whining” to describe a heated political situation.

But returning to the argument proper: Historical amnesia is clearly not something you are in favor of either, if your invocation of “the western apologists of Stalinist purges and the American & Brit supporters of the nazi regime” is any evidence. Aside from its polemical force, a comparison between “the inherent and inexcusable cruelty” of the Arab world and systematic slaughter by Stalin or the Nazi regime is hyperbolic and inaccurate to say the least. Strangely, the use of these examples gives us an insight into a counterargument used by various Islamists, militant or not. Their argument, or my approximation of it, goes like this: “You say we are backward and you are modern, that we are lacking and need to catch up. If, however, being modern allows for the rise of concentration camps, atomic weapons, and other forms of mass violence, then perhaps we don’t want to be modern.” The argument is pertinent and one that greatly troubled the greatest “Western” minds of the early 20th century. What does it mean to be “modern”? Is there really such a thing as historical “progress,” if forward movement in time has just created more elaborate means of destruction? These are key questions “the West” must ask itself to understand why “backward” peoples continue in their “inherent and inexcusable” ways.

The opposite side, one where I sympathize with you and Mr. Warraq, recognizes in liberal democratic societies a greater distribution of civil liberties (never inherent, always battled for), and greater access to advanced medicine. I use “greater” as a qualifier because I don’t believe that these traits are inherent products of Western societies; claiming so would forget the battles fought to gain such rights.

My own position is still in the process of being formulated. I have no desire to see human rights abused, in the Arab world or otherwise, but I cannot claim to sit on an impossibly clean throne from which I can decide the innocence or guilt of others. If I apologize for anything, it is simply for not being able wholly to laud or condemn “East” or “West."

I am writing final papers right now and in the rhythm of writing. The New York Sun, unfortunately, felt a part of these drum beats as I posted the following respone to this article reagarding one of my intellectual heros, Edward Said. The one available there, unfortunately, is not formatted properly.

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Let me respond first by noting that Said’s influential book is indeed deeply flawed, and in Terry Eagleton’s apt phrasing, is a "flawed classic." The fact that it is a classic and spawned, as noted in the article, the vast field known as Postcolonial criticism is, for Mr. Warraq, a major problem. Many scholars sympathetic to Said’s project have noted most of the basic problems that Mr. Warraq points to, those of historical accuracy etc. Moreover, Postcolonial theory and criticism has moved well beyond Said’s text; the newer iterations of these projects would provide more fertile ground for thinking the contemporary situation. That is my first point.

My second point is that there is, at least in this article, a deeply flawed understanding of what Said’s argument is. "If Orientalists have produced a false picture of the Orient, Orientals, Islam, Arabs, and Arabic society… then how could this false or pseudo-knowledge have helped European imperialists to dominate three-quarters of the globe?" 

Producing a false picture is precisely how the imperial project was accomplished. That is, Said is concerned with the ways conquest is justified, or even more perversely, thought to be helpful. A part of his argument, then, is ‘Orientalizing’ the Arab world meant dehumanizing its population, casting them into particular types such as the lascivious harem female or the equally perverse despot. Such debased creatures obviously need the help of Enlightened European empires whose universal rationalism will clearly see beyond their opium-induced irrationality. This is merely a gloss of the argument, but one that I hope illustrates the ways imperialism comes to be justified as, what Said calls, "the civilizing mission." One does not need much imagination to see how such dehumanizing logics–––based on sound epistemological practices no doubt–––duplicate themselves in the genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africas, et al.  Such logics, moreover, are not merely the scars of history but the present’s still bleeding wounds; the justification offered after invading Iraq, for instance, is a contemporary iteration of the ‘civilizing mission,’ namely the ‘democratizing mission.’

My final point, however, is less firm and more sympathetic to Mr. Warraq’s concerns. The question of how one avoids ethnocentrism without also collapsing into a toothless cultural relativism that remains mute to the persecution of women, homosexuals, and others, is a very serious one. Claiming, as Mr. Warraq does, that it is Said who paved the way for the Arab world to cry victim and hide cruel persecutions behind those tears is both reductive and historically inaccurate. The argument is reductive insofar as it denies the long and continuing history of Western involvement, often of the military kind, in the Arab world. More significantly, at least for Said’s case, is that a better part of the 30 year career following Orientalism was spent as an intellectual and cultural liaison. One article in particular, published in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, entitled "The Other America," admonished his readers to shatter their crude one dimensional images of America, or the West generally. In that same article, Said also describes his lifelong efforts with Arab premiers to think more complexly about the West, lest they replicate the same dehumanizing gestures he spent his lifetime critiquing.
 

    I was almost laughing, despite being adrenalized, because the muggers used such a classic script and played it like so many of the dress rehearsals at the dojo. Indeed, the gun and knife defense seminars had prepared me well for the language, the sight of a gun and the body movements. However, I was completely unprepared for the post mugging moment-of-truth.
    Walking up to my apartment I reviewed the incident, realizing with a surprise that I had stayed calm enough to ask questions, gauge distance; then, I wondered if I should call the police. The fact that they took my phone momentarily annulled that question but another deeper ‘logic’ announced itself with disturbing clarity. “What’s the point?” I thought to myself. “What am I going to say? Um, yes officer it was a black male with a gun. It’ll be a useless drop in the bucket, a drop that will vanish without distinction because it would be all too similar to hundreds of other cases in Detroit.” Within a few minutes my roommate came home and insisted that I call the police, which I did.
    The next day, I asked my students if my thought, my reason for not calling the police was racist. Only a few answered yes, partly, I think, because they didn’t want to accuse their just-mugged-teacher of racism. My own answer to that question, however, is a resounding “Yes!” The thought was absolutely racist, but one that demonstrates the power of ‘naturalizing narratives’ and the intersection of structural and cultural discourses.
    Most broadly, I began by naturalizing Detroit and armed robbery, understanding the latter as the inevitable consequence of living here, indeed even an occasion that marks one’s official entry to ‘Detroit-ness’––a perverse loss of virginity. Criminality here takes on spatial dimensions as inherent to deindustrialized urban centers generally, and Detroit specifically. Spatial logic, however, is a deliberate political construction, as Thomas Sugrue’s text so wonderfully demonstrates. The contradictory drives of New Deal policy toward home ownership and public housing framed an intense race conflict that ultimately led to the containment of Black urban residents in specific areas. Such strategic segregation of Black citizens into dilapidated housing in turn “proved” that Blacks could not be trusted to take care of their homes, that they would ruin whatever neighborhood they entered. Racist structural policies fed cultural “scientific” (observable) proof of Black ‘moral’ inferiority, which fueled policies; no origins, no simple cause-effect relationships, only circles of political violence. Indeed, my thoughts after the mugging made much the same logical circle, relegating the incident as merely the lived observation of an already given criminality.
    “The delinquent is to be distinguished from the offender by the fact that it is not so much his act as his life that is relevant in characterizing him” (Foucault 219-from the Reader). Spatializing criminality simultaneously racializes it because criminal acts-deviance-delinquency are understood more broadly as the inevitable outcome of one’s ‘biography.’ At a very crass level this can be stated as “what else will a poor black urban youth do?” Rap culture, ‘gangsterism’ and such are prominent cultural discourses, often taking the form of ‘biographies’ that themselves ascribe race and place to criminality; that these ‘biographies’ are historically situated in segregationist political practices is conveniently absent. The intersection of the cultural and structural is precisely in the biography, which is then ‘naturalized’ (and demonized) as the cause of criminality.

My initial thought, to not call the police, performed an a-historical conflation of race-space and biography, melting all three into the mugger as a ‘natural’, inevitable product.

     The question of family ‘normality’ evokes within me the most ardent absolute relativism and a critical knee jerk dismissal of all other positions as insular. After Kristine and I briefly visited a Pakistani grocery store, she noted the palpable hostility the store clerk and his friend directed at me. Although there was nothing particularly mean spirited about their now too familiar responses, the survey, evaluation, and rejection of my inauthentic Indianness took mere seconds. While the notion of the “authentic” is dense with cultural, economic and discursive density, my own ruminations here will be centered on a simple definition: Authenticity is the praxis of codes established by the Self. This open ended, ambiguous, problematically relative ‘definition’ replicates the very absurdity of ‘the authentic’ while also providing for a few markers to help find our way.
    In the space of the grocery store, thick with the smell of spices, mixes, vegetables, the figure wearing sunglasses, dressy jeans and a quirky yellow t-shirt screamed inauthentic. The clerk’s heavy accent announced his recent emigration, betraying his high academic achievements in the English-medium schools attended in India. His turbaned, heavily bearded Sikh friend paused conversation when the white girl and I entered. My American accented English said that I couldn’t speak any Indian languages, especially the Hinid or Urdu necessary in this situation. I bought nothing. Clearly, I was an American Born Confused Desi (ABCD) not a FOB (Fresh Off the Boat).
    When I first arrived on the Wayne State campus, I was putt off by the two distinct South Asian communities. The first were young college students like myself but whom I judged to be generally too superficial for my tastes. The second community, and second class in my mind, was comprised of the numerous graduate students who were clearly new arrivals. Complaints from fellow students about their thick accents and incomprehensible presentations as discussion and lab leaders embarrassed me. The snobbish glare I shot was matched with the unanswerable thought, “Why can’t you just be normal?” Maturation, desensitization and a few wonderful lab leaders began to normalize their existence, but it was family that brought a radical break.
    Visiting newly arrived and newly married cousins in Texas had all the excitement of a desert plain. However, when Vishali, an elder sister-figure in my youth, mentioned that she clearly felt the hostility and condescension in undergraduate glares, I fell silent. Otherness sat next to me. The accent, clothing and other such practiced codes fell under the weight of courage required to uproot and repot one’s existence. Wayne campus was suddenly filled with the inspiring audacity of belief, placing my anglicized ass in its proper place. The authentic, as a codified praxis, dissolved and allowed me to step closer to the Real.
    The heated emotional stakes of a conflict, like the one my family currently faces, are predicated on the practice of codes established by a Self; they are wars of authenticity, or more precisely, authentic modes of being. Negotiations and/ or mediation can only begin when all sides are assailed with the inherent violence of their position through a nauseating hypernegativity that opens the space for recognition of the relative. That is, ruthlessly interrogating the Self will begin to reveal the artificial construction of the various codes so desperately clung to. When even a modicum of artificiality—here understood as historically and socially overdetermined––is recognized, there is space for change.

The article, the blog post, and the comments section about India’s caste system.

Two article excerpts:

“There was found to be great, and at times violent, intolerance of displays of well-being, or public celebrations by Dalits. In many villages, bans operated on wedding processions on public (arrogated as upper-caste) roads. In 10 to 20 per cent villages, Dalits weren’t allowed even to wear fashionable clothes or sunglasses. They could not ride their bicycles, unfurl their umbrellas, wear chappals on public roads, smoke or stand without head bowed. Restrictions on their entry into Hindu temples averaged 64 per cent in 11 states, ranging from 47 per cent in UP to 94 per cent in Karnataka.

The research established that such restrictions endured even after conversion of Dalits to egalitarian faiths. In punjab, 41 of the 51 villages surveyed reported separate gurdwaras for Dalit Sikhs. Dalits who worshipped in gurdwaras frequented by upper-caste Jats were served in separate lines at the langar and were not permitted to prepare or serve the sacred food. In Maharashtra, despite mass conversions of the Mahars to Buddhism, Dalits were denied temple entry in 51 per cent villages. In Kerala and Andhra, there are  divisions in the church between Dalit converts and others, and discrimination even against ordained Dalit priests.”

    “Untouchable” Dalits are a horrifying reminder of the absence of a global now, of a temporality that is devoid of lived praxis. A project last semester saw me investigate the heterogeneity of global time as evidenced by the existence of pre-modern (mob) social formations that, although coexistent with global capital, are built on codes that are antithetical to it. The phenomenon of untouchability, however, has greater if more personal stakes, through its embodied practices.

    Although I was very young when I lived in India, I clearly remember both the pride and distance I felt when old men, bodies creased with years of farming labor, would call me “Dorah” or “Chinna (small)-Dorah.” Translating the word is not within my ken, but it implied a title, a class based on landownership, weighed down by a tradition of respectful reserve that I did not feel justified invoking.

    Historicizing the notion of a “global now” would probably take us to the creation of standard time and the concurrent industrialization that needed such mechanisms. However, cognizing a singular temporality that we all share has the effect of both dehistoricizing the particularity of a lived present and subsuming the temporal ruptures in the grand colonial-industrial narrative of a past-backwardness and present-enlightenment. Moreover, this progress narrative is deployed as judgment and categorization based on the lived actions, which themselves are imbedded within other narratives (religious, political, caste). Less abstractly, the prohibitions on Dalits to wear sandals, ride their bicycles, smoke, etc., are simultaneously conditioned by social narratives, the lived praxis of these narratives, and reinscribed into the “global now” to evince their backwardness and justified persecution.
    The strange injunction against wearing fashionable clothing and sunglasses is based precisely on this logic. Such cultural signifiers would begin to close the temporal gap through bodily inscription, through a lived praxis, that announced their presence as constitutive of the present. Other prohibitions would be forced to shift away from the logic of “backwardness” and place greater emphasis on the historically rooted practices of exclusion, which in turn are troubled by the absence of temporal dissonance.
    Wearing sunglasses is admittedly being politicized in this context, but is certainly not being offered as a solution to the complex and deeply imbedded insanity of caste prejudice. Rather, I am attempting to think through the bodily inscription and lived praxis of temporality, which both ruptures and responds to the “global now,” while negotiating the particular exigencies of a situation.

    The swarming mosquitoes are scattered by the ceiling fan now turned to high and spinning so vigorously that I am sure it will dislodge and decapitate me. Thickening night and mating crickets are interrupted by a group of young voices whose eyes I just begin to see. I lift the flashlight (torch) next to the door and point it outside only to hear scurrying footsteps. On the bed again, I fix my gaze to the TV and wait for my favorite tv show. The young voices approach without distracting my awareness and are suddenly at the door. Children my age, dark and dressed in soiled scraps, lean in and smile. I launch from the bed and shoo them away, surprised by how naturally I imitated my uncles’ responses to stray dogs and beggars. Twice more, I run at the door shouting threats as they dart into the adjacent field; it’s become a game and I’m enjoying it.
    Dad returns from the bathroom and has one of the children by his side. I…pause, baffled. He goes back to the door and yells for them, “Come here! Come on!” using the ‘ra’ suffix, appropriate for a Dorah talking to others.
    Two or three sit next to me on the bed, five or six are on the hard cement floor and we all watch our favorite tv show.

Superman as Christ???

Movie trailer for the return "of My only son."  

What the underworld [the place we heathens are going to] is this nonsense?? And why is he still wearing the American flag color tights?

I am officially terrified, or, to channel St. Paul/Kierkegaard for a moment, I am in “fear and trembling.” [The grammar of the previous sentence, like its subject, is a mystery]

 

My diplomatic ‘everyone love me’ side is totally paralyzed, nervous, taken aback, while my indignantly pissed off surface is in total solidarity. 

In sum, yeah…what she said.

f—-in hater biatches…

 

Catching up on Daily Shows again; if any more references are made to Ganesha, whom 60 minutes affectionately called ‘the elephant god,’ Hinduism as polytheistic or the many arms and legs these deities are often depicted with, I swear to the many gods that I will beat someone with two hands, stab them with a third all while kicking them with a fourth leg.

Hinduism is not polytheistic you f—in mooks…get your sh—straight…especially 60 Minutes…

...to borrow from the last chapter title of Edward Said’s “flawed classic” (Terry Eagleton’s words) Orientalism is, for me, an ongoing project that tragically has too much primary material to draw from.

If you want to kill a few minutes, look at this piece from CBS news show 60 Minutes; is it silly to expect more from educated people?

Perhaps Orpah should add Said to her book club; what the hell is this?

I don’t know if I want to shoot myself or everyone else….

Something to take the edge off…

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.

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?!?”

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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.”

I lost my grading virginity today by failing one student paper. The moment was unfortunate because the student lost the majority of their points by ignoring the assignment basics: page length, use all 6 artifacts etc. I had to remind myself that such papers are bound to come in and that it is the student, not me, who is responsible for the failing paper. My sentimental side, of course, hopes that the student will take the opportunity to re-write the paper and talk to me. We shall see.

You will simply have to read to find out what a picture of INXS in doing here.

Two Olympic moments: Forced by network coverage to watch the women’s moguls events, I realized that I may in fact still have some attraction for the blond blue-eyed variety. I thought only darker brunets could catch my eye but one skier [insert cheesy skiing reference here] with my heart—or that part of it that is connected to my hormonal reactions. After completing a run that put her in first place, this Norwegian skier simply put one hand up, unlike every other shmuck who raised both hands and jumped around after their own runs. The Norwegian then calmly takes off her goggles and smiles with an intoxicatingly sexy confidence, while also effortlessly showing off her uncanny resemblance to a young Sharon Stone.

“I need to get me a Norwegian…”

or as Renuka said after playing with Mary’s kids for a few minutes… “I love kids with blue eyes….must mate with Caucasian.”

Indeed…

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...as the liquor and exhaustion catch up I have a few things to add.

First: There have been three…oop…make that four close gun shots fired in my neighborhood. The sound is unmistakeable.

Second: thought—-will any of these blog posts effect my future as an academic genius….cage girls need love too…

Third: As I admitted to her and to you, my dear readers, no one holds a candle to my lovely Aarts: the charm, intelligence and dancing has no comparison…

...flings, however, are free to aply…

Last: These posts are the result of my first real encounter with alcohol in over 1 1/2 years. The extended break was a result of medical necessity, exercise in self control, and a release of those small weights holding back progress. Admitedly, I have a very intense personality that siezes on any particular activity and carries it to a near absurd maximun; alcohol, despite the health benefits of red wine, does not strike me as a subject that requires my hyper-attention.

There was a job talk today from Jeff Pruchnic who is applying for a position in Rhetoric/ Composition but more specifically the “computers and writing” sector of this field. The talk itself was nothing exceptional but there were some interesting “professionalization moments” that concerned me.

First, and most superficially, he was wearing a black pin stripe suit with brown shoes and cream socks: WTF??

Now then; it was interesting to note other features of his physical presentation that, to me, played a lot of different angles simultaneously. Pruchnic had thick black hair, the majority of which, except for the sides, was prominently spiked up; his facial hair was deliberately unshaven in strategic locations; thin rimmed black glasses rested on the precipice of his face which, quite nicely, always wore a slight smile even when under faculty interrogation.

I begin with Pruchnic’s physical appearance because there are so many intersections and disconnections with my own wardrobe project. Where I choose to be cleaner in appearance (shaved, fairly conservative hair), he chooses to play, what seems to be, on the look of a young, hip, radical intellectual who, while understanding the standards of ‘a professional appearance’, plays on these codes to foreground simultaneously his understanding and deliberate subversion. Moreover, his appearance provides energy within any setting, especially a drab conference room, and plays well when juxtaposed to his quiet voice and playful jokes.

The talk:

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The host committee is tutoring thousands of volunteers to “say nice things about Detroit” when encountering visitors.

Another effort is trying to help the homeless leave the streets for shelters on Super Bowl Weekend. One shelter, the Detroit Rescue Mission, plans a three-day Super Bowl party with food and four big-screen television sets. Experts estimate that 3,000 or more homeless people are on the streets at any one time, with up to a total of 13,000 homeless people

Are you kidding me?? Say “nice things”? Hide the homeless?

Pelevin’s Homo Zapiens refers to those who are specifically dispatched to uphold the simulated reality as The People’s Will. These individuals are sent out to make claims that they know to be false in an effort to uphold a material reality that doesn’t exist. That, of course, is post-Soviet Russia and nothing that insidious would happen in our dear motor city.

Hiding the homeless, sweeping them under the mat, is one ridiculous example of what can be summed up as “liberalism not revolution.” Closing your eyes to Detroit’s decaying structures, both physical and economic, does not make them disappear. You are not playing peek-a-boo!

Here is the full NyTimes article; the link will work only for a week or so before it becomes archived.

I’m reading through Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and despite the many intellectually interesting points raised, I find his head bashing against a specifically Western conception of the divine, troubling. What follows are some rough thoughts regarding a mystic/esoteric conception of divinity and some possible ramifications for reading Abraham’s story.

The duty becomes duty to God by being referred to God, but I do not enter into relation with God in the duty itself. Thus it is a duty to love one’s neighbor; it is a duty in so far as it is referred to God; yet it is not God that I come in relation to in the duty but the neighbor that I love.

Most basic Western conceptions of God are based on a hard and fast distinction between the divine and human beings. Christ, of course, is an exception as God’s manifestation on Earth but is unexceptional in that he is used to sustain this human/divine divide, precisely by being the exception. After all, we cannot become Christ. Thus, we have Kierkegaard’s claim that performing the duty to love one’s neighbor only achieves duty to God through a mediation, a reference that does not put one in direct communion with the absolute, as Abraham achieves.

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The July hanging of two gay teens in the city of Mashad sparked international outrage.

This article is a definite read, if only for some information. Also found on my del.icio.us

I’ve spent the afternoon working on various texts during the afternoon with my study partner Kim. The evening, however, has been spent binging on hockey games. Thus far, I’ve seen three games, including a wings game and another featuring Sidney Crosby, the next Gretzky according to many pundits. He made a play from his knees which was impressive and insightful (saw something most don’t) made all the more so considering he’s only 18.

More interesting is the Winter Olympic team announcements; the NHL will be sending players to 12 national teams. This “white washed” sport is one of the most nationally diverse sports readily available on Sportscenter.

Why bring this up: because my recent viewing of Crash, an excellent film in most respects, reminded me that the popular perception of hockey still sees it as a “white” sport. The film attempts to complicate stereotypes, of villains, of the ‘good guys’, of racial and ethnic tensions. One black character loves hockey, wanted to be a goalie and even (to my disapproving ear) likes country music—note the uncool conflation of country music and hockey.

I find this troubling not because people see the sport as “white” but rather because the terms white and black are used to understand a much more complex relationship. This is obviously not a new observation but one that was foregrounded for me in hockey. As much as black or African American suppresses an entire continent to one surface, white does the same.

My post earlier—”One”—was (originally) created the day Rosa Parks died and makes use of an image Apple put up on their home page to commemorate the moment. To my surprise, many have lashed out at the company saying that pasting their logo on that poignant photograph is nothing short of despicable. Hmm…

I would probably agree if I didn’t know that Apple had put out that image as a poster, along with over thirty others, paying tribute to most revolutionary minds who did “think different.” The collection was released when Steve Jobs returned to Apple a number of years ago. I am unsure if they have sought to reprint the poster, which would be welcomed by many.

To be clear, I am an Apple fan and would love to have the full collection join Picasso in my house but considering that each is worth several hundred dollars now, I don’t see that as a possible immediate reality. Do a quick search on Google. Here is one site.

At its best, this gesture is a beginning, a bow that allows us to see some of the giants beneath us; those known, forgotten and yet to be known.