r.i.p. my dearest friend and companion

Obi Wan-Derful: March 27, 1998 – June 20, 2008

Today Obi succumbed to feline infectious peritonitis. This is a painful, incurable disease that slowly shuts down organ function. This is the second cat I have had that died from this disease. I took Obi into the clinic this morning to give him fluids because he wasn't eating, but was told when I arrived about his blood work, which was not good. When the technician started telling me about his white and red blood cell counts I knew immediately what was coming next. FIP usually strikes early in life, but can lie dormant and become aroused during stressful times. I worry the introduction of Jesús to the family last summer was the source. Regardless, I wasn't prepared to lose my dear friend today. He was the sweetest kitty I've ever known. It's hard to think about anything else.

mean reviewer blues

Music: Last Comic Standing

Writing for publication and the blind review process has been a frequent and popular topic on RoseChron, in part because these things are central to what I do for a living, in part because I've learned a large chunk of the readership is comprised of professors-in-the-making.

As a reviewer, if I absolutely cannot contain my nastiness when I'm reviewing an essay, I save it for the editor's eyes only. (In the blind review process, a reviewer gets to send a private, personal note to the editor and then writes something different for the author.) I try very hard never to send something personal or ugly to an author. It's unprofessional and demoralizing. If an essay makes me angry (a very rare thing), I'll let the editor know, but the author I try to shield from my ire.

Many of you are reviewers, or will be reviewers in the future. I think it's important for we reviewers to follow some sort of protocol when reviewing. That protocol will change from one journal to the next, but I think we can settle on a few standards: (a) if the essay has hope, offer constructive suggestions; (b) if the essay has no hope, be critical but encouraging of the personhood of the author; (c) always make a distinction between the author and her argument, as the two are not the same---you get pissy with an argument, but that doesn't mean the author is a punching bag; (d) if you really dislike an essay and have nothing constructive to contribute, keep it short---there's no reason to write three, single-spaced pages on how much you hate the essay.

Of course, there's an exigency: today I received a revise and resubmit from a journal that I like: Explorations in Media Ecology. I discovered this journal because Ken published in it, and I like Ken's work. I've had some chats with EME folks and would like to get more involved. Part of that involvement has been reading media ecology stuff for the past couple of years and trying to do some work in that area. Admittedly, I'm not terribly well read in media ecology, but I'm trying. Anyway, as part of this effort to learn media ecology I thought I might submit something to EME. I knew---as I warned the good editor---I probably didn't have all the relevant literature cited, but I didn't know where to go to improve the piece. He sent it out for review a year ago. Today I finally got the reviews of my piece.

The editor was helpful and gracious with suggestions for revision, as is a reviewer who apparently knew Walter Ong (I cite Ong a bunch). But the second reviewer, I think, is way out of line.

From now on, I think I'm going to make inappropriate and unprofessional reviews of my work public on this blog. It's dirty laundry, but dammit: let's stop this "cycle of abuse." Even if what the reviewer says is true, it still should not be said to the author. I know I'm not Mr. Decorum, but I read this review and thought, "what if I was a graduate student?" A beginning scholar might be really bummed out about such a letter---heck, I was when I started out. Obviously by posting it part of it still gets to me too. So, without further ado, yet another lovely nasty review of my work in italicized fonts, with my reactions [in brackets]:

This essay is written without care.

[translation, "is written carelessly"]

Its author, who has some academic background, refuses to exercise academic discipline in the construction of the work. As a result, an interesting topic remains largely uninvestigated at the work's conclusion.

The argument is grounded in a few lines from Ong and Derrida: effectively, the sound of a voice is associated with the presence of a person, and people archive because they fear death. From this we are to understand voices of the dead and backward speech.

[Uh, no. It's more like this: the presence associated with speech is ambivalent, both good and bad, and these are separated out in popular culture into extremes, which EVP and backwards masking represent respectively. The argument is for taking up the ambivalence of speech in a serious way that Ong and Derrida help us to do.]

Both dead voices and back-speech are fascinating, there is no doubt. But when I ask myself what I have learned about them, upon leaving the paper, my answer is very little. That listeners hear their mothers, or that there is a binary of good and evil in the texts---these are hardly psychoanalytically significant. Could they be significant to those unfamiliar with psychoanalytic texts, who study mass media? I don't think so.

[So far, the review is not favorable but fair.]

No fundamental question is answered in this essay---no question that is particular concern to students of electronic media. [Um, does one have to have a research question to present research? If so, why?] Instead, a couple of "really cool" phenomena are called to our attention. And "really cool" is the deepest problem with the essay, particularly when the author segues into freestyle narrative in the latter part. I leave it to the editor to determine how much license an author might be granted stylistically, given that the journal has to position itself somewhere in the academy. The author shows much more, let me say, "confidence" than I would have submitting to an academic journal when he offers a line of repetitive "S's", "T's" "O's" and "P's." I have seen that used in dimestore [sic] novels.

[It's called alliteration, assonance, or consonance, fuckwit, and the essay is deliberately playful]

Back to the more fundamental issue: what is the basic question, and why does it matter? Or will we just say that these two tidbits from Ong and Derrida are sufficient to themselves, and let us go about renaming the world around them. That is not a project I could support in the academy. I would suggest, instead, that the author begin with a problem that is specific to electronic media and expressed by these or similar phenomena. That has not been done.

[Ok, this is much more helpful. And I admit this is a problem with the "essay," which is actually a bridging sort of chapter in the book in process. So the "ta-dah" comes at the end of the previous chapter and in the next one. So I gotta reframe the essay: fair enough. I don't agree one always has to be solving a problem to write "for the academy." It's clear this person has an idea of what is appropriate academic writing . . . that does not include performative writing, which is intellectual vacuous to his or her mind . . . . ]

Could we suggest instead that the cases themselves demand explanation? Not in my opinion. The cases provided are either fictitious or anecdotal. I do not believe there is a serious community looking for an answer to the meaning of Raudive's book [Breakthrough, a book in which this dude documents the voices he discovers by recording dead-air and listening to it really hard], nor the movie White Noise, nor the lyrics of Robert Plant. On the other hand, the voice that speaks to George Walker Bush is very important to all of us. Thus, it would be possible to find a case with such compelling significance that it would crave attention; and the strength of such an essay would largely be determined by the importance of that question. On this occasion, however, I don not see a question that matters in this sense.

Is there, then, something theoretical that we can learn by virtue of the way that this author answers this question, as insignificant as the question might be? That is what I was hoping as I started the essay.

[translation: when I read the abstract I already knew the essay was shit because it was about popular culture and some insignificant quack who recorded dead air in the 1970s]

But I grew more and more disappointed as I recognized that I was being carried along through an intellectual tour de force, performed by what appears to be the darling of a graduate program, who is [sic] yet to develop a sense of disciplined scholarship ([a footnote here] I use this expression because the author dabbles in scholars and scholarship, in the manner of one who fared well in the general game of fact-fetch that is played in college classrooms. I do not feel that I am reading a scholar who has seriously read anyone). I do gain a sense of who are the "smart" people with whom this author has become acquainted, as well as some of the "smart" ideas they had. But I am still waiting for something insightful and informative about the forms of electronic speech referenced at the outset.

[Yeah, this is the particularly obnoxious paragraph. I don't claim to be a genius; I claim creativity. I think I am creative---that's my skill set. Anyway, though, what gets me about his paragraph is that the reviewer seems to think I am a graduate student. What if I was that grad student trying to publish? This would be totally demoralizing. It's really a nasty thing to say to anyone, but especially someone who is training for this gig.]

I am particularly disappointed with the author's jump between non-fiction-writing and cinema, as if the two universes could be directly compared. Raudive is an historical author, Raymond Price is a theatrical character---it is inappropriate to construct an analysis as if the one could offer support for the other. Perhaps, the screenwriter, not the character, should be examined, but even that would strain the comparison. On the other hand, a thorough investigation of vocalic culture should produce some actual cases of significance and merit that could be examined. Again, the author must either abandon or discover a commitment to this project, because scholarship takes time.

[This book has been in process for three years; it's my fault the reviewer doesn't see what comes before and after; it's my fault I didn't frame the analysis to answer the "so what?" question. Even so, the choice of examples is not "quick"]

I am also disappointed with the author's general tendency to convert scholarship into storytelling and extended quotes. If we look at the percentage of this essay which deals in nothing other than statements made in other essays, it seems to me, again, that there is a problem. It is a sign of something, when a paper has so many indented paragraphs.

[Uh, yeah: it's a sign I know basic punctuation. All paragraphs should be indented. By five spaces. Or a tab set to five spaces. Perhaps s/he means offset citations?]

Finally, many years ago I read a line to the following effect, "You write with flare, to show your breeding. But easy writing's cursed hard reading." While this authorship is certainly a performance, it falls short when flare is set aside and content is sought. I caution this author to take the act of scholarship more seriously. The pubic intellectual is also a public trust. Neither an academic's career nor an academic's writing exists solely for that academic's pleasure.

[Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I think if I took my scholarship seriously I would have left the academy my first semester as an assistant professor. The values in contrast here are so deep and revealed in this last paragraph . . . I wish my scholarship had that sort of influence---"the pubic trust!"---ha ha haaaaaaaa!!!!! My take is this: curiosity and pleasure in the quest should come first. The rewards of making a statement that somehow lasts for perpetuity are few and go to even fewer. Owing to my interest in popular culture, my scholarship has a five year window of interest at best . . . the act of scholarship, consequently, is saying something that will make someone go, "huh!" now, not a century hence. I'm not so arrogant to think I have anything to say to that future person. My work is shit (in the good sense), and that's ok.]

hell among the yearlings

Music: Martha Wainwright: I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too (2008)

MY JONES

Last weekend I hosted a number of folks for dinner, some friends relocating to Austin from Minnesota, an already-relocated couple from Minnesota now in San Antonio, and my super-cool, soon-to-be-hitched neighbors Jeff and Lindsay (Jeff's from Buffalo, Lindsay, San Antonio). We had a marvelous time, in part, because none of us knew each other very well. We did a lot of "me too"-style bonding. We had some Mean-Ass Joshritas and I read Tarot. We ate gumbo. We yapped, yapped, and yapped. I learned Jeff and Lindsay were fans of Aimee Mann (they spied my CD collection and noticed I was too). I already knew they worked in radio. I did not know, however, their radio connections scored them tickets to Aimee Mann's show last night. They told me so. They said they had tickets to spare. I shat my pants and then said, "hell yeah!"

Ok, so, most of my buds who read the blog already know, but, you who know me less may be surprised to learn I have a thing for singer-songwriter ladies with skinny arms. Just the idea of an Aimee Mann show gives me [delete] [edit]: goosebumps. I'm happy to report the show was most excellent, not just because Aimee is smart as frack and delicious, but because the musicianship was top notch and the sound design un-freakin' believable.

Aimee and band played at La Zona Rosa here in Austin, a sort of concrete floor shack---a large shack---with a tin roof and terrible acoustics. I've seen about five bands there, all sounded like a sort-of buzzing through mud unless you were standing in the very center. But somehow the sound reinforcement folks figured it out and did an amazing job. I was really surprised. Mann's set was super-heavy on electronics---two keyboardists! One was hitched to a howling B2 that was just incredible, and the other to one of the new horizon Moog thingies and a Mellotron! I've not got the new album, but I gather it's keyboard heavy; the "single" she played had simple Boards of Canada riff thing going on (it was quite lovely). The harmonies Aimee and her bassist made singing would make the Louvins proud. The show was just tingly good; I even got a little lump in my throat when Aimee did a reworked version of "Save Me." This really tall, lanky, uber-geek with that Trekkie-smell standing behind me was singing along with all of his off-key heart. It was touching. I would've saved him myself, were I not pining away at bumpy, strumming knuckles too.

STAIGER SPECTACULAR

The Aimee Mann show followed a fun, fan-boy day with Janet Staiger. Janet is a professor in the Radio, Television, and Film department. I read a good deal of her work in graduate school (my secondary area was in film theory) and taught it myself while on the Audio/Visual Arts faculty at LSU. When I moved here, everyone and their colleague in some odd department urged me to meet her. I finally figured out a way to ask her out: teach her work and then ask her to talk to my class. So that's what I did, and fortunately, she agreed. I took her out to lunch before her talk and we gabbed.

Janet studied with David Bordwell at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She was in the Speech department, which in the early 80s housed film and media studies. Small world, heh? One of her best buds is John Lucaites, currently the editor of the flagship journal in rhetorical studies, The Quarterly Journal of Speech. So she knew all about what I did as a scholar (which was super nice not to have to explain), and I knew a lot about her work, so lunch was sort of fun and effortless. Her talk to my class was super, though my students seemed a bit sleepy (summer school jet set, you know).

So, like, yesterday I was already blissed-out when I hit the Aimee Mann show. Best. Tuesday. Ever. The only thing better would have been if I could've slept in, but I had to wake early to get to the vet, about which more below.

DEBT

Despite an awesome Tuesday, there's a nagging mental murmur: oh, how much I owe others in the writing department. [Dear lord: I've just turned on the Sex in the City syndicated show and Blossom Dearie's "They Say It's Spring" is in the soundtrack . . . another voice I get goofy to]. I'm giving a talk next Monday for my lodge's annual festive board, and I've little more than chicken scratch on a notepad at the moment. Promised encyclopedia entry is due next week. I need to work on my essay with Shaun. I should be writing on my book. I've got a revise and resubmit that should be tinkered on. I need to finish my syllabae.

All of this, and what I really want to do is go to music shows and watch season two of Carnivale. And season one of Six Feet Under, which I just got as a gift from my houseguests.

This, and I still need to finish my lecture for tomorrow on Baudry's "cinematographic apparatus" and Christian Metz on the psychoanalytic turn in film studies. My finances may be in order (almost), but I still find myself running in debt . . . .

HEART KITTY

Twenty-four years old and recently broken-up, I was, it seemed, marooned in a very cold place with three friends and coursework for as far as the mind could imagine. That's when I first found a therapist and stumbled into psychotherapy. That was also the time I thought I might adopt a pet---a puttie to sit in my lap as I typed out term papers. The problem was that, um, I'm allergic to anything that moves, especially of the domesticated animal variety. I researched for months and found that some folks with allergies can tolerate Devonshire Rexes. I found some people in Minnesota who had them and stuck my nose on their cats. Mild itching, but nothing horrible.

When loans came in the next semester I adopted a Devon from Terri in Kansas, now a friend of mine with a different last name in Houston. His name was Vico, and he died within a year of FIP. I was heartbroken. Terri sent a replacement (FIP is genetically linked) and, from some strange turn of fate, a companion too. Ten years ago I picked up a brown Devon and a nekkid Sphynx from the Minneapolis airport. The Devon came named---"Obi Wan-Derful"---and I named the nekkid girl "Psappho Alpurgis." I cannot believe I've had these kitties ten years now.

Over the years we've grown as co-inhabitants of my various apartments and now home. Psappho refuses to use the litter box. Thousands of dollars helped me to determine that's just the way she is: no illness, no problems. She's just picky. So she shits on the floor and pisses in the sink. And that's why I have bleach under all the sinks in the house. And that's why I'm constantly picking up poop.

Obi, on the other hand, is simply a super-sweet lap kitty. He just wants to be on you all the time. He eats. A lot. Or, at least, he used to eat a lot. He got super fat last year, so I started taking up his food. Slowly he started to lose weight this year. I went away this summer for a couple of weeks. I returned finally last Monday. I noticed Obi was skinny. He wasn't sleeping with me at night. And he couldn't jump up on stuff.

A few days ago Obi just stopped eating. He stopped drinking. He just slept. His meows were week. I phoned a vet and made an appointment for this Friday, but then, I worried myself so much, and he seems so pitiful, I couldn't wait. I asked if they could see him today.

So I took him in and left him. They had to sedate him because (they say) he got nasty (I'm not sure I believe this; he's so weak . . . and they get $80 for "sedation"). The "in house" urine test revealed his glucose at 1,000 (I have no idea of what units). Apparently he has kitty diabetes. I await the blood work tests. $400 of tests today.

When Vico died, Terri said he was my "heart kitty." What she meant by that was that he had become someone implicated in my self-identity. Vico died so young, I don't think he was that. Obi, however, has been with me for ten years. Right now he's in my bathroom, sort-of lying there. He got insulin today, but he still won't really move. I tried to get him to eat, and he did a little. But then collapsed in a pathetic bones and fur sort of way, just piled on the bathroom rug and exhaling a groggy "maaaahhh." I'm worried if the vet did the right thing. I'm worried about losing him . . . he's the real "heart kitty." I know he's old in kitty years, but still, he's too young to leave just yet---and from what I can tell from his pathetic protestant meows, he ain't ready to leave, neither.

I think tonight I'll help him get on the bed so he can sleep with "us" (that is, me and the other kitty). I just hope he can pull through this. I'm sort of done with death for the month. Too much death, too much. No more, dear Death. Pretty please, with a cherry on top? I promise I'll clean the house more often and stop eating chicken.

freemasonic ugliness

Music: Judge Judy My peep Talia alerted me to a story in The New York Times about a wronged Mason that has riled me up. Brother Frank J. Haas, a Mason for over twenty years, was humiliated in front of his father and home lodge brethren by the acting Grand Master of the State of West Virginia. Although Haas served as the Worshipful Master of his lodge (basically, CEO for a year) as well as his Grand Lodge (CEO for his state!), his succeeding Grand Master apparently disagrees with Haas' political views and kicked him out of the fraternity. What is repulsive about this (Masonically) unlawful expulsion is that it seems to concern old and intolerant segregationist views.

The acting Grand Master cited Haas involvement with this blog, the ill-named "Masonic Crusade," which was created in support of a series of reforms or "edicts" issued by Haas while he was a Grand Master. In the United States, Masons answer to no higher power other than the state Grand Lodge. In Europe, for example, many lodges answer to the Grand Lodge of Britain, but owing to things like, oh, the revolutionary war here in the states, Masonic leadership is pretty much delegated to each state. Hence, the laws of Louisiana are different than those of Texas (as is the ritual and liturgy). Hence, some states recognize Prince Hall masonry (Texas does) while some do not (Louisiana doesn't). Haas has been punished for trying to change the laws in West Virginia.

So, what's the problem? The problem is one of promise-making and tradition versus that of contemporary values and change. When one becomes a Mason, he swears to uphold the constitution and laws of his home jurisdiction. Some of those laws may be unsavory, but the point of the obligation is that, well, you are obliged. Fortunately, there are meetings once a year in which state constitutions are amended and changed, much like Congress does. These meetings are often contentious, as one would expect, especially in the last decade over the issue of race. Masonry since its inception in the United States was a white fraternity. Today, of course, that is not the case: some states are racially diverse (e.g., California), while others maintain a fairly white party-line (e.g., West Virginia). Haas' edicts were in pursuit of diversity in the fraternity and overturning centuries-old laws that prevented the fraternity from giving to charities that were not Masonic.

Reading the newspaper story, there's no way to tell what, exactly, the current Grand Master and former Grand Master disagree about. I have a strong suspicion, however, it has to do with tolerance: Haas wants racial diversity and equality, while the standing GM doesn't. The GM can say it was about procedure, but you don't have to be an savant to read between the lines here: this is truly embarrassing for Masonry. Racism is part of this country's historical past, and so too is it a part of the history of Masonry. But today, in 2008, racism has no place in the fraternity. NONE.

I just want all my friends and colleagues who know that I am a Mason that I would never join a jurisdiction that I perceived to be racist or intolerant. What has happened to Bro. Haas in West Virginia is truly unfortunate, but that is in West Virginia. I answer to the Grand Lodge of Texas, and even as yee-haw rope-'em our constitution can read, to my knowledge nothing like what happened to Bro. Haas would happen here.

Moreover, I think Haas mistreatment is thoroughly unmasonic. Masonry in its inception was a lodge created for speaking freely without fear of persecution. All this "secrecy" was in part to make sure someone could chat about astronomy without fear of the pope coming to get him. That a state Grand Master can be silenced for speaking his opinion is an insult to the Craft. Ugh.

the presidential penis

Music: Sparklehorse:Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain (2006) Leave it to Jim Aune to discover this prurient pay-pal enterprise: Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones have filmed themselves discussing their sexual adventures with Bill Clinton. Divided into seven segments (each of which are downloadable for $1.99 charge), the women discuss how Clinton's advances were (apparently) criminal and how his infidelity made their lives difficult.

I've purchased and watched a segment for you, dearest reader, as I know you're just as curious as I am about the content of "Two Chicks Chatting." They discuss in vivid detail Clinton's lovemaking style and skills and assess the quality of his penis in its three modes: erect, semi-erect, and flaccid. Paula repeatedly demonstrates the size of Clinton's manhood using her pinky finger, and debates with Gennifer for some minutes whether or not the penis is "bent." Paula argues that perhaps it appeared bent to her because Clinton was semi-erect. Because the penis was not bent when she had relations with Bill, Gennifer speculates that Hillary "bonked him on the pee-pee" for his infidelities, and that's why it's bent.

Aside from its obvious adolescent appeal, the event of this video is fascinating because of the way it represents what I'll term "the new publicity" or "postmodern publicity" in respect to the symbolic phallus. By "new publicity"---or should that be "pube-icity?"---I mean to capture the way in which the most intimate and private thing is self-publicized for recognition and/or monetary gain. The new publicity really began with the Pam Anderson/Tommy Lee sex tape scandal, and then was set firmly in place by the Paris Hilton sex tape. The former was an accident, but the latter was not, and once we begin thinking about someone deliberately publicizing what is presumably the most private of affairs, we must admit that "public affairs" has taken on a new meaning in our times. The implosion of public/private represented by YouTube.com and other modes of self-publicization is about intimacy and public presentation, or rather, a new, strange mode of anonymous intimacy. Anonymous intimacy is not restricted to sexual situations (or strictly sexual situations, I should say), but is also observable with, say, these "cutting" videos on YouTube.com, or online communities in which self-mutilators share stories about their inner pain (and attempts to inscribe the "law-of-the-father," as it were).

I say that cutting videos and the leaked sex tape are both examples of the anonymous intimacy of the new publicity because they both concern the "symbolic phallus." Let me explain.

In early life the conditions of intimacy are established over a love object. Freud said this was the penis, of course, which represents something that the mother presumably wants. Rereading Freud, however, Lacan argues that the biological penis ("real phallus") is really inconsequential. What matters, Lacan says, is that there is an object of focus---some thing---that we believe our primary parent wants and we try to be this thing, or become it. The infantile way of thinking is, "if I can become the thing mommy wants, then she will recognize me, love me." Lacan calls this thing the "imaginary phallus." Later in life when we understand sexual difference we can mistake the real phallus for the imaginary object, but, of course, that's a mistake.

Whence the "symbolic phallus?" Well, we can think about Lacan's retelling of the Oedipus complex: in the beginning there was mommy/child, then there was mommy/child/imaginary phallus. Or three objects, if you will. Now, when the child is old enough to start to understand identity, she realizes there is a "fourth term"---daddy. That is, the child realizes there are other objects to love besides mommy, and that mommy's recognition of others means the dyadic deal is not sealed. Alternately, the new parent says, "no, you can't has teh phallus!" The second parent prevents the child from identifying with the imaginary phallus, the presumed object that will get mommy's love.

This realization becomes, as it were, the moment of "castration," when we have to give up this quest and accept our fate: there is language, the world of "no," the law of void, the reality of having-not. The symbolic phallus "is not a fantasy," says Lacan, "nor is it as such an object . . . . It is even less the organ, penis or clitoris, that it symbolizes." Lacan says that "the phallus is a signifier intended to designate as a whole the effects of the signified." So what does that mean? In one sense, it means the signifier has an agency of its own and that it works on us; we do not control the symbolic. In another sense, it means that the symbolic phallus is the signifier for that which is desire, or to put it in a Cartesian way, the signifier for desiring as such: desiring exists. And for desire to exist, you cannot have its object (otherwise desire would cease). So the symbolic phallus represents castration in the sense that once we become linguistic creatures we have to "give up" something that we haven't and will never have. This is why the symbolic phallus is "the signifier which does not have a signified."

Now, why did I go into these distinctions between the penis, the imaginary phallus, and the symbolic phallus for discussing anonymous intimacy? Because I think at some level the "new publicity" is goaded by a kind of infantile desire to become new subjects, to invite castration again (or rather, as in the case of cutters, to finish the job). Although "Two Chicks Chatting" is ostensibly siliceous and akin to a kind of Penthouse letter, is the video really about the real phallus? Is the topic of "the presidential penis" really about Bill's dick? No, of course not. It's about the symbolic and the agency of the symbolic, about reminding Clinton that he does not have the phallus even though he thought or thinks that he does.

Obsessive neurotics are individuals who believe they can be or get to the unfettered autonomy represented by the signifier without a signified; if anything Primary Colors was demonstrative of Bill Clinton's obsessions. Laughing about Clinton's diminished prowess is one way "castrate" Clinton, of course. What's even more interesting about "Two Women Chatting," however, is the segment dedicated to Hillary's run for office. Will Hillary make a good president? No, says Paula, "she's let her husband womanize all these women." Flowers follows, "she's an enabler." Both women characterize Hillary as if she is Bill, just another obsessive neurotic.

As interesting as the table-turning (and profit-making) "Two Chicks Talking" represents vis-à-vis the phallus, however, there is still the issue of disclosure, the anonymous intimacy of publicizing private details, and this is a characteristic the video shares with teenage cutter exhibitionists. With cutters, it's easy to see the process as a kind of writing on the body, a way to somehow bring the signifier into the self, a sort-of self-castration. Hence one might speculate that cutting is often a recourse to individuals---especially young people---who are in single parent households (my own therapist disagrees with me here based on her experience, but I think she takes the "absent father" reasoning too literally). Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers prurient publicity stunt is obviously different: here we see an attempt to negate the symbolic phallus, which is impossible. The more they poke fun of the real phallus, the more they demonstrate the elusive power of the signifier of desire as such: the more they laugh, the more they enjoy.

What's the upshot, so to speak? I'm not quite sure yet. I'm not quite certain what to make of this Jones and Flowers dialogue except that it represents a new era of profitable publicity---and in particular, an era in which media technologies have made it possible for us to explicitly confront a looming crisis of masculinity. I don't mean the "crisis of masculinity" ballyhooed about for the past decade, the threat of the metrosexual, and that sort of thing. I mean the crisis that results when nothing is off-limits, when everything is permissible, when there truly is nothing sacred---when there's no one to spank and scold. I mean, in other words, the crisis of daddies, "father trouble." In other words: is an assault on sovereignty at issue here? Are the forces of production central to postmodern capitalism truly eroding the keeper of the Grand No! and is this new anonymous intimacy the result? The very idea of the "presidential penis" somehow bespeaks the impotency of the Office of the President in our times of postmodern publicity. I'll keep thinking . . . and when I figure it out, I must write an essay titled "The Presidential Penis" and submit it to Presidential Studies Quarterly.

the case for (film) theory

Music: Sparklehorse: Dreamt For Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain (2006)

I've returned to Austin after a loving but obviously sad visit with the family in Georgia. I'm getting back into a teacherly frame of mind, which I need to do and which gives me a sense of strength. One place I feel confident, one place where I think I do a pretty good job, is in the classroom. I've missed that place, and am happy to be back in it today.

This summer I am teaching "Rhetoric and Film," basically a survey of the greatest hits of film theory since Walter Benjamin's work on art in the age of its mechanical reproducibility. I decided this would be a good course to teach in the summer for two reasons: first, both graduate and undergraduate students are obsessed with writing their term papers on films; and second, because the summer term has flexible scheduling that allows me to teach for two-and-a-half hour blocks. This means I can show a film in its entirety if I need to do so. While I was away last week the class watched Vertov's Man and His Movie Camera, and today we will be watching a good hunk of Chaplin's Modern Times.

My lecture today is titled "the case for theory," and revisiting the lecture this morning reminded me of a charge I think that is good to promote. My course is based on a number of classes I took from John Mowitt at the University of Minnesota. John---a brilliant teacher and role model---often began his courses with an apologia for theory, and its one I often begin with too. I start by going back to the ancient Greeks and doing the etymology of "theory," which is, of course, theoresai, "to contemplate" or, more literally, "to see, to observe." So "rhetoric of film" can be read as "observations about film," or, "film theory."

I then trot out that old question: what's the relevance of theory?. In film studies, the answers led to a debate in two important contexts, the "third world cinema" debate about correct politics vis-à-vis developing film industries (e.g., Bollywood) and the North American squabble between Bordwell and others. Bordwell argued for a focus on history, others on the "appreciation of film" model. Of course, theory cannot be extracted from either.

Following Mowitt, I suggest to students that the questioning the relevance of theory really comes down to the corporitization of the academy, and the "downsizing" of courses focused on critical thinking. The push across the university has been either to focus on the sciences or the pragmatic, the latter courses designed to train students for the workforce. As any office drone knows, critical thinking is relatively unhelpful for pushing paper or information.

The case for theory is thus only made from a Marxian or materialist vantage: critical thinking about film is necessary not because it is profitable but because film watching has changed our reality. The study of film tells us about our reality, how we perceive it. Film also reflects larger cultural transformations, changes, and struggles. Film is history, to be certain, but that history is one of both perception and politics. The case for theory is made in the service of thought and understanding, not so much usefulness.

Rhetoricians are familiar with making such a case: criticism and theory go hand-in-hand. Every critical act is a case for theory. But perhaps unlike our forbears, the assault on theory is stronger today than it ever has been. The assault often takes the form of politics: "you liberal professors are brainwashing our children!" Quite the contrary: we're trying to teach critical thinking in a world that, increasingly, needs drones.

Charlie Chaplin knew this in 1936. I'm looking at the cover for the DVD of Modern Times. On the back Pauline Kael is quoted as saying, "One of the happiest and most lighthearted of the Chaplin pictures." Oh brother. Kael obviously didn't get a schooling in film theory, perhaps proof that we need theory now more than ever.

(the) home

Music: For Against: In the Marshes (1985-1987/2007)

When I was about eight years old I decided I didn't much care for day care at La Petite Ecole. My favorite "teacher," Ms. Nancy, had left after being brought to tears by Ms. Linda---the woman who drank Tab, smoked Virginia Slims, and tanned herself in baby oil. Ms. "Perky" Pat started wearing a bra because she noticed we noticed she didn't wear one. And because I was always "different" the bullying was taking its toll; the girl who kept biting me was starting to draw blood. My best---ok, "better"---friends there had graduated to after school programs. As the end of grade school heralded the return of summer (and thus all-day day care) my parents decided to give me a choice: either I could stay with Granny over the summer, or I could go back to day care. I don’t remember the decision or what factors went into it, but I chose Granny over all the Ms. So-and-sos who babysat me through their "dramas" that they thought children were oblivious to but were not. Little did I know Granny had her dramas too, but they were televised and titled Days of Our Lives and General Hospital, and that I would be made to watch them.

Granny's place was a small, white-with-red-trim, two-bedroom bungalow on Zoar Church Road. The house was settled in three acres of grass and separated by a narrow swath of trees from Zoar Church, a tiny Methodist postcard of a church. Across the road was a modest cemetery and then farm pasture as far as the eye could see. Down the road in the opposite direction from the church were other parts of the Gresham and Freeman clan: my cousins and great aunts and uncles, lots of them within a two mile radius. Uncle Tink and Aunt Marie were about a mile down the road, closer in were Uncle Morris and Aunt Molly (Tink, Morris and Molly are still there). All this land belonged to my great grandfather, who was a cotton farmer. That's why all my great uncles, aunts, and Granny have skin cancers removed all the time: they picked cotton in the hot sun as kids.

It wasn't two days into my first summer with Granny until I realized I had sailed directly into the center of that Dark Continent: the Heart of Boredom. With no brothers or sisters to play with I was marooned with Granny and her soap operas and visits with friends and relatives talking about the weather and gardening. I was put to work mowing grass. She showed me where the small animal traps were stored so that I could trap things (one summer it was a squirrel; another, a baby opossum which I raised all summer until the smell got so bad I let him go). She showed me how to plant and grow squash (yuck). She made me Johnny Cakes with Karo Syrup. I soon succumbed to watching soaps with her, when I wasn't building a tree house. I learned to love Club Crackers with Colby cheese and Vidalia onion (with Diet Coke). She told me countless stories about her life. Rarely did I hear stories about my grandfather (the drunk). I made her life a pain in the arse by declaring "I'm booooorrrreeeedddd" a thousand times a month. I broke stuff. I scratched her Floyd Cramer records. And I was surprised to learn Gomer Pile also sang under a pseudonym Mr. Rogers would love: Jim Nabors!

Over the summers with Granny she and I become close and have been so ever since. I remember when I was old enough to stay by myself (I think I was twelve or thirteen) I soon missed her company. I would have sleep-overs with her periodically. Granny would play some board games with me, so that was always a plus (my parents never would; just imagine the only child life with parents who wouldn't play games---that was my life, and I loved Battleship more than cookies). And she loved jigsaw puzzles, and so did I, so we would do them for hours in front of the television on the floor.

As a latch key kid freed from boredom at Granny's, I remember finally realizing that I shared my Granny, that my cousins also called her Granny and I was not "the only one." Sharing Granny was probably the closest thing in my life to knowing what it was like to have a sibling.

Even so, I felt (and still feel) special: only I lived with Granny in the summers.

In the summer of 2004, though, I was dutifully employed in Baton Rouge, all grown up, and Granny had a fall, likely caused by a stroke, and started changing mentally, sort of regressing. She was still the same Granny, just a less virulent strain or something. A strong woman who lived a hard, hard life, Granny has always been fiercely independent, and I think coming to terms with a lack of mobility was not easy. Shortly after the fall she moved in with my parents, then lived periodically with my aunt and uncle, back and forth, back and forth over the years. On the phone she's always confided in me complaints she didn't like to mention to my folks---mainly, about not being able to drive her car. Every time I visited home I was always struck by how my mom and aunt talked to her as if she was a child, and equally surprised at how bitterly Granny complained about her "wheels" being taken from her.

There were more falls. A car accident with my aunt. Another stroke. And then, after this past Christmas, a fateful visit to a physical rehab facility that was negligent. Granny slipped into a semi-mute state, stopped moving. Unable to care for her, my aunt and mother moved her into a home. I saw her for the first time since she was "homed" today.

"Now, don't be surprised if she doesn’t recognize you," my mother warned me. "She's not always there, inside."

"She'll know me," I replied. I was confident with that. And I was right.

It was a difficult sight for me to handle: Granny in a room shared with another, seemingly motionless. My aunt and cousin were already visiting when me and mom walked in, and I noticed Granny's feet began to twitch. She could hardly move her head, but her black eyes fixed on me and didn't leave. "Hey Granny!" I said in as cheerful a voice as I could fake, which is hard to do when your voice quivers uncontrollably.

"Look who's here," said my aunt. "It's Josh. You know Josh, don't you?"

Granny made as big of a smile as she could muster, her eyes got real big. "Of course she does," I said. Granny muttered something that was not English, but it was obviously a "yes." I could feel my mother and aunt were excited, because apparently Granny is frequently unresponsive to people. I told Granny about my travels. I figured they had not told her that Richard died yet, so I pretended I was in town because of a cheap fare.

During the visit I worked very hard not to lose it, because I didn't want Granny to see that. And it was clear to me that, although she's lost the ability to speak, she was very much present and understood everything we said. My mother and aunt left to talk with nurses, leaving my cousin Kathy and me in the room.

I had to share Granny, again. Since that last summer with her, I have rarely had one-on-one time. For years when I visited home from out of town, she and I would go for lunch at the Waffle House. Two years ago I said that Granny and I were going for breakfast, but the whole family came. No one trusted I would be able to handle her if something happened.

Kathy and I ended up "talking for her" as Granny bounced her eyes back and forth between us as we spoke. She may not be there all the time, but she was following every word during my visit today.

My mother returned and clipped her fingernails, brushed her sweaty hair from her forehead. We talked about the weather and squirrels chasing each other just outside the window. I complained she didn't have a television to watch her soaps. I vowed (to myself) that before I leave on Sunday Granny is going to have a television in that room, I don't care what the facility says.

Motions were made it was time to go, so I told Granny I loved her, kissed her on the check (she held her hand up to my face, again, signaling she was all there and not gone in the least) and told her I would see her tomorrow.

Everyday life---the things that all of us face---is difficult. I know if you're reading this, you've encountered something similar. If you haven't, it's coming soon.

After we left her room, walking in the hot sun toward the car, I completely lost it.

on adult-onset acceptance

Music: Spiritualized: Lazer Guided Melodies (1992)

Today seems oddly elongated into two: the "yesterday" of this morning's mourning of my uncle and the "today" of cooking my family dinner, watching something called HGTV, and following polling results. The stark contrast between these two days is hard to describe as anything other than using mundane routine to create distance from the body we interred.

I was both close and distant with my uncle, close because of affection he always had for me, and distant in recent years because of spaces between us, both the increasing physical distance of my moving farther and farther away and the buffer created by an ever-growing set of grand- and great grandchildren.

Richard was the kind of uncle who spoiled me with attention. Richard was the uncle who tickled me as a kid until I'd pee my pants.

The reflective posts as of late are not intentionally personal, just sort of representative of the pressing thoughts and feelings of the past week. It's not always academic with me or the blog, and I think I have had a tendency to "intellectualize" life events too much.

Last Tuesday I didn't imagine being "home" again, now typing on a guest bed that reeks of cat pee (someone---some furry one---doesn't like guests, I guess). I have been thinking during the "today" of today that normally I would be wound-up about the funeral service, but instead I feel resigned, ready to drown out the day in some Battlestar Galactica episode with a nip or three from ye trusty smuggled flask (the family---extended included---are Baptist teetotalers).

Growing up attending Southern Baptist funerals, I grew to resent them in my teenage years. After a manipulative and horrifically abusive funeral for Sonny---a man who practically raised me---when I was 24, I swore off going to a service ever again. Of course I went the next year to one. What angered me so about the Southern Baptist funeral was the way in which many people saw it as an opportunity to save me and other heathens from the Pit of Hell. Preachers would often piggy-back on the grief felt by the bereaved to alter calls, heaping on the guilt. I remember one service in which the preacher insinuated the soon-to-be-interred was in hell. And at the last funeral I attended two years ago my self-righteous cousin's eulogy was about how, even though my great aunt had gone to the same church every Sunday for the past 60 some-odd years, she witnessed to her and made sure she was right with Jesus (so smug!). I could go on and on with the stories, but I reckon I should save them for the novel.

Anyhoo, I expected many of the same brand of abuses today, but surprisingly, the preacher didn't go down that sickening path of manipulation. He talked a lot about the blood of Jesus, but then read the 23 Psalm and a few passages about heaven. He talked a lot about where my uncle was now playing and so on. He gave what I thought was quite a selfless eulogy designed to make as many people as he could feel better.

Although the preacher did much to set a more upbeat tone, I realized bowing my head for prayer that I had changed a good bit in the last five years. In part because of my work with the Masons, I think about religion in a very different way (I'm still agnostic, though): death is the great equalizer. In part, because I think I've successfully (and mostly) exorcized the abuses of my evangelical youth in writing and teaching about religion. In part, because the evangelical bastard I must call my president is on his way out of office. Seven years ago or so I would still be fuming about some of the things that happened or were said today; yet nothing other than the expectation of "viewing" seemed bothered me. The sight of my grieving aunt made me lose my composure more than once, but that's ok. The point is that today was about my aunt and uncle and being here for others and myself. There was still a heavy-handed politics of grieving, to be sure, but one that I sincerely recognize has value.

The one thing that did momentarily reduce me to a teen inside: the request that the pallbearers do a final viewing before the casket is closed. I do not find staring upon a poked, prodded, and sewed body anything like a comfort or a part of the grieving process. I looked at my cousin and aunt and said, "I can't do this." "It's ok, it's ok," I was assured. I'd much rather have the image of Richard in my head that I always have had: an image of him laughing. He was always laughing. I didn't want that image to be eclipsed.

carnival/death

Music: Siouxsie & the Banshees: A Kiss in the Dreamhouse (1982)

For the last few days I've felt like a former boxer, sore all over from coughing so much (which led to other unfortunate bodily exercizes with the diaphram). Since I've moved to Austin I've been getting sick fairly regularly, which apparently happens to a lot of people. To help elevate the mood, Amanda and Roger came over and brought Sadie the Super-Sneaky Pug Puppy and we watched them play for a couple of hours (she's sneaky because she chews on furniture corners, and when you call her on it she pretends she was chewing on a nearby toy all along). Nothing brings a smile like watching small dogs---especially puppies---rough house in the house!

Then we kenneled the dogs and went up the street a piece to the carnival that had set-up shop in the high school parking lot. It was cheering to see so much color exploding on an otherwise dreary landscape, all my neighbors out and about (some in high heels, which confused me), little kids riding fixed motocyles. The scariest ride by far was called "Freak Out," and it was scary because it looked like it was about to tip over and kill everyone in its path (no, we didn't ride it with my nausea issues and all). I just had to go to the Haunted House, which was a whopping four dollars. There were four strung up dead (rubber) people inside and a lot of black plastic. Roger commented it didn't quite live up to the painting of the façade on the outside. This seems true of things in general (insert nihilist joke here). I've uploaded a gallery of last night's festivities.

And speaking of contrasts, there's death. First, I was saddened to learn that Harvey Kormann passed away. I am a big fan of Harvey, largely because he and Carol Burnett baby-sat me though my latch-key existence as an only child. I remember getting home from school and anxious awaiting the The Carol Burnett Show on Superstation 17, at that time the Turner Broadcasting Station. What always made me laugh was when Korman would crack-up (usually with Tim Coway), like in this scene.

But the saddest contrast is the unexpected passing of my uncle Richard yesterday. He had been sick for many years with congestive heart failure. My father called to tell me as my mother was with a returning caravan of the family (they were up visiting my cousin in North Carolina when Richard died). I got in a little fight with my father on the phone about my coming home for the service. My father is insisting that I not come home because it will stress out my mother (which sounds absurd) and refused to tell me when and where the service is. I've found a bereavement flight for about $400 on American, but cannot book it until I get the all the details (apparently the airline calls the funeral home to check out your story). Anyway, not quite sure what the appropriate thing to do is, and hopefully I can get a straight answer from mom today. The politics of bereavement is an unusual and strange thing.

Truth is, I'm especially not a fan of funerals the way they are done in the south, in Snellville: like the carnival, there's all this fancy stuff and fancy clothes and the body is dressed up and heaved on a pile of white linen and looks like one of those things we saw in the haunted house last night. I once had to help a family very close to me choose a casket for one of the men who raised me and I think I'm still emotionally scarred by how manipulative that process was. As a result I'm doing it the Quaker way and getting cremated immediately.

Nevertheless, I do want to be there for my family, if they need and want me there. I regret I didn't get to visit much with Richard this past year. I'm glad I called a few times this semester.

So I'm ready to travel again if mom gives the green light; I just wish I didn't have this cold.

30-something identity crises

Music: Vanishing Kids: Skies in Your Eyes (2007)

A dear friend and colleague visiting with me from out of town left very early this morning, apparently unable to sleep. Last night we had a somewhat-comforting talk about identity. Although one starts asking it in one's teen years, we discussed how we are both still haunted by the "who am I?" question. Intellectually, I'm persuaded by the answer first advanced by Hume and elaborated by psychoanalysis: I am the sum or bundle of my reactions to experiences and the stories I tell, and that others tell, about "me." I am as I do; I am the meaningful ensemble of my gestures. I am a repository of narrative. I am the son of Dan and Jane and emplaced by their name.

Yet this intellectual understanding of identity is unsatisfying in moments of crisis, in moments of extreme sadness or misfortune. There are moments when you recognize "now" is not where you thought you'd be back then. There is a mis-match. Lacan would say the mis-match is that inability to overlap with the imago/ego-ideal. Ok, that makes sense too, but it seems to me Erik Erikson had the best, pragmatic description of dissatisfaction with his theory of "identity crisis" when, you know, you're actually in crisis: for about every decade of one's life, the "who am I?" question recurs. Often caused by some unfortunate event (death, loss of a job, a break-up, and so on) one is forced to reckon with the fact that his or her life is not as he or she imagined it was to be.

For me, moving to UT precipitated a crisis of sorts (a break up; self-questioning about whether I could live up to expectations; financial hardship), and then my break up last summer also really precipitated a crisis that only finally came to head with the news of my continued professional insecurity (viz., still waiting for tenure). As I was telling my friend last night, I'm an insecure and sensative person (like many of us) and so I have been doubting, as of late, my over-investment in professional security. That is, in exchange for the security of a career, I seem to have neglected personal relationships, and now at 35 I have the security of neither. In time I have faith one, the other, or both will change, so I'm not despondent. And years of dropping acid and talking to god-the-wall about the existential condition of thrownness led to a sort of acceptance way back then that periodic crisis and stretches of solitude was the way of this life gig.

Even so, I'm not where I thought I'd be either.

My friend shared similar concerns, and then we started talking about other people our age also enduring something of a 30-something identity crisis. I'm not going to name names, but I can count about ten friends who are going through, or just made it through, some crises. We're talking major things: bad break-ups or failing marriages, deaths, severe job changes, and financial hardship. WTF? Is there something about the 30-something years that makes the crises more transformative, more pressing, more conspicuous? Any 40-somethings have some advice for us?

Well, I don't really know what to say about this topic except that "identity crises happen," and there are a bunch of us working though it. We worry about whether the academic life was the right choice. We worry about whether we can cut it in this job, about getting tenure, about running out of time or ideas. We worry about trusting others and ourselves. We worry about the "biological clock" and whether a family life is possible. We worry about what we gave up by embracing a family life. We worry about being fat or unhealthy. We worry about finances and retirement. And what's most infuriating: we don’t make enough money to buy a sports car to help resolve this crisis!

(I think, however, a Vespa is certainly in order)

Erikson argued that identity crises were both necessary and inevitable, and it is only through crises that one can continue to maintain and fashion a dynamic identity that can whether the really big crises yet to come (death and dying). Of course, for those of us working though them (apparently some crises are years-long) this is little comfort. That said, I reckon the most satisfying thing I can say is what motivates this blog post: hey, 30-something people in identity crisis, you're not alone. It sounds sentimental, and in a way it is, but sometimes identification requires a recognition of mutual crises: we're in this together.

the ideograph

Music: Marconi Union: [Distance] (2005)

This week I've returned to writing, and I think that's partly because I have a cold. Something about my head is off, a dull buzz in my right ear, bouts of coughing, and the rumbling umbles of cold medicine. It's somehow easier than normal to sit here and just tinker. A footnote here. A sentence there. Check the email. Another sentence. Slowly it slumbers. I'm going to the doctor tomorrow (which I sort of dread only because of the weight scale routine), I predict a Z-Pac and a "call me in a week if" kind of conversation.

I've decided some of my chicken noodle goodness is in order, so I'll be heading out to pick up the ingredients here in a few. Until then, I’m coding this blog entry and pasting in what I/we wrote today and yesterday.

Some of you may recall Shaun and I have been writing (for years) a follow-up to our "Zombie Trouble" essay published a few years ago. In the follow-up we want to take up race, because we know we skirted the issue in the last essay. We're basically calling for more ideology critiques that can wrestle with the way (a) critique does a sort of ideological misdirection itself; and (b) critique has succumbed to cynical reason. Insofar as zombie films are themselves cultural critiques, they serve as an excellent illustration. What we've got already is about thirty-pages of notes and drafted passages that just need to be pulled together and coherent-ized, so I've started that process this week.

Of key concern to me: doing a literature review I discovered an overwhelming number of ideology critiques fly under the banner of ideographic criticism. For some reason I've never really been impressed with the idea of the ideograph. It's too text-bound and it really doesn't have any explanatory power. It seems to me the method keeps getting trotted out because its accepted, and then you can just say whatever the hell you want to say and attach it to some empty signifier like "equality" or "freedom." To be blunt, I've only ever been impressed with Condit and Lucaites Crafting Equality and Dana Cloud's work with the ideograph. Everything else just seems to oversimplify and turn ideology into this static and unmoving thing.

For me, true ideological critique requires book-length projects. I mean, that's what Jameson argues in The Political Unconscious, and I think he's right (I have a doomed essay about this which kept getting rejected, so I stopped trying to work with Jameson). So the bind with this second zombie essay is how to say that---how to argue for procedure and not do ideological criticism ourselves, or at least, only do a mini-version. Anyhoo, I'll forgo the introduction and jump into the discussion:

I. Resurrecting Ideological Criticism (Again)

Owing to a number of theoretical developments, such as the eclipse of the concept of ideology by that of "hegemony" or "power/knowledge," ideological criticism seems to be in decline---at least in name. Elsewhere we have argued that the decline in ideological criticism is also connected to an unwillingness to confront the determinist connotations of ideology, as well as a profound misunderstanding of the category of the unconscious. We think there is a third reason as well: methodological stagnation. Although for decades ideological criticism has been an accepted approach to understanding and critiquing cultural artifacts in Communication Studies for decades, such criticism has been limited to a fairly restrictive analytical procedure termed "ideographic criticism." The reduction of ideology to its ideographic footprint, we suggest, has slowed communication scholars from developing a more robust, poststructural understanding of ideology as such.

Developed originally by Michael Calvin McGee, ideographic criticism reduces ideology to its fundamental "building blocks," which he terms "ideographs." As Sonja Foss explains in her popular textbook on rhetorical criticism, "the primary goal of the ideological critic is to discover and make visible dominant ideology or ideologies embedded in an artifact and the ideologies that are being muted in it." For McGee, ideographs were simply words or concepts that punctuated the movement or development of a given ideology overtime: an ideograph is "a higher-order abstraction representing to a particular but equivocal and ill-defined normative goal." McGee lists "such terms as 'property,' 'religion,' 'right of privacy,' 'freedom of speech,'" and so on as examples of ideographs. Since McGee advanced the ideograph in 1980s, there have been many ideographic studies, including a widely read, book-length study of the ideograph by Celeste Michelle Condit and John Louis Lucaites.

As useful as McGee's concept has been for textual and cultural criticism, we question its exclusive deployment for more recent understandings of ideology that critique any easy correspondence between words and extra-linguistic reality. Ideographic criticism, in light of contemporary understandings of ideology, is not suspicious enough. For example, unlike previous Marxian understandings that hold ideology is always determined by the "base," Althusserian conceptions of "interpellation" hold that ideology, culture, and other social formations are relatively autonomous from basic arrangements. Consequently, there is often a mismatch or distortion between superstructural or cultural objects and basic, material arrangements. This notion of a mis-match between symbols and extra-symbolic reality is inspired, in part, by Freud's assertion that dreams are distorted representations of unconscious wishes that have been condensed and displaced in the conscious mind. The consequence of the displacement and condensation of ideology in an autonomous cultural domain is that there is no necessary or direct homologous relation between any two cultural strata, and insofar one notices a parallel, it is likely obscuring or displacing a deeper ideological element.

Such autonomy troubles a stable presumption behind ideographic criticism, detailed by Mary E. Stuckey and Joshua A. Ritter:

Ideographs . . . are terms that are ordinarily found in common language but tend to resist change--- "liberty" or "equality" are two examples, although ideographs can be visually driven as well. Ideographs possess a certain fluidity, revealing a protean nature, but their use within a cultural vocabulary produces an ossification into the public imaginary as an empty signifier that may be attached to various meanings in rhetorical situations. This is how they function discursively and why they are so powerful-they possess a certain "givenness" that is also highly variable.

If we understand ideology as unconscious and autonomous, the consequence for ideographic criticism is that symbols may not correspond to the ideological logics they appear to signify: "equality" may, in fact, be about torture practices, "freedom" may be about totalitarianism, and so forth. Ideographs may tell one where to look, but like the images of dreams, they are helpless to specify what one might find. Consequently, the ideographic approach runs the risk of turning criticism into little more than a shell game without an abiding conceptual apparatus of constancy other than the empty signifier: myth, narrative, and so forth.

As we have argued elsewhere, one conceptual innovation that better attends to the dynamism of ideology is interpellation. Althusser's theorization of ideology as interpellation explains ideology as a subject-making process: ideology is not an indoctrinated set of beliefs, attitudes, and values of a given "mass," but rather, a kind of map or script for who a given individual is; to use and reverse the zombie allegory, without ideology we are all zombies. The concept of interpellation is not completely satisfying as an alternative to ideographic criticism, however, for Althusser also makes an exemption for the critic. According to Zizek and others (e.g. Judith Butler), it is Althusser's inability to contend with this problematic, with his own interpellation in the act of critique, that leaves his theory of ideology incomplete. In fact, Zizek suggests that the difficulties of one's position as a critic is one of the reasons scholars have hastened

to renounce the notion of ideology: does not the critique of ideology involve a privileged place, somehow exempted from the turmoils of social life, which enables some subject-agent to perceive the very hidden mechanism that regulates social visibility and non-visibility? Is not the claim that we can accede to this place the most obvious case of ideology?

Indeed, Althusser maintained an "outside" category-that of pure and objective "knowledge"-that most commentators found untenable, precisely because the pure category served to obscure his own ideological investments. Insofar as there is no outside, insofar as every self-conscious subject is "always-already" interpellated, then it is always that case that every critique of ideology is a misdirection of one sort or another. One should always be suspicious of any claim to "radical breaks" as much as to objectivity. And rather than let such a predicament lead to the idea that the category of ideology is self-defeating, Zizek argues that it should lead to further theorization; we should not rest.

To better contend with ideology as a necessarily tautological structure, one must first completely divorce the concept from the 'representationalist' problematic at the center of ideographic criticism: in a qualified sense, "ideology has nothing to do with 'illusion,'" says Zizek, for "a political standpoint can be quite accurate ('true') as to its objective content, yet thoroughly ideological." In other words, insofar as the primary function of ideology-as-interpellation is to create subjects, interpellation does not produce a barrier between human reality (an interior) and some "true," objective world (an exterior). Interpellation is the process by which the exterior is enfolded to create a subject; in this sense, self-conscious individuals are products of the "outside," ultimately becoming what Burke referred to as the symbol-using---and symbol-used!---animal. Consequently, any one subject's self-consciousness is determined by ideology in general, and ideologies in particular, but only in the sense of establishing the limits of choice.

Dispensing with the problem of representation marks a break with Althusser, who held ideology was an "illusion," however, it also introduces a technical turn (and term) that is frequently misread: fantasy. Zizek explains:

The fundamental level of ideology, however, is not of an illusion masking the real state of things but that of an (unconscious) fantasy structuring our social reality itself. And at this level, we are of course far from being a post-ideological society. Cynical distance is just one way-one of many ways-to blind ourselves to the structuring power of ideological fantasy: even if we do not take things seriously, even if we keep an ironical distance, we are still doing them... What we call 'social reality' is in the last resort an ethical construction; it is supported by a certain as if (we act as if we believe in the almightiness of bureaucracy, as if the President incarnates the Will of the People, as if the Party expresses the objective interests of the working class...). As soon as the belief (which, let us remind ourselves again, is definitely not to be conceived at a psychological level: it is embodied, materialized, in the effective functioning of the social field) is lost, the very texture of the social field disintegrates....

Understanding fantasies as reality-scripts that tell us what we desire, Zizek contends ideology is a kind of fantasy-field, and culture itself an autonomous reservoir of largely unconscious desire-scripts that yield self-conscious identities.

Zizek frequently uses the fictional film as an exemplar of fantasies---and therefore the work of ideology. Insofar as the term fantasy is used in a technical, psychoanalytic sense, however, Zizek frequently refers to cinema as a nonfictional ideology zone in a manner that challenges commonplace understandings of "reality":

the psychoanalytic notion of fantasy cannot be reduced to that of a fantasy-scenario that obfuscates the true horror of a situation. The first, rather obvious thing to add is that the relationship between fantasy and the horror of the Real that it conceals is much more ambiguous than it may seem. Fantasy conceals this horror, yet at the same time it creates what it purports to conceal, its 'repressed' point of reference.

In this respect, films and other forms of media simultaneously shield us from the very things they bring into existence; they allow us to confront and indulge in our own ugliness without having to admit it or go "all the way." For example, the NBC network's program, "To Catch a Predator" (a break-out segment of the show Dateline NBC) is a hidden camera reality show in which presumed pedophiles are lured over the Internet into a supposedly under-age girl or boy's home. Before the men are arrested and taken to jail, the intrepidly righteous "journalist" Chris Hansen interrogates them, insinuating they are "sick," eliciting tearful confessions, and so on. Certainly the ideological fantasy in play concerns that of normalcy and deviance, however, the show's success depends on a perverse appeal: by watching those bad men get busted, one can safely confront the fact that young people are sexual beings.

Insofar as ideographic criticism---or rather, all criticism---exempts the critic from the ideological field and reduces ideology to a single fantasy structure, it is essentially a fantasmic enterprise: whatever we critique likely displaces some other kind of ideological labor-perhaps even reinforces the very ideology critiqued. In response to this predicament, following Peter Sloterdijk, Zizek argues critics have succumbed to cynical reason, either abandoning the category of ideology or reducing critique to facile, superficial readings. In what follows, we turn to an analysis of the film 28 Days Later to further elaborate two neglected but nevertheless important conceptual considerations for any form of ideology critique today: (1) the arrival of cynical reason; and (2) the ideological misdirection of critique itself. Only by reckoning with the cynicism and misdirection inherent to ideology critique can we hope to reinstate the enterprise as a viable one in Communication Studies.

rsa redux

Music: Westin hotel lobby muzak, some folk standard---oh, it's "Will the Circle Be Unbroken"---sounds like Mary Chapin Carpenter

It's difficult to believe I'm back at the Rhetoric Society of America conference two years since the last because it seems like I was just at RSA last year. Same crowd, same faces, but in addition to lots of new faces. Apparently RSA has swelled to over a thousand members and there were more than 800 attending this year. My first RSA was as a master's student in 1998 in Pittsburgh. It was a great conference. It was the last time I smoked pot---that is, it was the last time I hit on a random stranger who passed me a joint. It was the last time my buddy David ever doubted my ability to get us a ride home at 2 a.m. It was the last time this conference was small and cheap.

The panels I saw were good, and in general I was pleased that everyone I saw give a paper was prepared. The "Queering Public Address" panel based on Chuck Morris's edited collection was the highlight; great panel.

Seattle was a lot more fun this time than the last time I visited! It didn't rain! We found a working class bar at Virginia and Fourth called the Whiskey Bar that was not yuppied-out. We had some amazing oysters at Cutters.

I had---still have---a chest cold. Bourbon was the only thing that made me feel better [smirk]

The only thing that sticks out as uniquely reportable was the luncheon yesterday. During the luncheon awards are given, speeches are made, we thank each other and so on. David Zarefsky gave a speech on "the responsibilities of rhetoric," which of course was about teaching and promoting deliberative democracy and so on. What was really striking, though, was an "Ode to RSA."

Some dude was asked to give a "ode" as a point of levity. Understand RSA is comprised of people who teach and study public address in writing and speaking. So we're all supposedly trained to analyze the audience, assess the norms and predict expectations, and so on. So this dude---no doubt a nice guy---gets up there and starts reading his "ode" from a lap top (you know, pausing every so often to hit the arrow-down key) and basically gives us a rap on the all the other RSAs he found on google. It sort-of rhymes. One would suspect an "ode" lasts about a minute to five minutes, but at the ten minute mark I started to wonder what was going on.

So this guy keeps reading his ode, and suddenly it stops rhyming and turns into a sort-of platonic dialogue about the muses and white veils and stuff. The dude laughs at his own jokes (the 700 or so people at lunch do not laugh at the jokes). When he's into about fifteen minutes of this, the room is annoyed---you can just smell it---and this guy is still reading his ode. At one point he says something about being "indulgent," and I said quietly "I'll say!" People around chuckled.

At about the 25 minute point I serious start contemplating standing up and shouting, "hurry up already" or something like this. I start thinking about the ramifications of doing such a thing. Would I want to be known as that guy who stood up at a luncheon and told a speaker to hurry up? Maybe some people in the room are enjoying whatever it is this guy is saying?

I decide not to stand up and embarrass myself. Instead, I made a rabbit puppet out of my napkin and started to pretend my puppet was speaking. It entertained my table. I'm afraid it did not entertain a couple two tables over, as they gave me a disapproving stare. I know it was childish, but I couldn't help it. As a consequence of this guy's "performance," the panels started late.

That's my conference, in a nutshell. I'm sitting in the hotel lobby waiting for someone to come by and say hello and distract me as I also wait to meet up with Texas peeps for a cab to the airport. So if you're readin' blogs and are at the Westin, please come socialize with me. I'm make a puppet out of a napkin for you. I might even give you my cold!

thoughts on presenting at conferences

Music: Tahiti 80: Puzzle (2000)

Today I'm doing laundry and packing in preparation for my trip to Seattle tomorrow morning. I also just finished composing, editing, and practicing the paper I will deliver on Sunday at the Rhetoric Society of America conference. This morning just after I finished up my presentation script, I read Jenny's post on "performing" papers at conferences. She said she was working on flexing her "weak performativity muscle fighting the possibility of something new." Those of us in rhetorical studies circles should collectively flex this muscle more often.

I have an admission to make: for the past three years I have not gone to a panel at a conference unless it was my own, or a performance studies panel. In part, I don't go to panels because I'm too busy doing service-like things or trying to meet up with friends. But I also must admit I don't go to panels because too few people try to "perform" their papers; it's more common to see people drone on and on in a monotonous voice. I mean, most panels are like going to church. I don't like going to church.

There are exceptions, of course, but in general rhetorical studies remains a rather conservative discipline. The research in our journals is, for the most part, rigorous and well-researched. Yet until relatively recently, folks seemed to "play it safe." I very much understand the need to play it safe in one's published work (I try not to do that and to take risks, but I don't knock anyone who plays it safe---it's one's livelihood on the line!). But if there's anywhere to try something risky or new, it's the conference panel! Burst out in song in the middle of your paper! Tell a joke! Say something naughty! Make the audience participate in a visualization---do something! I mean, here we are, the teachers of lively writing and public speaking, and we resort to overly-serious droning---and frequently the worst paper deliveries are also the ones that occupy some sort of time warp in which five minutes seems like 30 seconds to the presenter.

Just in case any of y'all reading are working on presentations, here's some things you can do to make me a happy audience member at your panel. Of course, it's all about making me, Josh, happy and to hell with everyone else [grin].

DON'T DO THIS:

• Deliver your paper extemporaneously from an outline. I have seen THREE people do this well. The rest of us should read from a script that has been timed in advance to avoid taking another panelist's time.
• Attempt to deliver a paper by thumbing through the full-version and guessing which paragraphs one should read. Prepare in advance: assemble a "script" that is precisely what you will read and that is timed and practiced in advance.
• Read your paper from a laptop. It's annoying to most of your audience, trust me.
• Go over twelve minutes. In all the conferences I've been to, everyone—including the respondent if there is one—gets 15 minutes, tops. Factor in possible bout of coughing, some sniffles, drinking water, and you've only got about twelve minutes to work with. Don't take more than your fair share.
• Think you're the smartest person in the room. You're probably not, and over-investments in your brilliance only makes you come off like a shit. All of us are smart people; don't assume you have to "dumb-down" your work, either.
• Hemorrhage the brains of your audience. Conceptually dense essays are better read, not read aloud. Compose your delivery script as if you were talking to a competent colleague at dinner. I don't think I'm a dummy, but I must say when certain theory-rich scholars read their dense papers my eyes roll up into the back of my head and my temples start throbbing as my brain liquefies and dribbles out my ear. I especially have a low tolerance for panels full of papers like this. (My ideal theory-heavy presenter: Zizek. He makes tough stuff ok to understand when he gives a talk.)
• Play Socrates. Nothing is more annoying than some patronizing paper deliverer asking the audience a series of questions about the intended audience of wikipedia.
• Keep apologizing. All of us have inferiority complexes, and the rest of us are just assholes. There's no need to keep apologizing for what you didn't get to or how much you failed to do what you had planned. Fake-over the shortcomings. Only apologize if you went overtime (which you should not do).
• Slur or mumble. Articulate your words and read at a brisk but easy-to-follow pace.
• Be overly-serious. Ok, so, if your paper is about torture and human evil, you have license to be serious. Otherwise, lighten up.
• Fart. Usually a problem for the older male professor who has been there and done that. I don't know why these guys think its ok to pass gas in a small presentation room. It's not nice.

PLEASE DO THIS

• Be prepared. It's the Boy Scout motto, and it's always served me well. Have your paper scripted and timed and practiced. Did I say this already? Yes, but now more positively: script, time, practice, cut.
• Have a sense of humor. If you cannot laugh at this crazy world, our silly profession, or your own stupidities, you are the overly serious insufferable person that everyone writes and passes notes about during your presentation.
• Smile. I know, especially if you're presenting for the first time, delivering a paper can be terrifying! A smile says, however, that you're happy to be there. If you're terrified: fake it!
• Wear pants or a longish skirt and underwear. There are stories about individuals who did not. Unflattering stories. Astonishing stories. Stories about who dresses to the right or left or who does not shave. You'd think this was common sense, but . . . there are stories.
• Bring a sport jacket, light coat, or sweater: I don't know why this is, but it seems like every conference I've been to (except for one in Minneapolis) the panel rooms are freezing cold. Nothing's worse than having to deliver your paper with chattering teeth.
• Nod and take notes when your fellow panelists are presenting. Believe it or not, even when you're not presenting sometimes you'll be looked at. If you look absolutely bored to tears it will appear as childish. I know, because I had someone tell me many years ago I looked like I was bored to death and appeared childish.
• Dress nicely. No t-shirts or wrinkled oxfords please. You don't need to wear a tux or a suit, but, clothing that says you actually thought about how you appear is the baseline of professional-ness.
• Thank people. Thank the audience for coming if you get a chance. Thank your chair for coming and moderating; thank your respondent for her labor and comments. I've had some respondents who raked my work over the coals, or offered the dumbest, most inane suggestions ever (like that I should go read my own work, the author of which the respondent forgot). Regardless, someone took the time to read and respond to my work, and that labor deserves recognition.
• Look up. Always look up from your script and scan the audience to see how they are reacting. Doing this periodically will also give you a sense of where you are time-wise. If I'm sitting in your audience holding up a sign that says, "TIME OUT!" you probably should wind-it up ;-)

Now, armed with these Joshie Juice tips on conference presenting, you're ready not to bore the audience! Friends and colleagues: any more suggestions?

"batshit crazy": code for race

Music: The Alan Parsons Project: Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1987)

Diane passed on a link to an editorial in salon.com by Gary Kamia on "Psycho Christians and the Media." The by-line is hilarious: "Why the press gives McCain a pass for consorting with batshit holy men, but condemns Obama to talk-show hell for the same sin." As most folks know by now, McCain accepted the endorsement of Rev. John Hagge and actively sought the endorsement of Rev. Rod Parsley, both of whom have said patently wacky things (like the Catholics conspired with Hitler to kill off the Jews; like Islam is an evil religion; like we need to annihilate Iran to hasten Christ's return and the Rapture; like Deity created the world in seven, god-time days and then made the first man out of dirt and then turned one of his ribs into a companion to serve him). Kamia argues that

The media's double standard is all about deference to perceived mainstream norms, and tiptoeing around the Christian right. Despite their cartoonish views, the media treats Hagee and Parsley as quasi-mainstream figures, which makes McCain's relationship with them non-newsworthy. The dirty little secret of mainstream American journalism is that it operates within invisible constraints that conform to some imagined Middle American consensus.

Kamia says that in some polls 45% of "Americans" self-identify as "born-again" or evangelical, which would seem to indicate the mid-way consensus is imaginary only in the concrete, material sense: a very larger number of people actually believe there is a coming apocalypse and Jesus is gonna come back, and they hold similar images in their heads about how this unfolds (e.g., Left Behind). Now, lets just admit it: such views are no more "cartoonish" than the idea an omnipotent god twinned himself into a human, was born to a virgin, and then had himself nailed to a cross to bleed to death so that he could miraculously resurrect himself and, thereby, save humanity from the finality of death. And UFO-driving "Grey Men" built the pyramids.

Absurdity or "batshit crazy" beliefs come with the territory of most religious systems (not all). Faith is often defined by the ability to suspend disbelief in something like "Jesus was an Astronaut" or if I just understand the "law of attraction," then I can get laid, make lots of money, and refurnish my kitchen with top of the line stainless steel appliances. If you believe in some sort of conscious life after the only reality that is certain, then you'll believe just about anything. This means that about 95% of the world's population is batshit crazy, I reckon. I don't believe in an afterlife, but count me in anyway.

Nevertheless, Kamia makes some great points, all of which betoken the corporatization of the mainstream news media: no longer is journalism about truth or public service; it's about advertising and making money. As John Murphy points out, news reporters fashion themselves as celebrities in order for larger paychecks; recent debates have demonstrated that the questions asked are more about the moderator's self-branding than the information elicited from the candidates. Because the "bottom-line" is, in fact, the bottom-line, Kamia's argument that MSM does not want to offend or alienate audiences makes some sense.

But, the double standard of coverage goes deeper than celebrity news or selling eyeballs to pharmaceutical companies inventing diseases. Why are McCain's connections to Hagge overlooked, while Wright becomes Obama's albatross? What makes Wright's rhetoric particularly newsworthy? Um, Wright is black. I know this is mindblowingly genius but: the double standard is about race, rhetorical norms among different "raced" groups, and the inability of a mostly white reporting corps to report on "the other" in a sensitive way. Sure, Bill Moyers does. Sure, there's the PBS New Hour, but these are the exceptions to the rule. For example: go back to review Wright's address to the National Press Club. Everything is measured and even-steven until the Q&A. The uber-white and upper-classed moderator opens the Q&A by immediately distinguishing between two audiences, the "noisy" black people and the white press corps. That gesture alone signals the double standard Kamia is trying to explain: only someone who did not understand and accept African American vernacular norms would do something so stupid.

At lunch last week a colleague was pushing me on my defense of Rev. Wright's rhetoric. "How is what Hagge says any different from what Wright says?" I responded as I have on the blog, that they are coming out of two very different rhetorical traditions. Wright's rhetoric is more associative and figurative, performative, coming out of a tradition of double-consciousness. If you take him literally, you're missing 80% of what's going on in his preaching. Hagge, on the other hand, is literal. He's the classic "straight man" to Wright's signifyin' in a sense. She responded, "but when Hagge says the Whore of Babylon is the Catholic church, that's figurative." So there we went at lunch, round and round, and I found myself utterly incapable of explaining my self. The only argument that got traction with my friend was that Hagge advocated for foreign policy changes, while Wright does not.

"By incessantly attacking Obama as strange and scary, which is certain to be his strategy," argues Kamia, "McCain will be tapping into this already existing media bias toward sensationalism." It's clear to me that "strange and scary" means "black," and "sensationalism" means racism and racist-appeal. If Obama turns out to be the nominee and the race is indeed Obama campaign, we will be seeing one of the most racist contests in decades. In the days of segregation, racist politics was explicit, in your face, the n-word was bandied about, you knew the "strange and scary" other was raced. Today, the very same politics will be shrouded in a coded rhetoric that masquerades racist observations and tensions in the language of capitalism. Clinton already let slip the "white voter" word in West Virginia. That will not happen again. The double standard will be maintained over racial otherness, but we dare not speak its name.

drama begins at home

Music: Nine Inch Nails: The Slip (2008; get it for free here)

A letter designed to end increasingly hostile answering machine messages:

Dear [Neighbor],

I have been ignoring your phone calls for many days for one reason: if I speak to you in person, I worry that a litany of unkind words and offensive phrases would exit my mouth and enter your ear. Although I think you are deserving of such language at the moment, I do have the good sense enough to know I do not want to be the person who "cusses out" my neighbor. I am, therefore, choosing to write.

As I said to you over the phone last week, I am not happy with you and believe that you have taken advantage of my kindness and friendship. Since our debacle last summer it has become clear to me that you do not listen very well. I know, however, you read quite well, and so I thought I would communicate to you in writing why I am unhappy with you.

In general, I think you are a self-interested bully.

I also have come to the conclusion that you have no consideration for anyone other than yourself when you want something. When times are good and things are going well, you can be very loving. But when you want something, you hound and pressure whomever you can find to do your bidding, and often at their expense.

Aside from your uncontrollable harassment last summer, there are other examples of your inconsideration. Recently you and I were on the mend when you called one day to complain about the "rattling in the pipes." I heard no such rattling. On the phone you said the rattling started after the repairs from the summer. I responded by saying that you were welcome to phone my insurance adjuster and speak with him about it. You then said, "No! You call him!" in a demanding voice that was rude beyond measure. Sheepishly I agreed to do so, but after I had chance to think about it, I remembered seeing a plumber at your house the previous week. I called you back and said that he was your best chance to fix the problem, since he worked on your pipes last. In all honesty, I reported, my insurance company would not cover an unrelated issue. You hung up the phone on me, obviously disappointed.

Later that week I learned from a neighbor that you have had air in the pipes long before our water leak last summer. This means that the "rattling" in the pipes happened before our summer emergency. This also means that you were being deceptive. You were lying about the summer incident in the hopes that my insurance company would fix your preexisting problem. I honestly understand scrupulous methods as long as they are honest; in this plumbing situation, however, I learned that you will bend the truth to get your way, and wanted me to do all the work as well! I felt lied to and as a consequence no longer trust you.

The recent plumbing incident falls into the same category of deceit. Let me recount the situation as I recall it: Once you learned that you could save some money by my sharing in the cost of labor, you began pressuring me to have a water pressure regulator installed. I said repeatedly I could not afford it. On the phone two Sundays ago I said that I could not afford it. You said I should spend my economic stimulus check from the federal government on the pressure regulator. Despite the fact such a suggestion is patently offensive, I explained to you I owed the government taxes and would not receive any check. I also explained to I had a $1,200 car repair bill. I stated, in no uncertain terms, "I cannot afford this."

You countered that the plumber might take late payment. I said I didn't discount that a regulator was a good investment, but that I could not pay for it. I said that I may have the money in July. I asked if you could wait until July. You said you would talk to the plumber and get back to me. I asked how much such a thing would cost. You indicated $300-400 dollars for both, suggesting $150-200 a person. "I can afford that," I recall saying, "but not until this summer." I never said "do it." When I left you on the phone, you were to call me and report the conversation with the plumber. You never got back to me. I opened my mailbox to a $350 bill.

So why am I angry with you about the recent plumbing incident? Let me enumerate:

1. You said you would call me back about any plumbing work or payment deals to be struck, and you never did.
2. You couldn't wait until July, when I might be able to afford the procedure.
3. You told the plumber I would pay him next month! I never said I could pay him next month. I said I might be able to afford something in July.
4. You didn't research the procedure at all; had you been able to wait until I could afford such a thing, we could have called many plumbers and got estimates and went with the cheapest one.
5. You didn't consult me any step of the way, and approved work to be done without my consent.
6. You scheduled to have work done without telling me until FIVE MINUTES before the work was to be done.

Your inconsideration is beyond rude: it is adolescent. I am a kind person, but in wanting something so badly you have taken advantage of me. Because you are impatient, I suspect you resorted to deceit (whether or not you intend it), at the very least the kind of wishful thinking of a teenager.

I will no longer tolerate your abuse. I will, however, accept an apology. Regardless, it is both in your and my best interest not to speak at present. I do not want to be verbally abusive any more than you want to hear it. In time, with an earnest apology from you, I may eventually speak to you again.

Sincerely,

Josh

drafted!

Music: Aphex Twin: Ambient Works Volume Two (1994)

Yesterday I finally finished drafting the "magical voluntarism" essay, and just in time for RSA when I'll be presenting it. Today I'll be working on that presentation (at least I hope to) so that I don't have to worry about it next week and can focus, instead, on prepping for summer school. This summer I'm teaching a survey of film theory that I've not taught in four years. I reckon I should brush-up a bit, update some readings, and figure out what movies are possible to show in class.

Meanwhile, this weekend there are multiple commencements, and a number of chums are in town to "walk." I'm looking forward to sitting for the Ph.D. hooding ceremony on Saturday, dressed in my clown-suit, where I'll get to hug and cheer or a number of our goodly folks (all of whom are dutifully employed! w00t!).

In any event, continuing the conversation about The Secret and Foss, Waters, and Armada: we close the essay by calling for a return or re-engagement with dialectics. Dana wrote much of the stuff here, since it's more her bag, but I do side with the dialecticians myself re the critical theory battles (I go with the Frankfurt School, not the "immanence" people). Many of the criticisms of dialectics tend to be leveled at those folks who discuss it as the inner-dynamic of History and social change. I'm particularly taken with Ollman's work, who argues dialectic is a method of analysis and a style of thought, not to be confused with, say, an ontology. In this scheme, class antagonism is a chosen focus, for example. Now, there's some tension here between Dana's views on class and my tendency to see more common cause in Laclau's version of hegemony politics, but hopefully we won't need to highlight that tension. We'll see. Nevertheless, if we can make this conclusion plausible, then perhaps the magical self-transparent subject will be dead once and for all in rhetorical studies?

I mean, the subject has been dead for sometime, which is reason for our "zombie trouble." The dead subject just keeps on coming back, like her cousin, the dead horse. The tentative and drafty conclusion below:

IV. Concluding Remarks: Whither Dialectics?

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
---Karl Marx

In this essay we have advanced an extensive critique of Foss, Waters, and Armada's theory of agentic orientation, arguing that The Secret book and DVD are much better suited as an illustration of their theory. We have argued that the rhetoric of Foss, Waters, and Armada's theory and that of The Secret are typical of "magical voluntarism," an idealist understanding of human agency in which a subject can achieve her needs and desires by simple wish-fulfillment and the manipulation of symbols, irrelevant of structural constraint or material limitation. More specifically, we argued that magical voluntarism features three components: a reliance on constructivism; a belief in wish fulfillment through visualization and the imagination; and a commitment to radical individualism and autonomy. In light of these components, it is important to underscore magical voluntarism is not simply a rehabilitation of the rational, self-transparent and autonomous subject of the Enlightenment; it amplifies the powers of imagination in a manner that is said to transcend material conditions, including the laws of nature. Such a view is consistent with the beliefs and practices of magicians and witches in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Finally, we have argued that an embrace of magical voluntarism leads to narcissistic complacency, regressive infantilism, and elitist arrogance.

Although our primary task in this essay was to advance a critique of the ways in which capitalism enchants and mystifies, we do wish to close our essay with an alternative understanding of agency that takes into account the rhetorical research of the past two decades. If our critique of Foss, Waters, and Armada achieves anything, we trust it is the realization that scholars cannot simply wish-away the problems posed by the project of the posts (posthumanism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, and so on) any more than we can wish-away the systematic inequities and structural barriers that prevent millions of people from being the "director" of their own lives. Rather, as scholars and social actors, we must continuously work-thorough the problematic of agency in respect to our "structural" plight.

So how might we continue to work-through the question of agency? Insofar as the antithesis of our position is magical voluntarism, we are left with two directions that are not necessarily mutually exclusive: we can continue to think-through agency in terms of posthuman problemmatics; and we can continue working-through the question of agency dialectically. Dialectical thinking is, in fact, one of the ways in which posthumanist theory and the "middle way" favored by rhetoricians might come together---and is one of the ways in which each author of this essay finds a middle ground of agreement. In closing, we briefly rehearse the basics of dialectics to sound the final death knell of agentic orientation: when we understand how dialectical thinking works, it occurs that we already have the tools at our disposal to continue working through the question of agency without any magic whatsoever.

According to traditional Marxist theory, ordinary people exist in "circumstances transmitted from the past" that shape their consciousness and constrain their action, yet collectively and-in spite of ideological and coercive forces arrayed against them-come to consciousness of their situation, assess the world around them, and plan and enact change in their own interests (need source for quote). Materialist dialectics is a critical and political method that describes actual historical change and affords scholars and activists grounds for political and critical judgment.[1] On this analysis, class position and the experience of exploitation combine to form an epistemological potential in the dialectical contradiction between the lived experience of exploitation and the mystifications of ideology.

In philosophy, dialectics is most often understood as a form of reasoning toward understanding of the whole on the basis of the discovery of contradictions. This sense of the concept of dialectics has its origin in philosophical idealism, such as that of Plato, whose dialogues enact clash in the rarified realm of ideas, aspiring to what he regarded as ever-higher truths; and that of Hegel, whose observation that the self-estrangement produced in relations of unequal power is crucial, but whose solution to estrangement once again involved transcendence of the sensuous, material, political world.[2] Although Marx clearly rejected "thought against thought" as a viable resistance strategy, he and Engels were drawn to Hegel's dialectics as an alternative to either static views of society or theories of automatic linear progress. Materialist dialectics describes the ways in which history unfolds, not as a series of great ideas or scientific reforms, but rather as a product of contending classes, possessing divergent structural interests. Materialist dialectics insists that dynamism is neither metaphysical nor directed from above according to invisible laws or principles. Rather, change unfolds out of contradictions in the existing world.

Although many forms of dialectical thinking have blossomed from Marx's original project (e.g., the "negative dialectics" of Adorno), it is important to underscore it is a style of thinking and not a "science." Because dialectics is associated with Marxism, it is often misunderstood or hastily dismissed. As Bertell Ollman explains,

The dialectic, as such, explains nothing, proves nothing, predicts nothing, and causes nothing to happen. Rather, dialectics is a way of thinking that brings into focus the full range of changes and interactions that occur in the world. As part of this, it includes how to organize a reality viewed in this manner for the purposes of study and how to present the results of what one finds to others, most of whom do not think dialectically. . . . Dialectics restructures our thinking about reality by replacing the common-sense notion of "thing" (as something that has a history and has external connections to other things) with notions of "process" (which contains its history and possible futures) and "relation" (which contains as part of what it is its ties with other relations). (2003, pp. 12-13).

The implications of this view for agency should thus be obvious: individuals do not exist in isolation, but bear the traces of other individuals in such a way that to speak of "agency" as something any one person possess ignores the interactive dynamic of material and social realty. This is not to say an individual does not make choices that affect his or her life. Rather, a dialectical way of thinking about agency sees an individual only in relation to other individuals. Consequently, the individual takes a back seat to interactivity, dialogue, and collectivity.

Insofar as the totality is dynamic and constantly changing---insofar as the material world, inclusive of our relations to each other, is not inert---perhaps we should not settle on any definitive understanding of what agency is, who has or does not have it, and so on? Perhaps-and in much more in keeping with Lucaites' call-agency is only definitively sensible in retrospect and with situational specificity? We are taken with Caroline Williams' suggestion that we should leave the matter of the power and limits of the individual actor as an open question, which seems to us to be compatible with dialectical thought. Speaking of the concept of the subject in Western philosophy, Williams says:

A significant paradox has been noted to pervade the philosophical study of the concept of the subject. Not only do our references to the subject seem to assume the existence of the subject in some form or other, but the repetition of the very question of the subject appears to confirm its structure, a structure which announces itself in the form of the question: "what is the subject?" The circle of referentiality is quite unavoidable. (2001, pp. 191-192)

That we have similarly studied agency in rhetorical and communication theory in the last twenty years suggests a similar question. "What is agency?" presupposes that agency exists, but it does not necessarily isolate it in a discrete human being. How we contend with agency depends on the particular circumstances and material specificity of a given event; to say that agency resides in unbridled free choice is nothing short of magic.

Notes

[1] "Materialist dialectics" as we are using the term is not aligned with Stalin's distorted articulation of "dialectical materialism" or "dia-mat," which in 1938 interpreted Marx and Engels in such a way as to remove the human agent from the process of revolutionary change (see Stalin, 1938).

[2] See any of Plato's dialogues with the Sophists, including Gorgias and Phaedrus (Plato, 1997).

more on materialism and magick

Music: Judge Joe Brown

An air-conditioner repairman is busy in the bathroom attempting to stem the tide of water that continues to flood out of the ceiling. This after the previous repair company failed to fix the problem twice. Water damage bonanza, of course, sagging ceiling and all, but nothing like last summer thank Goddess. Now I have to see if the first company will repair the water damage caused by their gaffe (note the "e," I've added to gaff, dearest Eric).

[Later edit: nope, the guy who caused the water damage is denying the whole thing; it's either small claims court or insurance claim---I await the adjuster's phone call.]

Sheesh, people. I'm not so sure home-owning is for me; I have my doubts and I now understand why people buy "new" instead of charming and old.

Meanwhile, I write. After Bryan's stellar comps defense on all things Marxist (including Leninist vanguardism!), today I'm pumped to finish drafting the essay I'm writing with Dana ( introduction here and more here). Basically, we're critiquing what we call "magical voluntarism," the "old" self-transparent view of agency but with a bonus: that one can will the material world to change by wishing really, really hard. The vehicle of critique is a recent essay by Foss, Waters, and Armada on Run Lola Run, but our primary object of analysis is The Secret, a ridiculously successful DVD and book of wish-fulfillment clap-trap. Dana loaned me a copy of a recent Oprah show on "the law of attraction" and I simply couldn't believe these "experts" were taking each other seriously. I mean, its one thing to visualize success as a way of achieving it, but it's quite another to believe in magical stoves: this woman cut a picture of a stove out of a catalog one day because she'd really like that model one day. When she had her kitchen remodeled, she completely forgot about her wished-for stove and picked another model. They installed not one, but two of the other model stoves and neither would work properly. Then she remembered her dream stove and bit the bullet and had it installed: it worked perfectly! It must be "the law of attraction." I shit you not people were gasping in awe and nodding in agreement.

Could it be all my nasty home repairs are a consequence of my worrying about nasty home repairs? When will the endless cycle of repairs stop?

Anyhoo, it's hard to stay measured when writing about something as ridiculous as The Secret. And, the damn scheme only confirms my commitment to writing a self-help book under a pseudonymn. Basically, I want to plagiarize Plato's Phaedrus, dress it up in different metaphors, turn Phaedrus into a Phaedra (so the erotic mentoring angle is going), and make a million convincing people that a sexless love of the Divine Principle is the key to happiness. Then, when Oprah has me on her show, I will pull a Frey and reveal it was all a sham but, unlike Frey, my message will be positive: sometimes we are not responsible for our own conditions and sometimes structural change, not individual struggles with our inner-brats, is necessary to make the world a better place.

Anyhoot, I could ramble on but the day is wastin' and I actually should be writing over there instead of in here. I'm pasting in a little tease of yesterday's progress:

III. The Secret: Magical Volunteerism as Make-Believe

By the end of their reading of Run Lola Run, Foss, Waters, and Armada extract a theory of "agentic orientation" that emerges as both a "mechanism" for rhetorical criticism and an ideal toward which people should aspire. As a mechanism, agentic orientation can be discerned in a text/reality by attending to the conscious analysis and choices a given individual (real or fictional) makes in respect to structure, possible actions, and the outcome of the chosen action. As an ideal, however, the authors suggest the director orientation is "superior" (p. 219) and characterize the ideal in the following way: (1) a director understands that structural conditions can be manipulated such that "desires are affirmed and supported" (p. 215); (2) a director understands structural conditions as "resources" for "innovation" (p. 215); (3) a director understands structures as social constructions because "symbols create reality" (p. 216; p. 220); (4) a director exhibits "individual responsibility and independence" or "self-responsibility" such that "there is no expectation that others are responsible for meeting [his or her] needs or desires" (pp. 215-216); and (5) a director self-consciously chooses which agentic orientation to adopt (pp. 220-221). For simplicity, we can reduce these characteristics to three interrelated components: (1) wish-fulfillment through free choice and will; (2) social constructivism; and (4) radical individualism. The ideal agentic orientation, in other words, is one where an individual, mindful of the symbolic construction of reality, changes reality through conscious, willful choices made independently of others.

What is striking about Foss, Waters, and Armada's ideal is its unusual similarity to the way in which "magic" has been defined and characterized in the last two centuries. The most famous and influential magus of modernity, Aleister Crowley, for example, defines magic (or Magick) as "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will" (1999, p. 27), which overlaps precisely with the wish-fulfilling element of agentic orientation. Crowley then elaborates a number of "theorems":

1. Every intentional act is a Magical Act. . . .
2. Every successful act has conformed to the postulate [that change occurs through willful force].
3. Every failure proves that one or more requirements of the postulate have not been fulfilled. . . .
4. The first requisite for causing change is through qualitative and quantitative understanding of the conditions. . . .
5. The second requisite of causing any change is the practical ability to set in right in motion the necessary forces. . . .
6. "Every man and woman is a star." That is to say, every human being is instrinsically an independent individual with his own proper character and proper motion. (pp. 28-29)

The Great Magus continues at some length, however, we already see all three components of Foss, Waters, and Armada's ideal agentic orientation reflected in these statements about magic: the magus is an "independent individual" who changes the world in accord with her will through an understanding of the conditions, symbolic and material. Unlike Crowley who recognizes material limitation, however, Foss, Waters, and Armada are even more magical: reality is a creation of symbols and consequently can be changed by force of will alone (p. 220). Insofar as Foss, Waters, and Armada's theory of agentic orientation has striking parallels to a number of theories of magic (see Carpenter, 1996; pp. 57-58; Lurhman, 1989, p. 7), we argue for a better label: "magical volunerism." Magical volunterism refers to any theory of agency that suggests one can fulfill ones needs and desires through the independent, willful manipulation of symbols irrelevant of structural limitation or constraint.

Today magical thinking in the United States is no more conspicuous than with Rhonda Byrne's repackaging of the wisdom of Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking (1952). Both a best-selling DVD and a book, The Secret purports to reveal a centuries-old teaching, dubbed "the law of attraction," that "can give you whatever you want" (Byrne, 2006, p. xi). The law of attraction is simply this: "Everything that's coming into your life you are attracting into your life. And it's attracted to you by virtue of the images you're holding in your mind. It's what you're thinking" (p. 4). In the hour-and-a-half DVD and the 200 page book, various experts and "teachers of The Secret" explain-in both pseudo-scientific and spiritual terms (brought together in the endorsements of two quantum physicists) that the key to wealth, health, and prosperity is making sure that the mind's thought frequencies are appropriately and positively tuned.

The book and video suggest that The Secret has been wrongly hoarded by the powerful few, making what amounts to an appeal to popular power that, ironically, dislocates popular anger and defuses politically necessary antagonism. For example, in the DVD a scene is shown of a number of businessmen in a darkened room smoking cigars; in a voice-over the "philosopher" Bob Proctor explains: "Why do you think that 1 percent of the population earns around 96 percent of all the money that's being earned? Do you think that's an accident? It's designed that way. They understand something. They understand The Secret . . ." (p. 6). They understand, Proctor continues, that the secret to their success is visualization, that imaging one is wealthy leads one, magically, to wealth. Undoubtedly, The Secret is the most blatant and profitable exemplar of enchantment and magical thinking in our time. To illustrate magical volunteerism, then, we now turn to a comparative analysis of the three basic components of Foss, Waters, and Armada's theory and The Secret, careful to point out what we see as the real world outcomes in each instance. We begin, however, with the most foundational component of each theory: constructivist ontology.

Constructivism

Presumably drawing on the work of Judith Butler (1993, p. 28),[i] Foss, Waters, and Armada argue that orienting oneself as the "director" of one's life

is in tune with a tenet acknowledged by a number of diverse perspectives, ranging from social constructionism to quantum physics. Simply put, it is that symbols create reality . . . . Symbolic choices . . . can and do affect the structural world. . . . Although the reality of everyday life appears prearranged, ordered, and objective, and therefore outside of agents' sphere of influence . . . the structural world not only 'bears cultural constructions' but is itself a construction. (p. 220)

Because the structural world is itself a construction, individuals are capable of changing that world by thinking and making choices about it. Although the authors acknowledge that "agents cannot . . . lay out precisely the routes through which their desires will be fulfilled," they nevertheless believe that "desires are realized in outcomes that align with agents' choices" because of the ontological status of the structural world as a construction (p. 220). The key to understanding the ideal of agentic orientation is full consciousness : in order to change the construction of the world, one must understand what options are available and put faith in unforeseen possibilities yet to come (pp. 220-221). Such a position is entirely in keeping with the "core concept" of magic: "that mind affects matter, and that . . . the trained imagination can alter the physical world" (Luhrman, p. 7).[ii]

Not surprisingly, Rhonda Byrne also aligns "the Secret" with quantum physics (p. 156), however, constructivism appears in The Secret in the guise of "the law of attraction," which Bob Doyle, "author and law of attraction specialist," defines simply as "like attracts like" at "a level of thought." Byrne elaborates:

The law of attraction says like attracts like, and so as you think a thought, you are also attracting like thoughts to you. . . . Your life right now is a reflection of your past thoughts. That includes all the great things, and all the things you consider not so great. Since you attract to you what you think about most, it is easy to see what your dominant thoughts have been on every subject of your life . . . Until now! Now you are learning The Secret, and with this knowledge, you can change everything. (pp. 8-9)

Changing everything depends on understanding the ontological primacy of attraction, which is best grasped as a form of magnetism: "Thoughts are magnetic, and thoughts have a frequency," explains Byrne. "As you think, those thoughts are sent out into the Universe, and they magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency" (p. 10). Of course, in a basic seventh grade physics course students learn that magnetism is explained by the attraction of opposites, which is perhaps why The Secret is extra magical!

Nevertheless, as with Foss, Waters, and Armada, Byrne and her army of specialists insist on the constructedness of reality and the mutability of structure. "Time," for example,

is just an illusion. Einstein told us that. If this is the first time you have heard it, you may find it a hard concept to get your head around. . . . What quantum physicists and Einstein tell us is that everything is happening simultaneously. . . . It takes no time for the Universe to manifest what you want. Any time delay you experience is due to your delay in getting to the place of believing, knowing, and feeling that you already have it. (p. 63)

The concept of temporality is used here to teach readers a certain version of constructivism, the version Foss, Waters, and Armada advance in their reading of Run Lola Run: all three runs in the film happen at the same time, but reflect different levels of believing, knowing, and feeling. Once Lola understood the mutability of reality and the power of her manipulation of symbols, she could magically bend the laws of the Universe for money. Similarly, Byrne writes "[i]t's as easy to manifest one dollar as it is to manifest one million dollars" if you simply have the right mindset (p. 68).

Although we do not dismiss certain forms of constructivist thought, it is important to detail the consequence or "outcome" of choosing magical volunterism. Both The Secret and Foss, Waters, and Armada invoke physics to argue that structural change is possible for anything you desire through conscious thought and choice. Hence, magical volunteerism denies that some material and social conditions are not changeable:

Agentic orientations . . . are achieved within, rather than simply given by, the conditions of individuals' lives. Thus, individuals may be in a dominant position as defined by economic and other structural conditions or in a subordinate position as defined by a lack of access to such resources, but they may choose any agentic orientation and produce any outcome they desire. We acknowledge that such a view may be difficult to accept in extreme cases such as imprisonment or genocide; even in these situations, however, agents have choices about how to perceive their conditions and their agency. Even in these situations, adoption of the agentic orientation of director opens up opportunities for innovating in ways unavailable to those who construct themselves as victims. (p. 223, emphasis added)

In other words, the starving prisoner in a concentration camp should choose the director orientation and create the possibility of her liberation or escape.

Aside from the obvious offensiveness of such a perspective on imprisonment and genocide, what is the outcome of adopting this ontological view about "structural" conditions? The Secret is quite clear on the answer: narcissistic complacency. "Anything we focus on we do create," explains Hale Dwoskin, "so if we're really angry, for instance, at a war that's going on, or strife or suffering, we're adding our energy to it" (pp. 141-142). So although the rhetoric of magic exemplified by The Secret acknowledges structural injustice, it gets explained away in mystical terms that urge the reader to turn a back to the world and seek within. The video and book openly discourage social protest, invoking Carl Jung's phrase, "what you resist persists" (p. 142). "Don't give energy to what you don't want," intones one of the video's "teachers." For example, the DVD segment on wealth begins with black-and-white footage of sweatshop laborers in dreary factories, but sweatshops are a mere blip on the screen. Immediately, the text explains that today one can be free from such exploitation and drudgery simply by wishing for money (strangely, one of the "philosophers" invoked in the video to support the idea that the Secret can end exploitation is Henry Ford!). The real-world outcome of the constructivism that supports magical volunteerism is ultimately selfish inaction and complacency. "You cannot help the world by focusing on the negative things," says Byrne. "When I discovered The Secret I made a decision that I would not watch the news or read newspapers anymore, because it did not make me feel good" (pp. 144-145). Perhaps Foss, Waters, and Armada would have Byrne go to the movies instead?

Notes

[i] We object to the use of Butler's work in support of Foss, Waters, and Armada's project. The full citation that the authors marshal in support of their version of social construction is as follows: ". . . this presumption of the material irreducibility of sex has seemed to ground and authorize feminist epistemologies and ethics . . . . In an effort to displace the terms of this debate, I want to ask how and why 'materiality' has become a sign of irreducibility, that is, how it is that the materiality of sex is understood as that which only bears cultural constructions and, therefore, cannot be a cultural construction?" (1993, p. 28). Here Butler is concerned with those who argue that sex is not a social construction, and more specifically, why the materiality of sex is understood as "irreducible." Foss, Waters, and Armada, however, suggest Butler equates the materiality of the body with the structural world and, further, that she would support the argument that "choice is the basic mechanism by which the world is manifest," a statement Butler would rigorously reject as "linguistic relativism."

[ii] Luhrmann is careful to note, however, that change is possible only in "special circumstances, like ritual," a limitation that neither Foss, Waters, and Armada nor Byrne and her specialists acknowledge.

(a)typical austin weekend

Music: David Bowie: Stage (1978)

I had a pretty action-packed weekend of love and live music (and a leetle frustration), and am still trying to collect my wits for a week of writing that must happen or else! More guests arrive late in the week for this weekend's commencement festivities and a rhetoric people pot-luck.

Friday started off with a phone call at 10 a.m. from my neighbor who said "the plumbers are turning off the water now." What? I was in my pajamas and smelled like bed. I told Mrs. K. how inconsiderate that was, and promptly went outside to my mailbox area where there were two plumbers. "I have a meeting in an hour or so and need to bathe. Can you wait a half hour?" Sure, not a problem they said. I asked what they were doing. "We're putting a pressure valve in your neighbor's water line," they said.

Now, last week Mrs. K. kept pestering me about this valve, which I figured was in part a little-old-lady scheme given the cost she quoted me. She absolutely had to put one in, YESTERDAY, and wanted me to go in on it because it would save her money. "If you get one too, it's only $150 for each one of us," she says. I relay again I cannot afford it. "Why don't you spend your economic stimulus check?" she returned. Angrily, I said that I have a conference to go to, owed the feds $600 and would see no check, and just had a $1200 car bill. She kept on and reasoned that perhaps the plumber would take payments. "Look," I said, "if you can wait until July I'm teaching a summer class and might can afford it then. But I need to research it." She insisted that the plumber would be reasonable and said she'd talk to him and get back with me and let me know. This was last Sunday. She never called (and the work was to be done on Monday), so I had assumed the plumber said "no-can-do."

So I bathe, leave, have a great catch-up lunch with Adria, and return to find a plumbing bill in my mailbox for $350. Some of you will remember the joys of my cantankerous 80-something neighbor who behaves like a petulant teenager (for refreshers, read here and here). Well, she struck again. I called the plumber and left a message that I could not pay the bill and we needed to talk. I've yet to hear back from the plumber.

The weekend resumed to the greatness I had at lunch, however, in the early evening with birthday grrrrrrl festivities (both Dana and Adria got older this weekend). A group of folks started the evening at Lambert's BBQ (delicious!) and then a surprise happy hour for Dana. Later that night we saw the amazing Greencards play a sweaty set in Threadgill's sweltering outdoor theatre just off of Riverside. I realized to my chagrin the Greencards had apparently relocated to Nashville, which sucks: they used to play all the time here; now it's only once or twice a year. Although I'm not that big of a fan of their recent, Grammy-nominated album---it’s too "adult contemporary for my tastes---their first two albums are smoking and their set consisted (thankfully) mostly of the old stuff. Wow they were great. Then opening act was the amazing and local Sarah Jarosz, whom we were too late to see play by herself but who often played with the Greencards on stuff and in all the jams (the second video on Jarosz's page is from the show we actually saw; and someone has a gallery of the night we saw here)

Saturday I managed to get a little writing done and then cleaned house. Rebecca arrived from Baton Rouge just in time for dinner, so we hit one of my favorite places, Vivos, for some cucumber margaritas and grub. After that we headed to Club DeVille downtown in the Red River district where we were "entertained" by a Smith's cover band, Sweet and Tender Hooligans, and even more entertained by the barely legal Austin hipsters dancing 80s-style and hamming it up with the Hispanic-looking Morrissey impressionist (sans back-pocket Gladiolas, to my disappointment). Let's just say the band was "ok," Rebecca and I were returned to our 17-year-old-selves momentarily, and the lead singer took his shirt off way, way too early (like four songs into the set). We got out of downtown ahead of bar-time (always recommended to avoid the drunk drivers) and gabbed it up at my place until Rebecca left for her very-late-night party with other buddies.

Sunday began with a nice relaxing morning and a long phone call with mother for Mother's Day. I decided to make some crawfish etouffee so went to the store and got the goods. About the time I got cookin', Dana dropped by to gab a bit about our essay together and then Sadie dropped in for a visit with Jesús. Sadie brought along Roger and Amanda for the ride. After a good hour of the Butt-Sniff Carousel (as Amanda called it), the two tykes finally figured out how to play together. I was proud of Jesús, who treated Sadie like the 11-week-old that she was (very gentle). My god puppy pugs are cute as hell! I swear we could have watched them play for hours. Here's a gallery of their playdate.

This was quite a weekend for me. I'm usually lucky to get out one night a weekend. I know I appear the swingin' type, but in my old age I stay in more than go out . . . my how times have changed. And this weekend's series of outings reminded me how much I like to get out---how much Austin is an awesome place to live!---and probably would do so if I didn't have things falling apart all the time. And neighbors like Mrs. K authorizing hundreds of dollars of plumbing work without my consent.

moms

Music: DJ Yeshu: Mamamix 2008

For the past number of years---golly, probably six or seven---my mother usually has received flowers from me for Mother's Day. When I was a poor graduate student, however, I used to make her mix tapes and CDs, which she has always enjoyed and says she still listens to today. Last week I decided spending a couple of nights mixing up something for mom would be a nice change; last night I finished mixing it down. I mailed the CD overnight this morning.

This year has been a particularly difficult one for my mother, who shares caretaking responsibilities for my grandmother with my aunt. Last month my 85-year-old grandmother ("Granny") had a fall (her third in as many years) and had to go to the hospital. Once better they transported Granny to rehab despite my mother's protests. While in the rehab facility Granny had another stroke or heart-attack (we're not sure) but the damn rehab staff thought it was asthma. To make a long story short, Granny can no longer speak and is not "at home" in many senses. For one, she's now in a nursing home.

I am anxious to see Granny as soon as I can and will be going to Georgia at the end of the summer term. Granny pretty much raised me as a kid. See, I was picked on a lot in day care and finally my parents had me stay with Granny. I remember long, often boring days watching soaps with my Granny, catching possums in rodent traps, eating Club crackers and peanut butter and cheese and Vidalia onions and diet Coke. So I want to see her, maybe she'll be better by summer? I also want to see my mother, who is obviously distraught. I know this life stuff is normal for everyone, but this week I'm especially reminded of the joys and burdens of maternal caretaking.

I hope you all get to do something special for your moms on Sunday. You might cook her breakfast. Or you might make her a CD. Since my mom doesn't read my blog, I thought I'd share the mix I made for her with you. It is downloadable here as an MP3 file. Here is a CD insert I made in PDF. But don't give this mix to your mom: make your own!

My mom likes funk, soul, and country, and she has a pretty good sense of humor. So here's what I came up with:

1. louvin brothers: what a friend we have in mother
2. james brown: mother popcorn
3. parliment: give up the funk
4. chicago: mother
5. dr. john: huey smith medley
6. van morrison: see me through (medley)
7. ray wylie hubbard: choctaw bingo
8. tony joe white: tastes like chicken
9. lil joe washington: i feel alright
10. dwight yoakam: bury me
11. red stick ramblers: that’s what I like about the south
12. ralph stanley: hard times
13. robert plant and alison krauss: your long journey
14. willie nelson: mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys
15. ed’s redeeming qualities: mom
16. fountains of wayne: stacy’s mom
17. beautiful south: mother’s pride
18. rilo kiley: give a little love

I think Battlestar Galactica is calling me, so I shall hie meh buttocks to another screen.

on writerly sloppiness

Music: Kate Bush: The Sensual World (1989)

Yesterday I finished revising a review essay for a major journal in my field. After the experience I am feeling a little demoralized, certainly embarrassed, and perhaps a smidgeon of ashamed. I'm not despondent, mind you, just a little rattled that the last round of copy-edits caught a host of gaffs. The most embarrassing mistake of all: citing "Mother Stands for Comfort" as if it appeared on The Sensual World, when I know darn well it appears on one of my top ten favorite albums of all time, Hounds of Love. I must relinquish my claim to Kate Bush expertise now; that sort of mistake is inexcusable.

Now, the essay I sent back yesterday is among the most heavily vetted of anything I've ever submitted for publication. Seriously. It is very nice to have one's work scrutinized so closely---but it's also somewhat akin to head-shots in HDTV: flaws will be found. I suspect part of the close scrutiny has to do with recent publication controversies in the humanities over plagiarism. In our age of the sound byte and the sample, we're all getting lazy about attribution. My own students think "riffing" using someone else's words or ideas is completely legitimate as long as the final assemblage/bricolage is their own (and you'll recall sampling only became a legal issue in the music world when The Verve got sued for "Bittersweet Symphony" not terribly long ago). Scholarly changes in the academy are afoot; as my own citation practices are getting lazy (e.g., citing the wrong publication year), some outfits are choosing to vet ever more closely. Heck, it's now becoming a way to get rid of tenured professors.

Although there is no excuse for writerly sloppiness (it's the quickest route to a rejection that I know), I nevertheless want to craft an apologia for the common mistake: I don't care how hard I proofread my own work, I never catch all my mistakes or gaffs. It's like I'm blind or something. I read every essay I'm about to send off for review aloud, and that often catches things. But mistakes always make it through to reviewers, and I must admit it is more common than not that a reviewer will say to me, "proofread your essays before submitting them." I swear to gosh that I do! I don't understand what it is, but blindness to my own writerly shortcomings seems---to borrow an unfortunate phrase from Obama---to be in my DNA.

In part I think the mistakes are a consequence of some of my writing techniques: sometimes when I'm writing, it just comes out. Ronell describes writing as "automatic" at times, as if the words and arguments are coming from outside of oneself (in point of fact, that's what I think sort of happens anyway). I've often had the experience of binge-writing for three days and then sitting down with this essay---the thing---and thinking to myself: "where the eff did this come from?" Like I sometimes don't remember writing the thing. This is especially true of writing love letters: it just bubbles out and in some sense the declarative "I" of emotional abandon is someone else.

Nevertheless, this phenomenon of everyone being able to see your writerly boo-boo but yourself speaks to some sort of writerly unconscious. I sometimes catch myself writing a malapropism (e.g., writing "right" for "write" and so forth, which belies and betrays something), but in general I have them pointed out to me by someone else. Regardless, if it were not for the proofreading of others I'm afraid my publications would be an huge embarrassment. So if you're a blind reviewer or editor of my work, please understand: something beyond me is writing those mistakes! I'm trying very hard to "see" them myself, I swear I'm not that lazy. This is why I often go easy on error-riddled essays in my own reviewing, I get it.

This is also why copy-editors and blind reviewers are deserving of our praise. Initially my reaction to yet another round of edits was anger: "not again!" I thought; "I've revised this a billion times!" Then I realized I was being defensive about something else, something beyond me, as if the copyeditor was seeing something about myself that I'd prefer to keep hidden. That sort of attitude just won't cut it, and not having that attitude when I started writing is in point of fact my own secret to success: admit you are not the genius, let others help you, and get over your goshdarn self. Right? Right. No sense in being a prima donna, no sense in getting righteous over my own writing because I'm not in full control anyway. I'm not in control. I must, as the Postal Service sings, "Give (it) Up." This is why we need to let-go of the romantic idea of the solitary writer and critical virtuoso: no one piece of scholarship is single-authored, and that's a good thing. Without other people we couldn't understand ourselves; we would be blind to our own mistakes. And we wouldn't publish.