on being a publication terrier

Music: Clearlake: Cedars (2003)

I am delighted to report that, after more than three years, my article on Huey Long was published today (available here as a PDF file). I'm always happy to have something come out . . . until about two years later when I realize I was stupid and should not have wrote it. Nevertheless, I have not had an essay that was as rejected and roundly critiqued as this particular one. Although it did benefit from the suggestions of all of those rejecters, I never thought the essay deserved the scorn it received. Apparently reading it is akin to pulling teeth?

Regardless, I will say it to all of you junior scholars out there: just because your essay is rejected does not mean no one wants it. With the right reviewers in the right moods, your essay will see the light of the page . . . you just have to be persistent!

To revisit the history of this "well-traveled article," to borrow a phrase from Randall L. Bytwerk, you can start here, and then move on to here.

In other news: I have another cold! Argh! And just in time for spring break. Three cheers for karma!

joshcast: clashtrash 5

Music: Junior Wells: You're Tuff Enough (1968)

A'ight, y'all, it's time for some music for your awesome, spring-ish weekend! At long last, the fifth volume of my clashtrash collection is finished. For the most part, electroclash is dead and gone and a new punky/house/electro sound has replaced it. The tempos are slower, so this may be ideal for a sustained workout or jog. Mostly, the new mix is intended for dancing. I also deliberately mixed in a bunch of acts that will be in town for SXSW and playing next week (e.g., spektrum, the secret handshake, and so on).

As an advisory: I do not condone the lyrics! Sometimes a groove is just too good and nasty that you have to overlook the sentiments of certain, er, MCs.

You can download the cover art and track listing. The actual mp3 file is here. Remember, all music files are for previewing/listening only!

Tracklisting:

• black strobe: shiny bright star (phones remix)
• the shakes: sister self-doubt
• substitute symposium: been caught stealing
• black strobe: me and Madonna
• cazwell: all over your face (original extended mix)
• spektrum: don’t be shy (yeshu extended mix)
• snowden: kill the power
• datarock: fa fa fa (shakes remix)
• lazaro casanova: shorts and heels
• crystal takes manhattan: confetti princess (kissy sell-out remix)
• robbie williams: lovelight (soulwax remix—this is so nasty!)
• shout out out out out: dude you feel electrical
• sneaky sound system: UFO (vanshetech remix)
• dirty sanchez: asymmetric
• van she: kelly (cut copy remix)
• the secret handshake: too young (toxic avenger remix)
• young americans: inside out

Do tell me if you like it, and introduce some of these new bands to your friends! And for you locals: don't forget I DJ parties for hire and favor. If you want me to DJ for favor, well, it involves seven nubile concubines and a lawnchair.

sex on acid

Music: Curve: Cucoo (1993)

When I was in high school I "dropped" a lot of LSD on the weekends. I was not a "druggie" in the sense that I was always getting "fucked up," but me and my pals did get fucked up. I think my senior year we "tripped" our gonads off almost every weekend. It was lots of fun, and I got to meet God too.

I don't endorse doing acid; I mean, Timothy Leary is dead, right? ("Oh no, he's just outside looking in!") And he did not go gentle into that good night either---clearly his brain got all mushy. Besides, the last time I did "hard" drugs was over a decade ago (and the last time I smoked pot was when I was 24 hitching a ride with David Beard back to the hotel at RSA from two ladies we "hit on" at a dance club). Nevertheless, while I do not regret doing all the drugs I did because it led to who I am today (and my thoughts about the world and reality are unquestionably informed by my psychedelic experiences), I do regret one thing: I never had sex on acid. I've had sex stoned and drunk, which just means you can extend the usual six minutes to an hour or so (or not, since both taken to excess gets nobody excited). But the really neat thing about sex on acid has got to be synethesia, or the melding/confusion of more than one of our senses. One of the things LSD does is smush all one's sensations together: colors have sound and taste, smells have color, bodily touch produces wafts of smell and color, and so on.

Now where am I going with all this? Well, DJ Smokhouse Brown sent me a link to inevitability: the iPod dildo. Unfortunately, the website does not have any demonstration videos. Mirko and I have already written an essay about why this sort of thing is "overdetermined"---the idea someone would invent this is of the "no duh!" variety---so I won't rehash that argument here except for a thumbnail: bystanders hate others with iPods in public because the iPod user is publicly enjoying the device.

What is interesting is that the "inventors" (as if!) of the iDildo (or the "OhMiBod") make the process of marketing it transparent on the website (see the "evolution" link and the FAQ). Part of that marketing ploy is a new variety of the classical emotional appeal: "The OhMiBod vibrator is a whole new way to enjoy your iPod® or any other music player. Everyone loves music. Everyone loves sex. OhMiBod combines music and pleasure to create the ultimate acsexsory™ to your iPod." (It is not true that everyone loves sex or music, but we'll go with it for now.)" It's a synesthesia appeal, the notion that multiple drives can be stimulated at once!

The appeal to synesthesia is not new—this is what the cinema is about, frankly, as well as Playstation's vibrating hand controllers. What is novel here is the deliberate confusion of the senses, that the genital drive and the invocatory drive are supposed to be, well, "remixed." Apparently the dildo vibrates to the beat of your favorite tunes; the website encourages "users" to share their iPod "playlists" with each other (immediately I think that only dance music would really work all that well, but if anyone has experience to suggest otherwise, please tell me!). One can imagine the conversations: "oh, what did you cum to?" "Well, last time it was Underworld's 'Push Upstairs,' but I think I’m going to try a little Brian Eno next time so that I can, you know, take my sweet time."

What's also fascinating to me is the argument for public enjoyment that the designers are using to promote this device: "More than just a pleasure toy, OhMiBod harnesses the iPod movement and popularity to bring a higher level of acceptance and openness about sexuality in a fun and liberating way. Young or old, single or partnered, people from all walks of life are experiencing an amazing new way to connect and share the pleasures of orgasmic play." This is just plain silly, however, the politics implicated in these statements are pretty dead-on: the iPod has resurfaced discussions of stranger sociability vis-à-vis narcissism on the public screen. Coupled with the appeal to synesthesia, this politics points up a pretty interesting challenge: the thing about enjoyment is precisely that is wholly individual, that it is entirely self-focused. For example, whether you are a man or a woman or something inbetween, the moment of orgasm is really all about you, no matter how you try to maintain a sense of "mutuality" before and after the tingles. Yet here are these OhMiBod people appealing to stranger sociability ("acceptance and openness") with a device that does just the opposite (unless, of course, the argument is for men and women everywhere to masturbate on park benches and such . . . which would be interesting, if not messy).

In a sense, this is the sixties returned in the age of gageteering. The "hippies" of the 60s appealed to community by pushing drugs—drugs that, by their very nature, encourage self-enjoyment at the expense of others, or at least during the "peak hour" Is this not the dead end of addiction, sheer solitudinous enjoyment? I suppose I worry about arguments in favor of public enjoyment; they are patently absurd. Case in point? Witness this mock-up of iPod advertising. Although the point is well-taken, the actual practice is absurd (warning: this is NOT safe for work . . . but then again, a lot of daytime television is not safe for work either):

iPorn + iTease
Uploaded by xMissy

celebrity culture

Music: The Today Show

A major benefactor is considering throwing the College of Communication more than seven figures of funding to support the development of something called "Entertainment Studies." Some time ago requests for faculty contributions to such a major, track, concentration, "center," and so on were made, specifically in terms of who we might know to bring in for colloquia and what we might teach that fits with an "entertainment studies" rubric.

Obviously a number of my courses—including my rhetoric and popular music and religion classes—could fit here, although I said that I would be willing to develop an undergraduate class titled "celebrity culture." Personally, I enjoy the gossip columns and racy details of celebrity life because of its absurdity, and because the star system has permeated our lives in almost every domain: the sheer ubiquity, for example, of publicizing one's "private sex tape" is case in point (and there is a paper to be written here that argues, again, that the public does not exist). So I think teaching such a class would be fun, and potentially popular, and help introduce students to critical thinking. So this is a win-win-win proposition. Nevertheless, I've been thinking about what the syllabus would look like, insofar as this is an upper-level undergraduate course, scratching my head a bit.

Ok, so I know I'd have to include Walter Benjamin on "Art in the Age of Its Mechanical Reproducibility," and an essay or two from Adorno. The students will hate those readings, but they really are essential. I would then like to assign something like Jodi Dean's Publicity's Secret, although I think that would be too hard. So I guess what I'm saying is that everything that comes to mind is a bit too challenging for undergraduates. I don't mind challenging them a little—but just not with every reading. Any thoughts out there as to good articles or books on celebrity culture?

on eudaimonia and sacrifice

Music: Carcrash International: Fragments of a Journal in Hell (1993)

I just got off the phone with my mother, which is sometimes both a comfort and disconcerting, today mostly a comfort but a little disconcerting. With the recent passing of my grandfather, my father (in his sixties) has been considering gastric by-pass surgery, and my mother is frightened about the "less than one percent" chance he could die from the surgery. My father is thinking about his father and quality of life issues; if he has the surgery some of the other health issues will go away. It's odd to talk with one's parents about the "rest of their years" with them, but I suppose I am glad they are thinking about happiness, and how that might be maintained or achieved in the days that shimmer ahead, slightly out of focus but with glimmering promise nonetheless.

As I was telling a friend over lunch last week---finding myself reasonably "secure" with my career and more-or-less confident I'm doing the right thing (although I've fantasized about what the second, mid-forties life-crisis career change will be)---that my focus has been more and more on making sure the home life is in order, trying to enjoy the outdoors and the garden, working on maintaining important relationships (many of which are long distance), thinking about "family" possibilities (last year was the first year that I finally admitted I wanted kids "for sure," though letting myself be open to dissuasion), and other things that the focus on career had presumably displaced. I worry sometimes that I might have passed up on romantic opportunities in the past, now that the age of 34 is upon me and everyone's getting hitched and having children. For a number of years I rebelled (somewhat angrily) against my parent's constant demand for the production of grandchildren; they've stopped making those demands in various ways. I always envisioned children "after tenure," but I realize now this was foolish (after tenure there's merit pay, and then full professorship to worry about, and so on). The disappearance of the demand is somewhat of a relief, of course, but as I approach my birthday I worry about what sort of judgments my parents have made.

I remember very vividly, nearing the end of my senior year in college, the chair of one of my programs driving me home from an NCA seminar at the Smithsonian. He said he wanted to have a hear-to-heart discussion with me about "my bright future," and proceeded to disclose a lot of inside information about working in the academy. "Do you want to be a big name?" he asked. I resolutely told him "no! I want to think for a living and teach!" He then proceeded to tell me that the life of the mind was somewhat of a Faustian bargain: if you want to think for a living, you have to be ready to "sacrifice" some part of life that would have been preserved for family. He warned that my parents and extended family would not quite understand what I did. He warned that there are few rewards for the college professor, and that culturally teachers in general are not valued.

That conversation has (obviously) always stuck with me, in part because much of what he said was true. Much of it, I'm convinced, is not (e.g., I can name many exceptions to the warning about sacrifice, many "big name" exceptions, in fact). Nevertheless, memories like this weigh in on the question of happiness, which goes hand-in-hand with "flourishing" or doing what one does well.

Embroiled in faculty discussion these past three weeks, it seems to me sometimes department dynamics (not necessarily my own) reinforce the "sacrificial" view of emotional investment---that some folks think of colleagues as something to endure, while others think of them as workplace "friend" that have a direct bearing on the pursuit of happiness. I do not like the idea that somehow a department can "socialize" a interpersonal disaster or rehabilitate them, because it slights the view I'm trying to maintain, that a schoarly life cannot be partitioned. Case in point: hiring someone because they are a "big name" or publish out the wazoo or whatever, for the prestige external to the practice of your department, at the expense of more personal things---like how annoying the person's voice is, or how arrogant they seem to behave, or how they are deceptive (but not in particularly clever ways). Why do departments, in other words, continue to hire jerks? Is it because they don't investigate the individual properly, or simply because they do not care?

Ah, the (my?) so-called Life of the Mind. I still get excited about ideas; I suppose the point is that I tend to surround myself, or at least try to surround myself, with the similarly excited. Career and emotional/family/friendly life cannot be separated. I suppose what troubles me is that all the available, default maps "out there" seem to presume this binary, that maybe I have sometimes in the past fallen into the romantic dream of self-sacrifice myself. In part, this is why it was good to escape the gravity of New Orleans.

grant grubbing, part III

Music: Violet Indiana: Casino (2002)

First, the Marvelous Dr. Mmmmm has announced that a new edition of Liminalities out, which features a modest piece by yours truly, "On Answering Machines and the Voice Abject." It's a souped-up version of a canned talk I've toured for a couple of years based on a still unfinsihed print essay that will double as both a conclusion to my book project as well as an essay I want to send to either Text and Performance Quarterly or Cultural Studies. What remains to be done is . . . well, reading Levinas (the auditor will understand why and, yes, James, I've not forgotten about the reading group . . . just need some time).

Second: today I have a guest speaker for my class (the Fabulous E! on Giambattista Vico) and so instead of prepping I'm working on the NEH grant stuff again. I think I've got a good draft of the "project narrative," which will look familiar to some of you. The focus, this time, is on the "Voices from the Days of Slavery" exhibit at the Library of Congress, all of which is available on-line. Here goes:

An NEH Fellowship is requested to support the completion of a book-length project in rhetorical, cultural, and performance studies that examines the way in which the recorded human voice performs a number of important, cultural functions, from mourning and remembering, to repressing and forgetting. Because many scholars, journalists, and public figures have described ours as the "age of the image" or spectacle (e.g., Guy Debord; Neil Postman), it is commonly believed that human speech has declined in centrality and influence over the past century. The proposed book project, tentatively titled "Haunting Voices: Mass Media, Speech, and Transcendence in Postmodernity" (hereafter "Haunting Voices"), will argue otherwise, suggesting that as U.S. public culture becomes increasingly saturated by the image, the more central the human voice is becoming as a token of human authenticity. To this end, the primary research goal of the fellowship period is an analysis of the recorded voices of former slaves housed at Library of Congress and collected in the American Folklife Center's "Voices from the Days of Slavery" archive.

Although the book is predominantly concerned with an analysis of the use and function of the recorded voice in contemporary U.S. public culture, it also addresses a current trend in my home field of Rhetorical Studies, which is a sub-field of Communication Studies. Over the past decade, rhetorical scholars have devoted much attention to "visual rhetoric" and studies of the image. Noting the ubiquity and centrality of the image--especially the screened image--to contemporary public discussion and debate, leading scholars such as Barbara Biesecker, Dana Cloud, Kevin DeLuca, Anne Demo, Robert Hariman, John Lucaites, and Daniel Schowalter have published a number of studies that center on image and imagery as the most important locus of influence in our time. This trend in scholarship is part of a larger, disciplinary shift away from the analysis of human speech and speech activities. Before my field changed its name from "Speech Communication" to "Communication Studies" in the 1980s, with the exception of singing and voice training, scholars in my field taught and researched the human voice: phonology, physiology, sound physics, vocalics and elocution, the psychology of meaning and thought, argumentation and debate, oral interpretation and expression, public speaking, and so on, were included. Although many of my colleagues would argue that "speech" no longer seems to represent the varied objects studied in our departments, some scholars have argued for a renewed interest in the object of speech. For example, Frank E.X. Dance has urged scholars not to abandon almost a century of scholarship on what remains a central form of human expression. My project participates in this ongoing discussion about what communication scholars in general, and rhetorical scholars in particular, should select as their objects of study. Although I agree that the project of "visual rhetoric" is valuable and helpful, "Haunting Voices" will advance an argument in favor of the centrality and persistence of the object of speech in our media-saturated environment. Speech is increasingly mediated in our culture, however, it remains ubiquitous and has taken on new modes that merit continued scrutiny.

"Haunting Voices" continues an approach I adopted in my first book, Modern Occult Rhetoric: Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005). In Modern Occult Rhetoric I compare the tortuous and difficult jargon of mystics and magi, such as H.P. Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley, to the contemporary argot of a number of communities and organizations. For example, I compare the function and motive of difficult prose in so-called postmodern theory in academic circles to the hermetic argot of alchemists. My approach to modern occult phenomena was to show how common occult rhetoric is to our everyday lives--how we are all, in one way or another, witches and warlocks using language to perform professional and social kinds of magic. Although my current book length project differs substantially, I nevertheless approach my object of study the same way: "Haunting Voices" attempts to demonstrate how ubiquitous the recorded human voice is in our daily lives and the ways in which our use and reliance on these voices are often forgotten or overlooked.

Any cursory review of news media segments on the events of Nine-eleven reveals that the recorded voices of emergency personnel are frequently used to "anchor" an image as "real." As Steven Conner has argued, because humans tend to forget speech in favor of image, each re-encounter with a victim's pained voice in a Nine-eleven media event becomes a haunting experience of a human "presence" that shocks hearers to reckon with mortality. Similarly, the canned-laughter or "laff track" on television situation comedies haunts viewers as a token of audience presence when, in fact, the laughing voices are just recordings. Canned laugher can be said to mourn the disappearance of the studio audience during the taping of television shows, and its continued use as a generic component of the "sitcom" can be described as an attempt to make the show not only seem funnier, but somehow more humanly authentic. Another example of the use of the recorded voice as a token of authenticity is the "Voices from the Days of Slavery" audio collection, which features 23 voice recordings of former slaves and victims of discrimination speaking about their experiences. Leonard Kniffel reports that the recordings, many of which were made by journalists for the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, are "amazing" and "stunning": the director of the collection, for example, "points out that a written transcript cannot convey the anguish in a man's voice as he explains to his 10-year-old grandson what it was like to fight for his country in World War II only to be denied, upon his return, admission to an American movie theater because he was black." Whether or not it is true, the belief that the recorded human voice is more "real" than pictures is widespread in U.S. culture, and its use is most conspicuous in moments of cultural remembrance and memorialization. My project will not only document this belief as well as the ubiquity of the recorded human voice in the mass media, but also attempts to explain why the recorded human voice has functioned as a mark of authenticity from a psychoanalytic and rhetorical perspective.

The book project begins with a survey of thought on the human voice, including a detailed review of the work of Walter Ong, a review and response to the work of Jacques Derrida on "logocentrism" and the illusion of presence, and an analysis and description of Jacques Lacan's views on human speech. Portions of this theoretical survey have already appeared in two publications, "Mourning Speech: Haunting and the Spectral Voices of Nine-Eleven," which appeared in the interdisciplinary journal, Text and Performance Quarterly (2004); and "Mourning Humanism, or, the Idiom of Haunting," which appeared in the flagship journal of rhetorical studies, the Quarterly Journal of Speech (2006). Following this review, I will advance a concept that I term "the voice abject," which explains the ambivalent response we have to recorded voices---delight, horror, or both depending on the context---in terms of the infantile experience of the primary caregiver's voice (the "acoustic mirror"). Parts of this chapter have also been published in an invited essay titled, "Gimme Some Tongue (On Recovering Speech)," which is forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Speech (2007).

The largely theoretical exploration and framing of the first third of "Haunting Voices" is followed by a series of case studies, in chapter form, that will explicate how the "voice abject" is present in different, mediated contexts: (1) in the ventriloqual performance of psychics and mediums "channeling" the voices of the dead; (2) in the new media use of the recorded voices of Nine-eleven victims (over two chapters); (3) in the canned laughter of television comedy shows; (4) in the "backwards masking" or reverse speech on rock music albums in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the rumor panic rhetoric concerning Satanism and teen suicide articulated to this recording practice; (5) in the slavery narratives of the "Voices from the Days of Slavery" collection at the Library of Congress; and (6) in the common, cultural practice of saving answering machine messages and voice mail recordings of loved ones, particularly those that have passed away. A version of the chapter on psychics has already appeared in print as "Refitting Fantasy: Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity, and Talking to the Dead" in the Quarterly Journal of Speech (2004), and an audio essay version of the final chapter on answering machine has been published in Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies (2007).

For the six-month NEH fellowship period (preferably January-June 2008), I propose to meet two goals. The first and most important, labor-intensive goal is to research and write about the racial dynamics and complexities of the "Voices from the Days of Slavery" collection at the Library of Congress, which is available freely on-line as a series of Internet web pages. This chapter has two foci. First, I will conduct an analysis of a sample set of recordings using a hybrid methodology drawn from psychoanalytic theory, conversation analysis, and rhetorical criticism in order to describe what rhetoricians term the "authority-" and "emotional appeals" of the recorded voices. Such a task will require listening to seven hours of archived audio and may involve some transcription. The second focus of the chapter is the assembly and presentation of the exhibit itself vis-à-vis the content of the recordings: how did the curators rhetorically frame the recordings? Are there discrepancies between the recordings and what is said about them? Insofar as these voices are "raced" as African American, what does the curators' presentation tell us about contemporary racial anxieties, and how is the recorded human voice used to negotiate these anxieties? Answering these and related questions will require a week-long visit to the Library of Congress' American Folklife Center in Washington, D.C. to interview individuals involved with the maintenance and promotion of the collection. I have secured a fellowship for the summer of 2007 to complete the partially written voices of Nine-eleven case study and to pursue a book contract. Consequently, the completion of the "Voices from the Days of Slavery" chapter will also mark the completion or near-completion of a draft of the book. Hence, the second goal for the fellowship period is to revise those chapters or potions of chapters that have been previously published in scholarly journals elsewhere for continuity of focus and tone. The second goal, in other words, is to revise the entire draft of "Haunting Voices" in preparation for publication.

"Haunting Voices" is an interdisciplinary book project, of which the essay on the recorded voices of former slaves will form a substantive part, which contributes to scholarly discussions on collective memory, mourning, and memorialization. The book will appeal to scholars in the fields of rhetorical, cultural, and performance studies, as well as scholars interested in collective memory, cultural mourning, and media ecology. From a disciplinary vantage, the project also intervenes in an ongoing debate regarding the proper objects of study in the field of rhetorical studies, which I argue should include actual speech. Finally, as the case studies of the recorded voices of former slaves and Nine-eleven victims suggest, the book contributes to a larger, cultural reckoning with tragic events in the history of the United States. "Haunting Voices" is not only a scholarly study, but also a personal project of mourning that I hope will contribute to our larger, collective attempt to reckon with the traumatic events of our past.

____

Ok, that's it. Is it clear? Focused? Fundable?

grant grubbing, part II

Music: Ulrich Schnauss: A Strangely Isolated Place (2003)

It's time for a patented DJ Joshie Juice bitchfest: as all of us in the humanities at public universities are now fully aware, grant grubbing is now right up there with publications, teaching, and service. And as any colleague in the social sciences will tell you, writing a grant can be as labor intensive as writing an article for publication, and there is frequently a trade-off. The unfortunate thing about the trade-off, however, is that you may not get the grant. Of course, you may not get published either (although you can keep shopping a failed article around, not so much a grant proposal).

Ok, so, today was my day to apply for an NEH fellowship. I've been at this for four hours now, and am defeated. How so? Well, let's put it this way: grant-grubbing and Microsoft are closely associated. And who is surprised by this association anyway? After all, grant-grubbing is, more or less, a corporate imperative to begin with, and nothing says corporation like Microsoft! Let me explain further.

To apply for an NEH grant, you first have to register with an independent site (presumably run by a contractor), Grant.gov (.) To register with Grant.gov, you first have to register with a credential certification service, also on a separate site. So, once you register with the certification service (typing in personal stuff, addresses, and so on), you then go back to Grant.gov and plug in your user ID and password (which has six letters long, to have one special character, at least one numeral, and a capital letter). Grant.gov then asks you for the "funding opportunity number," which requires you to go back to the NEH and read and read and read until something like an FON pops up. Copy, paste this back into Grant.gov, whereupon you are provided a link to download an "XFD" file.

Now, after this hour-long process you are instructed to download the free "Pureedge Viewer Software." Your application for the NEH grant cannot be made without this software . . . which, you guessed it, is for Windows users only. A few hunts and pecks later, I find a link for "non-Windows users." Following that link, you are taken to a PDF that you download and read. This PDF says "We recognize the popularity of the Macintosh Operating system," and then it continues that Grants.gov "has embraced Apple's move toward compatibility" with their deals with Intel, and then it recommends that Mac users purchase Virtual PC and then Windows so that they can download the Puredge viewer. No thanks.

More hunting and pecking reveals two other options for Mac users. One is to use the "Citrix" remote emulator. Basically, Citrix is a Microsoft Internet Explorer program that allows you to work off of a government Windows server remotely, which already has the Pureedge viewer installed. So downloaded and installed Citrix, fired it up, and it asks me to locate the fellowship application file, which is the XFD file. I do this. "Error: file unavailable" it says. I delete the XFD file and download another one. "Error: file unavailable" it says.

I go back to the Grants.gov website looking for a troubleshooting guide. No troubleshooting guide. I notice there is another option for Mac users, a program by IBM that is sort of Windows emulator lite. I download this program, which is gzipped. Now, gzip is an old way to zip files---or at least for mac people. Stuff-it Expander cannot open the file, so I go to Tucows.com to find a gzip expander. I find one, download the expander, and try to start it up. My machine says that this program is written for OS 9 "Classic," the old operating system. My computer asks if I'd like to start up the old OS. Sure, I says, lets do that. My computer says that it cannot find the old OS.

I was considering reinstalling system 9, but here FOUR EFFING HOURS LATER I think I will call it a day. I am looking into getting a Windows loaner laptop so I can apply for this thing and have it over with. Sheesh.

nuggitude

Music: Roxy Music: Viva! (1976)

• At the behest of the dean, in the department we are knee-deep in discussions about envisioning the future: who are we, what do we do, and what to we want to become? The "Rhetoric and Language" area that I am a member of (as opposed to "Organizational Communication" and "Interpersonal Communication") has met a good bit---if not too much---and developed some excitement. The trouble is that when the larger faculty gets together, some juniors are terrified to say anything aloud for fear of hurting the feelings of seniors. I don't get it. I posted my thoughts to the entire faculty and one junior colleague commended the post as "courageous" and "risky." I am starting to worry that I am too stupid to negotiate the careful politics of a department that had a tumultuous and difficult 1990s. Is it just my department, or is there something of a "culture of fear" among pre-tenured junior people from really speaking up and out in the governance of departments?
• Yesterday Brooke and I saw Pan's Labyrinth. Because I am, well, a sensitive boy, I sobbed a good bit during the movie. It's somewhat embarrassing walking out of a theatre and looking like you've been to a funeral, especially when the young women around you are laughing and making jokes at the end of the movie. I was glad to see my date was weepy too. In any event, Pan's Labyrinth was nothing short of brilliant, worthy of the accolades it has received. Too much of the violence was gratuitous (there was no good reason for a lot of the graphic sadism, and the fascist character was too one dimensional to be believable, but I know horrible people did exist). I have a very short list of films that are on my "do not watch" list. My list has two parts: brilliant and good films that are too upsetting to see again, and bad films that are so bad I never want to see them again. Like Natural Born Killers, Pan's Labyrinth is a very, very good film that is too upsetting to watch again.
• Speaking of Pan's Labyrinth, I remember saying something so naive in the car on the way home, but it is something that nevertheless I think when I learn about bad people: I just cannot fathom any capacity for inflicting pain on someone. I mean, I can be ugly and mean to people (who cannot?) and I know I am manipulative at times (which I don't realize until after the fact or when someone points it out), but enjoyment of self-conscious sadism simply baffles me. Brooke said that we don't know what others (or ourselves) are capable of in extreme situations, which is the lesson of Pan's Labyrinth. This is true, I guess. I don't wish extreme situations on anyone, then.
• Speaking of faculty meetings and movies that make me cry (and a litany of other things), I wish I wasn't so sensitive as a person. I dunno if it's an insecurity thing or an only child thing or what. It's the main thing I work on in therapy, but the shrink has been urging me to own-up to my sensitivity and embrace it. I guess so. I think this is related to my hatred of Colin Oberst.
• Speaking of people who annoy me, is anyone else out there tired of Nora Jones? Jesus, her cute face is everywhere and on everything. I remember I really enjoyed the first album and played it constantly. And then even kind of liked the second album. But now her music and cuteness are starting to make me barfy inside---like eating too much cotton candy.
• I think we have found a new daddy for Cosimoto! We're finalizing the details, but I can honestly vouch for the potential adopter. The little guy is sitting in my lap right now. I've really enjoyed Cosi and don't want to see him go, but the ante is upped: we now have another Devon at the shelter one day away from euthanization. The rescue person I work with said that he's in the injured section, so he may need some serious care---we shall see. I didn't think when I signed on for rescue I would have many of these guys to help---even the shelter folks say Devons are "very rare"----but, I suppose it comes in waves? I'm happy to help out. Sometimes I wish I was more like my colleague Dana: in the streets protesting, rallying, and so on, to save human beings from death row. Saving cats is nothing compared to saving human beings, but it’s a good thing still.
• Brooke and I had a yummy dinner last night at a local tex mex joint with funky decour and renowned margaritas. One of my favorite students works there and, to our delight, we found our entire meal comped when we got ready to leave. Wow. This student is an "A" student with no need for extra credit or anything, so the gesture was especially nice. A surprise joy. Brooke said she felt like she was dating a "mafia boss."
• Two of my best friends got tenure track job offers: Mirko at Converse College in South Carolina, and Shaun at North Texas. I'm so tickled, as my mother would say. Now that Shaun has job security here in Texas, I have two best friends within a short drive (Christopher is at A&M). Given that and a number of other things, Austin is a great place to be.
• I've been dreaming about adopting a dog. I know that I should not, and so I will not, because I travel too much and I have no yard. I like standard poodles (good for my allergies) and really like the Huge Dog, but I reasoned if I got a dog I would be ok with a minipin or a French Bulldog. My friend the Master Piercer Jen has a great minipin, Isis, and one night when I was sleeping over I shared my bed with a chummy (if not snore-y) French bulldog that was a real trip. The French bulldog belonged to her boss, who, with her partner, are major underground porn stars (the partner is a female-to-male transgender exhibitionist). Ok, yes, French Bulldogs and unusual porno are associated in my head, but I'm only on my second cup of coffee.
• Because I got my tax returns last week, I splurged on a lot of household cleaners, a car tune-up, and two CDs: the new Bloc Party album and the new Skinny Puppy album. The Bloc Party stuff is good, but less 80s sounding than the debut and more guitar-y. The Skinny Puppy Mythmaker is excellent, but not as good as The Greater Wrong of the Right. The new album is all about the Bush administration (and a pretty nasty critique). My favorite refrain from the Skinny Puppy album is a song in which a heavily manipulated voice sings, "Jesus wants to be ugly, Jesus wants to be ugly . . . ."
• I'm trying to locate a short story by W. Hartenau (a pseudonym of Walther Rathenau) titled "The Resurrection Co." for a book chapter I'm writing with Dale on Jack Spicer. Larry Rickels writes about the story in his Nazi Psychoanalysis series. Apparently a phone company figures out a way to service the dead, and they start calling each other like crazy---eventually prank calling the living as well. This story was published in 1898, and so it gives an early voice to the fantasy of talking to souls that new technology catalyzed. Dale are going to argue Spicer's fascination with ghosts and poetry as channeling presaged posthumanism by many decades.
• For the organizational communication guest speaker series this year, Majia Nadesan from Arizona State came and spoke last Friday. She's writing a book on governmentality, a follow-up to her book Constructing Autism. She presented on brain research vis-à-vis Foucault. Wow, an amazing talk and something many of our rhetoric grad students would have enjoyed if they bothered to show up (alas, Obama was in town and speaking at the same time). I am thoroughly convinced that I have no idea what organizational communication is anymore. I thought I knew, but clearly I am an ignoramous. After her talk, I worried perhaps rhetorical studies is the wrong field for me. The only other time I felt this was for three years at LSU, when I realized I could have been a performance studies person and been just as happy. Rhetoric is so culturally conservative.
• Speaking of speakers, my advisor Robert Lee Scott is coming here to give a talk on April 6th. I'm thrilled.
• Ok, that's enough nuggitude. I need more coffee.

garden goes britney

Music: Van SheEP (2006)

We've had such delightful weather the past few days that I've been trying hang outside more than I sit in front of this screen. Part of that outdoor life involved the spring clean (for the May Queen, of course) in the garden. After two very hard freezes my plants were pretty pitiful looking (one of my antique roses came down with black spot), so I went Britney on 'em. I pruned the shit out of my garden. It looks as pitiful as a pop star having a nervous breakdown on the public screen.

Speaking of pruning, it seems like rehab is the must-have celebrity accessory for 2007. Britney tried twice, I'm told, to rehab her self/career but couldn't endure the month-long treatment that Lohan did. Apparently St. Britney shaved her head after K-Fed threatened to test her hair for drug use in the custody battle o'er the kids but . . . what could she possibly be on or addicted to? I mean, he could still test her pubes too (did she shave those?). What is she so worried about? I mean, if she was on smack or crank she'd look like Kate Moss or be publicly digging the worms out of her face.

Speaking of worms, there are none in my garden. I did find a snail today as I pulled out more weeds. I wonder if everything will grow back? And I wonder what I should plant. I'm thinking about rosemary, to be sure, and perhaps replacing my gardenia that died my first winter here. Anyway, to commemorate the ugliness of my garden, I put yellow food coloring in my fountains. It looks like pee. I wish my toad would come back. I wish things were greener. You can check out the pitiful state of Joshie's Britney-fied garden here.

I wish Britney had hair. I miss New Orleans.

meet cosmo!

Music: This Week

Here's my new friend Cosmo, a charming boy pulled from a local shelter to save him from his imminent doom! Recently I've become a registered foster parent for rescue Devonshire Rex and Sphynx cats in the Austin area, working with the Siamese Rescue Alliance. Although Devon and Sphynx rescues are rare, there is (to our knowledge) no one to help with rescue around here, so I'm stepping-up. Here's my first rescue: Cosmo the Wonder Rescue! I would love to keep him but, alas, my own two kitties are already throwing a hizzy!

Would you like a new putty in your life? Cosmo is a very sweet and friendly boy, loves to be petted and MEOWS for you to keep doing it. If you really get him going he rolls over for the coveted belly scratch. He is a Devon, so his hair is short, curly, and very soft, and sometimes those who are allergic to cats can tolerate devons. He's a small kitty (check out his size next to the cordless phone) who is both active and likes laps too.

It is very sad that a family decided they wanted to send him to the pound. Their reason was that Cosmo was having tinkles outside of the box. Well, golly: if they would have taken him to a competent vet they would have learned he has a bacterial bladder infection! So, he's currently on a two week regimen of antibiotics and, since I've had him he's had no problem using the box. Once that infection is cleared up, he'll have no troubles in the tinkle department. The only reason you may not like Cosmo is that he likes to TALK. He's a chatty guy, likes to let you know where he is. If you want your kitties quiet and aloof, this guy is not your putty. If you want an active and loving boy who gives you lots of attention: Cosmo is you man! Here's a gallery of action shots. Drop me an email if you're interested.

happy valentine's day, bitches!

Music: Today Show

What a glorious and love-filled Wednesday this is! . . . or NOT! As usual, this year I have mixed up two cd-length mixes of music so that none of you are empty handed for this most commercial of emotional holi-daze. I regret I can no longer afford to mail out the disks to you bitches, so a joshcast or two will have to do!

The first joshcast is for all you lovers out there. I know you think I’m critical of romantic love—and I am—but that don't mean I'm immune to longing for it! That said, this year's pro-valentine mix is titled "lil' heart-shaped beasties 2007," and you can download the mp3 by clicking this link. I've also uploaded a CD insert, which includes the tracklisting, as a pdf file, which you can download from here. Here's a tracklisting for the pre-DL curious:

lil' heart-shaped beasties 2006

• The Delays: "Valentine"
• The Human League: "Love Action"
• Flock of Seagulls: "Space Age Love Song"
• Cut Copy: "Time Stands Still"
• Colder: "Crazy Love"
• Tom Petty: "Even the Losers"
• Milton Mapes: "Quick Eyed Love"
• Now It's Overhead: "Meaning To Say"
• Portastatic: "I'm in Love"
• Favorite Sons: "Down Beside My Beauty"
• Futureheads: "Hounds of Love"
• Elkland: "Put Your Hand on Mine"
• CSS: "Let's Make Love"
• The Similou: "All This Love"
• Alloy Mental: "Gotta Love"
• Electric Hellfire Club: "Calling Dr. Love"
• XTC: "Love at First Sight"
• The Rapture: "Don Gon Do It!"

Next up is the anti-Valentine's mix, which is a bit gloomy (though, what do you expect?) titled "Philophobia 2007." No love songs here! Just anti-commercial vitriol for a commercialized emotion. You can download the mp3 by clicking this link. The CD insert for "Philophobia 2007" can be downloaded by clicking this link. Here's a tracklisting for the pre-DL curious:

philophobia 2007

• the swans: "love will tear us apart"
• beautiful south: "especially for you"
• annie ross: "to hell with love"
• emiliana torrini: "bad luck woman"
• wire: "i should’ve known better"
• morrissey:" life is a pigsty"
• tv on the radio: "don’t love you"
• type-o negative: "everyone i love is dead"
• yeah yeah yeahs: "no no no"
• the gossip: "your mangled heart"
• the fall: "what about us?"
• grand national: "drink to move on"
• she wants revenge: "i don’t want to fall in love!"

Enjoy your day, whether you love or love to hate the holiday!

gadget love

Music: Nick Drake: Way to Blue (1994)

Yesterday I started feeling down, for good reasons of course, but at some level for inexplicable ones. I very much dislike the inexplicable blue ("IB"), you know, the inexplicable tear? This time of year is hard on everyone, I realize. It would be nice to have some sun today, I guess. Must be Seasonal Affect Disorder or some such unpleasantry.

A hard series of meetings happen this week at school: graduate admissions, the vision thing (e.g., what do we want the department to be in the next century?), strategic planning and so forth. So research is taking a back-seat to other obligations. Regardless, I'm still trying to push through the February blues and managed to write a small bit on the iPod essay this morning. Here it is:

Any cursory review of popular media stories about the iPod reveals that the device is at the intersection of a number of different rhetorics: first and foremost, the iPod concerns sound insofar as it is a delivery mechanism for music; second, it is a profitable technological commodity that has become a desirable possession (seemingly) independent of its use; and third, as we have already suggested, the iPod seems to function as an occultic device of discrimination based on those who do and do not enjoy it in public space.[i] The three dimensions of iPod rhetoric are suggestive of a musical experience, a desirous form of consumption, and a public politics that are somehow intricately related. The concept that immediately seems to link these dimensions of iPod rhetoric is fetishism, or the attribution of magical or sexual powers to an object that it does not itself truly possess: The iPod delivers musical bliss, it promises consumptive fulfillment (and unforeseen profit), and it creates social groups of insiders and outsiders. In this sense, the iPod is the haloed center of a significant kind of cultural work, and the device betokens something more than itself-a "something more" or beyond the iPod than the iPod.

The "something more" of the iPod speaks to its character as a gadget and the desire that gadgets stimulate. Catherine Liu explains:

Gadgets are miniaturized prostheses-and fit into the available orifices of the consumer body: they resist decorporealization insofar as they provide an imago for the ideal organ. Palm Pilots, Blackberries, refrigerators that send email, robot vacuum cleaners, iPods, and customized cell phones require psychic docking ports that allow data to be attached to bodies in motion.[ii]

The "gadgeteer," continues Liu, is someone for "whose attachment to new technologies trumps his or her attachment to sex or other strenuous activities."[iii] Adorno argues that gadgets betoken a false sense of empowerment among "persons who do not any longer feel they are self-determining subjects of their fate."[iv] The libidinzalization of gadgets is thus party to a soul-deep, science fiction fantasy of immortality and omnipotence, the ability to replicate or extend oneself without (or beyond) embodiment. In this respect, Laurence Rickels argues that "gadget love" is simply the contemporary iteration of fetishism as such, the public desiring of our "high tec" times.[v] Gadget love is a metonymic surrogacy for sexual organs,[vi] a kind of lust for machines that participates in a larger, cultural fantasy of "overcoming of a crisis in reproduction though the self-replicating prospects of immortality . . . ."[vii] One of the reasons the iPod has dominated discussions about popular culture, then, is that the device is plugged into a larger, cultural, "psy fi" techno-fantasy self-extension and control.

The fetishistic appeal of the gadget is twofold. First, though its look, feel, and use gadgets cause desiring for "something more" in the gadget than the gadget itself. Walter Benjamin once described this "something more" in the context of technological reproduction as the "aura," . . . .

Notes
[i]For popular literature on the iPod as a musical device, see______; for literature on iPod as a fetishized, commercial gadget, see _____; finally, for a discussion of the social politics of the device, see ______.
[ii] Catherine Liu, "A Brief Genealogy of Privacy: CTRL [Space]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother." Grey Room 15 (2004): 113.
[iii] Liu, "A Brief," 113.
[iv] Adorno, Stars Down, 74.
[v] Laurence A. Rickels, Nazi Psychoanalysis, Volume III: Psy Fi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 129-207.
[vi] Catherine Liu, Copying Machines: Taking Notes for the Automaton (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 36-37.
[vii] Laurence Rickels, "Nazi Psychoanalysis: Response to Werner Bohleber." American Imago 52 (1995): 356.

the privation of anna nicole

Music: David Bowie: Lodger (1979)

Celebrity culture has had a bit of indigestion this week, heaving up two tantalizing stories: a diaper-wearing astronaut who pepper-sprayed a perceived romantic rival after a crazed, non-stop drive from Texas to Florida; and the shocking demise of Marilyn Monroe returned, Anna Nicole Smith, possibly from a drug overdose. What interests me about the coverage of these two events is that it seems to be built around what Lacan termed "privation," the perceived deprivation of the symbolic phallus particular to women. Whether or not one believes in Lacan's theories, the point is that "lack" is clearly a big player in television and Internet reports of the two women. This morning the Today show featured their own version of Dr. Phil, Keith Ablow, along the editor of People (!), who both stressed how "needy" Anna Nicole Smith was. She was starved for love, they said, and this put tremendous pressure on her recently deceased teenage son. Likewise, reports about Lisa Nowak have been stressing NASA's lament that their battery of psychological tests did not detect Nowak's lack of stability and strength of character. That Nowak attempted murder over a male love interest, of course, speaks directly to continual, metonymic slide of privation.

In a couple of seminars that are not yet translated (namely, the fourth) Lacan details three kinds of lack: symbolic castration, imaginary frustration, and real privation. Most folks who've mucked around in Lacan are familiar with symbolic castration (e.g., as entry into the Symbolic and so on). Real privation refers, first, to Freud's argument that girls develop penis envy, initially blaming their mothers and then, eventually the imaginary father (for not producing a suitable substitute, a baby). That is, when Suzie sees that Bobby (or Daddy) has a penis and she does not, she perceives a literal lack in the Real. Now, like everything that has to do with identity, this perception is a mistake, for (a) the vagina is a complete organ; it is not "really" lacking; and (b) the Real, strictly speaking, cannot be lacking. "Lack" is a symbolic perception. So, the idea here is that girls are socialized into thinking they are missing something, not the biological penis, but some symbolic thing that they have be deprived of (viz., the symbolic phallus). At first this missing thing is identified (mistakenly) as a real penis, but then as subjectivity evolves from girlhood to womanhood she "slips-along the lines of a symbolic equation, one might say, from the penis to a baby" (Lacan as quoted in Dylan Evan's Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis).

Of course, privation here is a more technical description of Freud's notions, so we should not be surprised to see this theory underlying the commentary of "experts": the notion of woman as "lacking" something is soul-deep---it's a common cultural assumption. So, Anna Nicole is described as constantly seeking objects to overcome an impossible-to-overcome lack: money, true love, and finally, children. The thing with privation is that it's never enough, it's impossible to overcome precisely because it’s a function of the symbolic—the lack is not, well, not real. So we have Lisa Nowak, already with the tokens of privation---an estranged husband and two children---but it was not enough. Enraged, she must destroy any obstacle (e.g., symbolic mommy or imaginary daddy) that stands in the way of her impossible "recovery." The script is Basic Instinct or Fatal Attraction: we all know how the story goes and how the story ends. The Freudian tale of privation underwrites the news everyday.

Perhaps the saddest part of this cultural fantasy is that it has material consequences: children are born in their capacity as the symbolic phallus without any regard to their well being as human beings. I am reminded of a story, very close to home, about a newly wed wife who insisted on seeing her baby shortly after it was born, despite the fact the infant was premature and needed immediate, life-saving attention. She complained for days on end, alienating the family and even her husband, until the child was well enough to handle handling.

There are scores of wonderful mothers out there---mine especially. These mothers may or may not be reacting to privation, I don't know. But I do know the good mothers do not treat their children like objects to collect or possess. We rarely see the good mothers on the news or on television (unless, of course, it's a maudlin celebration of some sort, like in Disney's Extreme Home Makeover, which Dana has persuasive argued is all about the failure of the imaginary father). Instead, we're more likely to get the mother of all mothers: the needy one, the one that needs to be saved from her own, ravenous, drug-riddled self.

bright eyes

Music: Austin City Limits

Conor Oberst is on public televison singing his little heart out with a nice Old Navy pullvover and cute floppy hair, with nicely groomed eyebrows and the angst of puberty. It seems to me he has a bit of Ani DiFranco syndrome: every thought that comes in a Waffle House moment is transferred to a napkin and then is deemed worthy of putting on an album.

I love me some Saddle Creek (yo, Faint! I luvs ya shit) but . . . am I the only one who gets all pukey when Oberst opens his mouth? What a fuckin' musical putz. Seriousy. How does David Lowery put it? "What the world needs now . . . ." I swear Bright Eyes is like the Dead Milkmen without a sense of humor. "Punk Rock Girl" becomes an plea for rape awareness.

Oberst is a tortured, eighth-grade putz. Period.

postfeminism

Music: Julee Cruise: Floating Into the Night (1989)

First, my sincere thanks to all of you who emailed with condolences (and also to those of you who thought them too). Although my grandfather and I were not very close these last many years, it is upsetting to loose him, and hard to see (or rather hear) my parents grieve, and a real bummer to talk to my step-grandmother about it, as she's very upset. It's particularly difficult for me because "Papa" was cremated and there is no service planned; I should be there, but here I sit.

I think it was de Man who said somewhere that literature and writing about literature were ways to stave off the certainty of death and any full reckoning with lack. As hackneyed as this sounds, one could say such is the purpose of scholarship in general, or at least scholarship in the theoretical humanities (that is, we stave off certainty). While working in Baton Rouge folks used to ask how I managed to be so productive those three years, and my answer usually was "sexual sublimation." I mean, I couldn't get a date to save my life (or start any new ones, either). In retrospect that answer is not quite right, especially when I think about the death-culture of Louisiana. Heck: Lacan says that all drives are death drives, right? So we write (about) death.

On that cheerful note, I've been staving off certainty by writing about post-feminism or postfeminism today (I prefer the unhyphenated version). Or more specifically, I've been revising my "Size Matters" essay for publication, focusing particularly on my discussion of an essay by Blair, Brown, and Baxter titled "Disciplining the Feminine." In this controversial 1994 essay the authors argue that there is a tacit masculinist norm in Communication Studies that spanks different ways of writing and researching, especially if those ways are coded feminine. I'm trying to argue for a reading of that essay as a critique of tone.

Here's my problem: recently this essay won a prestigious award, but I want to claim that it is still widely critiqued. The critiques of this piece are always anecdotal: in the hallway, at the bar, maybe in a classroom sometimes, but never in print. So I have to figure out a way to use this anonymous anecdotal "evidence" in the service of my argument, that the award is actually somewhat of a postfeminist move. I'm pasting in a DRAFT of the revision below. I'm wondering, however---if anyone's still reading---I'm wondering if anyone has heard similar dismissals of this essay? I would be embarrassed to mention some of the folks that have dissed Blair, Brown, and Baxter (so I will NOT disclose the names), and I've always been baffled because I think the essay is pretty darn powerful.

Anyhoot, here's a chunk:

ON SEEKING SUBSTITUES, OR, THE ARRIVAL OF THE ALWAYS ARRIVING

What a hunk of love . . . . Gigantic, Gigantic, Gigantic/A big big love!
--The Pixies, "Gigantic"

If we understand the traditional apocalyptic as a characteristically phallogocentric enterprise, the analogies of the pervert and the apocalyptic prophet interpenetrate: it feels good to discriminate in the tone of impending catastrophe, even when told to stop. Consequently, I have suggested that we can come to grips with the debate over Big Rhetoric as sounding an apocalyptic tone that is symptomatic of perversion. Such a conclusion suggests that those who continue to address the identity of rhetoric's field or undisciplined discipline might attend more studiously to the role of affect and emotions via the symptomology of tone. It also suggests that those who continue to prophesy the castration of rhetoric's prowess are themselves committing a kind of masculinist violence by excluding those who reject the monotony of death knells. How do we, as Cher once quipped in the film Moonstruck, "snap out of it!?!" Or, insofar as the apocalyptic as such is fundamentally exclusionary, can we? Perhaps a renewed attention and rereading of the "feminist" and deconstructive arguments in respect to tone intones and answer?

Redisciplining the Feminine

In the key of postfeminism, some might argue that the phallogocentric character of traditional apocalyptic suggests the primary exclusion effected by rhetoric's version was the work of feminism, and that we seem to have overcome its exclusions thanks to important, critical work by feminist critics. Such optimism is reflected in the recent attention received by Carole Blair, Julie R. Brown, and Leslie A. Baxter for their controversial 1994 essay, "Disciplining the Feminine," which received the National Communication Association's 2006 Charles H. Woolbert Research Award for having "stood the test of time" and for becoming a "stimulus for new conceptualizations of communication phenomena" ("Call for Awards"). Although the essay does not address the Big Rhetoric debate, it registers the anxieties of our (seemingly) ever-expanding field and, to my knowledge, is the first essay to examine seriously the scholarly tone of discipline-related conflict. Moreover, "Disciplining the Feminine" directly engages the classically phallogocentric social-contracting of scholars in the private, hush-hush off-screen of (going-)blind review. I suggest that one can better understand the dominant, apocalyptic tone of the Big Rhetoric debate by revisiting and reframing this important, award-winning essay.

In "Disciplining the Feminine," Blair, Brown, and Baxter argue that a "masculinist disciplinary ideology" governs the norms of scholarship in rhetorical (and Communication) studies, especially the "demand for a refined, ahistorical, smoothly finished univocality" (383). They critique of a 1992 report on the "Active Prolific Female Scholars in Communication" and the remarks of blind reviewers regarding their criticism of the report (Hickson, Stacks, and Amsbary 350-356). Blair, Brown, and Baxter castigate the report for, first, advancing a postfeminist rationale that works to obscure masculinist ideology (e.g., that because there are "prolific females" working in Communication Studies, we no longer need to scrutinize male privilege), and second, for advancing a "male paradigm" that excludes thought and work that is not impersonal and abstract, that does not heed strict boundaries between disciplinary territories, that does not promote the centrality of individual autonomy, and that does not reify dominant social hierarchies. This paradigm is signaled by its chief figure, the phallus:

Equally offensive is [the authors'] description of their report as an attempt to establish a "yardstick for active, female researchers in communication." Hickson et al.'s report-as-yardstick hearkens to the vulgar (and frequently brutal) political arrangements characterizing dominant/non-dominant group relations in times we have come to believe were "less enlightened." The yardstick (along with its metonymic associates, such as "the ruler" and "the rod") often functioned as the instrument used to "articulate" and reinforce the punitive politics of domination and oppression. . . . the yardstick (or its equivalent) is used by one individual to discipline another. In so doing, discipline and those traditionally charged with its preservation, are maintained. (393)

The authors criticize the responses to their critique by showing how cruelly the rod was used to dismiss their arguments as embarrassing, un-scholarly, and unprofessional. "There are too many feline, petty attacks in this manuscript," says one blinded reviewer, "and [there is] too much ball-bashing [for the essay] to be a scholarly article" (398). Insofar as the authors admit that "no conclusions offer themselves easily" and that it is "not up to the three of us alone to resolve" the tacit contracting over professional propriety, it is clear who claims the phallus in its coming castration (and, of course, which cats are blamed for posing the threat).

After Blair, Brown, and Baxter's important exposé, some rhetoricians may be tempted to argue that our phallogocentric apocalyptic has been tempered by their and related, subsequent critiques (e.g., Biesecker, "Coming" 140-161). That the conference planners of the most recent RSA meeting in Memphis chose "Sizing Up Rhetoric" as the theme should temper any unbridled optimism, as should an understanding of the apocalyptic tone as monotonously perverse. Although professionally recognizing "Disciplining the Feminine" contributes to an argument for feminism's acceptance, in light of the recent "sizing-up" idiom one should consider whether such recognition is merely a symptom of the very same yardstick-disciplinarity the essay is said to expose. To what extent does recognizing the essay sound like a "resolution" of the monotonality it critiques? In other words, can the celebration of the essay as a "feminist success" play into a kind of postfeminist ruse (see McRobbie), a tired, disciplinary iteration of "been there, done that?"

The threat of monotonal assimilation is easy to recognize if we take matters back to the off-screen (primal) scene where Blair, Brown, and Baxter originally bid readers to go: unquestionably, recognizing the essay over a decade after its publication is a (somewhat generationally marked) reaction to the oft-heard and overheard dismissals of the study in everyday encounters (e.g, in conversation at the RSA conference bar). For example, recently a blind reviewer for the present essay described "Disciplining the Feminine" as mere "whining" (a tonally-coded word if there ever was).[1] I have often heard the same sentiment from respected scholars at conferences and in casual discussions, a sentiment few would be willing to publicly voice because the essay has become a fetish of so-called political correctness. In this qualified respect, celebrating what some characterize as a critical castration is merely a toothless variety of lip service.

The problem with voicing an opposition to Blair, Baxter, and Brown's argument is that, presumably, it would brand one as a misogynist. Such a presumption, however, is party to the binarism of exclusion and, in a sense, misses what I understand as the core of their critique: gender coded rhetoric ("feline, petty attacks," "ball-busting," "whining") intones a phallogocentric, off-screen form of the disciplinary contract-the kind of contract that Derrida has shown entails a secret exclusion. To characterize their essay as a castration, consequently, is a mistake. Blair, Brown, and Baxter's critique has been (sometimes deliberately) misheard, for the critique is not only leveled at the level of the word, but also at the level of its expression and event-those things better discerned by an attention to tone. For example, the masculinist rules for expression they deplore demand "personae of the singular, neutral, authoritative observers who are detached from or ambivalent about their own histories and contexts" (402). Hearing/reading the tone of "detachment" is central to their arguments, which run counter to the monologic of apocalyptic. "Our talk about 'scholarly dialogue' and 'scholarly communities' notwithstanding," they argue, "we tend to construe our work in monologic terms" (403). Blair, Baxter, and Brown conclude their essay by calling for a rigorous attention to "patterns in our writing and speaking" (403). Yet, to my knowledge, few have taken their charge seriously in subsequent studies (see Schwartzman and Swartz 69-76). Insofar as prohibitions and protests have failed to put an end our perverse, apocalyptic tone in rhetorical studies, then, I shall come to an end-or better, I shall keep coming-by diagnosing why our strange brand of enjoyment is overdetermined and, perhaps, inescapable.

Rereading Gaonkar as Huldah

Whether from its institutional and political history or rhetoric's centuries-long status as a supplement, rhetorical studies is foundationally and fundamentally an apocalyptic and perverse discipline. As the Blair, Brown, and Baxter essay demonstrates, rhetoricians have been prohibited from this or that perversion many times and in many ways in the past thirty years. We can locate many more examples in . . . .

Note

"Blair et al., despite the circulation their essay has gotten, struck me as simply whining, and generalizing on the basis of a highly limited sample." Comment to the author from a blind reviewer.

4:30 a.m.: ollie gunn, r.i.p.

more writing

Music: Judas Priest: Defenders of the Faith (2002 remaster)

Well, the work of a scholar is never finished, not even on the holidays. I suspect I'm not alone when I say this: over the break, marooned in Hotlanta with no work to do, I felt somewhat lost. So, it's nice to be back in the saddle of projects, even if I'm constantly running behind deadlines.

Good news: the masturbation essay has received a provisional acceptance with minor revisions. I'm a bit confused by this, because neither of the reviewers requests revisions, and both seemed quite pleased. I may not generate flawless submissions (who does?) but I do think I can revise well. Anyhoo, I asked Diane Davis (the wickedest smartest postie this side of the Rio Grande) to give a look over and she had some suggestions, so I'll revise to those and get it back next week. Woohoo! Now with this and "ShitText," I have no more taboos to violate in academic publishing. Yippee! Now I can retire.

Oh, but I want to write three more books. I have them in my head already. I just need to research them. Oh, and write them.

And I have more revisions to finish. Proofs for "Hystericizing Huey" arrived today, and Mirko and I have a "revise and resubmit" essay on the iPod to overhaul. I started overhauling today. Both the editor and a review did not like the theory-then-application structure of the original, but wanted a continual application as theory rolls-out sort of thing. So this requires a reframing. Here's a very drafty version of the new introduction:

Today it is difficult to ride in or traverse any peopled, public space without becoming witness to someone's musical enjoyment. Increasingly the devices enabling such pleasures are of a kind: Apple's personal music gadget, the iPod. Although the iPod has sold well ever since Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled it on October 23, 2001, nearly 60 million of the 90 million iPods sold since that time have been in the last two years, signaling a previously unimaginable ubiquity.[2] Originally the iPod was a digital version of the portable CD player, however, since 2001 Apple has introduced a number of updated versions of the iPod, including models that display photos as well as low-resolution videos. The iPod (which is currently bundled with a popular, cross-platform software program and online music store titled "iTunes") has garnered over 70% of the market share for all types of portable media players, and 90% of market share for portable hard-drive based media players.[3] At the time of this writing, the current, fifth generation iPod comes in both white and black with chrome backing, and features a vivid, color screen (see Figure 1). With 20 to 60 gigabytes of memory, iPods are capable of holding tens of thousands of songs, photos, and videos that are selected and played back from a rotary wheel, which the listener uses by selecting on-screen menus and pushing the middle "enter" button. iPods are shipped with white-chorded earbuds that are inserted directly into the ear canal.

For a number of cultural critics, the direct insertion of the earbuds into the ear canal betokens "a form of accompanied solitude" that is rude and offensive.[4] "When you plug into your iPod in a public place," writes Armstrong Williams, "you are basically telling everyone else that you do not want to interact with them."[5] Owing to the flexibility of MP3 technology, which has resulted in an "unparalleled access" to one's entire music collection on a device the size of a credit card, iPods have been at the center of an expanding culture of mobile listening that replaces chance conversations with the musical "company" or "occupancy" afforded by the iPod.[6] Critics of the device frequently describe the false solitude of users as a narcissistic and self-indulgent one, as if using the gadget in public is an inappropriate, masturbatory event.[7] In fact, related to this caricature of the iPod user is a warning analogous to going blind: frequent and prolonged use of the iPod causes hearing loss. Audiologists have warned that, because the iPods earbuds are directly inserted into the ear canal, they literally focus sound directly to the eardrum at six to nine decibels louder than open-air sounds.8 Advances in music recording techniques and technology have also almost eliminated the hiss or "noise" discernable in older, "analog" recordings that contributes to distortion at high volumes.9 Consequently, the discomfort or "pain" one would usually feel from older recordings is not experienced by an iPod user when listening to music at high volumes. The consequence is that loud iPod music can traverse the threshold of pain and still sound "good" as the listener slowly goes deaf.

In this essay we argue that the association of the iPod with both masturbation and pain is not coincidental, but an overdetermined cultural relation owing to its status as a fetishized object or gadget. From a psychoanalytic perspective, gadgets are devices fabricated expressly for stimulating various human desires or "drives," sometimes by direct insertion into an orifice, but also by inviting the attention of the eyes (e.g., television) or ears (e.g., the sound of a portable alarm clock). Analyzing the iPod as a gadget in this sense, we argue, helps to explain both the pleasures of using the iPod, even beyond the threshold of pain, as well as the discourse generated about the device, or what we term "iPod rhetoric." To this end the essay is divided into two sections in which we focus on the experience of the iPod and the rhetoric of that experience respectively. First, we describe the psychical apparatus central to our understanding of the appeal of music in general, the drive to listen or the "invocatory drive," which is what the iPod is primarily designed to stimulate. Then, we detail the relationship between the libidinal and symbolic economies of exchanging meaning in musical experience in terms of a crucial concept, the "sonorous envelope." Finally, we illustrate our psycho-rhetorical theory of popular music by examining more closely the promotional and critical rhetoric surrounding the device. We conclude by detailing the political dimensions of the public enjoyment promoted by the iPod.

I. Experiencing (with) the iPod

A number of scholars in the fields of musicology, communication studies, and cultural studies have taken to explaining in detail how the formal elements of a musical text communicate meaning in seemingly non-discursive ways. For example, in his classic study of music education, Christopher Small argues that the central logic of western music is formally telic. The evolution toward functional harmony in the history of western music created a kind of musical gravity that depends on feelings of expectation and satisfaction.[10] The sonata form that resulted from these manufactured feelings (variously represented by AABA or, as a certain group of Swedes made famous, ABBA) underlies the structure of most of what we characterize as "popular music," from the Beach Boys to George Gershwin to Frank Zappa.

This notion of a drive toward the tonic, or the beginning key or note of a musical composition, is not merely an aberration or circumstantial event, but one that is overdetermined and ripe with cultural and ideological influence. Consequently, in addition to analyzing and critiquing the sensory effects of tonal music in the west, many scholars have also been tracing the persuasive or "rhetorical" dimensions of formal musical structures and their relationship to the social.[11] Scholars in the field of communication studies have contributed to this effort in a number of ways. For example, Karen Rasmussen has drawn on semiotics and Kenneth Burke's theory of form in order to show how Leonard Bernstein's Kaddish Symphony encapsulates a formal struggle between tonal and atonal compositional motives, which serves as a rhetorical inducement and reckoning with a Jewish struggle outside of the symphony's narrative.[12] The mediation and rhetorical or suasive effects of the social also figure prominently in Theodore Matula's schema for analyzing popular music, which stresses the interplay of text and context at multiple levels of abstraction. This approach better specifies an individual's listening practices as a complex amalgam of personal life-experiences and ideological influences.[13] Dissatisfied with the focus placed on meaning "intrinsic to the musical event" and the attention given to the "internal relationships of the [musical] composition," Robert Francesconi has argued for a "rhetoric of musical style" that emphasizes social frames of interpretation.[14] Although far from exhaustive, these three studies help to demonstrate how almost every attempt to specify a "rhetoric" of music forwards a strategy to help navigate the object of the "musical text" and the historical, social, political, or cultural context of its reception.

Whether one studies the critical object of a speech or song, the key theoretical difficulty of any interpretive schema is the tension between an individual's personal experience of a text and the external forces and discourses mediating and influencing her experience of that text. Of course, any framework for understanding the desirous act of listening should help to specify the interplay of listener, text, and practice. In theorizing this nexus, psychoanalysis focuses on both the individual, subjective experiences of the listener as well as cultural and social forms of mediation.15 Psychoanalysis is not some provocative "literary-metaphorical project of textual exegesis,"[16] but rather provides a number of compelling, explanatory tools for answering questions concerning subjectivity, affect, and desire. A psychoanalytic approach to music suggests that although the "suasive" influence of music can be explained with reference to the ideological and political norms encoded in formal musical structures (e.g., the tonic, timbre, timing, lyrics, and so on), the fact remains that different kinds of music appeal to different kinds of listeners, and consequently, any explanation of the suasive appeal of a given song or genre of music based solely on musical structures cannot account for the idiosyncrasies of individual enjoyment. The subjective psyche of a listener must be taken into account. Why does techno music cause a person to tap along to the beat, even when she hates techno? Why do some people enjoy country music when others despise it? We believe that the answer to these and similar questions has something to do with infantile experiences and libidinal energies that reside and emanate from the unconscious, something that an analysis of the iPod helps us to see.

We submit that the appeal of a given song or genre of music resides in the dynamics of two interwoven, psychical economies: one that is libidinal and concerns pure kinetic rhythms (the psychical and experiential); and another that is linguistic or representational and which involves the relationships between sounds and their culturally defined meanings (the rhetorical). Because communication scholars have tended to focus on the latter at the expense of the former, one of our goals in this essay is to supplement extant rhetorics of music keyed specifically to cultural representation and mediation with a theory of desire--or an explanation for what attracts a listener to a given musical object. Understanding how music attracts listeners experientially will help us, in turn, better understand the appeal of discourse about music and its modes of address-that is, the rhetoric of music.

an editor's trick

Music: Divorce Court

After almost twenty weeks in review, Tom and I finally got word from the editor of a lead journal in my field (rhetorical studies) about our article on alchemy. This word came a few days after I sent the following email to the editor:

Dear _______,

I'm writing in regard to [ms. #], "Catchy Article Title," which Tom Frentz and I originally submitted on 11 September 2006. Although I recognize the holiday period is a busy and frantic time for everyone, Tom and I believe that a decision about what to do with the manuscript is now long overdue.

In my first query to you on 5 September 2006, you said that "turn around time with the electronic system is about six weeks." In the 19 weeks since we submitted the manuscript, with humor and tact, I have contacted you numerous times to inquire about the status of the review. Let me review those moments:

I emailed on 27 November 2006 to ask about the status of that manuscript. I received no response from either you or your assistant.

I emailed again on 6 December 2006 to ask about the manuscript. I received no response.

I emailed a third time on 13 December 2006. In that email I mentioned that "we are deserving the respect of a response," even if that response was not positive. Silence, I mentioned, was unfair to us. Thankfully, you finally responded to this email, and we had a very nice conversation about the review process.

Last week I emailed to inquire about the manuscript, as we're working toward week 20. Neither Tom nor I have heard from you or your editorial assistant.

Although I realize that the transition to the on-line review system, combined with sluggish reviewers (or simply finding them!), is partly to blame, we are starting to believe that the decision to ignore our queries is deliberate.

In your reply in December you mentioned that you have one review in. We respectfully request to see this review, and that you make a swift but fair decision on what to do with our work.

Sincerely,

D(Jx3)

The editor's initial response? Silence! of course. Then another day. Then another day. Finally, a response:

25-Jan-2007

Dear D(Jx3):

At long last, the reviews of your essay, "Something Catchy" (manuscript #_____), follow this letter. Reader 1 is cautiously optimistic and recommends resubmission after major revision. Reviewer 2, in contrast, believes the work require for success constitutes more than revision, and s/he advises against further development for [this journal]. After reading the essay and the critics' comments, I understand both the optimism and reservations they express.

These divided recommendations have posed consistent challenges during my term, though I suspect I would agree with Reader 1 here. That speculation is moot, however, as in the last three weeks I have accepted 4-5 papers for publication. In the process, I have committed all of the space in my final volume.

On February 1, editor-elect ________ begins receiving all new submissions to the journal. One option you may want to consider is to study the readers' comments, re-work the essay, and to submit the paper to _______ as an original manuscript early in [her] tenure.

Regardless of how you proceed, I wish you the best of luck with your project.

Sincerely,

Mostly Silent Editor

How y'all like this trick? Let me paraphrase: "We've had your manuscript for nineteen weeks, but I won't offer you an apology. What I will tell you is that normally I'd offer a revise and resubmit, but I'm full. So sorry! Now go away!"

[In my best Borat accent] Is nice, ya? You like!

N-O-T [take breath] N-I-C-E. Of course, we might have considered sending the piece to the new editor, except for two reasons: the second reviewer who recommended the piece is (a) the new editor; and (b) the same reviewer who sat on the manuscript for nineteen weeks.

And so it goes in the world of pursuing publication for tenure.

spirit of service

Music: U.N.K.L.E.: Psyence Fiction (1998)

Today I just finished writing my first-ever "blurb" for a very good book on psychoanalysis and writing pedagogy (or "postpedagogy," as the author prefers): Thomas Rickert's Acts of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Zizek, and the Return of the Subject, forthcoming from Pitt this year. Y'all go get it: it's really an earnest and brilliant attempt to bring theory into the classroom, but in a way that doesn't devolve into what I term the "pedagological retreat." The "pedagological retreat" is a style of argument in rhetorical studies that dismisses the abstraction of theory as "idealist" and justifies ignoring it in the name of the "children." Y'all know what I mean, cause we see it all the time.

Anyhoo, such blurbage is on the heels of a completed review of Grindstaff's Rhetorical Secrets: Mapping Gay Identity in Contemporary America, as well as a completed review of an essay for a journal yesterday. This kind of labor got me thinking about what constitutes "service to the field," not in terms of what counts toward tenure, but in terms of my obligation and responsibility as a scout in Camp Rhetorical Studies. What do I owe the field in exchange for my "knowledge" and professionalization? I have a job, of course, and in part that job is a consequence of certain key scholars having a faith in my work and viability as a rhetorician. What is the proper return gift for this faith? Or is my thinking about the field as an exchange of gifts simply wrong-headed?

I hope not. There's no way to escape "exchange"---I just hope to avoid the factory metaphors as long as is possible.

Nevertheless, although I am often frustrated by so-called blind reviewers in my field, and although I am often really annoyed by the lack of humor in what is, by most accounts, a culturally conservative discipline, I am often more annoyed by the arrogance and dismissive attitude of some colleagues in my field who make it a point to belittle rhetorical studies and the work done within it. Part of that attitude translates into a kind of gatekeeping meanness: "I am Mighty Reviewer, and on the basis of my superior knowledge I shall bar this crap from ever besmirching the pristine pages of this Sacred Journal." Service to the filed in this mode becomes sadistic. To echo my former DGS: "there's room for everbody!"

In my view, the spirit of service is socialization in two senses: first, creating a sense of community and belonging; and second, helping to show others how to be a part of the community by example. Although I do not agree juniors should be reviewing books, I think that practice is a laudable service to the field. Nasty reviews are simply uncalled for. The same goes for reviewing essays: why the nastiness when you can be blunt but constructive? I think all the junior folks should not continue what some of our elders do with this meanness, but see service rather as constructive support.

Recently I was in an argument with a person from another field. She said she believed it was her job to gate-keep as a reviewer, to separate the shit from the gold, and that's what she did, with great pleasure. Our field is so small, however, that I just don’t think we can afford to do this. I see my role as a reviewer as: (a) to determine if something can be worked into a publishable thing, which, frankly, is 80% of the time; (b) determine if the editor or me has the time to work with a revision; and (c) socialize scholars into the field. A and B could be understood as gatekeeping, but I don't think that's the purpose---the purpose is more pragmatic. The C point, though, is part of my service in a small field. It's not like we're an MLA-style mega-discipline in which one resorts to gatekeeping for pragmatic reasons.

Finally, I think the spirit of service is exemplified by a number of my colleagues by (a) nominating stuff for awards without having been asked to do so; and (b) emailing folks and telling them you dug their latest article. Many years ago Dana Cloud emailed me to express her appreciation for something that I published, and I was really touched. She was critical, but took the time to tell me. A few months ago a new colleague in Colorado did the same. Those kinds of shout-outs really go a long way toward giving the hard working juniors in our field a sense of belonging. Since Dana's missive, I, too, have made it a point to email the authors of articles I enjoyed---even if I disliked them.

repeat conference proposing: a (re)draft

Music: Cliff Martinez: Kafka: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1992)

Panel Proposal for the Performance Studies Division of the Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association, Chicago, 2007

Panel Title: Re-communicating (Re)views: Using Intellect to Faithfully Create Sites of Disciplined and Ethical Health Through Acting, Connecting, Looking Back, Moving Forward, and Most Especially Reaching Around: Repetition-Yet-Again, Five Years Later: A Retrospective

I. DESCRIPTION OF PANEL

In the spirit of interdisciplinarity, this panel articulates performance to recent theoretical developments in cultural and rhetorical studies through the concept of repetition, and in this repetition of the panel, more specifically in the idiom of "retrospective." More than a mere idiom (philosophical or otherwise), repetition captures a central, neurotic movement in the ideational (or discursive) histories of both bodily (e.g., performance studies, theatre) and more somatophobic (e.g., philosophy, rhetoric) disciplines. In her own way, each panelist will explore how mimesis and imitation continue to haunt innovations in performance and rhetorical theory, and how a return or a "reaching in" to our own repetition compulsion helps to unravel the coherence of (our academic) identity in two important senses: (1) identity as it is constituted in "subjectivity" (e.g., Butler's notion of performativity as the essential precondition for all politics); and (2) identity as it is debated in object theory (e.g., descriptivism vs. anti-descriptivism). In order to underscore the anxieties of/about repetition, and in particular in order to do so in relation to the economic mandate to "perform—or else!" (McKenzie), the object under investigation is the convention panel itself—currently in its fifth iteration—understood as a repetitive, performative pedagogy of academic identity.

II. BACKGROUND

In his Difference and Repetition, Gilles Deleuze framed the problem of repetition as a problem of representation. Because of various Western conceits, which we can trace back to Plato's condemnation of mimesis in both its poetic (rhetorical) and performative (theatre) modes, repetition has been construed as a relationship between two similar, equal, or identical forms. Deleuze suggests that we treat repetition as "difference without concept," meaning that repetition becomes absorbed into the same and similar instead of being understood as a distinct (viz., "different") iteration (xv-xvii). Yet, in our contemporary age of "cynical ideology" (Sloterdijk), people know very well that there is no pure or absolute form of repetition—that, in fact, each iteration is different if only for temporality and therefore quantitude—yet we continue to behave as if repetition were of the same. Consequently, Deleuze argues that any variation in repetition leads to a suspicion, that something is being hidden or covered over in the iteration. Although Deleuze's insights are primarily philosophical, we believe that this "suspicious sense," as it were, goes directly to the heart of our collective scholarly performance.

At issue, then, is a performative misrecognition of the different (or pure difference). Slajov Zizek suggests that the "suspicious sense" is the symptom of misrecognition, and that combined they sustain an "ideological fantasy": "What [people] overlook, what they misrecognize, is not the reality but the illusion which is structuring the reality, their social activity. They know very well how things really are, but still they are doing it as if they did not know" (32). In the last twenty years, this kind of perserveration or seemingly autonomic "doing" of bodies has become deeply wed to an ideological fantasy of scholarly life, and our suspicion has been grafted onto the reality of what Jon McKenzie has characterized as an organizational, cultural, and technological performativity increasingly governed by the instrumental logics of Capital.

Translated into the more mundane project of the panel itself, we contend that professional performances have become increasingly "survivalist" or "apocalyptic" in tone, and that the suspicious sense is being grafted on everything from tenure standards to the death of disciplines (e.g., the eclipse of performance studies by rise of theory in theatre departments; the murder of rhetoric by cultural studies, and so on). One consequence of this mania is that alternative forms of scholarly presentation have been rigorously excluded in most NCA divisions, excepting those more open to performative alternatives (e.g., the Performance Studies Division and the Ethnography Division). Indeed, it is this policing of performance that routinely arouses the suspicion that a given conference panel will be "more of the same old thing," and it is precisely the suspicious sense that continues to sustain "more of the same old thing." By exploring the repetition dynamic, this panel promises to be very different.

III. THE DIFFERNCES

In the 2005 and 2006 repetitions of the panel, we introduced the video "remix" work of Dr. Patricia Suchy, which was shown in tandem with the panel itself. For the fifth anniversary of this panel, in the spirit of an anniversarial reunion, Dr. Suchy will assist in isolating the greatest moments of past iterations which she has captured on video. Panelists will be asked to reflect on these moments, discussing their feelings as well as the invention process behind their conference papers. Audience members will also be asked to reflect on their past experiences with the panel and share their feelings as well. We have contacted two well known television hosts and psychologists, Drs. Keith Ablow and Phil McGraw, in the hope that either would be willing to help moderate our retrospective. If they cannot commit, Dr. Stormer has agreed to host and moderate our retrospective.

Finally, our fifth year anniversary will be the debut of the "Repetition-Yet-Again" franchise. During, before, and after the retrospective audience members will be encouraged to buy commemorative t-shirts and autographed glossies from our merchandise booth. Additionally, CD-ROMs will available for purchase that contain a Repetition-Yet-Again Panel kit, on which franchisees will find the complete text of all the panels papers, the panel proposals, and other documents so that the panel can be presented at regional communication conferences across the country.

IV. PANELISTS

Host: Nathan Stormer, University of Maine

Retrospective One: "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, or, Drunk with Posts" Aric Putnam, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
1. The Dada Version: Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post. Post.
2. And for the Suspicious: This essay sympathetically explores the recurrence of the prefix “post” in performances of academic identity. “Post” has done exemplary duty modifying “fordist,” “modern,” “structural,” “national,” “feminist,” and “Marxist” and in so doing served as the vessel in which we’ve bottled our conversations about disciplinary identity. Will there always be another “post” on the shelf, or is it time for harder stuff?

Retrospective Two: "Repetition, Rinse, Repeat: On Wooden Paneling," Joshua Gunn, University of Texas at Austin
According to Freud, repetition compulsion is governed by something "beyond" the Pleasure Principle—namely, the death drive. Combining ethnography, auto-ethnography and a smidgen of self-critique, this essay examines the plight of the typical panel-goer at an academic convention, particularly in relation to the following question: If the practice of panel-going is not governed by pleasure, then what performance of death are we repeating? The answer, I suggest—with a nod to object-relations theory—is an unseeming religiosity of surplus, an encounter with a strangely wooden "objet (petit) a" unique to NCA.

Retrospective Three: "Ms. Pacman and the Vagina Dentata" Chani Marchiselli, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
In addition to frustration and privation, castration is one of the three forms of "lack of object" identified in Lacanian psychoanalysis. This paper examines how frustration (the imaginary lack of a real object) and privation (the real lack of a symbolic object) are repeatedly eclipsed during academic panel sessions by a symbolic lack of the imaginary object of communication. As a fundamentally monological--and therefore homosocial--forum, the panel form encourages endless phallic resurrections—ghosts of what is not, ghosts of the previous convention, ghosts of the illusion of mastery, knowledge, and the rest of it. This paper argues for an embrace of "lack" and the promotion of universal rountabling.

Retrospective Four: "The Interminable Return of," Christopher Swift, Northwestern University.
Repeating the insight associated by numerous scholars with the early writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, namely that all language is "rhetorical," has come to occupy the status of a confirmation of faith in our discipline. But even this thinker of the eternal return of the same developed beyond such an abstraction, already tired in the nineteenth century, much more quickly than we have. The very discourse of the eternal return performs a transfiguration of discourse rather than simply writing about it. This paper attempts to follow Nietzsche's model.

Respondent: Michael S. Bowman, Louisiana State University

Repeat Attendees: Jake Simmons, University of Southern Illinois, Naida Zukic, University of Southern Illinois

Stunt Doubles: David Terry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Michael LeVan, University of Southern Florida

Videographer, Gaffer, and Key Grip: Patricia Suchy, Louisiana State University

References Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition, translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
Kripke, Saul A. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.
McKenzie, Jon. Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Seid, Michael and Dave Thomas. Franchising for Dummies. New York: For Dummies, 2000.
Sloterdijk, Peter. Critique of Cynical Reason. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,1988.
Zizek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. New York: Verso, 1989.